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Bruce Dowbiggin

Woke Folk: Going To The Chappelle And We’re Going to Aggravated

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News Item: Crypto giant FTX collapses the day after U.S. midterms provoking stories of Ukrainian money laundering and $40-million Democratic Party donations. 

As the expression goes, you can always tell a liberal. You just can’t tell them much. Which might account for the seismic reaction to Dave Chappelle’s SNL monologue last week. No, not the anti-semitic gargle. That’s political boilerplate that matters only to the chattering class. Average people see it for what it is. Insider baseball.

No, what was truly unique was Chappelle’s observation that the midterms just passed were not Donald Trump’s last stand. He started his riff by saying his enlightened New York crowd probably think #orangemanbad is done. But from his own home among the poor whites in Ohio it’s not so clear to Chappelle.

Trump, he says, is still loved. Why?  Chappelle points out that real estate mogul/ TV host  was the first rich white person to confess to the commoners: “We are doing all the things you think we are doing.”

“He’s what I call an honest liar…” Chappelle said. “That first debate, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen a white male billionaire screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘This whole system is rigged.’ … (asked for proof) he said, ‘I know the system is rigged, because I use it.’”

When accused during the debate by Hillary Clinton of not paying taxes, Trump shot back: “That makes me smart… if you want me to pay my taxes then change the tax code…But I know you won’t, because your friends and donors enjoy the same tax breaks that I do.” And with that, said Chappelle, a star was born.

What was interesting about all this cynicism is that it’s still news to the #SNL audience fed cartoons about Trump and his base. Six years later, the Rob Reiner crowd is still huffing and puffing about Russia. The Anti Trump Republicans can’t fathom that the base created Trump, not vice versa.

Leading disaffected conservative author George Will to observe of the RINOs under Donald Trump, “A large number of its elected officials are terrified of their voters … And if you’re afraid of your voters, you don’t really respect your voters. And if you don’t respect them, you don’t really like them.” Now, the Liz Cheneys and Mitt Romneys are a hunted class thanks to Trump’s base.

Trump the opportunist was the first person in on the game who was honest about The Fix. (Bernie Sanders was always an outsider). Poor middle-class people respected that cynicism. He gave them rough honesty. They gave him loyalty to pursue their agenda.

U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the South Lawn before their meeting about the NAFTA trade agreement at the White House in Washington, U.S. October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Naturally the preening cool kids in the NBC studio and the sneering Canadian commentariat prefer the byzantine Russia hoax and the bleach and the MAGA hats. The Rachel Maddow lecture series and the Keith Olbermann eye rolling. They never understood that the unrelenting scorn they poured out since 2015 could not remove Trump’s connection to the people that Chapelle lives with in Ohio. It enhanced it.

The knowledge workers and performance artists and Greta Thunbergs— used to hapless Republicans who just blew the midterms— could never fathom the elemental link between Trump and his rallies. The Jimmy Kimmel slappies still believe the “GOP Friends of Big Business” tag.

The political polar opposite to Trump is Canada’s serial fabulist PM Justin Trudeau, who blew off Remembrance Day to hobnob in SE Asia with third-world bullies, Klaus Schwab technocrats and to be lectured like a schoolboy by Xi Jinping. He, too, is petrified of real people. To protect himself he flaunts his privilege. He despises anyone outside his Great Reset club. He wears blackface while lecturing on race tolerance.

As a member of the WEF Brahmin caste, he’d die before lowering himself to honesty with the Freedom Convoy untouchables. (But try to keep him from attending a drag show!) Even as his fellow ESG toffs around the world are being sacked, no amount of shame from the Emergency Measures debacle or sacking Jodie Wilson Raybould could force Trudeau to level with the Convoy types..

He’s a Woke made man, after all. He knows the NDP support will protect him from the populist rabble. His refusal to “slum” is his eternal bond with the CBC snobs. Portraying himself as a brave hero in Covid times, he locks down people and fires them for not taking vaccines. His virtuous vanity gives him purpose. That’s also supposed to make his ardent supporters into heroes, too. This fake virtue is enough to cover every insult to Canadian voters, every grab for power.

Which brings us back to FTX and its neurodivergent founder San Bankman-Fried. Even as he (and as-yet unknown parties) launched this massive fraud he made sure to blanket his nefarious business in all the Woke pieties Trudeau worships. From climate to veganism to trans sensitivity, SBF played the system, just as Trump assured his voters the exploiting class would. SNL never said a word.

It seems he took down a number of the In Crowd— Shaq O’Neal, Tom Brady and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan among them— with his pathetic virtue videos. But the people on the inside made out just fine. The Democrats used his laundered Ukrainian millions to corrupt GOP primaries that produced Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker. The Wealth Class doubled its billions during Covid. Big banks wrecked the crypto start-ups. The status quo survived and thrived.

As Chappelle has noted, for all their failings the Trump base sees the world as it is. The progressive left sees a world as they wish it to be. Eventually they are going to collide.

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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

 

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BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Be Careful What You Wish For In 2026: Mark Carney With A Majority

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“The unifying theme that enables the Liberal party to maintain its hold over Canada is persistent anti-Americanism…I hope Canadians finally mature, acknowledge that we are neither superior nor inferior to the United States, and abandon our collective national inferiority complex.” Conrad Black quotes a friend. 

Canadian media have almost always been reflexively anti-American. Fair enough. Abandoned by Britain they needed to push back. But the real fear of being consumed by the rebel colonies to the south has morphed into a fear of Donald Trump reminding Canada that it has been riding first class while paying economy.

Bashing noisy, bumptious America has always been good business if you owned a Canadian newspaper or television/radio network. The performative worship of Canadian leaders who cocked a snook at the Yankees led, in recent times, to the open-mouthed support for the fatuous Trudeaupian line of monarchs. As Ray Davies sang, “each one a dedicated follower of fashion.”

Since Pierre “The Bold” Trudeau succeeded Lester Pearson and ascended to the throne of the Family Compact in 1968, Canadian policy from Viet Nam to Trump has become “What are the Americans doing? Then let’s do the opposite”. Sample of spite: CBS TV pulled a controversial 60 Minutes news story —but it aired in Canada after being leaked by pissed-off CBS employees.

Yes, there was the brief Harper interregnum when Canada actually fought a military campaign alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan. But mostly it was Jean “Golf Balls” Chretien sitting out the Iraq War.

Alas, all good things must end. Or at least pause. People were starting to notice that Justy was a Chinese trusty, his Montreal riding campaign funded by hundreds of Chinese “businessman” from far away. The tragi-comic Trudeuapian succession hit a speed bump with Mark Carney being brought in to domesticate Canada in manner satisfactory to Brookfield and the EU.

But no one is betting the Libs won’t turn to a third generation of Quebec fashionistas— in the form of another Trudeau progeny— when all else fails.

As usual caustic Conrad Black sums up Canada best. With Quebec and Alberta talking separation he quotes a friend on the state of the nation. “What exists instead is a Liberal Party that manages — often quite poorly — the finances of a collection of provinces and territories, while relying on its media apparatus to shape and safeguard its narrative. It resembles a hedge fund supported by an image consulting firm.” (Insert your convict felon/ anglo wannabe reference here.)

There is no doubt that, as 2025 skulks out, the “image-consulting firm” painting rosy pictures of the Laurentian Elite is in for a a challenge. Justin thought using Trump as his pretext could achieve peace by buying up the lads and lasses of the fourth estate. It worked with Covid and the Truckers Convoy as the column writers/ panel hosts dutifully wrote it like he called it (even as the international press chided Trudeau.).

But even those good times didn’t last, forcing the Libs to do a presto-chango before Justin could lead them to a catastrophic defeat in the spring election. Once more, faced with Trump’s aggressive posture toward trade with Canada, the press closed ranks over Elbows Up, portraying CPC leader Pierre Poilievre as Dick Dastardly.

But new polling shows that the burst of enthusiasm for more Liberal pantomime is wearing thin. The new “new” trade deal promised with Trump has dissipated. The threat to private home ownership in B.C. by government’s indigenous land concessions has sent a chill through the middle class. The NDP fainting goats who bought Elbows Up are headed back to Crazytown, likely under Avi Lewis.

Now, at last, the reckoning promised by the Conservatives’ 20-point lead in polling this time last year may be at hand. While the diehards will go their graves mumbling land acknowledgements and 32 pronouns, there is hope that the under 60s— who emphatically support the Tories— will force change.

What change? Tristan Hopper in the National Post suggests that one place to start reforming the jalopy of Canadian government is in the oceans of money lavished on cause-related political leeches. Seeing the Bondi Beach slaughter by ISIS radicals many now question how long before Toronto or Montreal experiences a similar tragedy at the hands of jihadis who are lavishly supported by tax money.

Yes, not all Muslims in the West are terrorists. But almost all terrorists in the West are Muslim. Hate-spewing Hamas groupies from college faculty are regularly allowed major intersections with police protection as they promise to wipe out infidels. Till now it’s been poor form to even mention, let alone criticize, this pantomime.

Withdrawing financial aid to these groups and their academic fellow travellers would immediately rob these brigands of their impact. The cries of despair from cutting the cord would also expose those in the Commons who have coddled these vipers with grants and ministries.

Similar hacking at the slush money aimed at every other form of leftist posing— from trans to indigenous to illegal immigrants— would also mark the end of free money. Of course there will be caterwauling from the Elizabeth May Free Lunch crew. But with the threat of Canada coming apart with Quebec and Alberta/ Saskatchewan headed for the door those usual dissenting voices will be muted.

Only one thing stands in the way of this culling. That is PM Mark Carney coercing one more MP to cross the floor to his party, cementing its majority status for up to four more years. While the At Issue panels slap their flippers in glee at Poilievre’s demise, the rest of the nation will be less enthralled with the new realities of censorship, trade and housing.

As Stephen Punwasi states. “People in Canada can’t afford homes & prices can’t fall because debt was securitized with widespread fraud—so taxpayers will subsidize foreign speculation. It’s like they hired the mayor of Vancouver to run housing. Oh—they did, eh? Kids, run.”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Hunting Poilievre Covers For Upcoming Demographic Collapse After Boomers

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For those not familiar with hunting seasons in Canada it may come as a surprise that the nation has a year-round hunting season. That would be the targeting of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre by the massed army of Liberals, their bots and the richly endowed media pack. Forget he’s never held power. He’s to blame for the ills in Canadian society.

It has been a good hunt. After floor-crossing by dissident CPC, the Liberals are one seat from the majority that Canadian voters denied them in the spring. (They’ll likely get the majority soon.) MPs who a day earlier were at Conservative Xmas parties suddenly sang the praises of Carney. MPs in ridings targeted by the Chinese suddenly joined Team Elbow Up.

All the while the media corps landed blows from their perch. Robert Benzie: “I know that Premier [Danielle] Smith is very unhappy privately with Pierre Poilievre because she thinks that [MOU motion] is undermining this [pipeline] project.” The nadir of the media dog pile was formerly eminent scribe Robert Fife who sniped, “Conservatives persist with cute legislative tricks, while the government tries to run a country.” Run a country. That’s rich.

From his lips to Liberal brains, however. “.@CBCNews and @AlJazeeraWorld viewers consider themselves uniquely informed, says @ElectionsCan_E report. The two TV networks were named by self-described “informed” voters when asked where they got their news.

It is, seemingly, a great time to be a Liberal. Or not. While Operation Poilievre was gathering steam for Xmas polling revealed that Liberals and Conservatives remain locked in a tie, and Canadians continue to express ambivalence about the country’s direction, mixed feelings about their leaders, and sharp divides by generation, region, and policy concern. These generational discrepancies continue to be buried.

As was the case in the spring, the Liberals are supported only by the Boomer generation that swallowed Elbows Up nostalgia like a fat man on a donut. The under 60s demo at every level shows the current Carney agenda is a loser for them. In the segment of house-rich Boomers the Libs lead 50-31 over CPC. But in every other category it’s “how can I get out of here faster?”

The 45-59 demo it’s 46-36 Conservatives; 30-44 it’s a whopping 48-31 CPC; 18-29 it’s 40-39 CPC. A healthy chunk of Liberal supporting from the collapse of NDP vote. Where they used to poll in the 20s, the highest demo shows 11 percent support. Otherwise Poilievere would be PM.

Meanwhile, research now finds that 54 percent of Canadians say the growing number of newcomers to the country threatens our traditional customs and values— an increase of sixteen points since 2020. Over the same period, the share of Canadians who say immigration strengthens our society fell thirteen points to 35%

In short, the Carney Circus of marrying Canada to China and the EU is a card trick that will be exposed shortly. But where do we see the Ottawa press corps attention to this impending demographic snow plow? As we wrote in March  “It’s not hard to see the (under 60s)  looking at the Mike Myers obsession with a long-gone Canada and saying let’s get out of here. 

Recently former TVOntario host Steve Pakin attended two convocations. The first at the former Ryerson University, (switched to Toronto Metropolitan University in a fit of settler colonizer guilt.) The second at Queens University, traditionally one of the elite schools in the nation. Here’s what he saw.

“At the end of the (TMU) convocation, when Charles Falzon, on his final day as dean of TMU’s Creative School, asked students to stand and sing the national anthem, many refused. They remained seated. Then, when the singing began, it was abundantly noticeable that almost none of the students sang along. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know the words, which were projected on a big screen. The unhappy looks on their faces clearly indicated a different, more political, explanation.

I asked some of the TMU staff about it after the ceremony was over, and they confirmed what I saw happens all the time at convocations. Then I texted the president of another Ontario university who agreed: this is a common phenomenon among this generation at post-secondary institutions.” 

At Queens, where Canadian flags were almost non-existent, O Canada was sung, but the message of unrest was clear: “Convocation sends a message of social stability,” Queen’s principal Patrick Deane  began in his speech.  “It is a ceremony shaped in history. You should value your connection to the past, but question that inheritance. Focus on the kind of society you’d like to inhabit.”

You can bet Deane is not telling them to question climate change and trans rights. As Paikin observes, “if we fail to create a more perfect union, we shouldn’t be surprised when a vast swath of young people don’t sing our anthem the way so many of the rest of us do.” So why are the best and brightest so reluctant to see as future in becoming the new professional class that runs society?

In the Free Press River Page searched the source of their discontent. “If the Great Recession, Covid-19, and the spectre of an artificial intelligence-assisted ‘white collar bloodbath’ has taught the professional class anything, it is that their credentials cannot save them. This insecurity, compounded by the outrageous cost of living in many large cities, has pushed the PMC’s anxieties to the breaking point. 

“Add that to the triumph of identity politics in professional class institutions like universities, corporate C-suites, non-governmental organizations, and media—itself a byproduct of inter-elite competition as many have observed—and what you have is the modern left.

“… they’ve already come to the baffling conclusion that there’s no difference between class struggle and child sex changes. More to the point, the socialist mantra “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” has only ever stood the test of time in Anabaptist sects. It requires a religious devotion to self-sacrifice that is not characteristic of this anxious and hyper-competitive class—as many actual socialists have spent the last decade warning.”

The tsunami over immigration has caused severe dislocations— as PM Steven Harper predicted in the 2015 election debate. He was shouted down by the dopey dauphin Justin Trudeau who opened the sluice gates to every kind of progressive nonsense. Which is now evident.

Like all people addicted, CDN Boomers don’t want the truth. They want performance theatre, T-shirts and hockey games. They blame Trump for their predicament, caught between grim realities. Will they take the 12 steps? Or will their kids have to tell them the facts as they escort them to the home?” We’re now seeing the likely answer to that question everywhere in Canadian society.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books

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