The Silent Majority Has Become the Cowardly Majority

Democracy is not "majority rules". It was never intended to be. In our part of the world it's the law that rules. I guess this is supposed to somehow keep the mob at bay, but as always, we seem to have learned how to game the system. Now small minorities with weird, toxic views have learned how to influence the even smaller minority that makes our rules in order to get their extreme views cast into laws that affect the majority.

You can see the effects of this in the issues in Canada and the US around gun control - in one country it seems almost anyone can buy a gun and in the other one rural hunters have to give up their guns in order to make the city-dwellers feel safer. Neither of these reflect the majority viewpoint on the matter.

But this article is not about guns because, in Canada at least, the biggest problems facing us are not guns at the moment, but those aforementioned small minorities.

Now, in the context of this article, “small minorities” are not the Muslims, or the black population, or any of our indigenous people. It's not the immigrants, or the gays and lesbians, or the people who voted for the Communist Party or the People’s Party.

I'm talking about this fringe element of the political left that feels perfectly justified (nay, entitled) to demand that their ideals, beliefs, and rights trump everyone else's.

These minorities, which if the BLM protests of 2020 are any indication, tend to skew white and privileged. Self-flagellation is now considered in vogue (at least in this part of the world) and the harder one is on oneself, the more praise and attention one gets. The hive mind of the nation collectively drones, “Yes, we are horrible and there's little we can do about it so please allow me to tell you precisely how horrible we (that is, ‘you’) are.”

What the hive mind is really saying, but would never say out loud is this:

“I’ve seen the light! Look at me and see how I have forsaken my evil ways! I will now publicly confess my sins so I may be washed clean by the gods of Wokeness.”

And then there's that little implication at the end that tells all the rest of us that we had better get our act together lest we be left behind.

It's a new religion with its own cadre of evangelists and prophets, and guess who the heretic is…

Even before BLM flags began fluttering in windows and adorning buildings, Rob Henderson from the University of Cambridge had a very insightful analysis of the situation. He called it Luxury Beliefs. Please check out that link, because I promise that after reading that, you'll never look at western society the same way again.

According to Henderson, luxury beliefs are, “ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.”

As Henderson says,

Now, upper-class people don a luxury belief to separate themselves from the lower class.

Obviously Hollywood is rife with these, but a perfect example of a luxury belief among “normal” people is the “defund the police” narrative that was so popular in BLM circles. While this is easy for people with money to say - people who will return to their gated communities where the crime rate is low and the security is high - the people who really need the police tend not to think this way at all. These are generally people with less money who live where rent is lower and crime is higher. Ironically, a large proportion of these people also happen to be black…

The thing about luxury beliefs is that even though they generally only benefit the upper class, those from the lower classes tend to adopt them (at least outwardly) in the hopes that they might appear a little more adjacent to the upper class that came up with the belief. Kinda like buying that fake mink for your wife, I guess.

These days in Canada, it's not defunding the police that we need to be concerned about, but the fascistic ideologies of the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” people. This has become the most blatant form of institutionalized bullying in modern history. And the fact that it's supported by every level of government only makes it that much more nefarious.

As with other luxury beliefs, this notion that all white people are racist, which of course is promoted mainly by white people (brace yourself for that board to the head) has been a gold mine for the burgeoning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry. DEI is basically an entire industry of grifters making millions off corporations, school boards, and government departments simply by showing up and telling participants how horrible they are. And in many cases, attendance at these meetings is mandatory. So while it may be great for these extremely privileged DEI facilitators who charge tens of thousands of dollars per session, the public good that has resulted is debatable at best.

There are numerous examples of this toxic ideology, but the most chilling and extreme instance of this kind of bullying was recently experienced by Toronto principal Richard Bilkszto, who jumped to his death this last July.

Bilkszto was a principal with the Toronto District School Board who was scathingly berated by DEI facilitator, Kike Ojo-Thompson during a Zoom call after he politely challenged her absurd assertion that Canada is fundamentally a much more racist country than the United States and “a bastion of white supremacy and colonialism”.

It's a lengthy story spanning over two years, so I'm not going to get into the whole thing, but I strongly encourage you to read if you're not already familiar with it.

The condensed version is this:

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During a Zoom call with about 200 other school administrators of the Toronto District School Board, after Richard Bilkszto politely challenged Ms. Ojo-Thompson, she berated him publicly, called him a racist and a white supremacist, and afterward referred to him as “The Whiteness”, who's job it was to simply believe and not question what he was being told. Instead of coming to Bilkszto's defense, his peers did nothing and some of them even piled on with the instructor.

Bilkszto ended up suing the TDSB, but the whole ordeal was devastating to him and resulted in Bilkszto losing his job, seeing his good reputation destroyed and his 24 year career torched before his eyes, and ultimately ended in his death. Ended for him, that is. It's far from over.

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True to form, CBC felt the need to report on a rally that took place a few weeks after this tragedy. This gathering included some local teachers and politicians who were concerned about “rhetoric” and the “weaponization” of Bilkszto’s death.

Black students, teachers and politicians concerned about rhetoric after Toronto principal's death

This is an interesting choice of words considering rhetoric is a huge component of DEI training, and weaponizing is exactly what they’ve been doing with race since the beginning. Another interesting aspect of this article is that while CBC felt it necessary to provide a list of “demands” by this group (including a demand for an independent investigation), it fails to note that the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board has already investigated the incident and found that Kike Ojo-Thompson’s conduct “was abusive, egregious and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying.” They also awarded Bilkszto seven weeks of lost pay for the sick leave he took on account of this incident. Is this the kind of “rhetoric” they're concerned about?

NDP member of parliament, Matthew Green was also at this gathering voicing his concern about rhetoric, and adding insult to injury. By the way, Matthew Green was that MP who tabled a motion in the House of Commons earlier this year to condemn Tucker Carlson because of his “invade Canada” comments. Clearly this man needs more tasks to keep him busy. The motion failed.

According to Green, the reason for the outcry from “right-wing media pundits” is not that Ojo-Thompson was bad at her job, or a horrible person in that moment, but that she and “every single anti-racist and equity worker” are so effective in “dismantling white supremacy”. That's apparently why people are upset. Because they just can't handle the truth. He went on to say that every speaker present at that rally “could have been Kike,” like she was the victim. He said they (the speakers at the rally), “could have been targeted by the violence of white supremacy online and in our community.” Really Matthew? Is that what happened? Was Kike “targeted” by Richard Bilkszto, the white supremacist in that Zoom meeting? Needless to say, that brought a round of applause from the crowd.

This Zoom call in which Richard Bilkszto was publicly skewered and slandered included about 200 principals and school administrators, most (if not all) of whom had great respect for Bilkszto prior to this meeting. I wonder how many of his peers on that call were at least somewhat uneasy with what was going on, if not outright horrified. I also wonder why not one of them dared make so much as a peep about it, let alone came to his defense, and why some of them actually decided to pile on and side with the instructor during that meeting and afterwards.

Perhaps this incident is merely a microcosm of a country in which the vast majority are just too scared to say anything while their friends and colleagues are thrown under the bus in the name of an ideology they don't even understand. It seemed pretty clear this was the case during the pandemic as well.

Now, you can give these people the benefit of the doubt if you want and say, “Well, there's a climate of fear around these things, you know,” but I heard someone say the other day that it's not a climate of fear, but a climate of cowardice. And this is exactly what I've been saying for years. Of all the things that are wrong with this country politically, and of all the problems we may or may not have with what our kids are learning in school, the biggest problem of them all is when people who know better sit there and say absolutely nothing.

I've also said this before: Canada's biggest crisis is a crisis in leadership because the real systemic problem in this country is not racism, but that our leaders have abdicated their authority to fringe ideas and mob rule.

Make no mistake - if there is a “climate of fear”, it's the fault of our cowardly leadership. The only way that stops is if the employees, or the students, or the citizens throw off their own cowardice, grow a pair, and say something.

Again, I wonder how many of those 200 teachers it would have taken to speak up and come to Richard Bilkszto’s defense, and to turn that situation around. I guess we'll never know because not one of them even tried.

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Further reading:

Is The Tide Finally Turning On Woke Weirdness?

Canada's Biggest Crisis is a Crisis in Leadership

Fighting Racism With... More Racism?

The Paralyzing Fear Of Making Important Decisions