Democracy IS THE COMPROMISE.
The alternative is a nonstop threat of violence that makes the “Wild West” look like a monk’s retreat.
The ‘Wild West’ wasn’t all that wild or lawless https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR7EBBXcQUg it was probably safer than life today in Canada. Don’t let all the dumb Hollywood movies fool you.
It doesn’t help my hope for things that, every time Carney clearly represents the owner class over the working class, I see people in comment sections talking about they “don’t like it but you gotta get things done!”. No, this is bad and should not be excused, and why do we always have to have excuses and patience for centrist and right-wing bullshit, which has still yet to show any real functionality, but we won’t even try being progressive despite the innumerable examples of progressive policy working all over the world? Even Mamdani is making it work in the US and we act like Carney needs to allow unreviewed distruction of our environment to benefit O&G companies or the whole country will up and die in only a couple years’ time.
I’m so tired of this crap. I’m so tired of us willfully throwing away our rights and self-respect just to get leaders who will ignore us at every possible turn. I’m sick of people saying that the left will be like Soviet Russia while everything they describe as guaranteed with progressivism is literally happening, openly, in front of them under conservative governments(like our current one, too). Degrading our democracy almost feels like it’s still democratic because so much of the population seems perfectly happy to watch it happen.
Many jobs SHOULD be public sector jobs. Like water utilities, garbage collection, electrical utilities, teaching, college teacher.
These public sector jobs should be 4 days a week, with a 5th day of retraining/training. So people keep gaining more skills encase technology changes the workforce, and make peoples’ lives more meaningful.
The fifth day should just be free, with training being offered during portions of the year for everyone or as a system similar to, but separate from, vacation days. Imagine a couple weeks in the year where everyone gets together for training or a fairly generous pool of training days to take from and an approved list of courses.
Exactly this! A great example is when the Alberta UCP flat out told renewable energy companies that they just were not allowed to do business in Alberta. Straight up, in your face central planning. Free market indeed…
I am not far left enough to say communism is the right goal, yet, but I am further left than saying we need socialist reforms. I am from Saskatchewan so I can see the benefits of psuedo-socialized markets (think phone and internet with Sasktel sticking it to the big 3) I just wish the rest of the province could see it to. If Saskatchewan can see it and really start celebrating it maybe the rest of Canada could as well.
I’m 100% behind you with this.
And every time I mentioned how it was a bad idea to vote for Carney and how bad he is, I kept being downvoted and then people comment “yeah but we would’ve has Poilievre otherwise.”
No we wouldn’t. A lot of NDP ridings turned red because of this. But people should have voted for the NDP. With them as a strong opposition, we would still be in a better position in a minority big C Conservative government than we are right now with a majority small c conservative government.
Carney is a corporatist. He knows how to sweet talk investors to gain their trust like any CEO can bullshit people into buying their stock. And he’s done that with all of Canada.
Be careful what you wish for…
we would still be in a better position in a minority big C Conservative government than we are right now with a majority small c conservative governent.
You might not have been aware of the full stakes and nuances of the situation in late 2024, early 2025. At around December 2024, Trudeau was so unpopular that Poilievre was in clear majority territory, not minority if an election were held then.
This is more a matter of opinion, and I agree what we have is not a great situation, but do you really think that having Pierre in charge, with a cabinet of emboldened racists and a coalition of a group of conservative Liberals would be better than this? Metaphorically I see it as having Pierre in the driver’s seat with Liberals with them in the front and the NDP backseat driving in the opposition, versus Mark in the front, with the NDP and the Cons together in the back with PP unable to find a compelling message.
Plus, getting Lewis to unapologetically push left-wing ideas for us I think is a better strategy than Singh’s centre-left conciliatory approach that had exhausted its usefulness. The orange wipeout was, rightfully IMO, a wakeup call for the Canadian left.
…the Singh centre-left got lots of stuff done in Canada like a dental plan.
The left needs simpler ideas, like ‘we’ll just hire your kids right out of trade school, and give them a job building 500,000 social housing units’ so they can make money and get experience’.
The left also needs to get tough on crime. Get rid of the violence in prisons by making them safe, but put lots more people behind bars.Agreed with your first and second points, crime definitely is a separate discussion, I’m mixed on that.
Recall that I wrote “…had exhausted its usefulness”, implying it was good, but unlikely to be as effective going forward.
The police forces are controlled by very right wing people, they don’t put any energy into causes that they don’t like, like loud and reckless driving cars.
It would be good to make the police forces more responsive to the communities they serve, but the left has no interest. Legalize drugs, make they only available through license sellers…and go after the unauthorized seller very very very hard, because those people don’t care about you, or making Canada better.but the left has no interest.
You mean the centrist liberals right? Progressives are 100% on board with changing the way law enforcement is done, top to bottom. Its a core of their platform.
Progressives are 100% on board with changing the way law enforcement is done
The left can’t communicate what it wants law enforcement to be.
Carney is decidedly NOT a Corporatist. He is 100% a Banker, tried and true.
A Banker is what makes a Corporist possible.
UK and Germany’s too. Hungary, France, Denmark and Italy also not in great shape. Anywhere there’s heavy zionist genocider influence campaigns. Coincidence maybe. Spain and Ireland are doing great as an anti-pattern.
The richest man in the world does a Nazi salute and you think “it must be the Jews behind all of the problems”?
They weren’t taking about “the Jews”. They were talking about genocidal, racest, apartidests that are interfering in other countries elections.
You don’t have to get pissy because they didn’t list everyone in that category.
Well, there was one country who was very adamant about not having neonazis next door…
High chance Elon is pro-Israel. It’s a symptom, not the disease.
A pro Israel Nazi? Confusing.
A lot of Nazis and other European facists supported the zionist project because it wpild give them a place to send the Jews.
What? Where did they say that? They’re talking about Israel.
“Every crisis is an opportunity”
– Every single slimy “liberal” politician who is really just a posh autoritarian with a toolbox of Identity Politics slogans.
Excellent article. Thanks for posting.
Trudeau’s failure to bring in proportional representation will be a missed opportunity with severe consequences that most don’t fully appreciate.
This this this. So much this. Canadians do not understand just how catastrophic of a fuckup that was. The consequences of that have not yet been truly felt but it will be horrendous when they are. Canada’s electoral system is a goddamn joke and, in my opinion, is barely even a democracy at all because of it.
Just like the US, we are one 51% vote away from a bad actor gaining absolute power and tearing down everything Canadians have known and loved. Hell, even right now we have a majority government that the people did not vote for.
51% vote? More like 38-40% vote. That is all a party typically needs to be able to get a majority government.
Our system is better than the US’s system. By just a hair but it is better, but yes we need election reform.
Literally the argument the article is criticizing. Don’t compare one country to another like that. Sure you can take specific examples of how something doesn’t work in certain circumstances, but doing a direct compare just to say “At least we’re not as bad as ____” is ultimately defeatist.
Yeah he might’ve fucked the whole country on that one, but now he’s exclusive with Katy Perry so I guess he learned his lesson. /s
Trudeau did not fail to bring in proportional representation. He campaigned with the intention of bringing in ranked balloting. Instead of forcing it through when he could, he sent it to committee where no consensus was reached. Instead of compromising with a small improvement the NDP flat out refused anything but proportional representation. With ranked balloting the NDP would consistently win more seats than they do now and we would have more minority governments where compromising would result in more progressive legislation.
Ranked ballots are soooo much better than FPTP, why won’t the NDP and other lefties see that ranked ballots are good. Why/how did proportional representation become a purity test of the ultra left?
It’s happening all across the west
Actually, this is not about Canada, this is about the world. And it’s frightening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Fd-_VDYit3U&ra=m
“Quietly”?
Democracy in the entire west is eroding.
I’m a bit put off by our rating now placing behind Brazil as I’m pretty sure in practical terms Canada is still more Democratic in many aspects. Does it mean we’re not sliding? I’m certain we are,but I think methodology might be flawed and as a result we’ve got sensational-ish content.
TBF - yes democracy is sliding in Canada, just look at recent government moves i Quebec and Alberta as a sample. Meaning we have to fight for it at the polls and on the streets. It’s far from “game over” but it could be at some point.
I’m pretty sure in practical terms Canada is still more Democratic in many aspects
I’m not as familiar with either system as you seem to be. What is it about Brazilian politics that makes you feel Canada is more democratic?
we can start with favellas which have no equivalent in Canada (treatment of indigenous people is a separate issue and looks to be similarly bad in both cases). Then we can look at Brazilian latest election scandals etc. which have no equivalents in modern Canadian elections. Then we can look at corruption levels in politics.
So the favelas are bad, obviously, but I don’t quite see the relation to democracy. They’re certainly an indicator of poverty, but I’m not entirely sure what they indicate regarding democracy.
Then we can look at Brazilian latest election scandals etc.
I don’t really know about these scandals, but when I think about other scandals surrounding elections, they’re not necessarily an indictment of the democratic system itself, right? I mean, Trump clearly disputed the election results of the 2020 election, but does that mean the election was unfair? But in all honesty, I haven’t looked at their latest election scandals, and you seem to have looked at it, so maybe you know better. What was the latest election scandal?
Then we can look at corruption levels in politics.
I suppose we could. Did you? Is it worse in Brazil?
favella dwellers are people with virtually no rights, i.e. no “democracy” for them, fact that someone would weaponize democratic processes to get rid of democracy is the problem with latest scandals. In terms of corruption, anecdotally I hear stories from (ex)Brazilians that I cannot draw parallels to in Canada
And Canadians don’t have the same excuses to not do anything about it unlike the muricans. Their healthcare is not tied to their jobs.
Their healthcare is not tied to their jobs.
sure, if you dont care about your teeth, eyes, mental health, physiotherapy…
All tied to employment…
And before anyone jumps in here with “at least not as bad as america!!!”… thats exactly the kind of low bar thinking that landed us in this situation…
And before anyone jumps in here with “at least not as bad as america!!!”… thats exactly the kind of low bar thinking that landed us in this situation…
Well, look at the bright side: at least you don’t yet have to compare your country with North Korea like Americans do to make it seem less bad.
OK. I broke and dislocated my shoulder in 2024. I was in emergency for a while. My open reduction and internal fixation on the left proximal humerus was scheduled fairly quickly. I didn’t have to take out a mortgage for the surgery. I wasn’t financially ruined to get the use of my arm back. If you want teeth, eyes, mental health, and physiotherapy? Be prepared to pay way higher taxes! Your choice….
We’re either paying for it though our job, out of pocket, or through taxes. It’s not free. I’d much rather have it come out of taxes to reduce the middle men just profiteering from our system.
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Yes. I had one on my ankle last year. I think I paid $200. That wasn’t even to the hospital, is was for my crutches and aircast at the pharmacy.
So I can tell you haven’t been poor recently.
And many would say that you haven’t really been ‘poor’ unless you were a poor citizen of China in the last century. Yet socialism has pretty much eliminated abject poverty in the country.
No, but it is tied to politics. What treatments Canadians have access to is determined by unaccountable appointed bureaucrats at the ministries of health.
As an example, GLP-1 is only available to Canadians who are diagnosed with diabetes. It is not available for general weight loss.
And in the U.S. GLP-1 is only available to U.S. citizens who have enough money to pay for the exorbitant prices. What’s your point?
You can get the prescription for weight loss in Canada, especially if your current weight puts you at risk. I already know a few people taking the generic for this purpose. Insurance companies are the ones that refuse to provide coverage for anything other than diabetes treatment.
In the US anyone can decide they want to take the drug and just go to one of the websites that advertise all over the place and get a prescription with no issues.
In Canada, if your current weight does not put you at risk but you would still prefer to lose some weight, you’ll have to convince your doctor who may refuse you.
I can’t tell if you think this is a good thing (it is) or a bad thing.
The two aren’t comparable. You really want Doug Ford to decide what and who can be eligible for what treatments, only to have it overturned by the next premier?
Unelected, nonpartisan bureaucracy is what prevents those swings.
But you’re not wrong - Ford is smothering healthcare, as seen by the hospitals struggling with finances right now. Its a problematic sign if most of the major hospitals are all struggling at the same time. Less funds mean poorer service and less availability, and that part is directly driven by politics in the longrun.
You really want Doug Ford to decide what and who can be eligible for what treatments, only to have it overturned by the next premier?
No, the total opposite. I think the government regulation of medicine should be limited to ensuring a drug’s safety, but not efficacy. This was the regime we had decades ago that gave us some of the most useful medications we still have, such as NSAIDs, antibiotics, and many vaccines.
Let me, an individual, decide (along with my doctor) which drugs I should or shouldn’t be taking.
but not efficacy
that’s how you get snake oil
and chemotherapy
you make an adulterous and valid point. godsdamn curing ourselves by poisoning ourselves to death.
Actually, I was referring to how efficacy is not part of the evaluation criteria for chemo drugs.
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-effective-is-chemotherapy/
Plenty of that out there already, see the supplements category.
What removal of efficacy requirements does in reality is open the door to a lot more off label use.
NOT TRUE.
I’m on GLP-1 and I am neither diabetic nor prediabetic. My A1C is slightly elevated, that’s it.
I actually voted for Mark Carney out of pure fear of what PP would do. But I had no idea it would still turn out this bad.
I voted Pierre because the current government intends to criminalize nearly a million people, myself included, for firearms we purchased legally and have been available to the Canadian market since the 70’s.
Say what you want about firearms, the money put into Bill C21 could’ve gone into mental health awareness or increased the budget to the firearms program & RCMP detachments performing background checks, hell I think an improved Canadian Firearms Safety Course is about due with stricter requirements.
I seriously doubt that PP has the political brains to undo the OIC and bill C-21.
What turned out so bad?
- Bill C-22… unwarranted surveillance of Canadians
- Promoting environmental destruction through increased O&G production
- Proposed reforms to the Access to Information act to reduce transparency
- Promoting war in Iran
Shall I continue?
And a whole lot of other shit, too.
Mark Carney has spent 24-7 meeting with European countries, creating new trade deals, alleviating the dependence we have on the country that is calling us the “51st state”. I’m down with that :)
He also has been cozying up to the most insane US companies, too. His problem with the US is only that he wants Canada to remain nominally independent while still basically being a fully owned asset of US corporate interest.
In short, its Trump’s wording he is opposed to more than anything. The moment the fucker dies is the moment it is business as usual in his mind.
Overall, I supported Carney as well, last election (but voted Green). But I said at the time, here in this community, that although I completely agreed with his economic and fiscal policies, the jury was still out regarding his social and humanitarian policies. If you think back, Carney ran almost entirely on his financial policies, and remained silent on social policies.
Fiscal policies? The guy is basically gutting everything in favor of his rich buddies. You think Doug’s fatass privatization of healthcare is alone to him.
He is implementing fiscal policies that promote economic growth. Protecting the less fortunate and disadvantaged is a social, not a fiscal, policy.
He is doing none of those things.
You said yourself he is favoring his rich buddies. Policies that promote economic growth. You can not say he is going ‘those things’ and then say ‘he is doing none of those things’. Which is it?
Are you trolling?
No, I am entirely serious. Are you trolling?
The single factor that is leading to the breakdown of “democracy” is the extreme polarization of the population into two adversarial camps. The more entrenched in their ideology the sides become, the more antagonistically aggressive they become towards each other. Expecting that democracy could survive in this quagmire is like expecting a devout religion to be democratic.
While you are correct, I kinda hate this argument because it ascribes equal blame on both sides as if giving up on human rights is a reasonable political position. The better way to describe it is that the Nazis are too comfortable taking their masks off
Does it ascribe blame that way? I don’t think saying “You’re too extreme in your views” necessarily means “You think people shouldn’t have to suffer” and equating them is ultimately going to lead to the exact polarization the commenter is talking about.
You don’t defeat fascism by becoming a “good” fascist.
That would only hold water if the left and the right were equally represented in the Western world. The Overton window currently sits somewhere odd Zohran Mamdani and literal Nazis. Other than odd fringe groups with less political sway than a groundhog in spring, there’s nothing approaching left wing fascism in the Western world.
The polarization is a product, a symptom, not a cause. Look at the economic processes affecting everyone. They drive the political processes, part of which is polarization. Simple example - if I can’t find a job as a young guy, see no feasible way to move out of my parents’ basement, therefore have little chance to court a girl and have a family of my own, I’d be pretty angry and looking for the cause of my misery. Seeing all these new people on the street that weren’t here a few years ago would be an obvious candidate. The axes on which polarizarion occurs aren’t new and unnatural, and people have found the same explanations for their misery in the past, way in the past. Not all of those explanations are valid of course, but the economic misery driving to them is real and the march towards polarization won’t stop until the misery recedes.
Read what I said carefully. I said the breakdown of democracy was due to polarization. I did not say what the cause of the polarization was. The American system of democracy, and to a large extent our system, is based on an adversarial winner-take-all, loser-maybe-next-time system. An election simply determines who will be the authoritarian dictator for the next election cycle. But now, the two sides have completely vacated the middle, leading to a complete polarization (no middle ground) of their policies. Thus, no matter who wins, democracy loses, because it is no longer governance of all the people, for all the people, by all the people, but governance of the winning side, for the winning side, by the winning side. The ideals, goals.ideology of the other side are completely ignored.
Okay I see what you’re saying on the electoral system, and I don’t disagree, but do you really think that the winning side are actually representing the voters of the winning side? Cause it looks to me (and I think there a good reasons for) that not only the winning side are not representing the losing side, they’re no longer representing the winning side’s own voters. I don’t know if you agree with this but if you do, don’t you think that’s a more fundamental break in the democratic system than the side-wise representation problem?
It is said that humans are essentially a herd animal by nature. The followers of the winning side are just that - followers. The herd leader determines the direction. Steve Jobs was once reportedly asked if he used focus groups to determine what features to include in his products. The story goes that he responded with a resounding “Never. People do not know what they want until I tell them.”
I believe that the herd instinct is based on genes, but more importantly that whether these genes are expressed or not depends on the environment of the individual, particularly the socioeconomic and educational environment. There is a reason why the ‘entitled’ faction implement every policy they can to denigrate the importance of education. I posit that the more uneducated a person is, the stronger their herd instinct, and the stronger their herd instinct, the more blindly their devotion to their leader. There is also evidence that, especially related to cult behavior, the amount and type of protein in the diet is a factor. Google “cults and the limitation of protein”.
So yes, I believe that many political leaders today look upon the voters as ‘election fodder’ and consider them simply as a means to get elected. Also that the politicians in our current system that are best adept at mobilizing the ‘herd’ have the best chance of getting elected. This is particularly evident in America, where the education level of the population tends to fall into the lower tiers.
Our concept of the ‘Party System’, Party Loyalty, and blind obedience to the whims of the Party that the voter identifies with is all part of this.
It must be remembered that the original form of ‘democracy’ in the American constitution was limited to white male landowners, who would be less inclined to conform to a ‘herd mentality’.
Interesting. I don’t share this framework of analysis of the political economy but it decently fits the current status quo. Thanks for sharing!
This is exactly the wrong application of empathy to this topic. The last group of people to be trying to excuse through empathy is racist young men who feel aggrieved entitlement to women’s bodies. It is good to empathize to the point of understanding their motivations, but their conclusions are an appeal to privilege, not an excusable and “natural” human reaction.
Young men who resort to fascism (we’re not gonna pretend racism and misogyny isn’t fascist at this point) because they don’t have good jobs and a guaranteed wife are doing so because they feel the system should guarantee them these things, has failed to deliver it, and they want to use this ideology to reassert what they view as their natural spot on the hierarchy. They are not sympathetic people, they are fascists who would rather commit violence than give up that privilege.
Whatever feeling you have for them that amounts to “well, I used to think that and I could see myself failing to change” or “they don’t know any better,” is misrecognizing your shared internalized values with these men as a natural human response. It is not, these are socialized values that benefit a select group of people disproportionately; which means they are most certainly not against harming others and any suffering this system has caused them is not making them question those values for fear of harming the rest of us.
Of everyone who suffers under this system and commits to actions that people do not empathize or sympathize with enough, these men are not the ones to spend our time being gentle with. They’re a problem, they’re going to keep being a problem, and the overwhelming majority of them will never change because they are already in a system that is built to reproduce that privilege. Racism would not be an “obvious candidate” to explain their discontent if they did not already feel entitled to certain things by merit of being white and Canadian.
You can empathize with people and still accept that they are harmful.
Edit: Before anyone says anything this, I don’t care if you think men don’t get enough consideration. They do, and there are many, many more groups of people who do not. If you are a man and angered by something like this, you better bring some actual proof that you’ve read about gender studies, sociology, or at least about vulnerable groups in this country if you want me to take anything you say seriously.
Swap the young guy for a young girl. Many girls also share the desire to court guys, or girls, have intimate relationships, maybe kids. That also tends to require moving out of parents’ basement (in this society). Girls also understand and feel the power of the labour market as they need to interact with it in order to obtain the entry level jobs needed to get on the path towards fulfilment of those desires. The labour market literally tells them that the existence of more people competing for the same jobs means they aren’t getting those jobs. We don’t need racism to conclude that. The capital system’s built-in dynamics tell us so. There’s amount of anti-racism that can paper over some of that. Once the prospects of achieving those desires get dim enough, I don’t think there’s enough anti-racism to do it.
What I’m saying here isn’t that indignation towards immigrants or any other others is the only option people can take. I’m saying the economic system, without other intervention points people towards that conclusion. Obviously intervention like raising people’s class consciousness can replace it and I think it’s durable, and perhaps even strengthened as people’s economic prospects decline.
Now you could say that wanting these things is a product of the privilege of being a Canadian born to Canadian parents that have a basement. And to that I’d say - yes it is. And I don’t think people should feel entitled to any less because decent food, shelter and the ability to have the chance[1] to live a decent life with someone, and procreate if they and the someone wants to, is the very lowest of standards people should require from a system in which all of us produce as much wealth as we do. The Canadian born to Canadian parents that have a basement, as well as the “others.”
[1] Chance, not a guarantee as no one is entitled to a partner, but one should be entitled to the material conditions allowing to attempt finding one.
“It’s the same if it was a woman*” further demonstrates the issue here. No, women don’t subscribe to racist values and actions at the same rate as men, even if everyone here is socialized within a white supremacist culture. Why? Because they do not benefit from that system in the same way white men do, because they are subordinated more than white men are already by merit of being women. No, that is not the same thing as saying women do not internalize racist culture, they do, but the way that they do does not even come close to fascists – the overwhelming majority of which are men. The labour market doesn’t tell them that, and it isn’t some “lost cause,” (hope you understand the irony of applying that narrative here) it is the consequence of the settler-colonial foundations of this country. They understand that it is an option because they understand that Canada is fundamentally white supremacist and is going to exploit them less than vulnerable groups. Just because you can empathize with those people because you have similarly been raised in a white supremacist culture does not mean that their choice to remain racist is sympathetic. There is an amount of anti-racism that could challenge that, which is any, but the ultimate goal of anti-racism is to completely deconstruct this system for this exact reason. It’s also worth noting that you think this only applies to immigrants when this racism is readily turned on any racialized peoples within Canada as well as indigenous peoples and First Nations, strange that a sympathetic narrative for these people would have to ignore the effects of their actions in order to be more believable.
You have once gain naturalized the very specific and intentional conditions of this system with human nature. You think that fascism is a human respnse, but its logic is entirely dependent on prexisting liberal, capitalist, and settler-colonial values to exist and is oriented around reinforcing those values. These are also not “girls” and “guys,” these are adults who have the responsibility to change once they are made aware of their harmful behaviour. Even if this was reflexive in a natural way and not a socialized way, they still have the responsibility to change and their choice to remain racist makes them a threat to everyone else’s safety and wellbeing; sympathizing with them is saying that saving an actively harmful person is more important than helping their victims. Again, it is right to empathize with them and understand why they make the choices they make, but it is wrong to make that an excuse to misrecognize the harm they intend. Everyone in Canada today is offered worse conditions than previous generations, that isn’t special to them and it isn’t like other groups in this country haven’t had similar experiences without having racism as an option and without resorting to violence.
This is not a failure of the system to regulate the economy in an effective way, everyone in positions of power understand that this is the consequence of neglecting privileged workers and petty property owners. They expect them to react this way because they have been socialized to think this way, which again points to how it isn’t “natural.” Race is a class in this system, and they are responding in solidarity with maintaining the privilege of that class; however distorted that is from the material reality of class dynamics and struggle. If you’re truly anti-capitalist and anti-racist, these people are not your friends.
I think you’re both misunderstanding what I’m trying to say and adding 80% auxiliary construction which I don’t find helpful as it adds a lot that I did not say, did not imply and do not agree with. Feels borderline bad faith. I’m trying hard not to take it that way. Hence why am responding.
For example nowhere I imply that the responses to the labour market are natural. The capital system isn’t natural. Yet, that doesn’t mean the system doesn’t create material incentives for people to act in specific ways. I don’t naturalize anything. I take the system as it is and ask how would certain changes in the material conditions affect some other variable.
I’m using the guy and the girl as an example of one part of society in order to explore how capitalism affects them in this narrow context of drivers of polarization. Not as a target to moralize their actions as just or unjust, or emparhize with or anything like that. Side note - if this historically privileged class is struggling, everyone else has it worse.
The last thing I’m gonna say is - I disagree that the racist response to the labour market is primarily a product of the settler-colonial nature of this country. I think that colonial nature of the country plays a role in addition to it but is not primary. Am of immigrant descent from a place that has not touched settler-collonialism and people facing this in my community (in Canada) who can’t find jobs that are now filled by newer immigrants are making the same conclusions. Heck this effect is now starting to show up back home after capital recently began importing temporary foreign labour without a labour hsortage, because they finally figured out they can depress wages this way. It’s a post-“communist” country so the capitalist class is fairly new and it’s still learning the ropes.
Again - I am not moralizing the new or preexisting workers. Everyone is trying to get by and feed their kids.
You guys always pull out “bad faith” when you don’t like how visible your underlying values are in what you say.
I’m not saying it’s wrong to look at these groups, I’m saying you’re looking at them wrong because you lack a deeper understanding of how this system came to be and why it functions the specific way it does. Whether you intend to do what you do is not what defines the consequences of what you do. When you tried to construct a sympathizing narrative, you didn’t talk about any vulnerable groups, you didn’t talk about indigenous peoples, you only talked about the most privileged groups of people in this system. Yes, that says something more than what you want the words to say, and you are also responsible for that.
“Racism isn’t because of settler-colonialism because I am a settler and other settlers like me engage in racism.” I can’t think of a clearer example than this to demonstrate this misunderstanding. Whiteness is a fluid category, it does not literally refer to the melanin content and physical attributes of a person’s body, it is about privilege. White Europeans (Irish, Italian, French, Greek, Slavic, etc.) were historically racialized and marginalized incidentally in this country, experienced systemic disadvantage, but certainly do not experience racism today; black and African Canadians still do. There are also differences in privilege delineated by gender, sexuality, ability, and class within those groups, that does not mean racism isn’t specific to some and only benefits some. Your being an immigrant means you are potentially open to discrimination along those same lines, but also means you participate in racism and settler-colonialism by merit of your privilege over First Nations and indigenous peoples; whom are also racialized. Racism exists to naturalize the subordination of others, it literally came into being through settler-colonialism, and being a racialized settler does not exempt you from benefiting from that racism.
You are taking effects as causes, and yes, by dojng that you are naturalizing these things as inevitable human reactions that cannot be curbed. Whether you want to or not, that projects a moral meaning onto those things.
White Europeans (Irish, Italian, French, Greek, Slavic, etc.) were historically racialized and marginalized incidentally in this country, experienced systemic disadvantage, but certainly do not experience racism today
I really can not get my head around the American census breakdown of the population into Black, White, and non-Spanish-speaking White.
I don’t know who “you guys” are and now I think this is definitely bad faith. I don’t even disagree with a lot of what you said in general. But deliberately ignoring parts of what I said in order to focus on others whose meaning changes when ignoring those parts, putting yet more words I did mot say or imply in my mouth tells me we’re done here.
Riding are too big, imagine if we had riding of 30,000 instead of 100,000. You’d get very local candidates making their way to Parliament, with very local issues to deal with. It would be less polarizing, and help solve local problems.
And the cost of implementation would be enormous. You are talking about a huge supporting infrastructure, the cost of just the MP salaries alone would be triple the current expenditure. The Law of Diminishing Returns gone ballistic.
The wages of the extra politicians would be completely insignificant. People can’t really seem to comprehend the money governments spend, and on what.
I am afraid that the only thing this would result in is even more political posturing and politicking by three times as many politicians. The more diverse the political spectrum represented in the HoC, the less likely that any decisions would be made. How do you get that many MP’s to decide on anything? Toronto suffered this fate when the number of counselors rose to unmanageable levels.
unmanageable levels
We went from 47 to 25. Toronto has a population of 3.3 million. That’s 132,000 per councilor, currently. Previously it was 70,000 people per city councilor. Nothing is being done in this city because there are too few councilors! Currently a handful of very rich developers get to decide most things.
Even the few things that this city council managed to decide, those decisions were still overturned by Doug Ford.Collingwood Ontario has 9 city councilors and has a population of 30,000. That’s like 1 representative for every 3,000 people!!!
It is not the ratio of population to councilors that results in the Law of Diminishing returns, it is the overall number of councilors. Toronto had reached a point of absurdity in their meetings with 47 councilors all wanting to put in their two cents worth on every issue. Politicians by their nature demand to be heard and thrive on posturing in front of the public.
Not a new thing even remotely. That isn’t the “single factor,” these are the inevitable conditions that liberal-capitalist systems produce. They are fundamentally organized around the subordination of othered groups of people to the benefit of a privileged group(s), which means the value of human life or any life is not a real consideration. Polarization like this appeared in the late nineteenth century as well (Progressives and Populists), and similarly people looked at that as the cause of problems and not the result of a system that will never adopt an idealized form of democracy as that would inevitably mean a group of exploited people have power within that system.
What you are identifying is a particularly energetic moment in political rhetoric that has been very effectively proliferated through corporatized media (not just social but yes, social media) and internet services. To suggest there are “two camps” depends on erasing the variability of people’s material and social interests in politics, which just works to the benefit of privileged groups and their political interests. I’d hardly call Liberal voters the same thing as NDP voters or, god forbid, someone who understands the liberal legal and political system as only a part of our politics and not the entirety of it. The split I figure you’re thinking about is between Liberals and Cons (which can be understood as “liberals and conservatives,” “progressive and traditional,” “fascists and republicans,” but is really just oriented around party politics and not actual ideological differences) and, go figure, they happen to be ideologically aligned under neoliberalism. Their differences are a consequence of different marketing and rhetoric strategies based on target demographics and regions.
Cons do better in the counties with mostly white settlers who have poor political literacy, a lack of cultural diversity, and a high economic dependency on extractive industry and agriculture. So, they use rhetoric that enforces “traditional” values and relies on an elitist crisis narrative that constructs local economic decline or struggle as a consequence of decadent wealthy people in positions of power who have corrupted the country, i.e. the only other large party: Liberals. Liberals tend to do better in cities and suburbs, particularly affluent ones, and use rhetoric that evokes welfare liberal ideas of “progress” and a balance between private and public spending to address a crisis in market forces and bad actors within the system, namely Conservatives. They must produce certain outcomes to maintain that image, and of course their different interests means they attract different financial supporters with their own imperatives that factor into policy-making. So, they sometimes push different policies, but usually their motivations and outcomes are ideologically compatible.
The result is the construction of this adverserial narrative that really just refers to what the most privileged groups associated with voting trends in each party are concerned about. Fascists are particularly energetic, and both parties here in Canada have readily embraced that energy to their ends. PP pushes transphobia and racism, Carney plays on the anxiety caused by it to frame the same neoliberal policies as acts of self-reliance and sovereignty. To even suggest this system was democratic to begin with is also deeply ahistorical and difficult to defend rationally. You could certainly say there’s “two teams” in that there really is just capitalism and its supporters and then people who are invested in the value of human life, but then the politics just melts into one team which is “capitalism’s supporters.” I’m sure you can understand how that would be reductive as well.
Please, do not buy into narratives that simply these issues; simplicity is easier for them to control.
It’s also that the riding are too bid at 100,000 people, and should be 30,000 at most. Combine the large riding with FPTP and people in both rural/urban areas don’t get the representation that they are looking for and become dissatisfied. We’d have more than 3 parties with smaller ridings, and we’d have to address more local issues.
Is there anything in your response that is not standard political anti-establishment trope?
I would adore it if you could produce even five sourced for that
“adore”???
Is that a no?
The tipping point has been reached. It’s time to usher in the next phase of human existence with a universally global benevolent dictatorship. Democracy was good to a certain point but now we are a world of dangerous fools electing dangerous fools to “lead” us. We need a serious thinking adult in the room again.
After 10 years of Trump and barely a year of Carney, anyone who says ‘we need a businessman and not a politician’ should be locked up in solitary confinement for 20 years minimum.
Fuck business, I’m more for humanity and ecology.
Exactly. This whole ‘we need a businessman’ line was originally started by Ross Perot in the 90s. To be honest, it only would make sense if you know nothing about public vs. private infrastructure and profit vs. ‘this is lossy, but critical’.
For example healthcare… I hate to say it, you cannot make money off healthcare without being extremely predatory and evil. this isn’t me being idealistic and somehow refusing to believe you can be ‘good’ while maintaining a for-profit model. YOU CANNOT MAKE HEALTHCARE PROFITABLE WITHOUT BEING EVIL!
The reason? Despite it being absolutely critical, healthcare and insurance is going to need a ton of money to maintain, and unless you’re denying healthcare most of the time (and only partially covering the other) you will lose money. You know the private for-profit healthcare clinics that have been popping up in Canada over the past few decades? They deliver less results and cost more public money than public clinics do. Yes, they’re getting taxpayer dollars, a lot of them, and STILL can’t turn a profit.
If you said ‘no more public healthcare, all private now, but they need to stand up on their own two feet’ most of them would collapse within a few years. Because no matter how important this shit is, they can’t be profitable. So they are given public money that they pocket themselves while still failing to provide the services demanded.
when I was more naive I would ask ‘but why not just make it all public? It’ll be cheaper? and make it easier to be a doctor and give more grants to medical students and learning?’ But now I know the reason answer… because it would benefit a few people (double digit numbers at the most) over the millions below. That’s it. It is such an intensely simple way to look at it.
This is why Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire is one of the worst things to happen so far, because he is far from the first. The others are racing for trillionaire spots. What this means is basically they don’t just control the economy of entire countries and can fully bypass any government they want, but they basically control the entire world.
You mean like a billionaire, who is thus uninterested in money, is anti establishment, pledges to get rid of the corruption of politics, seems to be closer to understanding poor people and getting along with them? We have one, and he’s absolutely the worst president ever.
Edit: I also think that mostly applies to Germany in the past on führer contemplation.
If you’re a billionaire, you ain’t benevolent.
They all are… That’s the actual goal as we move forward to a new age of complete human ownership via technology attached to government.
The idea of Nation is transitioning out.
