I didn’t sleep well last night. And when I did wake up, in my stupor I recalled the oddest dream. Unfortunately, much of my dream had strong roots in reality.
In my dream, there was tension everywhere, between everyone and about everything. There were Conservatives versus Liberals, Republicans versus Democrats, Christian versus Muslim, citizen versus immigrant, pipeline supporters versus earth muffins, and so on. Within these groups, such as the pipeline supporters, even they were at each others’ throats, as some people didn’t think their compatriots within the same movement were strong enough in their words and actions to be part of the crowd.
But where my dream took this was most disturbing. It wasn’t just people yelling at each other, arguing different points about this or that. Instead, they were taking up arms. All of society seemed on the edge of breaking into a civil war. People were arming themselves and getting ready to take on the other guys, whomever those other guys might be.
And in all of this, a demagogue, one that I had met in real life, took advantage of all the tension and took power.
And then I woke up.
But have I?
In a few weeks I’ll hit the 27th anniversary of writing this column. And I don’t recall any time where our society has been so fractured, especially along the lines above. I came of age just as the Cold War ended, so perhaps there were deeper tears in our society before my time. But in my adult life, I have never seen such polarization.
Take, for instance, the recent protest movement that in less than two months has swept the oilpatch. Many, but not all, of these protests, have been characterized by participants wearing yellow vests.
While much of their manifesto, as it were, focuses on energy issues like building pipelines and kyboshing the impending carbon tax, there are parts of it with regards to migrants and the United Nations that some people find troubling. I’ve told many people that comparing migrants and pipelines is like talking about apples and sausages. They’re not even the same food group.
That inclusion of discussion of the United Nations, globalization and migrants led to the planning of two convoys to Ottawa, because one group of otherwise like-minded people did not want to be associated with anything to do with the migrant issue. The non-Yellow Vest convoy eventually withdrew, leaving it down to one.
But even within that remaining convoy, there has been a schism in recent days. As of the time of writing, it looks like there are, again, two convoys, one associating themselves with Yellow Vests, and the other, not. But the schism does not seem to be related that much with the migrant issue, but rather to other points.
So what just happened here? Broader society got fractured into a protest movement against the government, which then, itself, fractured, then fractured again.
What the heck is going on?
