This morning @JoeNBC, had a very emotional moment where he tried to talk directly to his friends and family who have fallen into the place where they honestly fear AOC and her Green New Deal – progressivism – more than they fear authoritarianism or autocracy.

In Canada some 41% of conservatives, about 12-15% of Canadians, have exactly the same mindset. You might be surprised at the number of people who wouldn't vote Liberal or NDP under any circumstance whatsoever, even if it means authoritarianism for our country.

These people fall into two groups so don't kid yourself that they're all just idiots who have fallen prey to social media misinformation or aren't smart enough to distinguish the fine line between our kind of democracy and Russian style "democracy".

The first kind is the victim who falls for misinformation, isn't very bright maybe, has generational partisan issues, hates liberals because they want to take his money and "they're all poetry teachers" (sorry @DrJayDrNo), is poorly educated and reads only PostMedia/RebelMedia.

You can almost forgive these easily manipulated intellectual lightweights drones who will believe virtually anything people like Rex Murphy say, think if something is "published" it's trustworthy and have been raised to hate all things Liberal and especially Trudeau connected.

These people are mostly victims of their own intellectual limitations and baked in prejudices. But their real abusers are the second group in the "never liberal" mix.

They're the journalists and publishers, the copy writers and meme makers, the professional influencers.

Every day this second group, despite knowing what they're doing, sits down to manipulate the other group. They sit down to make them angry, rile them up, get them good and scared of progressiveness, tell them lies, half lies and nearly lies cleverly hidden in word trickery.

They, despite having the intellectual power to distinguish between conservatism and what Trump is doing and what Harper tried to do, despite understanding the consequences, sit down every day and try to scare Canadians about progress. We have Jon Kay, they have Ben Shapiro.

They have Fox News, we have PostMedia. Their job is not to inform you, it's to frighten you into compliance. It's not to create a more representative overview of reality, it's to alter your sense of reality.

These people will tell you outright that they will *never* vote liberal or NDP. They will *never* be "left". There is no candidate bad enough, no policy stupid or craven enough, no outcome disgusting enough, no slope slippery enough, no outcome anti democratic enough. None.

And the only way these people, these influencers, can possibly stay relevant and keep an audience is to keep them angry and tell them lies.

The only way they get their illiberal, anti progress, colonial, tiered society is to keep enough of us stupid.

It's 100% true.

America got lucky and a Never Trumper group found their spines and got their courage in the sticking place but can you see any of the Canadian conservative literati ever engaging in a clear eyed assessment of @PierrePoilievre, as an example?

Can you see Coyne endorsing Trudeau or Iveson standing up to some of crazy Rempel's bullshit or Fife calling out anything? Ever?

All this is just navel gazing, it's nothing new or insightful, but I felt so bad for Joe, tbh.

He's trying to understand why some people would rather have authoritatism than utterly failed regurgitated policies and plans that only ever work for rich white people ...

... oh.

Mr O'Toole has told us he intends to follow the *exact* same economic path.

And let's not pretend that this economic policy doesn't carry the same social effects as it did in America. Don't let the "economic" part fool you.

And this second group are informed. They see Trump. They see America and yet they shrug and say "good plan, O'Toole".

Not because it's a good plan, but because it's not a liberal plan.

The educated, aware second group might see the light some day and realize the part they played in the disintegration of our political discourse and withhold their vote or vote liberal.

But the little monsters they created in this generation or the last are still holding all the grudges that the lies created. They're still fearful of nonsense things they were told might happen, angry over things misrepresented to them by the "smart" folks in the second group.

I dunno, Joe. I feel your pain. So many of my family and friends hate Trudeau so much or are so PostMedia head fucked that they can't see straight. I can't reach them. They're lost in a maze of disinformation and malice, not even aware that they're pawns in a bigger game.

Our conservatives are better mannered and slightly more concerned with "the forms" but that's changing. They're realizing how far they can go and keep their base and they could sneak in another government before Canada realizes what they've become.

That will be our Trump period.

I think it's avoidable. But barely.

I think the media class thinks they can control their monsters. I think they're wrong.

I also don't think we have enough genuinely principled conservatives to save us if it happens.

So we must not let it happen to us.

Mostly we must not think it *can't*.

It can.

Just a long ramble on a rainy day.

Addendum:

Shortly after I posted, I got a DM from someone who might be considered a part of the "second group" and whom I personally consider "principled".

I think this part of the conversation is worth sharing. As a practical matter, I think the last paragraph is accurate.