Times always change, but our time is changing faster than usual. We live in a rare moment of revolution — a paradigm shift in culture, politics, economics … everything. As Ginny Roth said in episode #3, “Nothing is settled.”
Since World War II, western countries have held a shared set of principles — a common operating system, if you will. Most people call it ‘liberal democracy’. It includes a long list of assumptions about freedom, the individual, rule of law, deference to reason and evidence, trust in science, respect for experts, and much more.
Those ideas are no longer assumed or shared. Many academics abandoned them long before I was born, but regular people never doubted them until recently. The 2008 financial crisis shook many people’s faith in liberal principles, but we hoped it was a blip, a black-swan event.
In hindsight, 2008 was one car on an accelerating train. Trump’s ride down the escalator in 2015, Brexit in June 2016, and then Trump’s first victory in November 2016 are all connected. Even so, diehards refused to doubt their faith in liberal first principles, while the train kept gaining speed.
In late 2019-early 2020, China welded doors shut on apartment buildings to contain a novel infection. Western countries soon declared a state of emergency for a new SARS virus. Borders closed. Police arrested families out walking in the park. By the summer, we had George Floyd, Black Lives Matters, Capital Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, and more.
Canada’ s Freedom Convoy in 2022 sparked similar events around the world. Prime Minister Trudeau’s Emergency Measures’ Act solidified his notoriety with citizens’ bank accounts frozen for donating $50, mounted policed trampling a disabled woman, and more.
All due to COVID, right?
But the train hasn’t slowed. Today, 98% of academic job postings discriminate based on DEI criteria. America has started to abandon identity-based employment discrimination, but Canada remains committed. Doctors must not question a teenager’s gender dysphoria to avoid breaking new law that bans ‘.’ Medical Assistance in Dying is now the 5th cause of death in Canada, in which most patients choose voluntary euthanasia with only a few choosing physician-assisted suicide.
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