Conservatives are unstoppable

I get the feeling this thread is going to be closed.  I do think this is actually a good topic for discussion though...why is the Right making big gains all over the world?

Stargazer wrote:

My guess, it's because people are pissed off, feel powerless and angry but can't actually articulate exactly why and who they are angry with. Thus creeps like Ford, Beck and the rest of the lunatic fringe get a ton of ratings or votes. These "populist pundits" allow angry people to direct their anger at "them" (and them is almost always the less powerful).

There is no need to do your own research, or to even support a person who truly has your best interest at heart when you have angry white men yelling at you and telling you who you should be pissed of at. Intellectual laziness, apathy and a general state of perpetual fear. That shit works. Clearly.

Also, short attention spans, a lack of knowledge, lack of motivation to get involved - why bother when you can yell with the bigots from the sidelines? Who cares if deep down you know this isn't the right person to be onside with, all that matters is that finally someone is angry and hell yeah, I'm can be angry right alongside them. Punish these "elites". Most people couldn't care less if the angry white man is an elite, since he is their kind of elite.

I don't think this trend is going away any time soon. It pretty much came to a mass movement after 9/11 and still continues.

Just my opinion.

 

Education = bad. Downtown Toronto = Bad. Politicians = Liars. Scarborough = Gangster Land. Mostly angry white males, lashing out at whoever they can, and they are now given the green light to do just that with people like Ford and that other clown Rossi given so much air and news space. To a lot of people there is nothing else except endless news bites in the papers they read (National Post,The Sun) and they don't care to nor want to hear anything different. Makes them feel better to know they can blame all their problems on immigrants, women, and of course, the gheys.

Yes.

The problem with the left is that we're too rational, and too polite. We've been well-trained to never show anger, even when anger is the obvious and appropriate response.

For example, when confronted with a new poster whose very name claims allegiance to the left, but who from day one states his intent to vote for Rob Ford, for fuxsakes, we waste our time politely explaining reality to him, when we really should be telling him to FUCK RIGHT OFF ASSHOLE, because he's (a) most likely another useless troll, or (b) too fucking stupid to ever make a useful contribution around here.

But instead, we allow him to come back and get under our skins with another thread of bullshit about how the conservatives are unstoppable.

It's the capitalists, stupid!!!

P.S. _ i'm in complete agreement with LTJ and would like temporary mod powers to send conservative trolls and other misanthropic slime to a digital grave.

"Things are mean and gettin' meaner."-Taj Mahal. These are fractious times, and the right wing opponent is very well trained, armed and financed.  But there is more to the story - North American socialism seems to have split from world socialists movements in some ways. North American socialism  has been engrossed in identity politics, a fairly rigid ideological framework, and an unwillingness to engage with opposing points of view. I have to agree with Camile Paglia that the left on this continent is committing intellectual suicide. Marxism is irrelevant in so many ways today as the world faces an ecological count-down. Surely some kind of fresh thinking is called for.  Back in the '60's I became enamoured   of Paul Kastner's outrageous REALIST magazine out of New York City. Realism (of many kinds) still seems like a hopeful starting point of re-invention  and rejuvenation.                

N.Beltov wrote:

What's the difference between a conservative and a bucket of shit?

The bucket

Cueball wrote:

I see that about the "big unions" thing all the time. Thing is its bullshit. Unions consistently have aligned themselve for progressive social change. In fact the unions are probably the only force that is has any ability to confront corporate capital at all. The fact that this is in part motivated by self-interest is irrelevant. The unions are structures that were designed to act as such a deterent.

Nothing at all is preventing you from trying to unionize your place of work. Now you may get fired in the effort, this is true, but blaming unionized workers for the fact that corporate managers will fire your ass for trying to create a collective bargaining unit is not the fault of the ATU 113.

thanks for answeriing, bascially the unions do nothing for the poor in practical reality.  The union benefits those who are unionized, thats why most people stop caring about the sound good leftie rhetoric and pay attention to every little bonus and overtime payments that union members get.

In order to succeed, the labour movement needs to be made up of labour workers, not union members.

How can a person with the pseudonym of /' social democracy now' start a thread about how great conservatives are and how fucked up liberals are?

I smell a troll.

takeitslowly wrote:

Cueball wrote:

I see that about the "big unions" thing all the time. Thing is its bullshit. Unions consistently have aligned themselve for progressive social change. In fact the unions are probably the only force that is has any ability to confront corporate capital at all. The fact that this is in part motivated by self-interest is irrelevant. The unions are structures that were designed to act as such a deterent.

Nothing at all is preventing you from trying to unionize your place of work. Now you may get fired in the effort, this is true, but blaming unionized workers for the fact that corporate managers will fire your ass for trying to create a collective bargaining unit is not the fault of the ATU 113.

 

thanks for answeriing, bascially the unions do nothing for the poor in practical reality.  The union benefits those who are unionized, thats why most people stop caring about the sound good leftie rhetoric and pay attention to every little bonus and overtime payments that union members get.

In order to succeed, the labour movement needs to be made up of labour workers, not union members.

And the main mode of building the labour movement for all labour is through union organizing. This is not just something that the unions do. The workers have to form unions. Its legal to do so. If you are interested call up a union that seems to be associated with kind of work that you are doing and ask them how to unionize your work place.

Furthermore the unions continue to be the main institutions that organize effectively to defend social safety net systems that support ALL workers, and all people, regardless if they are in a union or not. Indeed, even in the act of defending their jobs nurses support the health care system, simply by protecting the jobs of trained staff. The ministry of health could probably safe a whack load of money if they started replacing nursing staff with candy stripers and volunteers, but the nurses union prevents that from happening. They do this, simply by defending their jobs, and determining that trained people are in the right positions at the right time by asserting the clauses of their collective agreement that define job descriptions.

Ensuring that there is a qualified triage nurse at the emergency ward, as opposed to a "receptionist", is a good example of something that helps the poor directly. These small things are usually taken for granted in a hostile media environment that only ever talks about the "perks", "benefits" and allegedly high salaries of unionize workers.

In fact, most labour disputes are not about money at all. That is just the way that the media pitches it. In reality, most labour disputes are about working conditions and job descriptions and issues where employers are trying to finesse the collective agreement by subcontracting out to sub-par unskilled workers, not about increasing personal perks.

For example, the ETFO strongly advised the provincial government on the issue of the new "full day kindergarten" program in schools in Ontario. Pointing out that it would not be "full day kindergarten" unless a qualified teacher who had graduated from a university level course in pedagogy was on staff for the whole day. Having ECE level workers taking care of kids is not "Kindergarten", (teaching kids) but actually "day care" (baby sitting). Their point was that McGuinty was promoting the new "kindergarten" program as "full day teaching", when in fact they were offering a half day of kindergarten, and a half day of day care -- misrepresenting to the public what was being offered, as full day kindergarten.

This is not to say anything bad about ECE workers, but to say that if Dalton McGuinty is going to tell people he is offering "full day" Kindergarden, as opposed to day care, he should say so. Of course these little things are not the kind of things that are going to get a lot of coverage in the star.

And those are some examples of the good things that unions do just by "selfishly" defending their interests, and says nothing about the funding they give to charities, community groups, lobbying for higher safety standards, better health care and organizations such as the Good Green Jobs for All coalition, that is specifically aimed at bringing new unionized jobs to people who are not in the loop already, and bringing needed services to people in priority neighborhoods.

My old dad, who seems to have got wiser since departing this life, once said that people born in Toronto are like dead sparrows: you know they must be there, but you never see one. Cities like TO are not seething cauldrons of sophistication. They are rube magnets. Every day another influx of rubes lands in the city, be they from Renfrew or Rawalpindi. (Actually, the latter are likely to be better educated but less likely to vote.) Ford isn't particularly smart, but he's realized that Toronto is actually a very large small town, and he is basing his appeal on the most malignant small-town values. (Conversely, the Toronto Star has always treated the GTA as an idyllic small town, and frequently runs pieces about how a smart young feller up in Aurora has invented hisself a new kind of barber chair.) You can for a while appeal to cosmopolitan aspirations and win, but the bedrock values tend to be those of small-town hustlers on the make. Every great city seems condemned to spend time ruled by colourful buffoons who have grasped this truth: Mel Lastman in Toronto, Boris Johnson in London, Marion Berry in Washington, anybody you care to name in New York.

What can you do? Appeal to those Torstar Duckburg values: neighbourliness, civic pride, a sense of responsibility for the misfits who populate every small town. Avoid their evil twins: ratepayers' groupthink, boosterism, a sense of entitlement to persecute the different.

Fotheringay-Phipps wrote:

My old dad, who seems to have got wiser since departing this life, once said that people born in Toronto are like dead sparrows: you know they must be there, but you never see one.

Yay, I'm a dead sparrow!

You mean shitty jobs for all as opposed to making the wealthy pay their fair of taxez? I gotcha! I mean $20 and hour is just way to fucking much for someone to stick their hand in stinking piles of rotting food all day long.

Peoples elitist attitude to manual labour is pretty ironic really. Professional's sitting at a desk like a teacher gets respect, but sticking your hands into a dirty toilet filled with shit and cleaning is a job "anyone can do"... maybe Asian "guest workers"? That is right we can bring the Third World here.

The fact is that outsourcing garbage work isn't actually going to create more jobs, since there is only so much garbage to pick up. All it means is that the people doing it will be paid less.

Do you think that outsourcing garbage collection is going to create more jobs? How? All it will do is reduce the cost. That doesn't mean they will employ more garbage collectors with the savings. No. That profit will go into the hands of executives running the business.

Fotheringay-Phipps wrote:

My old dad, who seems to have got wiser since departing this life, once said that people born in Toronto are like dead sparrows: you know they must be there, but you never see one.

You can see plenty at the York Mills centre. Birds whack into the windows there all the time.

takeitslowly wrote:

i will work with shit for 20 dollar an hour! where and when? lol.

Anyone who makes this claim has never done that kind of work for any length of time, or much other heavy duty manual labour.  I see that kind of talk all the time and the talkers can hardly ever hack it or keep up.  I've done that job, for a good period of time, those people are worth a heck a lot more to the funcitioning of our society and our communities than most corner, or even middle of the floor, office dwellers- but some how these working stiffs (with stiff backs and joints after a lifetime of manual labour) are just a drag on the rest of us.

I get it too as a farmer.  "You're smart- what are you farming for surely you could make more money doing something else"  The disrespect this society shows towards people who work with their hands, backs and brains is extreme.

Oh and what Cueball said.

Ford's ranting and raving as he appeals to the anger most folks feel for the feds and province for not getting it right.  Is it an indication of support for the Conservatives notta but more Ford has ignited the anger and is promising to reduce the Chinks as he so eliquently put it out of TO says you sure know how to pick em and don't forget the lawsuits that will bleed the city dry after electing the biggest, racist, fool out there as the mayor of Canada's biggest city.

The economy will be the final decider if the Conservatives stay or go and since I trust my intuition 100% it is easy to say the Canadian economy in major cities is not going to be pretty but neither is the Federal election as the people's anger will be directed at the Conservatives.  It is why the Liberals lost their seat in NB but that will change back as your have federal liberals and provincial conservatives all in the same voter as it is not an indication of how people will vote Federally.

http://money.ca.msn.com/investing/news/business-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=25748489

Strategic voting is the death of democracy. Indeed, years of it has gotten us to the point where the only choice left is them.

I remember the Bloc Blocker. Refresh my mind of the 22 minutes one.

I don't mind the Quebec bashing..All it's going to acheive is stronger BQ support and guarantee the Harperites never achieve their majority.

\I also like it because it will renew interest in the sovereignty option.

Thank you Maclean's and thank you Rick Mercer.

Lord Palmerston wrote:

I get the feeling this thread is going to be closed.  I do think this is actually a good topic for discussion though...why is the Right making big gains all over the world.

Right Wing Populism (Peronism?) resonates with the working class, because working people don't care who runs the show as long as they have work, and the perception that the people in charge are somewhat competent.  They also tend to eschew intellectual analysis of their condition.  Their credo being: 'Get it done', rather than: 'What is to be done?".  Of course this attitude is reinforced by monied interests, as in the Koch Bros.' backing of the Tea Party, or Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, et al..

So, what is to be done?