Thread by @EmpireinWinter

Reviewing Taibbi's old Neil Young coverage at Rolling Stone...

'Denouncing truckers for "unacceptable views," Canada's Prime Minister skipped town rather than face evidence of his own unpopularity. Is neoliberalism finally cracking?'

https://twitter.com/juarezxmachina/status/1491842009140629504

'There may be no real-world comparison between a blood-soaked monster like Ceaușescu & a bumbling ball-scratcher like Joe Biden...or an effete pseudo-intellectual like Justin Trudeau.'

'The Berlin Wall had fallen, and Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush had recently announced the end of the Cold War, making the end of Ceaușescu’s rule inevitable, though he couldn’t see this yet.'
taibbi.substack.com/p/justin-trude…

'Ceaușescu to the end did not grasp that his unpopularity had an organic character. He was convinced ethnically Hungarian “terrorists” were behind the latest trouble.'

'Paul Kenyon’s Children of the Night describes the morbid black comedy that ensued. The Ceaușescus and a motley gang of undead apparatchiks...tried to load into a single helicopter....“Where to?” asked the pilot, and nobody knew, because there was no plan'

'Ceaușescu’s balcony will forever be a symbol of elite cluelessness...never be able to see the last salvo coming, if doing so requires any self-examination.'

'The neoliberal political establishment in most of the Western world, the subject of repeat populist revolts of rising intensity in recent years, seems to suffer from the same disability.'

'From Brexit to the election of Donald Trump to, now, the descent ... of 🇨🇦 truckers upon the capital city of Ottawa to confront Trudeau, a consistent theme has been the refusal to admit — not even to us, but to themselves — the numerical truth of what they’re dealing with.'

'Canadian truckers are reportedly 90% vaccinated, above the country’s 78% total, a key detail that’s been brazenly ignored by media in both countries determined to depict these more as “anti-vax” than “anti-mandate” protests'

'A near-exact repeat of the “basket of deplorables” episode, Trudeau’s imperious description of “unacceptable” views instantly became a rallying cry, with people across the country lining the streets to cheer truckers while self-identifying as the “small fringe minority.”'

'Everyone from high school kids to farmers and teachers and random marchers carrying jerrycans of fuel joined in as Trudeau’s own words were used to massively accelerate his troubles.'

'Trudeau fled the city, removing his family to what aides called a “secret location” for “security reasons,” a politically disastrous move denounced by just about everyone with a microphone or a Twitter account, including members of his own party. '

'Liberal MP Joël Lightbound took things a step further. He ripped Trudeau’s politics as divisive, saying his government needs to recognize people have “legitimate concerns” while adding, acidly, “Not everyone can earn a living on a MacBook at a cottage.”'

'This has been a theme in the States, too, where the people most dickishly insistent on the necessity of lockdowns or mandates have tended to be Zoomer professionals spending the pandemic in pajamas. '

'Meanwhile, in a hilarious third-rate spoof version of American conventional wisdom — when Canadians try to imitate American pretensions, does it ever not end in a cringe-worthy self-own?'

'CBC announcer Nil Köksal went on air on January 28th and suggested the trucker protests were a Russian concoction.'