Copyright nationalobserver
It’s worth noting that the freedom-loving Poilievre has consistently (and conspicuously) declined to call out the Trump administration for its numerous recent infringements on freedom, which include everything from forcing large corporations to surrender an ownership stake to the government to kidnapping Americans of colour from their homes and workplaces and sending them to foreign gulags. But what really matters here as far as Canadians are concerned is Poilievre’s instinctive and irrepressible need to own the libs. He’s hardly alone here. If anything, this instinct has become the defining characteristic of Conservatism in 2025, one that is perhaps best personified (and often practised) by the extremely online vice-president JD Vance. In America, as in Canada, conservatives used to believe in things like free markets, smaller government and standing up to enemies abroad. Now, it’s all about performing for an increasingly radicalized and online audience of hyper-partisan conservatives, one that seems to value the perceived humiliation of their political opponents above all other principles. That helps explain why, among any number of other indignities, Americans have had to watch their president post AI videos featuring him crapping on protesters. It’s why, when the HuffPost asked his government who picked Budapest for the next meeting with Vladimir Putin, two different senior White House officials — press secretary Karoline Leavitt and communications director Steven Cheung — both responded with “your mom.” The deadly serious business of government is all a big joke to them, one aimed almost entirely at an online audience that prefers nihilism to nation-building. Conservatives in Canada haven’t fallen that far down the rabbit hole just yet. But so long as Poilievre is their leader, they’re going to be susceptible to the same sort of thinking and the same set of instincts. There’s no doubt that Poilievre’s repeated attempt to create a revisionist history of the Nazis delights his more ideologically strident supporters. Maybe it helps him deliver a big number at his upcoming leadership review in January. But owning the libs is no way to actually govern a country, as Americans keep finding out with each passing day. If Poilievre actually wants to govern our country one day, he might want to start acting like it.
