By Ross Douthat, New York Times
A great and mostly unknown prophet of our time is Michael Young, whose book “The Rise of the Meritocracy,” published way back in 1958, both coined the term in its title and predicted, in its fictional vision of the 21st century, meritocracy’s unhappy destination: not the serene rule of the deserving and talented, but a society where a ruling class selected for intelligence but defined by arrogance and insularity faces a roiling populism whose grievances shift but whose anger at the new class order is a constant.
This year it’s Canada’s turn to live inside Young’s somewhat dystopian scenario, set in the 2030s but here ahead of schedule. On one side of the trucker protests you have Justin Trudeau, a condensed symbol of meritocracy-blurring-into-aristocracy — with degrees from two of Canada’s three best universities, but also the pedigree of being Pierre Trudeau’s son — and behind him a Canadian establishment that has followed public-health advice on Covid more closely than the United States, imposing more stringent restrictions throughout the pandemic.
Then on the other side you have the truckers and their allies: A complex mix of forces in the style of France’s gilets jaunes, organized in part by right-wingers but inclusive of all kinds of characters and ideas, defined by an exhaustion with pandemic restrictions and a strong connection to the physical portion of the economy, the part that relies on brawn and savvy, not just the manipulation of words and symbols on a screen.
