The Paralyzing Fear Of Making Important Decisions

The rise of Canada's ineffective and impotent leadership.

If ideas are the rudder of society, then fear is that unrelenting wind constantly pushing us off course.

Fear has been a mainstay of government and media narratives since the beginning of governments and media, but it really hit its stride at the end of 2019 when the coronavirus pandemic hit. It seemed like every decision being made was because of fear. Fear of getting sick, fear of getting Grandma sick, fear of holding the wrong opinions, fear of breaking arbitrary rules that we could neither understand, nor explain. Maybe the most debilitating fear was the fear of countering the official stories we were being told about the pandemic - the causes, the harms, and the remedies.

The reason I say this was the most debilitating of the many fears on offer, is because this is the fear that so totally consumed our governments and their media. And they were the ones responsible for promoting those fears without even questioning their validity, since asking those kinds of questions was apparently not tolerated.

Obviously not everyone was worried about being contrarian with regard to the official story, but as long as the government/media machine never wavered, it kept the questioners to a minority. In fact, even when they did waiver (which was fairly regularly), most people were still fearful enough to not ask too many questions, or even point it out. The ones that did were quickly shouted into submission.

It's not just the pandemic. There are many official stories that continue to be promoted and continue to instill fear around anything that runs (or appears to run) counter to them.

It's one thing for the average person to be ruled by fear, and entirely another thing for a country’s leadership to be ruled by it.

A case in point:

The statue of John A. MacDonald at Queen's Park in Toronto was damaged during a “mainly peaceful” protest in 2020. This protest was against historical figures who had views that might be deemed “problematic” by today's standards. That whole deal is a topic for another discussion.

How badly damaged is this statue, you ask? Well, apparently it has some pink paint on it. And maybe a bag over its head. Or something. And I think that's it. Of course, you can't really verify any of this now because it's been covered up with some weird plywood box for more than two years. The reason for this is evidently that no one really knows what to do about it. Do we clean it? Do we chop it down? We just don't know! So they've come up with an ingenious plan - let's leave it for the next guy to clean up. But they did have the forethought to at least put a plaque on it

Trigger warning plaque on the plywood box in Queen's Park, Toronto.

This is the modern legacy of our political leaders. Namely, the fear of making important decisions. Let's call it “FOMID” because that's equally as ridiculous. I mean, these must be truly momentous decisions, after all. Cuz like, who knows who it might offend? It could offend literally ANYBODY, and it might even be somebody with a huge Twitter following, so best just leave it alone for now.

This is the kind of action (or non-action) that results in impotence and complete incompetence. These people are absolutely useless in their positions if they can't even handle something as simple as this. I fully expect that if a decision is ever made about this (and there's nothing saying that the next guy won't just kick it down the road again), it will be to simply tear it down and replace it with something less "triggering" to the tiny subset of people who have no tolerance for viewpoints other than their own, let alone any concept of context or nuance.

Of course there are many examples of this kind of pathetic behaviour by our political leaders. Not least among these examples would be the reaction to the “mass graves” fiasco of 2021.

When speaking about the torching of about a dozen churches in response to media reports of these alleged graves, our Prime Minister's reaction was particularly notable.

“That is simply not right, it is a shame,” Trudeau said. Of course, he also felt the need to add that the anger is “fully understandable, given the shameful history that we are all becoming more and more aware of."

Tut, tut, my children. Now, you can do better than that…

Brian Lilley at the Toronto Sun summed it up rather well:

By his own definition, these arsons and acts of vandalism would be hate crimes, but he can’t say that. So instead, he calls it “a shame.” He may as well have added a “tut-tut” at the end and a finger wag.

A shame indeed.

Thanks to questionable (or downright dishonest) journalism and a media fearful of offending certain groups, this topic is still a no-go zone and as a result we still don't have the answers that we were supposedly looking for right from the start.

This kind of fear is present in most of the important decisions that are being made today. From government to school boards to the stories on the six o'clock news. It's the fear of a tiny, but very loud minority supported by others who join in simply because they're afraid of what might happen if they don't.

Academia is also paralyzed by this kind of fear. To see this paralysis in action, one need look no further than the Halton District School Board in Oakville, Ontario which made international headlines in early September when a transgender teacher came to teach his junior high shop class with gargantuan fake breasts literally hanging down to his waist. Never mind tying back your hair when using the equipment, get yourself a set of tarp straps while you're at it.

An Oakville, Ontario shop teacher scanning the shop in search of a double tarp strap.

Rather than taking any sort of stand for proper dress code or even human decency, the board did nothing for fear of blowback from the Trans community. About two months after the incident, the board issued a report:

“It is important to recognize the impact that dress code policies can have on members of the transgender community,” states the report. “Most notably, it is important for employers to make allowances to ensure that these employees are able to express themselves in accordance with their lived gender.”

Gotta love the term “lived gender”. Is this person’s “lived gender” more important and more real than all the students in that school who actually do have a dress code? Evidently the answer (from the school board) is a resounding “YES”. So once again the “decision” is to do nothing out of fear of legal implications and human rights violations.

This is not political in the sense of left versus right, although these people do tend to occupy a position a fair bit to the left of the Communist Party of Canada, and with an authoritarian bent for good measure. Most of their supporters (also generally on the left) who go along with it, do so not necessarily because they fully agree, but because they assume that's what’s expected of them, because they think that's what the “the left” is. And of course, because of fear. Also, what usually goes unsaid is that anything is better than “the right”, which for some reason they believe is their only other option. The truth is there are a lot of people on the left that are simply fed up with it, even among their own ranks. Regardless, it's about a small group seeking to control and dominate everyone else by using bullying, guilt trips, slander, and other dishonest means.

It's decisions (or non-decisions) like these that just serve to embolden and enable these people. Whether we're talking about Trans ideology or Black Lives Matter, or sketchy government narratives, the story is the same:

They're all propped up by weak leadership and citizens who are too afraid to even question their legitimacy, let alone denounce it outright.

But here's the thing: waiting for the leadership to figure this shit out only ensures that they never will. The leadership figures it out when they sense that the majority of their people are demanding that they figure it out. That's our job, and I'm now beginning to think that we need to start taking it a lot more seriously.