Canada just demonstrated that, in a technologically sophisticated Western country, it's easy to become a dictator.  And then, once you're a dictator, it's even easier to pretend you're not, as was the case with Canadian dictator Justin Trudeau's condemnation of Russian authoritarianism.  Apparently, it takes one to know one.

A few years ago, Justin Trudeau was a laughable lefty who managed to become prime minister of Canada both because of his lineage (putative dad, Pierre, was once prime minister, too) and because leftist Canadians were in love with the idea of a hip, totally woke leader.

Two years ago, with the onset of COVID, Trudeau, even while still speaking the language of woke victimhood, began to crack down hard on Canadians' civil rights, all in the name of science.  For Canada's truckers, who have been almost broken by the mandates, the requirement that they produce a vaccine passport to cross back into Canada from America was one mandate too many.  They convoyed across Canada and into Ottawa, where they honked their horns, ate food provided by locals, danced, and had bounce houses for the kids.

To the truckers' surprise, the same Canadian premier, in 2020, who praised truckers to the skies and showily took a knee to honor the violent, disruptive, criminal Black Lives Matter, refused to talk to them.  Instead, he ran away and emerged only to defame them as evil people, including calling them Nazis.

Image: Trudeau denounces authoritarianism.  YouTube screen grab.

On Valentine's Day, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, giving himself complete power because truckers were honking their horns in Ottawa.  At his orders, the entire financial system was used punitively against not just the truckers, but anybody who dared to support them — and, mind you, this included making donations to the truckers when there was nothing illegal about doing so.

In addition, Trudeau unleashed police on the truckers and their supporters.  The police reacted enthusiastically, beating peaceful people, trampling an old woman under a horse (and laughing about it), and bullying people whenever and wherever they could.

Then, two days ago, despite the police having brutally stopped the truckers' protest, Canada's leftist-controlled Parliament voted to extend Trudeau's unlimited powers.  They voted mindlessly along straight party lines.  Indeed, so mindless were they that one member of Parliament, who can give Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a race to the bottom when it comes to stupidity, insisted that "honk honk" was a secret code for "Hail [sic] Hitler."

Within a remarkably short time, Trudeau went from a ridiculous figure to a vicious tyrant.  Not only a vicious tyrant, but a completely un-self-aware one.  And so it was that Trudeau lashed out at authoritarian government — not in Canada, of course, but in Russia.  When he joined the United States and a handful of other nations to impose some sanctions on Russian banks, he justified what he was doing this way:

Canada will continue to be there to support Ukraine and its people. Russia's flagrant disregard for the independence of a sovereign nation is a serious threat to security and stability in the region and around the world. Canada and our allies will defend democracy. We are taking these actions today to stand against authoritarianism. The people of Ukraine like all people must be free to determine their own future.

"We are taking these actions today to stand against authoritarianism," says the man who is aggressively using his financial and police power to destroy working-class people for daring to oppose his politics.

By the way, the woman to Trudeau's right, whose head is bouncing away as she seems to be mouthing his words behind her mask, is Chrystia Freeland, a former journalist who made a name for herself as a Soros sycophant.  It is she who is taking the steps to destroy financially not just the truckers, but their supporters.  And it doesn't matter whether they were breaking any laws when they acted.  She will wipe them out economically.  They are, after all, the new Nazis, according to Trudeau and his peeps.  This is ironic, considering that Freeland's own grandfather was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator.

Leftists in once free countries have realized that if they have the executive office, the legislature, the administrative agencies, the media, and the tech companies, they can pretty much do anything they want.  The Democrats' response to January 6 was a trial run for the leftists.  Trudeau is showing that the same tactics can work on a national scale.  And just last week, even as COVID fades away, Biden extended the national emergency, giving himself continued power to control vast sectors of the U.S. economy and its police powers.

The Canadians don't have our masterful Constitution.  However, I predict we'll very soon have to address the question of what happens when the entire federal government is under the control of people who no longer feel bound by that Constitution.  Look north, my friends.  Look north.