the need for sincerity…

Front runners Mark Carney & Chrystia Freeland in the Liberal leadership stakes!

Click link for article

https://open.substack.com/pub/justinling/p/nothing-is-sincere-and-everything?r=1sx7vz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Nothing Is Sincere, and Everything Hurts

How troll politics are setting up an unreal era

JUSTIN LING

Court Painter with portrait of journalist Justin Ling

JAN 17, 2025

Excerpted from article:

The Need for Sincerity

‘I don’t know what four more years of Trump means. I have to suspect that it will not mean the annexation of Canada or Greenland. I believe it will mean cruelty to migrants whose only crime was trying to chase the American dream, trans people who just want basic respect, and a host of others who don’t fit into the reactionary vision Trump represents and who are easy targets for his high-velocity online propaganda machine.

And I know that the hollow patronizing from his liberal critics isn’t going to be an effective check on his power nor a popular alternative.’

Trump demonstrating an interest in geography!

‘For years, liberals have remained fundamentally stuck in their ways — while the left and non-reactionary right have only tried to emulate their tactics. They have lectured their critics to stop whining, insisted that things are better than they may seem, and defended their half-measures as sufficient, all the while insisting: We hear you.

Yet when Trump comes along, fundamentally in charge of the pervasive frustration present in Western society, he forces them to do more in a few days that they’ve done in years.

Trump demonstrating an interest in geography.

Now is the time to dismantle this rigid, inflexible, and paternalistic liberalism of self-fashioning, and figure out what an actual democratic, participatory politics would look like. It’s not enough for our politicians to become the symbol they think we want, it’s time they actually start speaking to people in real terms — offline, whenever possible — and leave the absurd conventions behind.

Now would be an ideal time for Carney, or one of his competitors, to model good behavior, drop the vacuousness of this modern liberalism, and show everyone what better can look like.

We don’t have five or ten years to figure this out. It needs to happen today.’

Justin Ling