Most Canadians vote for people who are not elected.
76.9% of voting Canadians in this last election didn't vote for the government. That's a pretty impressive "democracy." No wonder so many on here are so smug, disinterested in reforming it, and instead obsessed with China's "dictatorship" and the political structure of countries on the other side of the world.
Most Canadians vote for people who are not elected.
76.9% of voting Canadians in this last election didn't vote for the government. That's a pretty impressive "democracy."
Not only that, but the same people who were pearl-clutching about how the Conservatives won a majority with less than 50% of the vote didn't seem to care that the Liberals won more seats even though the Conservatives had more votes in the last federal election. One of the reasons the movement for proportional representation failed in Canada is that it was seen as a means to rig the system to block the Conservatives from ever forming a government (remember the key talking points about how Liberal+NDP>Conservatives in every election) rather than ensuring a fair distribution of seats in relation to how people voted. That alienated nearly everyone on the right. Any election fairness campaign that alienates that large a section of the electorate is by definition unfair and is going to fail.
Most Canadians vote for people who are not elected.
76.9% of voting Canadians in this last election didn't vote for the government. That's a pretty impressive "democracy."
Not only that, but the same people who were pearl-clutching about how the Conservatives won a majority with less than 50% of the vote didn't seem to care that the Liberals won more seats even though the Conservatives had more votes in the last federal election. One of the reasons the movement for proportional representation failed in Canada is that it was seen as a means to rig the system to block the Conservatives from ever forming a government (remember the key talking points about how Liberal+NDP>Conservatives in every election) rather than ensuring a fair distribution of seats in relation to how people voted. That alienated nearly everyone on the right. Any election fairness campaign that alienates that large a section of the electorate is by definition unfair and is going to fail.
Naw, that's BS. Lot's of people were pointing out how the Conservatives who have consistantly tried to block PR would have been better off if it had been in place in the last election. Of course Conservatives didn't pick up on that themselves because the potential for FPTP rewarding them a false majority is far more attractive than a system that gives them their fair share of the popular vote.
Naw, that's BS. Lot's of people were pointing out how the Conservatives who have consistantly tried to block PR would have been better off if it had been in place in the last election. Of course Conservatives didn't pick up on that themselves because the potential for FPTP rewarding them a false majority is far more attractive than a system that gives them their fair share of the popular vote.
That has been the BC NDP's "unofficial" policy for decades. They too love false majorities that allow them to ignore large parts of their own constituency let alone other parties supporters.
When Singh first won I was very enthusiastic even though I had not supported his run. Now I think Ashton would have been a far better choice. She is really young so perhaps she can be the next leader.
While it is true most people didn't vote Liberal a good chunk didn't vote at all. I voted but I was no more politically active than most voters.
Naw, that's BS. Lot's of people were pointing out how the Conservatives who have consistantly tried to block PR would have been better off if it had been in place in the last election. Of course Conservatives didn't pick up on that themselves because the potential for FPTP rewarding them a false majority is far more attractive than a system that gives them their fair share of the popular vote.
That has been the BC NDP's "unofficial" policy for decades. They too love false majorities that allow them to ignore large parts of their own constituency let alone other parties supporters.
That is true. Bill Tieleman and other BC NDP hacks have been at the frontline of the war against a more proportional democratic system. But at least there is a bit of consistency there, Tieleman seems pretty up front about preferring 20 years of BC Liberal government if it means that when the BC NDP get a kick at the can, they don't have to compromise with environmentalists.
The Federal Conservative whining about getting less seats than their proportion of the vote while blocking a system that would make that possible was the kind of shamelessness you would expect from the anti-democratic right. This incarnation of the Conservative party definitely takes its cues from the Republicans in their open contempt for democracy. Which lowers the bar for all parties.
Trying to blame this on the fairvote movement is a pretty good post-truth revisionist take.
Fair Vote Canada: First-past-the-post cheats voters in every province
Canada’s new House of Commons makes the country look far more divided than it really is.
No party can be satisfied. Our skewed voting system has, incredibly, given Liberals 34 more seats than the Conservatives despite the Conservatives getting 1.5% more votes than the Liberals.
Do the math — Canadians aren't getting the government they're voting for
We woke up on Tuesday to a similar but new government: still Liberal, but a minority. While many may feel frustrated at the prospect of another Liberal term, and others with the difficulties that come with running a minority, I feel frustration at how we have arrived at this result.
The seat allocation in the House of Commons doesn't represent what citizens wanted.
According to the CBC, here are the number of seats won and the percentage of the popular vote earned by each party in this federal election:
- Liberals: 157 seats (with 33.1 per cent of the popular vote).
- Conservatives: 121 seats (34.4 per cent).
- Bloc Québécois: 32 seats ( 7.7 per cent).
- NDP: 24 seats (15.9 per cent).
- Green: Three seats (6.5 per cent).
- Independent: One seat (0.4 per cent).
- People's Party: No seats (1.6 per cent of the popular vote).
This is what happens with the first-past-the-post system. We are not fairly represented, because some parties take disproportionate hits while others make disproportionate gains.
Just look at the numbers. The Conservatives have more support than the Liberals, yet have 36 fewer seats.
Everyone was pointing this out. The reason why it didn't have any traction is because Conservatives absolutely do not want more democracy, they just want more seats.
Naw, that's BS. Lot's of people were pointing out how the Conservatives who have consistantly tried to block PR would have been better off if it had been in place in the last election. Of course Conservatives didn't pick up on that themselves because the potential for FPTP rewarding them a false majority is far more attractive than a system that gives them their fair share of the popular vote.
That has been the BC NDP's "unofficial" policy for decades. They too love false majorities that allow them to ignore large parts of their own constituency let alone other parties supporters.
That is true. Bill Tieleman and other BC NDP hacks have been at the frontline of the war against a more proportional democratic system. But at least there is a bit of consistency there, Tieleman seems pretty up front about preferring 20 years of BC Liberal government if it means that when the BC NDP get a kick at the can, they don't have to compromise with environmentalists.
The Federal Conservative whining about getting less seats than their proportion of the vote while blocking a system that would make that possible was the kind of shamelessness you would expect from the anti-democratic right. This incarnation of the Conservative party definitely takes its cues from the Republicans in their open contempt for democracy. Which lowers the bar for all parties.
Trying to blame this on the fairvote movement is a pretty good post-truth revisionist take.
Fair Vote Canada: First-past-the-post cheats voters in every province
Canada’s new House of Commons makes the country look far more divided than it really is.
No party can be satisfied. Our skewed voting system has, incredibly, given Liberals 34 more seats than the Conservatives despite the Conservatives getting 1.5% more votes than the Liberals.
Do the math — Canadians aren't getting the government they're voting for
We woke up on Tuesday to a similar but new government: still Liberal, but a minority. While many may feel frustrated at the prospect of another Liberal term, and others with the difficulties that come with running a minority, I feel frustration at how we have arrived at this result.
The seat allocation in the House of Commons doesn't represent what citizens wanted.
According to the CBC, here are the number of seats won and the percentage of the popular vote earned by each party in this federal election:
- Liberals: 157 seats (with 33.1 per cent of the popular vote).
- Conservatives: 121 seats (34.4 per cent).
- Bloc Québécois: 32 seats ( 7.7 per cent).
- NDP: 24 seats (15.9 per cent).
- Green: Three seats (6.5 per cent).
- Independent: One seat (0.4 per cent).
- People's Party: No seats (1.6 per cent of the popular vote).
This is what happens with the first-past-the-post system. We are not fairly represented, because some parties take disproportionate hits while others make disproportionate gains.
Just look at the numbers. The Conservatives have more support than the Liberals, yet have 36 fewer seats.
Everyone was pointing this out. The reason why it didn't have any traction is because Conservatives absolutely do not want more democracy, they just want more seats.
Fair enough, and I will concede that point somewhat, although I do remember this being a favourite talking point among some on the left.
I think this is a product of a political culture that has divided into factions, where each faction tries to drive turnout among its own demographics rather than engaging with the electorate at large. It seems these days that being part of a political movement is to define oneself primarily by hatred of one's opponents, rather than standing on a vision of what you feel is good for society and honestly making the case. It's almost as if you're not allowed to agree with your opponent if your oppnent ever says, "today the sun rose in the east and set in the west."
Speaking of engagement, I wonder if any NDP leadership candidate during the upcoming leadership race would have the guts to do a sit-down interview with Rebel Media, the Western Standard, or the Post Millenial. Fox News is explicitly anti-socialist. Yet Bernie Sanders went on the network and got Fox news viewers to cheer on the idea of Medicare for All. Why not take on your ideological opponents on their own turf? At the very least, it would be good practise for how to properly engage with a hostile audience.
I know people who wouldn't have been able to collect CERB under how the Liberals originally constructed it which completely missed the fact that a massive section of the workforce was juggling temp/part-time/contract work and was solely focused on their middle-class base.
CERB may be flawed in some of its implentation, but Canadians are receiving more benefits under the Liberals than they would have received under the Conservatives. If the Conservatives had been in power during the pandemic, there would have been a lot less done to help Canadians who needed it. The Conservative philosophy is that many of these people are lazy grifters who are receiving too many benefits.
Unless there is some catastrophic change, I'm still voting for Alexandre Boulerice (see photos of Alex at Palestine demonstrations). I don't belong to the NDP, though. I may still belong to Projet Montréal (I joined to vote for Plante, don't know if I'm still a member). The only party I am sure to belong to is Québec solidaire.
Unless there is some catastrophic change, I'm still voting for Alexandre Boulerice (see photos of Alex at Palestine demonstrations). I don't belong to the NDP, though. I may still belong to Projet Montréal (I joined to vote for Plante, don't know if I'm still a member). The only party I am sure to belong to is Québec solidaire.
I share your view. My MP who is an NDP MP is better than any of the alternatives that might run against him. I hate the NDP central office with a passion but I only get to send one person to parliament and I have always voted for the NDP activist in my riding while hoping they could move the party to the left. I had Bill Siskay as my MP and personal friend for years and we all know what the party did to him. After that I swore that I would not vote NDP again federally but then Gord Johns was my candidate when I moved and if he doesn't win the riding a Conservative wins so again I had to vote for the NDP.
It is obviously our electoral system that is the problem.
I don't think tweaking the system through PR would change much which is partly why I am sold on it federally as well as provincially. FPTP or PR doesn't give people more clout it just divies up power between parties differently. I reject the notion that the party I vote for actually represents my views or me be it under PR or FPTP. Our political system forces us into boxes. It has never been easier to find out where people stand on issues. It has never been easier to consult the world's foremost experts many of whom are Canadian.
All it takes is the will of the people. The way to influence the will of the people is to expose those who are robbing us of the country's wealth in treasure and labour. The right was right about stoking and directing anger. It is a very effective tool that we should be using. Expose how money is being funneled to the wealthy.
All it takes is the will of the people.
How can the will of the people be adequately represented when sections of the population's opinions are underrepresented or not even represented at all?
All it takes is the will of the people.
How can the will of the people be adequately represented when sections of the population's opinions are underrepresented or not even represented at all?
What it seems Pondering is saying is that requiring the people's will to be united enough to succeed in FPTP elections is only fair. If people can't agree on what alternative they want, they should get whatever the (possibly quite small) plurality want, and it's their own damn fault.
All it takes is the will of the people.
How can the will of the people be adequately represented when sections of the population's opinions are underrepresented or not even represented at all?
PR won't change that. The will of the people can force any government to do its bidding. That is how apartheid was ended wasn't it? If most white people had remained in favor of slavery we would still have it but we evolved. at least somewhat. Without having the will of the people behind you change will not occur or rather change will occur based on the desires of the powerful.
I don't think tweaking the system through PR would change much which is partly why I am sold on it federally as well as provincially. FPTP or PR doesn't give people more clout it just divies up power between parties differently.
I support PR partly just because it is a more accurate representation of what people are actually voting for and would allow some stakeholders who have been shut out by our system to come to the table but with the caveat that the devil is obviously in the details I actually think it could have a transformative positive effect on federal Canadian politics for 2 reasons:
I don't discount the importance of the 'people's will' but it's also true that some institutions and systems manage and obstruct that will more effectively than others.
I know people who wouldn't have been able to collect CERB under how the Liberals originally constructed it which completely missed the fact that a massive section of the workforce was juggling temp/part-time/contract work and was solely focused on their middle-class base.
CERB may be flawed in some of its implentation, but Canadians are receiving more benefits under the Liberals than they would have received under the Conservatives. If the Conservatives had been in power during the pandemic, there would have been a lot less done to help Canadians who needed it. The Conservative philosophy is that many of these people are lazy grifters who are receiving too many benefits.
I wasn't arguing otherwise. My belief is that CERB would have been worse under a Liberal majority. Their original CERB proposal left out workers that don't fall into their middle class base: temp/contract/worker juggling multiple jobs. I can't think of any example of when the Liberal party has shown any interest in this demographic so this isn't surprising. I think those workers were lucky the Liberals did not have a majority government.
Contrary to what Aristotle24 was saying, I actually think this would have a very positive knockon effect on the Conservative party. It wouldn't be great for Social Conservatives who have based their entire movement on taking advantage of a broken electoral system to aim for the outside chance that they might get outsized influence through vote splitting and gamification. Once that path was closed through a stable and fair propotional system, Social Conservatives would still be a bloc but Conservatives who cared about other issues would have the opportunity to operate like Conservative parties in PR systems in Europe and actually form government through coalitions and compromise to get policies that have popular support passed. Taking away the potential for false majorities would force our politicians to grow up and do the actual work of collaborative governance.
I was more talking about how, when you hear the left talk about proportional representation, it comes across as trying to game the system to keep the right-wing parties out of power.
I actually don't think the NDP or the Conservatives would survive in their present form under a PR system. You're correct that there are socially-conservative factions within the Conservative party who are always trying to take control of the agenda. It's the same within the NDP with the more left and moderate flanks. If you have PR where every vote counts fairly (or more closely than we have now) then it's easier for the factions to break off into different parties, and you may see different arrangements. For example, suppose the Conservatives break off from their more socially-conservative elements, and each one is represented in the government. If the Conservatives were to form the government, they could rely on social conservatives on votes of confidence and economic matters, but when the more socially-conservative issues come up for discussion, the Conservatives can then rely on the Liberals to marginalize a more socially-conservative agenda. It depends on the terms of negotiation for confidence votes, and that may produce all kinds of arrangements. I believe Jacinda Ardern's first coalition in New Zealand included a small nationalist party.
Even moving beyond the traditional right-left axis and introducing a more authoritarian-liberterian dynamic within this framework, you could see (and I know my use of these terms is a bit generalized) far-left anarchist parties and far-right liberterian parties co-operating on issues of human rights and anti-militarism, while continuing to disagree on economic matters. It might open the door to, as you said, parties choosing to collaborate and to disagree on an issue-by-issue basis, rather than reflexively being for or against certain policies depending on what your political opponents think.
I think this is a product of a political culture that has divided into factions, where each faction tries to drive turnout among its own demographics rather than engaging with the electorate at large. It seems these days that being part of a political movement is to define oneself primarily by hatred of one's opponents, rather than standing on a vision of what you feel is good for society and honestly making the case. It's almost as if you're not allowed to agree with your opponent if your oppnent ever says, "today the sun rose in the east and set in the west."
Speaking of engagement, I wonder if any NDP leadership candidate during the upcoming leadership race would have the guts to do a sit-down interview with Rebel Media, the Western Standard, or the Post Millenial. Fox News is explicitly anti-socialist. Yet Bernie Sanders went on the network and got Fox news viewers to cheer on the idea of Medicare for All. Why not take on your ideological opponents on their own turf? At the very least, it would be good practise for how to properly engage with a hostile audience.
I don't disagree with the first paragraph but I think there are obvious reasons for Singh not to go on these outlets. The Sanders/Fox parallel doesn't hold up. Fox has a massive audience so there was an obvious benefit for Sanders that Singh wouldn't get talking to the fringe right media. Also, as bad as Fox is, they will often take populist left positions (in my opinion usually insincerely) and had a history of sometimes making positive comments about Sanders and AOC. I don't read or follow the media you are reffering to but I know Levant and I have never heard him direct anything but smears and vitriol at the NDP. By talking to these outlets, Singh would be giving them more credibility and make it easier for rightwing politicians to cater to the far-right by saying the NDP set a precedent. I think a debate/conversation in good faith with someone on the opposite side of the spectrum could be productive but the negatives seem to outweight any potential positives here.
I think this is a product of a political culture that has divided into factions, where each faction tries to drive turnout among its own demographics rather than engaging with the electorate at large. It seems these days that being part of a political movement is to define oneself primarily by hatred of one's opponents, rather than standing on a vision of what you feel is good for society and honestly making the case. It's almost as if you're not allowed to agree with your opponent if your oppnent ever says, "today the sun rose in the east and set in the west."
Speaking of engagement, I wonder if any NDP leadership candidate during the upcoming leadership race would have the guts to do a sit-down interview with Rebel Media, the Western Standard, or the Post Millenial. Fox News is explicitly anti-socialist. Yet Bernie Sanders went on the network and got Fox news viewers to cheer on the idea of Medicare for All. Why not take on your ideological opponents on their own turf? At the very least, it would be good practise for how to properly engage with a hostile audience.
I don't disagree with the first paragraph but I think there are obvious reasons for Singh not to go on these outlets. The Sanders/Fox parallel doesn't hold up. Fox has a massive audience so there was an obvious benefit for Sanders that Singh wouldn't get talking to the fringe right media. Also, as bad as Fox is, they will often take populist left positions (in my opinion usually insincerely) and had a history of sometimes making positive comments about Sanders and AOC. I don't read or follow the media you are reffering to but I know Levant and I have never heard him direct anything but smears and vitriol at the NDP. By talking to these outlets, Singh would be giving them more credibility and make it easier for rightwing politicians to cater to the far-right by saying the NDP set a precedent. I think a debate/conversation in good faith with someone on the opposite side of the spectrum could be productive but the negatives seem to outweight any potential positives here.
The goal is not to change the minds of the hosts, it's to potentially see how many viewers minds we can change. This may become important down the line, as the MSM continues to lose audiences and people self-select media outlets they find credible. For example, at a sit-in last year protesting the security checkpoints at the Winnipeg library, I actually met a guy who said he likes Rebel media. I didn't talk to him too much at the time, but is it fair to assume so early that there's nothing I could say that could reach him? Should we assume that nobody in that audience is reachable? Let's use a specific example. We generally agree that Dave Rubin is a cretin, and yet Marianne Williamson humiliated him on his own show some time back.
Besides, as the MSM continues to lose credibility, I think that open, honest debates between actors who openly declare their viewpoints and ideologies is far more interesting than the "neutral" mediation of the MSM, especially as audiences continue to fracture.
PR won't change that. The will of the people can force any government to do its bidding. That is how apartheid was ended wasn't it? If most white people had remained in favor of slavery we would still have it but we evolved. at least somewhat. Without having the will of the people behind you change will not occur or rather change will occur based on the desires of the powerful.
What if "the will of the people", AKA public opinion, is most often divided many ways?
The real question is determining what the will of the people actually is. In the past we thought politicians should bring ideas to the table to implement now we seem to want them to come to the table to read opinion polls and go which ever way the fad takes the populace.
The real question is determining what the will of the people actually is. In the past we thought politicians should bring ideas to the table to implement now we seem to want them to come to the table to read opinion polls and go which ever way the fad takes the populace.
The will of the people can safely be ignored as long as you get the top couple of issues right. Financial security comes first so I would go with that as the focus. Canada is an incredibly wealthy country. Politicians are taking the position that they can't do much about income inequality because it is due to automation or they make some other excuses claiming it is somehow inevidable and they are trying their best. I remember when Bill Morneau was accidently honest and said something to the effect that people would have to get used to precarious work.
The right redirects anger, worry and resentment. They give people targets. We need immigration because women aren't having enough babies but immigrants are changing the country culturally, making Canada much less european, and less Christian. Couple that with poor lazy people taking all their money. The right constantly goes on about working people having a right to keep their money instead of giving it to the federal government. Wanting to keep the money you earn is a natural impulse.
I would show people through graphs and short pieces of information, who, by name, (other than the government) is robbing them. Once people become convinced that they are being robbed not by a corporation but by specific people with names they will be pissed and direct their anger at the right people.
That is when you can propose solutions, but first you have to identify the guilty.
So Singh should come out and say that David Thomason, Galen Weston, James Irving, Jimmy Pattinson, Daryl Katz, Charles Bronfman, and many other billionaires and near billionaires are robbers who are guilty of destroying Canada? Maybe Singh should publish a poster listing the names and faces of the 1000 richest Canadian robbers who are guilty of destroying Canada? How would Canadians react to that? What kind of election results could the NDP look forward to after that? I think it would be disastrous for the NDP but I am often wrong about gauging public opinion.
So Singh should come out and say that David Thomason, Galen Weston, James Irving, Jimmy Pattinson, Daryl Katz, Charles Bronfman, and many other billionaires and near billionaires are robbers who are guilty of destroying Canada? Maybe Singh should publish a poster listing the names and faces of the 1000 richest Canadian robbers who are guilty of destroying Canada? How would Canadians react to that? What kind of election results could the NDP look forward to after that? I think it would be disastrous for the NDP but I am often wrong about gauging public opinion.
If it just the facts of how much wealthier they have gotten since COVID then it might fly rather well. I wish it would bring out the mobs with pitch forks to overwhelm the private security forces at their fortified compounds but that is a faint hope. Is the guillotine too old school?
If we had PR, Pondering and likeminded people could easily establish a "These oligarchs must be stopped" political party as people would not be hindered by the prospect of splitting the vote.
It probably would be difficult getting a guillotine into their gated communities.
Just because I can't resist.
According to this web site Steven Tyler's net worth is $150 million!
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/rock-stars/steven-...
I agree that the censorship bill was bad but its hardly the first bad position the NDP has taken.
I can remember during the Harper minority years Jack Layton would often take flack from just talking to the Conservatives and trying to negotiate concessions from them that would help average Canadians. Let's look at the censorship bill another way: if Harper's government was proposing this exact same thing, and the NDP were playing along exactly the way they are now, would people be inclined to forgive the NDP or would they be angry as hell?
I agree that the censorship bill was bad but its hardly the first bad position the NDP has taken.I can remember during the Harper minority years Jack Layton would often take flack from just talking to the Conservatives and trying to negotiate concessions from them that would help average Canadians. Let's look at the censorship bill another way: if Harper's government was proposing this exact same thing, and the NDP were playing along exactly the way they are now, would people be inclined to forgive the NDP or would they be angry as hell?
I was fine with the NDP talking to the Harper Conservatives but in reality I don't remember much being passed to help average Canadians. The NDP support for mandatory mins despite everything we know about them was shameful. As much as I dislike the Liberals-I think the improvements to EI and the CERB response that has been accomplished with a Lib minority government working with the NDP has been far more helpful to average Canadians than anything we saw with a Conservative minority and would have been impossible to accomplish with a Conservative minority government. It is a shame that the Conservative party as it is currently oriented is not a viable partner on things like democratic reform, government transparency and economic nationalism since that sets the bar so low for the Liberals. There is clearly a lot of political space for the Conservatives to take if they abandoned the Republican wedge issue rile up the base culture war politics that aren't suited to forming government in Canada.
I think you are right that if this was a Conservative government, the problems with C-10 would be getting a lot more attention and the NDP would be feeling more pressure to bring up those concerns.
The other thing that has changed though is the degree to which rightwing networks have used social media to spread lies and disinformation. That has been extremely toxic and there is widespread public support for taking this on. I would prefer to see anti-monopoly polices that break up the tech giants and regulations that prevent them from collecting and selling people's personal data which in my opinion has enabled this online environment. I don't want to see a censored internet but the way disinformation is being circulated and promoted with conspiracy theories like Q-anon getting historic levels of support is a problem and I understand why people want to see some action. So C-10 isn't popping out of thin air, there is a real issue that needs to be addressed.
Probably the other significant difference at least when comparing the babble community now and in the Layton/Harper years is that there is a lot less enthusiasm or expectations for the NDP period. I'm speaking for myself but I get the impression the feeling is widespread that no one expects the NDP to be much more than a stopper on a Liberal majority any more-which occasionally broadens the stakeholders who are listened to by the government and will pretty much follow whatever political positions their polling cosultants tell them are trending.
The other thing that has changed though is the degree to which rightwing networks have used social media to spread lies and disinformation. That has been extremely toxic and there is widespread public support for taking this on. I would prefer to see anti-monopoly polices that break up the tech giants and regulations that prevent them from collecting and selling people's personal data which in my opinion has enabled this online environment. I don't want to see a censored internet but the way disinformation is being circulated and promoted with conspiracy theories like Q-anon getting historic levels of support is a problem and I understand why people want to see some action. So C-10 isn't popping out of thin air, there is a real issue that needs to be addressed.
I'm surprised that people think this is a new issue, but I suppose it speaks to how well old lies and disinformation have been baked into our system. Qanon's been described as a new religion, which just highlights the contradiction. If you tell a lie long enough, and it's about stuff that's obviously bullshit ("supernatural", in Canadian law), you get tax exemptions and people who believe the lie have the law rewritten so they don't have to be exposed to people "hatefully" contradicting it. It's the new heresies that have to be banned, same as it ever was.
If you tell a lie long enough, and it's about stuff that's obviously bullshit ("supernatural", in Canadian law), you get tax exemptions and people who believe the lie have the law rewritten so they don't have to be exposed to people "hatefully" contradicting it. It's the new heresies that have to be banned, same as it ever was.
nice.
good name for an album or sumthin'- the new heresies.
If it just the facts of how much wealthier they have gotten since COVID then it might fly rather well. I wish it would bring out the mobs with pitch forks to overwhelm the private security forces at their fortified compounds but that is a faint hope. Is the guillotine too old school?
Exactly. Don't bother presenting an entire argument (or solutions at first) because that just causes people to react suspiciously. Imagine a simple graph showing the increase in productivity and the trajectory of income for the 1% in comparison to the middle class. Looking at a graph like that people can't help but to see it as unfair. On another graph show how personal and corporate taxation has changed over decades.
Don't present explanations or solutions (at first) because they can be argued with. Can't argue with straight facts. When people come to their own conclusions, or think they do, it is much more difficult to change their minds. "The left" has the truth on its side.
The right figured out how to build fear and anger and misdirect it against their enemies. The left must correct that misdirection and learn to defend government.
The other thing that has changed though is the degree to which rightwing networks have used social media to spread lies and disinformation. That has been extremely toxic and there is widespread public support for taking this on. I would prefer to see anti-monopoly polices that break up the tech giants and regulations that prevent them from collecting and selling people's personal data which in my opinion has enabled this online environment. I don't want to see a censored internet but the way disinformation is being circulated and promoted with conspiracy theories like Q-anon getting historic levels of support is a problem and I understand why people want to see some action. So C-10 isn't popping out of thin air, there is a real issue that needs to be addressed.
I'm surprised that people think this is a new issue, but I suppose it speaks to how well old lies and disinformation have been baked into our system. Qanon's been described as a new religion, which just highlights the contradiction. If you tell a lie long enough, and it's about stuff that's obviously bullshit ("supernatural", in Canadian law), you get tax exemptions and people who believe the lie have the law rewritten so they don't have to be exposed to people "hatefully" contradicting it. It's the new heresies that have to be banned, same as it ever was.
I don’t think anyone thinks cults are new. What’s new is how we receive and reproduce (dis)information. By far the fastest technological revolution in our lifetimes, it’s also occurred alongside the dismantling of all the regulations and laws that were put in place as a result of the last time monopoly capitalism and financialization wreaked havoc on the world. I think both Shoshana Zuboff’s ‘Surveillance Capitalism’ and Matt Stoller’s ‘Goliath’ are pretty good sociological/economic descriptions of how we got here. The rise of Qanon isn’t the disease, it’s one of many symptoms.
I don’t agree with censorship but I’m also wary of it being used broadly as a label to prevent any government regulation or action. Obviously, elites would prefer that the 'solution' is for tech monopolies to police what is said on the internet but seeing this purely as a 'censorship' issue misses the wider problem. C10 has problems but making things harder for Google isn't one of them.
If it just the facts of how much wealthier they have gotten since COVID then it might fly rather well. I wish it would bring out the mobs with pitch forks to overwhelm the private security forces at their fortified compounds but that is a faint hope. Is the guillotine too old school?Exactly. Don't bother presenting an entire argument (or solutions at first) because that just causes people to react suspiciously. Imagine a simple graph showing the increase in productivity and the trajectory of income for the 1% in comparison to the middle class. Looking at a graph like that people can't help but to see it as unfair. On another graph show how personal and corporate taxation has changed over decades.
Don't present explanations or solutions (at first) because they can be argued with. Can't argue with straight facts.
The left just needs better PowerPoint presentations?
Who knows at some time in the future maybe instead of a Pulitzer Prize you will be getting a Q'anon Prize instead. Yellow journalism morphed into the highest form of US propaganda and they award prizes for it.
If it just the facts of how much wealthier they have gotten since COVID then it might fly rather well. I wish it would bring out the mobs with pitch forks to overwhelm the private security forces at their fortified compounds but that is a faint hope. Is the guillotine too old school?Exactly. Don't bother presenting an entire argument (or solutions at first) because that just causes people to react suspiciously. Imagine a simple graph showing the increase in productivity and the trajectory of income for the 1% in comparison to the middle class. Looking at a graph like that people can't help but to see it as unfair. On another graph show how personal and corporate taxation has changed over decades.
Don't present explanations or solutions (at first) because they can be argued with. Can't argue with straight facts.
The left just needs better PowerPoint presentations?
sorta. the better powerpoint presentations would be one of the results of the left having it's act together.
income-disparity-acceleration-since-covid graphs on t-shirts, on masks. on discussion threads...
this is low hanging fruit, and visual communications matters, but where are they?
pondering is on to something here.
As much as I dislike the Liberals-I think the improvements to EI and the CERB response that has been accomplished with a Lib minority government working with the NDP has been far more helpful to average Canadians than anything we saw with a Conservative minority and would have been impossible to accomplish with a Conservative minority government.
CERB was a lifesaver last year. Life has moved on since then. I was lucky enough that my own job was not interrupted last year. I also noticed that when I did my taxes that had I gone onto CERB, I would have taken a slight pay cut. When you also factor in the requirement to pay back the CERB in taxes, on top of the debts people already have accumlated, CERB is no longer the godsend that it was.
The other thing that has changed though is the degree to which rightwing networks have used social media to spread lies and disinformation. That has been extremely toxic and there is widespread public support for taking this on. I would prefer to see anti-monopoly polices that break up the tech giants and regulations that prevent them from collecting and selling people's personal data which in my opinion has enabled this online environment. I don't want to see a censored internet but the way disinformation is being circulated and promoted with conspiracy theories like Q-anon getting historic levels of support is a problem and I understand why people want to see some action. So C-10 isn't popping out of thin air, there is a real issue that needs to be addressed.
Has Q-anon really gained traction because of the proliferation of right-wing, conspiracy-theory-oriented networks in recent years, or from anti-Trump media playing up the threat of Q-anon? Futhermore, let's look at some falsehoods promoted by the media that have caused more harm and cost more lives than anything that Q-anon can ever claim responsible for:
Saddam Hussein was making weapons of mass destruction and ready to destroy the world
Gaddafi was a horrible dictator and Western governments need to take him out
Unless the Canadian military stays in Afghanistan, the Taliban will regain traction and human rights will be lost
The economic impact of cutting greenhouse gas emissions will be too devastating on the economy in order to contemplate.
A spark will only light a fire if it encounters dry tinder, and I think this is true of conspiracy theories. Many of what people call conspiracy theories in terms of covid, for example, that there were going to be forced vaccinations, were also around during the 2009 flu pandemic. It never gained any traction then because life was allowed to go on as normal, so people just rolled their eyes at those ideas and life moved on. Now, we have lockdowns, government leaders who told us we can't get "back to normal" without a vaccine, plus the fact that people are confined to their homes and interaction with the world is limited to their digital devices. All that comes together, and people start thinking, "maybe there is something to this." As to how you deal with it? I think this excellent interview with Glenn Greenwald sheds light, in particular the portion that I have transcribed (6:44-9:14):
FS: If someone goes out campaigining against taking a vaccine because they say that it is filled with microchips and it's going to be linked to Bill Gates or, you know, something that most people would deem to be obviously not true, you still think it should be out there and allowed and you just rely on people's common sense to decide whether they agree with it or not?GG: Well, you rely on people's common sense but also on institutions of authority to rebuild trust. Maybe this is the fact that I'm American and the American position in regards to free speech tends to be a bit more absolutist than even in Western Europe and in other places throughout the democratic world. But we, as a country, have never allowed the government, for example, to intervene in our public debates and our public discourse and render off-limits certain opininos because they're designed to spread disinformation. That's something we've decided is best left to the citizenry to resolve. And of course you can concot examples like the one that you created where someone might say, "well what's the benefit of allowing something obviously false to be disseminated?" And the answer is, well there may not be a benefit to allowing it to be disseminated but the risks or the dangers of allowing and empowering institutions to suppress it are worse than the dangers of allowing it to be disseminated, and I think that's the answer. So, you know, one of the problems that I think we have with regard to these questions about disinformation is that we used to have institutions of authority, in the media, academia, health policy that gained the trust of the population. So if somebody popped up and started spouting conspiracy theories, you had trusted media outlets or scholars or health organisations to say, "no that's actually untre, the science proves otherwise" and all but a small handful of people trusted those pronouncements. That credibility has been eroded, and I think one of the thingsthat we need to do instead of starting to use brute force to say, "well we're just not going to allow people to express things that these institutions declare to be false" is question why it is that we've lost trust as a profession of journalism or why experts have lost trust. I think there's a lot of reasons that lie within the behaviour of those elites and that to me seems like a much better solution.
Probably the other significant difference at least when comparing the babble community now and in the Layton/Harper years is that there is a lot less enthusiasm or expectations for the NDP period. I'm speaking for myself but I get the impression the feeling is widespread that no one expects the NDP to be much more than a stopper on a Liberal majority any more
The NDP has even failed at that, with Singh supporting the Liberal budget with no serious attempts at negotiations.
which occasionally broadens the stakeholders who are listened to by the government and will pretty much follow whatever political positions their polling cosultants tell them are trending.
I've been e-mailing politicians throughout the pandemic with my thoughts on how things are going. I've stopped hearing back from them as frequently as I used to, and I was on a first-name basis with many of them before the pandemic. I honestly doubt that politicians are acknowledging any communications from citizens and are only listening to people in their bubbles. I think the "stay home, stay safe" attitude, along with cancellation of cultural events like street festivals and the like have contributed to this. What happens when politicinas are out and about visiting cultural events, and out in the community? People tend to recognize them, go up to them, and to tell them what's on their minds. Even the best of us are prone to become rigidly trapped in our own thinking, and that spontaneous interaction with the citizens is an important check on that. With no public gatherings and with politicians staying home to "set an example," how can they truly know what is going on in the wider community?
If it just the facts of how much wealthier they have gotten since COVID then it might fly rather well. I wish it would bring out the mobs with pitch forks to overwhelm the private security forces at their fortified compounds but that is a faint hope. Is the guillotine too old school?Exactly. Don't bother presenting an entire argument (or solutions at first) because that just causes people to react suspiciously. Imagine a simple graph showing the increase in productivity and the trajectory of income for the 1% in comparison to the middle class. Looking at a graph like that people can't help but to see it as unfair. On another graph show how personal and corporate taxation has changed over decades.
Don't present explanations or solutions (at first) because they can be argued with. Can't argue with straight facts.
The left just needs better PowerPoint presentations?
sorta. the better powerpoint presentations would be one of the results of the left having it's act together.
income-disparity-acceleration-since-covid graphs on t-shirts, on masks. on discussion threads...
this is low hanging fruit, and visual communications matters, but where are they?
pondering is on to something here.
There are 2 simple things governments can do in order to interrupt the flow of wealth to the top. The first one is to encourage health and investigate possible cheap, early covid treatments that prevent people from winding up in the hospital. The second is to announce plans to open up and stay open (see Texas, Florida, South Dakota) so people can interact with each other in person without the need for mediation through digital devices. That will have a much more immediate impact than dangling a "wealth tax" that will be a fight to be in and is, under the best case scenario, a long way off.
As much as I dislike the Liberals-I think the improvements to EI and the CERB response that has been accomplished with a Lib minority government working with the NDP has been far more helpful to average Canadians than anything we saw with a Conservative minority and would have been impossible to accomplish with a Conservative minority government.CERB was a lifesaver last year. Life has moved on since then. I was lucky enough that my own job was not interrupted last year. I also noticed that when I did my taxes that had I gone onto CERB, I would have taken a slight pay cut. When you also factor in the requirement to pay back the CERB in taxes, on top of the debts people already have accumlated, CERB is no longer the godsend that it was.
It's not a godsend but its better than what EI was and EI is better than what it was pre-CERB, which is the first improvements we've seen to EI since it was 'reformed' by the Liberals in the 90s during the Liberal majority governments who were into austerity before it was cool. That is a real tangible change that has helped Canadians. It's hard to imagine a policy as substantial that a Conservative minority would be willing to work with the NDP on. I'd like to see a Conservative party where this isn't true but apart from a little bit of rhetoric, there is no evidence for that.
Has Q-anon really gained traction because of the proliferation of right-wing, conspiracy-theory-oriented networks in recent years, or from anti-Trump media playing up the threat of Q-anon?
Since people are increasingly in their own media bubble, I think the messaging in the rightwing echo chamber is much more responsible than the anti-rightwing echo chamber since they are mostly just speaking to their audiences.
Futhermore, let's look at some falsehoods promoted by the media that have caused more harm and cost more lives than anything that Q-anon can ever claim responsible for:
Saddam Hussein was making weapons of mass destruction and ready to destroy the world
Gaddafi was a horrible dictator and Western governments need to take him out
Unless the Canadian military stays in Afghanistan, the Taliban will regain traction and human rights will be lost
The economic impact of cutting greenhouse gas emissions will be too devastating on the economy in order to contemplate.
For sure, I'm not defending the MSM or saying that the disruptive effects of the internet have been wholly negative. It's good that there are more voices challenging dominant propaganda narratives. The respective propaganda "sucesses/failures" of the two Gulf wars are a good example of how the internet has changed the game. TV Media had figured out how to pacify audiences and just bombard them with messages creating a very submissive public. It was much harder to control messaging once people could share information much faster and across borders. So I agree that there is a a lot of danger in empowering Governments, MSM and Tech companies to censor speech.
A spark will only light a fire if it encounters dry tinder, and I think this is true of conspiracy theories.
I agree up to a point. A spark from a match is less likely to start a fire than a gasoline soaked haybarn hit with a flamethrower.
I'm not going to repeat all the stories that have come out which I am sure you have read and have been probably been posted on babble but for example we know Facebook favoured posts that invoked anger and heated contraversy, sold data to political firms to help them target people based on their data. We know Google's business model is also based on collecting data and selling their ability to use that data to herd behaviour. Our information infrastructure is now set up to be viral and it encourages both hostility and an information leveling where people glom onto whatever "facts" support their own biases without a lot of critical thinking. I remember in 2016 when my social media feeds just got bombarded with rightwing memes and talking points from people who I have grown up with and in the past could probably have been accurately described as apolitical. I'm not saying they had no agency or that there aren't sociological reasons for why they would be attracted by those positions but the way they were consuming and reproducing information was radically different than how they had in the past and I wasn't surprised to learn what we now know about how Facebook and Google use behaviourist methods to herd their users. The online ecosystem they have created makes it much easier for conspiracy theories and disinformation to spread virally.
I think this excellent interview with Glenn Greenwald sheds light, in particular the portion that I have transcribed (6:44-9:14):
Yeah I haven't listened to the whole interview but I agree with that excerpt. I think Greenwald is extremely insightful on a lot of issues but one area where he is weak and I have heard him admit it in interviews is economics. It's not something he claims to know a lot about or be that interested in and he tends to approach everything from a civil liberties perspective and while that does make it possible for him to communicate with both the left and libertarian right, the reality is the libertarian right's primary achievement has not been to improve civil liberties. It's been to completely take over the field of economics in elite universities, governments, international bodies and become the dominant economic orthodoxy of the last forty plus years destroying regulations that were put in place to constrain finance and monopoly capitalism. We can see the result of that in increasingly regular reoccurring finacial crises and union-busting tech billionaires that harvest our data to herd our behaviour. So the problem is a lot bigger than just a civil liberty or censorship issue which is how the libertarian right would like to frame it. Government has a role to play.
I'm not going to repeat all the stories that have come out which I am sure you have read and have been probably been posted on babble but for example we know Facebook favoured posts that invoked anger and heated contraversy, sold data to political firms to help them target people based on their data. We know Google's business model is also based on collecting data and selling their ability to use that data to herd behaviour. Our information infrastructure is now set up to be viral and it encourages both hostility and an information leveling where people glom onto whatever "facts" support their own biases without a lot of critical thinking.
That's true. The Obama campaign used that very successfully in its 2012 re-election campaign. There was anger and frustration when Trump successfully applied those same tactics 4 years later.
As much as I dislike the Liberals-I think the improvements to EI and the CERB response that has been accomplished with a Lib minority government working with the NDP has been far more helpful to average Canadians than anything we saw with a Conservative minority and would have been impossible to accomplish with a Conservative minority government.CERB was a lifesaver last year. Life has moved on since then. I was lucky enough that my own job was not interrupted last year. I also noticed that when I did my taxes that had I gone onto CERB, I would have taken a slight pay cut. When you also factor in the requirement to pay back the CERB in taxes, on top of the debts people already have accumlated, CERB is no longer the godsend that it was.
It's not a godsend but its better than what EI was and EI is better than what it was pre-CERB, which is the first improvements we've seen to EI since it was 'reformed' by the Liberals in the 90s during the Liberal majority governments who were into austerity before it was cool. That is a real tangible change that has helped Canadians. It's hard to imagine a policy as substantial that a Conservative minority would be willing to work with the NDP on. I'd like to see a Conservative party where this isn't true but apart from a little bit of rhetoric, there is no evidence for that.
Has Q-anon really gained traction because of the proliferation of right-wing, conspiracy-theory-oriented networks in recent years, or from anti-Trump media playing up the threat of Q-anon?
Since people are increasingly in their own media bubble, I think the messaging in the rightwing echo chamber is much more responsible than the anti-rightwing echo chamber since they are mostly just speaking to their audiences.
Futhermore, let's look at some falsehoods promoted by the media that have caused more harm and cost more lives than anything that Q-anon can ever claim responsible for:
Saddam Hussein was making weapons of mass destruction and ready to destroy the world
Gaddafi was a horrible dictator and Western governments need to take him out
Unless the Canadian military stays in Afghanistan, the Taliban will regain traction and human rights will be lost
The economic impact of cutting greenhouse gas emissions will be too devastating on the economy in order to contemplate.
For sure, I'm not defending the MSM or saying that the disruptive effects of the internet have been wholly negative. It's good that there are more voices challenging dominant propaganda narratives. The respective propaganda "sucesses/failures" of the two Gulf wars are a good example of how the internet has changed the game. TV Media had figured out how to pacify audiences and just bombard them with messages creating a very submissive public. It was much harder to control messaging once people could share information much faster and across borders. So I agree that there is a a lot of danger in empowering Governments, MSM and Tech companies to censor speech.
A spark will only light a fire if it encounters dry tinder, and I think this is true of conspiracy theories.
I agree up to a point. A spark from a match is less likely to start a fire than a gasoline soaked haybarn hit with a flamethrower.
I'm not going to repeat all the stories that have come out which I am sure you have read and have been probably been posted on babble but for example we know Facebook favoured posts that invoked anger and heated contraversy, sold data to political firms to help them target people based on their data. We know Google's business model is also based on collecting data and selling their ability to use that data to herd behaviour. Our information infrastructure is now set up to be viral and it encourages both hostility and an information leveling where people glom onto whatever "facts" support their own biases without a lot of critical thinking. I remember in 2016 when my social media feeds just got bombarded with rightwing memes and talking points from people who I have grown up with and in the past could probably have been accurately described as apolitical. I'm not saying they had no agency or that there aren't sociological reasons for why they would be attracted by those positions but the way they were consuming and reproducing information was radically different than how they had in the past and I wasn't surprised to learn what we now know about how Facebook and Google use behaviourist methods to herd their users. The online ecosystem they have created makes it much easier for conspiracy theories and disinformation to spread virally.
I think Greenwald is extremely insightful on a lot of issues but one area where he is weak and I have heard him admit it in interviews is economics. It's not something he claims to know a lot about or be that interested in and he tends to approach everything from a civil liberties perspective and while that does make it possible for him to communicate with both the left and libertarian right, the reality is the libertarian right's primary achievement has not been to improve civil liberties. It's been to completely take over the field of economics in elite universities, governments, international bodies and become the dominant economic orthodoxy of the last forty plus years destroying regulations that were put in place to constrain finance and monopoly capitalism. We can see the result of that in increasingly regular reoccurring finacial crises and union-busting tech billionaires that harvest our data to herd our behaviour. So the problem is a lot bigger than just a civil liberty or censorship issue which is how the libertarian right would like to frame it. Government has a role to play.
There may be some overlap, but I think there needs to be a decoupling of economic and libertarian analysis. I'm not well-read in anarchist thought by any stretch, but there is a line of thinking along the anarchist left that would agree with Milton Firedman on issue of government involvement in our personal lives (i.e. drug policy) but would absolutely contest his view of how the economy should function. Overall, you are correct that libertarians use the natrual human desire to be free to do as we please to advance corporate interests. In the case of resource extraction, very often the government policies towards communities around such deposits is very often anti-liberty. Once you decouple economic and liberty matters and study them further, then you are better equipped to take on the contradictions in libertarian ideology. The biggest contradiction is that libertarians claim to hate "big government" interference, they argue for corporate entities to do as they please, and yet a corporation by definition only exists because "big government" granded said corporation a corporate charter in the first place.
I remember in 2016 when my social media feeds just got bombarded with rightwing memes and talking points from people who I have grown up with and in the past could probably have been accurately described as apolitical. I'm not saying they had no agency or that there aren't sociological reasons for why they would be attracted by those positions but the way they were consuming and reproducing information was radically different than how they had in the past and I wasn't surprised to learn what we now know about how Facebook and Google use behaviourist methods to herd their users. The online ecosystem they have created makes it much easier for conspiracy theories and disinformation to spread virally.
I think part of that has to do with the fact that we spend so much time socializing online (yes, I'm aware of the irony of posting this message on an online platform), in large part because social media is willfully designed to be addictive. Bill Maher has been a critic of this cultural phenomenon for a long time, and I think he's right when he says, "people need real friends. Not chatroom friends, not Facebook friends, not fellow paranoids feeding each other misinformation on a screen, but real, human friends, who can look you in the eye and tell you that your theories about the coming race wars are horesshit, and to tell you that social media is not real."
If it just the facts of how much wealthier they have gotten since COVID then it might fly rather well. I wish it would bring out the mobs with pitch forks to overwhelm the private security forces at their fortified compounds but that is a faint hope. Is the guillotine too old school?Exactly. Don't bother presenting an entire argument (or solutions at first) because that just causes people to react suspiciously. Imagine a simple graph showing the increase in productivity and the trajectory of income for the 1% in comparison to the middle class. Looking at a graph like that people can't help but to see it as unfair. On another graph show how personal and corporate taxation has changed over decades.
Don't present explanations or solutions (at first) because they can be argued with. Can't argue with straight facts.
The left just needs better PowerPoint presentations?
sorta. the better powerpoint presentations would be one of the results of the left having it's act together.
income-disparity-acceleration-since-covid graphs on t-shirts, on masks. on discussion threads...
this is low hanging fruit, and visual communications matters, but where are they?
pondering is on to something here.
Why should grocery store workers be subsidizing food for everyone else by working for less than a living wage?
The right knows how to frame things. The left needs to reframe them.
If a business can't pay employees a living wage then it is not a viable business and should close.
Loblaws isn't refusing to pay employees a living wage. Galen West, a man worth 7 billion, is refusing to pay workers a living wage. How can the company afford to pay him and other executives without raising food prices?
How can it be that essential workers are worth less than everyone else? They aren't even worth a living wage.
Here's some slogans,
Minimum wage should be a living wage.
If a jobs worth doing it's worth a living wage.
Couple with graphs showing the errosion of minimum wage over decades, what it would be now if it kept up with inflation.
Contrary to what Aristotle24 was saying, I actually think this would have a very positive knockon effect on the Conservative party. It wouldn't be great for Social Conservatives who have based their entire movement on taking advantage of a broken electoral system to aim for the outside chance that they might get outsized influence through vote splitting and gamification.
I think you have the wrong culprits. Right wing think tanks spent decades figuring out how to beat back progress. Sometime around the seventies they figured out they could win if they courted the southern evangelicals. The economic right doesn't give a shit about abortion rights. Rich women will always have access regardless of any laws.
In the US they don't pay a price for it because religion plays such a large part in politics but they are paying a price now because it is linked to the fear of whites of becoming a minority, which they will be by 2050 if not sooner. Whites will still have all the power but that isn't enough. They want the US to be majority white and they don't see it as racist because other races dominate most of the world. Too few white babies are being born so non-white workers are being imported.
During his minority governments Harper threw bones at the social conservatives such as not funding organizations that provide abortions in other countries and not completely silencing socially conservative MPs. Social conservatives assumed that once Harper had a majority he would do more. They understand that Canada is more liberal but Canada is the only developed country without laws limiting abortion. They think it is perfectly reasonable to pass laws impacting the 3rd trimester and preventing sex-selective abortion. They aren't being radical like the US evangelicals that are trying to stop all abortion after a fetal heartbeat. They see not having any laws at all as radical. Harper betrayed social conservatives and they are not about to let another leader do it just to win an election. To social conservatives there is no point in winning if it doesn't result in laws against abortion. It isn't that they will vote for someone else, it is that they will stay home.
O'Toole used social conservatives to defeat Peter Mackay. They are not about to let him forget it. They are pissed at him for what he did to Derek Sloan. After Harper betrayed them they are not about to let another leader get away with it.
The reform conservatives married fiscal libertarians to social conservatives because fiscal libertarians don't give a shit about abortion or any other social issues. It worked for quite awhile. They destroyed the Progressive Conservative party then took over when they were forced to merge to win elections but they are faced with the same problem. They courted social conservatives to win and now the social conservatives won't shut up which is preventing them from winning.
"The left" should court religious people on other issues. If they perceive that no party will represent their anti-abortion views they will be open to supporting another party based on a different issue or issues. For example, countries that have better social supports for unwed mothers have fewer abortions. Extremists are against both abortion and sex education but shown statistics on how sex education prevents abortions could be persuasive because their ultimate goal is fewer abortions not punishing women for getting pregnant.
Church communities sponsored many refugees and provide sanctuary for deportees fighting to stay. In a sense the right has succeeded in dividing people of faith from progressives on sex and abortion. Jesus was a progressive.
"The left" really messes up on strategy and communications. Being right isn't enough.
I think you have the wrong culprits. Right wing think tanks spent decades figuring out how to beat back progress. Sometime around the seventies they figured out they could win if they courted the southern evangelicals. The economic right doesn't give a shit about abortion rights. Rich women will always have access regardless of any laws.
Sure, I don't disagree with that but my point wasn't who the culprits were. I think PR, depending on how it was implemented, could shake up the current coalitions that make up our political parties for the reasons I outlined above. Social Conservatives would still be a voting block but I think other Conservatives would probably form their own party and gain the flexibility to get their policies passed without relying solely on SoCons. I could see them working well with rightwing Liberals without the SoCon baggage. Paul Martin and Stephen Harper both found Mark Carney very easy to work with. I could also see Trudea/Notley/Horgan types within the same political party at some point if regional political grievances became less important. Hopefully this would free up some space for a genuine internationalist anti-imperialist ecosocialist party to join the conversation.
Overall, you are correct that libertarians use the natrual human desire to be free to do as we please to advance corporate interests. In the case of resource extraction, very often the government policies towards communities around such deposits is very often anti-liberty. Once you decouple economic and liberty matters and study them further, then you are better equipped to take on the contradictions in libertarian ideology. The biggest contradiction is that libertarians claim to hate "big government" interference, they argue for corporate entities to do as they please, and yet a corporation by definition only exists because "big government" granded said corporation a corporate charter in the first place.
Yeah, I agree 100%. I find it a really disingenuous narrow view of 'liberty.' In reality libertarian politics has had a very negative effect on most people's liberty as most people have their liberty constantly trampled on by a monopoly capitalism that looks out for those at the top.
I think in general taking any one abstract political principle and saying it is always true in every situation regardless of any external realities is probably not a good way of interacting with a very complex world. I feel like I grew up with a lot of 'liberty' and have seen some of it eroded but I could say the same about 'economic fairness' and the natural environment which are things I value as well.
If it just the facts of how much wealthier they have gotten since COVID then it might fly rather well. I wish it would bring out the mobs with pitch forks to overwhelm the private security forces at their fortified compounds but that is a faint hope. Is the guillotine too old school?Exactly. Don't bother presenting an entire argument (or solutions at first) because that just causes people to react suspiciously. Imagine a simple graph showing the increase in productivity and the trajectory of income for the 1% in comparison to the middle class. Looking at a graph like that people can't help but to see it as unfair. On another graph show how personal and corporate taxation has changed over decades.
Don't present explanations or solutions (at first) because they can be argued with. Can't argue with straight facts.
The left just needs better PowerPoint presentations?
sorta. the better powerpoint presentations would be one of the results of the left having it's act together.
income-disparity-acceleration-since-covid graphs on t-shirts, on masks. on discussion threads...
this is low hanging fruit, and visual communications matters, but where are they?
pondering is on to something here.
There are 2 simple things governments can do in order to interrupt the flow of wealth to the top. The first one is to encourage health and investigate possible cheap, early covid treatments that prevent people from winding up in the hospital. The second is to announce plans to open up and stay open (see Texas, Florida, South Dakota) so people can interact with each other in person without the need for mediation through digital devices. That will have a much more immediate impact than dangling a "wealth tax" that will be a fight to be in and is, under the best case scenario, a long way off.
Oh, Christ. Yes, when I want to look at reducing economic inequallity the first places I look to are Texas and Florida.
Great discussion about income inequality in parts of the US. Strange thread for it: "Jagmeet Singh Strips Niki Ashton Of Her Critic Role"
Sure, I don't disagree with that but my point wasn't who the culprits were. I think PR, depending on how it was implemented, could shake up the current coalitions that make up our political parties for the reasons I outlined above. Social Conservatives would still be a voting block but I think other Conservatives would probably form their own party and gain the flexibility to get their policies passed without relying solely on SoCons. I could see them working well with rightwing Liberals without the SoCon baggage. Paul Martin and Stephen Harper both found Mark Carney very easy to work with. I could also see Trudea/Notley/Horgan types within the same political party at some point if regional political grievances became less important. Hopefully this would free up some space for a genuine internationalist anti-imperialist ecosocialist party to join the conversation.
I've become quite agnostic on PR. I am for it in the sense that strictly speaking one person one vote seems the fairest although in a sense it leads to might makes right in urban interests versus rural interests. At this point between the NDP, Liberals and Conservatives it is a vanity of small differences because they all support the current basic status quo. No party wants to do more than tweak and tweaking is no where near what we need to do to stop climate change and growing income inequality which are both symtoms of unfettered capitalism.
Great discussion about income inequality in parts of the US. Strange thread for it: "Jagmeet Singh Strips Niki Ashton Of Her Critic Role"
don't tell me this forum ain't got no soul - just gotta poke around.
