One of the inevitable consequences of aging, aside from the fact that only a select few of us continue to be extraordinarily wise, is that we begin to forget small, unimportant things. So it came as no surprise to Elder Advice, as he was leafing through his copy of The Wit and Wisdom of Justin Trudeau, that he had forgotten that book does not exist. Anyway, I stumbled upon a favourite quote of his: “At one point, people are going to have to realize that maybe I know what I'm doing”. Now, it may be just me … well, me and most of the population of this country … but I feel confident in saying that it has been 9 years, and we are not yet at that point.
Those hoping for another Elder Advice demonstrating conclusively that Justin is the worst Prime Minister since Sir Mackenzie Bowell will be sorely disappointed because I am going to say nothing at all about him this week. Nothing about his government’s shambles of a housing policy, which it is clearly intended to ensure that everyone pays enough rent to enable their landlord to buy a house. Nothing about the disaster of his government’s immigration policy and its breezy failure to account for 800,000 foreign students and other temporary residents: a situation even his own Minister acknowledged is out of control. Nothing about the undoubtedly merry and entirely free Christmas the Trudeaus had at a $9,360 a night privately owned Caribbean resort, first claiming they would be paying their own costs and then, after the media discovered the lie, issuing a “clarification”: that they had vacationed at no cost. Which sounds more like a “confession”. No cost… other than the estimated $162,000 of taxpayers’ money to house and feed the bevy of security personnel and aides who accompanied them. And whatever will be the cost of the quid pro quo to Peter Green, the businessman who provided the illicit benefit. Not to mention the double cost of two RCAF Challenger jets required to get the family there and back when the first became “unserviceable”, like successive Liberal cabinets, and another was dispatched to return them to Ottawa. All in all, it would certainly have been cheaper, and Elder Advice wonders out loud whether it would have been better for all concerned, if they had just been left in Jamaica.
Anyway, not a word about any of that.
Because Elder Advice needs to talk instead about “certainty”. A favourite young associate of mine has been wrestling with the issue of whether or not to have children. None of the usual explanations - about the sorry state of the world - apply. Rather, her concern is that she is uncertain. About everything. “My friends are so sure about things” she told me. “But I’m always riddled with doubt. What kind of parent will that make me?”
A very good one, in the chronically reliable view of Elder Advice. The present problem is that too many people apply the instruction to “suspend your disbelief” to life outside movie theatres. They accept all manner of nonsense unmoored from fact and even probability. They intentionally or negligently abandon knowledge, logic and judgment and allow themselves to accept the most bizarre fictional narratives as true.
A particularly egregious yet hilarious example surfaced during the Iowa caucuses last week. The Iowa caucuses are a peculiarly American ritual, unfathomable to foreigners, apparently designed to have a single state with a voting age population of 20 or so decide who will be President and leader of the free world. Which makes perfect sense. If you are of voting age in Iowa. It was a video declaring with certainty that Donald Trump is God’s emissary on Earth. Really. It begins with a preacher voice-over: “And on 14 June 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump,”
God said: “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state. So God made Trump.” …
“I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the Deep State yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to ruffle the feathers, tame the cantankerous, come home hungry, have to wait until the First Lady is done with lunch with friends, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon – and mean it. So God gave us Trump.”
“I need somebody who can shape an axe but wield a sword, who had the courage to set foot in North Korea, who can make money from the tar of the sand, turn liquid to gold, who understands the difference between tariffs and inflation, will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then put in another 72 hours. So God made Trump.” …
“God had to have somebody willing to go into the den of vipers, call out the fake news, their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s. The poison of vipers is on their lips …”
The climax has God anointing Trump as the shepherd to lead his flock in the drilling for fossil fuels, the securing of the southern border and the creation of jobs, all while religiously attending church every Sunday.
Clearly God is destined to be one of the greatest fiction writers of all time - if he hasn’t already qualified for that accolade.
Elder Advice confesses he never envisaged God as quite so chatty. Or so needy. Or so forgetful. After all, everyone knows it is Canadians who are ordained to make money from the tar of the sand.
Otherwise, Elder Advice cannot imagine a list of things that Donald Trump has done less of: 112 hour work weeks. Alchemy. Obstetrics. Understanding economics. Swordplay. Snake charming. Missing meals. Battling communists. Being polite to women. And what is with that weird misogynist cheap shot at Melania? A girl’s gotta eat.
God may indeed have made Trump, but only as an amuse bouche before getting down to worthwhile creation.
Anyway, pure fiction. Not a fact in sight. But believers aplenty.
In the post-Enlightenment Western world, we used to appreciate the bright line separating fact from opinions and opinions from beliefs. Facts were accepted with the implicit understanding that knowledge can always be improved upon. Opinions not built on facts were derided on that basis. Beliefs were restricted to the realm of religious conviction. What Elder Advice now observes, with increasing unease, is the reversal of that process. With an ever increasing number of those among us who have deliberately or lazily permitted their factually-impaired opinions to become beliefs and who then present their beliefs as facts. Which they contend are unassailable. Like their religious convictions. If this strikes you as pre-Enlightenment thinking, fast approaching the medieval, we would both be correct.
Opinion texted me last week, complaining that everyone now always wants him to be right or wrong. “That’s not my authentic self”, he said bitterly.
The present result is no shortage of simpletons with laptops, convincing user-names and dreamcatchers on their walls where the diplomas should be – who are certain about everything. Elder Advice anticipates 2024 will be the year that cocksure cohort announces it will no longer use the words “a” and “an”. Because they are, after all, indefinite articles.
Elder Advice has been fortunate. Many of his friends and business partners are engineers and scientists - people who, by inclination and training, are wonderfully uncertain. While others were skipping high school chemistry class and trying to live down the reputations they developed in grade 2 for eating paste, these people were learning to be methodical, thoughtful and, above all, skeptical. To deal only in probabilities supported by facts. In their admirable world, facts are the product of the labour of a global network of institutions. Institutions that have credibility because they do the hard work of foundational research, report their findings, expose them to critical review, and accept as fact only those that survive.
Elder Advice? In the increasingly complex real world outside movie theatres and other places of worship, it is necessary to suspend all beliefs. Uncertainty is essential. And parenting now involves more than effort to raise honest, skillful, caring and thoughtful young people who are comfortable in their own skins and who do good deeds for others. They need instruction in critical thinking and calling out fact-free beliefs.
As for certainty, leave that to Elder Advice. Who is unfailingly correct.
One of your best, Tim. You have eloquently set out what I’ve been quietly fuming about for some time.