Tumbler Ridge, Herle, And Canada’s Crisis Of Compassion

How To Rise To A Moment

(Liam MacKinnon swung by the Scrimshaw Show to talk Sens and the Olympic Men’s Hockey Tournament this week - was going to put this up Wednesday but it felt weird given this week’s tragedy. Give it a listen!)

This site rarely covers tragedies, because it usually goes without saying that they’re tragic. I felt no need to add my name to the chorus of statements about Tumbler Ridge on Tuesday night because I’m not anybody - I’m not a politician and I frankly despise those who offer tweeted thoughts and prayers to the grieving families of those injured or killed as if they were one. It’s of course a tragedy, and one that I fail to comprehend on any level.

But Wednesday’s seen Canada at both its best and its worst - an extraordinary scene in the House, with every party elevating themselves to the moment and partisan divisions being the furthest thing from consideration, paired with both the culture war around the shooter’s identity and the latest clip of David Herle making an ass out of himself taking a shot at Jamil Jivani. And for those things to happen on the same day is making me very fucking angry.

The shooting is obviously the greatest tragedy the country currently faces, a brutal and devastating attack on a community that never could have expected it. It’s horrific, and we should not let this tragedy recede into the background, one of a hundred things that are happening at the same time. This is a horrible, tragic, and consequential moment in our history, and we need to meet this moment with the urgency it requires.

But that does not mean it is acceptable to use this to further hatred and bigotry. The idea that this shooting tells us anything about trans people, as some on the right are trying to say, is as nonsensical as it is offensive. The Ecole Polytechnique and Dawson College and Nova Scotia didn’t prove that white men were all murderous psychos, and anybody who might have been crass and indifferent enough to say it would have been resoundingly hounded for such a horrific use of tragedy to score points. Those attacking the trans community now should equally wind in their necks and shut the fuck up.

But we should also find it within ourselves to understand that condemnations of that hatred require condemnations of Herle too. Herle has been a whipping boy of this site for years, and I stand by all of the criticism of him I’ve levelled. But this is not criticism, this is condemnation. To attack Jivani is to be a Liberal - he’s an unserious thinker whose ideas are shallow and his entitlement to a role forming government policy on the US because he plays fantasy football with Vance is immense. But that doesn’t justify what Herle said, because none of that justifies a personal, and vitriolic, attack on his looks. That Herle thinks Jivani’s problem is that he’s “too unattractive physically” is just patently unacceptable.

But both, while obviously of different gravity, are fundamentally two manifestations of the same crisis our country faces, a crisis of compassion. We find reasons to be shitty, we look for ways to accentuate the differences, not look for the similarities. Our brains are wired to look for reasons to dunk on people and to make ourselves better than, even when it achieves nothing at all.

I’m not going to act like I’m above this - there was a particularly hostile weekend around a year ago now where I decided to relentlessly and needlessly provoke Albertans. Did I need to? No, but I was in a bad mood and the part of me that likes to fight had control of the tweeting fingers. I didn’t need to do it, and I shouldn’t have. Was I right about what I said? I don’t know if I think I was anymore, and I frankly don’t care - it was needlessly antagonistic and I didn’t need to do it.

We need to start thinking about whether things are necessary. The answer is often going to be it’s not. We don’t have to add in the personal swipe or jab. The nasty tweet designed to show the world you’re better than someone else can stay in the drafts. The endless need to one up everybody isn’t doing any good. It’s a mode that we are all too fucking comfortable in, talking about people we don’t know like they’re horrible monsters for the sin of disagreeing. The accusations of bad faith that surrounded me for saying Trudeau needed to go extended to accusations of bribery and corruption, because it was inconceivable to people that I could genuinely just believe that in good faith.

The reason for that is because we’ve turned good faith into something we only extend to people we decide are good politics. For Herle, that doesn’t include JD Vance’s Yale buddy, and for some Conservatives that means it’s open season on transphobia. Obviously it’s not all Conservatives - Dimitri Soudas’ comments today were wise and genuinely appreciated, at least - and plenty of Liberals are no fans of Herle’s or his comments. But we need these moments to be a reminder to everybody to dig in, and find our common humanity before we find the thing that drives us apart.

It’s not just a moral nicety - this country has some massive structural problems that will need to be fixed in the next 10 years, and it will be impossible if we don’t work with people in good faith. And guess what? You only get the benefits of good faith if you show it to your opponents. Expecting the other side to take you on faith while you refuse to give them an inch of understanding is how countries fall. It’s how you end up reading about the Way Things Used To Be while whistling Wheat Kings. That’s not good enough for me, and it’s not good enough for this country.

Tumbler Ridge is a horrific tragedy, and one we cannot undo or wish away. But it can be a moment we look back on as a rubicon - a moment where we saw where we were headed and decided not to let us go there.

For all our sakes.