Recently we've seen our media do some pretty complicated and creative backflips to protect Liberals from criticism.  We've seen interviews that are advertised as hard-hitting and full of "tough questions" in which the interviewer literally suggests answers to the PM.  We've seen endless Trump coverage in lieu of actual Canadian coverage, which sets up the CPC to fail come election time should they say or do anything even slightly Trump-adjacent.  We've seen journalists shrug their shoulders when Liberal MP's all but disappear, accept completely implausible narratives about Jagmeet Singh's complete incapability without question, downplay popular uprisings over carbon taxes in other countries, and (my personal favourite) run with Liberal boilerplate about how Conservatives are "politically motivated".

I like the "Conservatives just care about playing partisan politics!" bit the best because it's right on that sweet-spot border line between ignorance and malice.  Are the Liberals just dumb enough to not realize that they are being partisan by accusing the CPC of being partisan?  Do the journalists listening to this garbage ever once stop to ask if perhaps the Liberals could be politically motivated?  Probably, but we all know why they never make that big of a deal about it: it is not wise to anger the Liberals, our perpetual rulers.

And in these contentious times, where the Liberal ruling class is having a tougher time than usual enforcing their will, the last thing we need is a protest over a pipeline, or a kerfuffle about an Indigenous Minister being shuffled… especially when it becomes about gasp  identity politics.  Not just any kind of identity politics, mind you, but Indigenous identity politics, the kind that calls the very identity of Canada into question.

Thus, our Journalists, our Guardians of the Canadian Media Galaxy, were very careful to make sure that when the recent protests near the Unist'ot'en healing camp in Northern B.C. were playing themselves out, the villains of the piece were faceless entities like "The RCMP" instead of any Liberals to whom the RCMP might conceivably report.  The PM was allowed to get away with Captain Obvious-level statements like, "It's not an ideal situation," and he was allowed to lecture Indigenous protestors about the importance of waiting in line to ask your question at one of his town halls, because this is Canada.  Then Trudeau went on to demote Jody Wilson-Raybould (which he couldn't really escape culpability for) and wouldn't you know it, the media indulged his beside-the-point debate about whether it was really a demotion.

Now, any suggestion that the PM and his government might, possibly, probably, be a little bit racist or white supremacist here was duly skated around by everybody the media, the Opposition, and even the Indigenous protestors and Wilson-Raybould herself.  Some stuff is just a pipeline too far, you see.  You don't want to raise the discourse-temperature too high, you understand.  Besides, we all know the left-wing rejoinder to someone like me pointing out this double standard is something like "DURRRRR YOU DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT INDIGENOUS CANADIANS DURRRRR RACIST!!!"  There I go, playing "partisan politics" again!

And it is quite clear that it is a double standard, because we will be hearing about how racist Conservatives are with increasing frequency as the election approaches.  The names of these racistly racist racists will be published without hesitation as part of the spiderweb chart that the Liberals will be making a "key plank" of their election strategy.  And Andrew Scheer will be made to answer for the comments of every yellow-vested yahoo with a Facebook account, or face certain electoral doom!  Doooooooom!

But even if Scheer denounces the Yellow Vests, it makes no difference, because they represent a can't-miss opportunity for Trudeau: a restive group of intemperate Canadians on the rampage, using social media to 'gin up hatred' against the last bastion of democratic centrism, representing the same bozo eruption brigades that have been sinking election efforts ever since the Reform Party was a thing.  The Vesties themselves can rest easy no order will be given by Mark Zuckerberg to shut them down, especially since they themselves know their own part in this charade: generate some clicks, share some shareable, have existential crises over whether they should actually get off their duffs and vote/volunteer (because putting yourself at the disposal of the party system means compromising your principles!) blame the weather for low turnouts to their meetups/protests, and most importantly, be something the Liberals can point to justify their "rising tide of hatred and white supremacy" rhetoric and get themselves off the hook for the same.

Written by Josh Lieblein