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The U.S. has certainly seen this before, but it has never had the media bandwidth to amplify and fight the ideology battles on such a scale down to the individual level. Partisanship has been democratized with technology that is far more efficient and penetrating than plodding letters to the editor. There are no more barriers to media entry, and the more partisan and inflammatory, the better to drive clicks and responses that drive even more views and clicks. Hard, objective news has become passe and underfunded because the old revenue model is broken.

What concerns me is the increasing lack of tolerance towards the opposing side. That Twitter, Facebook and big tech are suppressing conservative support of a sitting president I’ve just never seen before. Wordpress just told a conservative group that they have a limited amount of time to find another provider because their views don’t line up with Wordpress. YouTube takes down videos of people talking about the election with a conservative viewpoint. A great deal of pressure was brought to bear on the Trump legal team and as a result some of his lawyers have resigned. Even the worst criminals have a right to their day in court, but apparently not Trump? People attending a peaceful march of support for Trump in Washington DC on the weekend were attacked as they made their way back to their hotels. Children were roughed up as well as women. The press downplays this while attacking any mention of Antifa or blm in a negative light for their rioting. This climate is a dangerous one that’s not been seen before like this in the US. That’s all I’m saying here. Where it goes from here no one can say.

Intolerance comes from things like media corruption here. I don't mean to single out USA today because WashPo, CNN, NYT and all the other fake news outlets posted similar disinformation on their various platforms. I'm just not rounding up all the links. Those people know that there's a certain percentage of people who lack the reading comprehension to make sense of what they're looking at, some are ignorant enough to just believe it without checking into it, and there are people who are happy to just lie right along with them just to smear someone that they don't like. In the end it adds up to millions of people who are saying things like this that simply aren't true, for one reason or another. There are even people on this site who still honestly believe that Trump referred to all immigrants as animals because of dishonest reporting like this. Obviously the people here take an an active interest in politics, so they follow these things closely, yet they're still completely sucked in by fake news. It's actually impossible for a certain percentage of the population to not be sucked in by things that they see on major news networks. And truly, anyone who believes what they see on CNN really shouldn't have tolerance towards Trump supporters because according to CNN's narrative Trump supporters really are morally repugnant. We can't really blame CNN's followers for being stupid enough to believe them though, because stupid people are just a fact of life and they will always exist. We should however, be really angry about the lying and the disinformation that CNN and their fellow fake media members are spreading. If my dog is following a red laser dot that my son is moving around the floor, and it's knocking over people and tables, I don't get mad at my dog because I don't expect it to know any better. It's obviously my kid that's to blame. If people are dancing to CNN's tune I don't blame them, because CNN is using sophisticated, proven techniques for manipulating humans and it's hard for people to believe that a major news network is blatantly lying to them. How far are these fake news guys interested in going is the real question. "You can always convince half of the poor people to kill the other half." Are they happy with the current level of violence (like what is ignored in Washington recently and all the beatings and killings during the riots), or are they going to keep on ramping up the rhetoric against police, conservatives, Christians, etc?

There's evidence of fraud...it needs to be investigated completely. If it isn't...trouble. Again...you don't seem cut-out for combat, so don't wish for it.

What exactly did she do? Sulking and claiming she actually won for years afterward and giving silent assent to the rioting, looting and attacks that occurred months afterwards and caused billions of $ damage. And during her campaign she helped spread the fraudulent Steele Dossier that was never backed up by a single source. And she recently was still claiming she won.

One of my closest friends is a computer geek who works in ag. As the lead designer, he was isolated about 10 years ago for nearly 2 years to do a complete re-design of their automated feed blending systems (customized by ROP records - record of performance - so each area, pen, or even single animal could be fed a particular quantity and quality as needed). He headed out at the end to their first international high tech business exhibition, where they were going to introduce their new feed management software as a presenter on day 2. On day 1 he was approached more than once and propositioned to buy HIS OWN software - still supposedly a secret. Chinese (actually red army) hackers target not just government but EVERY private and commercial computer they can access to steal IP. And it has been going on for decades (also Russia does similar). It is not just the Sunny Ways morons who ignored this, the so-called "conservatives" were equally culpable. As usual, Canada (and with the one obvious Trump exception) the US share not only a border and culture, but a complete lack of balls in dealing with China.

I don't care if Biden has great intelligence, judgement and strong morals, wisdom and knowledge, if he works to further advance the leftist progressive agenda. Quite sure the first thing he will do is reinstate the mandatory federal worker sensitivity training program, and also in elementary schools titled "Why you should hate your country" or something. Trump showed that the answer to China is to start building and making our own crap on this side of the pond again. I think it's a wise move for several reasons, not the least of which is better military and defence readiness... against the likes of China. It's also obviously better for us in a national health emergency as we have all learned, to be able to make our own medicinal supplies and emergency equipment. That's not racist, it's simply being responsible. These things were already warned about decades ago, yet our politicians ignore the issues and cower before the Chinese.

Everything is subservient to our survival and security. You don't care about that? I'm trying to figure out just what you're arguing here. All you appear to be doing is disapproving of what everyone says without offering up anything yourself.

Yes I agree that everyone is a whore, not least our politicians who work in the interests of their corporate donors to better ensure re-election. Trudeau and his Liberals are the biggest whores of all. Harper's crew weren't too far behind. Not least of those was John McCallum, fired for beating the CCP's line. You wonder how many free proverbial "blowjobs" in China the CCP provided him. This is called "elite capture". https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mccallum-out-ambassador-1.4994492 China is playing the game very well and we often don't seem to even notice there's one going on. China is doing everything it can to gain an advantage on Western countries, which is why we should do the same towards China. Zero sum. Your move, Canada.

How many warships and nuclear submarines does Canada have in the South China Sea and surrounding region ? How many tactical and strategic aircraft squadrons ? How many Canadian troops are in South Korea and Japan ? Clearly Canada does not share that.

You can shoot the messenger all day and your problem will not disappear.

Your sophomore phycology isn't going to save you once the shooting starts. You can pretend I'm the cause all you like.

There's evidence of fraud...it needs to be investigated completely. Again...you don't seem cut-out for combat, so don't wish for it.

Why indeed? Anyways...you don't seem cut-out for combat... So don't wish for it. There is evidence of fraud...it needs to be addressed.

It isn't primarily about morality, it's primarily about national self-interest. What is your pain tolerance to have your country's sovereignty and economy come under increasing control of an adversarial power? Do you support putting Hauwei 5G in this country and risk coming under surveillance of China to save a few bucks? If it weren't for Chinese illegal tactics we may have been installing Canadian 5G tech all over the world. Do you understand that China is attempting to steal as much global tech IP as possible in order to become the world leader in tech? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china-steal-canada-s-edge-in-5g-from-nortel Do you understand that the CCP has mass surveillance across China's internet and mobile networks, has 54% of all security cameras in the world, and has initiated a social credit system where "bad citizens" are denied travel, employment opportunities etc? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System Do you want to be using something like a Chinese google or facebook or Whatsapp or iphone one day, and come under the surveillance of the CPP through its use so that they can exert evermore control over you? When AI and automation explodes globally do you want it to be owned by American or Chinese companies? Do you understand that China increasingly demands loyalty from its diaspora by threatening their family members in China. Do you understand the potential power of a country of 1.4 billion with an ever-rising economy that will blow past the US and has a huge ever-growing diaspora including in Canada? Do you understand that the US's 300 million population won't be able to compete with that indefinitely?

Obama should mind his own business.... You don't see George Bush sticking his nose in there!

iPhones can be manufactured elsewhere. Yes it would be painful, at least in short-term. Also painful: giving up global hegemony to genocidal totalitarian tyrants.

Awful, but there is a prophesy about that and as the prophesy goes and as you can see now, the amount of Muslims increase all the time, it is the white folk that are facing the threat of extinction. I have no idea why ask, but there you go.

I thought you meant Hillary at first, and 2016.

Indeed....Senator Barack Obama in 2008:

As Trump says...they're not really after me...they're after you...and I'm in the way. Step one is to dehumanize your opponent by dividing the population along lines of fracture....religious...political...racial...economic...etc...the more fractured the better. Step one complete...

Don't you think this is beautiful? link

Is America splitting apart? Perhaps. America has always had a lot of arguments, it seems. Some are bigger than others. I think that the left is having the most issues these days. The left needs a psychiatrist.

What I understand is the pro-China lobby hates Trump but likes Biden, and that China is in a better place with Biden and the Dems, and the likes of Trudeau and the libs. Not that anyone in Canada would dare stand up to them. You can argue, but the evidence given here speaks for itself.

Yes I know, your worst nightmare is a Trump win, so you might want to brace yourself just in case. It’s much more likely that Trump or Biden would carry the day.

Yes you would....China's middle class was already growing and BC was laundering money for them. 50 years ? China thinks in much longer terms....going on 5,000 years.

We need to think on time scales of 50+ years from now. Had we done that 25-30 years ago when this all started we wouldn't be in this mess.

Sure....after going through the Trump meat grinder, Canada will welcome the good old days of softwood lumber tariffs, "Buy American" protectionism, NAFTA quotas, 50% Yankee ownership of manufacturing base, pipeline politics, and Chinese clean-up for the rest. I guess a familiar and previously acceptable level of misery is better than a new adventure for Canada, and that includes China.

So don't drink and post. And that includes drinking stupidity from CNN's firehose.

U.S. exports are far larger than that and is dominated by services compared to "electrical machinery. Also, the U.S. economy is far less dependent on exports (13% of GDP) compared to China (20%) and Canada (30%).

No, money was. But that was the thinking among politicians. A few very wealthy people are making money off the relationship, principally those who own lots of stock in companies doing business there. But even there most of the money is ephemeral. China wants to avoid importing large amounts of goods from other countries, so it pressures companies to build whatever it is they're selling there in China. So a lot of companies find they have to reinvest their profits from China IN China in order to retain their favour. It looks good on the books back home, but China could take it away any time they wanted. There's no law there, after all. The question is, though, is this good for the US? Well, no. For example, the top export for both countries is electrical machinery. China imported $14 billion in electrical machinery from the US. Sound good? But they exported $125 billion into the US. Whoops. Number two is machinery, with them buying $13b and selling $93b. So yes, some people are making money, but more people are losing money. And jobs. Lots of jobs. Corruption and short term thinking on the part of politicians who, for the most part, aren't really focused much on trade anyway. Did you hear it mentioned in our election? Nope. Anyway, I'm not suggesting we walk away. I'm suggesting we force them to abide by the WTO regulations they signed, and kick out their spies. Also, I don't know enough about the internet to know if it's possible to put a cordon sanitaire around them, but if it was I would. Open confrontation of the Trump type does not work well with China. Gentle coaxing behind the scenes works even less well. The Chinese are very good at smiling and nodding and ignoring you. People need to look at how China pressures countries, like by suddenly finding some excuse to temporarily ban the import of various goods, or imposing time consuming customs delays. We should do the same to them. The Chinese don't see restraint as anything but weakness.

Okay, but that really isn't the point here for "what Canada should do about China". Sometimes yes...sometimes no. Canada was complicit in some of the dumping, IP theft, and transshipments. Canada is far more likely to accept the familiar economic pains of the past represented by Biden/Democrats than anything Trump/GOP came up with.

This is exactly correct, but isolating China as you suggest in your later post is to create yet another cold war - except this time with an adversary that makes Russia look like schoolboys. You have to meet China head on, and to exclude them is not doing that. You give them continued access to our markets but with 100% requirement to meet labour, human rights, product safety and environmental standards for each and every product to gain access. Similarly, go right back to the source for such stuff as fentanyl smugglers and hold China responsible for them. What they really don't want is international embarassment.

I remember during my basic, and battle school, we were surrounded by pictures of Royal Canadian Regt of its members taken through out it's history, or huge paintings of historic battles. I could not imagine the hell they went through and how much that must have scared them both mentally and physically. Their lives changed forever, it would have taken everything from them, from friends, family, wives and children, jobs, sleep, for many years after, and thats is just the mental aspect. mental illness destroys everything you have, until you have no one, or nothing of value. You know all the sexy stuff about going to war, the stuff nobody tells you about, The stuff Canadians forget about just how much we owe our vets. Thats what i get when i see these pictures and paintings, or these poems, i see the horrors, the pain. I guess that why they wrote them, to shock us into not forgetting, or atleast looking after them when they needed us the most. All my time in Afghanistan did not come close to the hell they seen in WWI, WWII, or Korea. I say this because a high percentage of soldiers that were in Afghanistan have PTSD, depression, or anxiety of some form or another, but to have lived through either world wars, and then to come home and try to be a productive citizen, to try to fit in their crazy world. I don't know how they did it.

No it won't...it is very typical U.S. political behaviour. Kids !

We've tried that, they have made it clear they don't want to follow any rules except the ones that benefit them. They're the ones that have made this zero-sum.

Most Americans, including myself, do not hate Canada. If anything, we are guilty of being quite indifferent towards Canada without a complete understanding of how the national relationships have evolved over time. It is far more interesting to hear a Canadian (i.e. this YouTube video) explain the evolution of Canadian nationalism from a very Canadian perspective, without the tactical poop flinging across the border for fun and games. Canada's shift from right-wing to left-wing nationalism is fascinating and consistent with the changing domestic and foreign circumstances it has encountered. I have long been a fan of J.L. Granatstein's books on the topic but he doesn't seem to consider the anti-Americanism to be a permanent condition, subject to changing policies in the United States. If America ever were to adopt most of Canada's social and political policies, it remains to be seen if it would dilute and vanquish the anti-Americanism that is currently so popular...and essential.

Well, Canadians (and Americans) do find accommodation at the personal and practical level across millions of lives, but the aggregate nationalist identity still demands a purposeful separation and rejection to exist. This is not just a Canadian attribute, but Canada's history made it much more likely and enduring, and even persists domestically with Quebec. The Americans initially defined their national identity as fiercely not British, but this gave way to an American nationalism that was no longer challenged or threatened by a declining British Empire, with the United States creating it's own identity and history on its way to becoming a world superpower. Being British is now just a punchline in Hollywood movies and actors with bad teeth.

Aint got, but I got my Dads cross-bow, and a long bow. Rambo 4, here I come!

That's one way of looking at it. Kind of shrill, hateful, and reeking of desperation if you ask me. But you have an opinion, good for you. I'm not sure if it's yours or one that's been planted in a gullible mind by fake news but it's an opinion. Good for you. I prefer the one below. Somebody took the Rudyard Kipling poem "If" and matched it up with Trump. Your mind wipe won't let you watch it so I'll just tell you - The poem fits the reality like a glove. As to your insisting on calling the open minded a cult, again, that's just projection.

So you feel that all political leaders should be required to go to gay pride parades? Have I got that right? What about Muslims and Hindus and Orthodox Jews? What else? Attend BLM protests and bend the knee? Is that a requirement too? The Harper government DID, in fact, fund contraceptives, just not abortion. And I'm still waiting for you to show me how they forced their religious views on you.

I have had my doubts about O'Toole on a number of other policies, but on China he certainly seems to be stepping hard on a need to distance ourselves from them, to pull back industry from there and go our own way as much as possible. I particularly liked this part: “We made a mistake in allowing ourselves to de-industrialize totally,” O’Toole said. “Thirty years ago, the Western world’s political, financial and business elite made a bet: we would allow China to have unfair access to our market while they protected their own… Once it became a rich and prosperous country, we hoped it would turn into a good actor, would democratize, take human rights seriously, liberalize, and play by global rules. We all know that this has not happened.” O’Toole went on to describe China as “state-owned juggernauts, Orwellian surveillance technology, cyber-theft on an industrial scale, hostage diplomacy, and increasing human rights abuses within its borders, and increasingly within its wider sphere of influence.” And this: “So, I will say this: when the most efficient outcome does not align with our national interest, a Conservative government will ensure that the national interest comes first,” he said. “Free markets alone won’t solve all our problems.” O’Toole concluded by saying that GDP growth is not the “be-all and end-all of politics.” https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/otoole-calls-for-better-conditions-for-workers-slams-outsourcing-to-china-in-speech

There is just something so wrong about American politics. I watched that parade of morons and cretins at the Republican primaries four years ago and could only shake my head that any of them (except Bush) would even be considered as a possible presidential candidate except by idiots and lunatics. Then I watched another parade of enfeebled losers at the Democratic primaries this year and couldn't believe any of them (with the possible exception of Biden) would even be considered as a possible presidential candidate except by idiots and lunatics. Bloomberg might be another exception, but he waited way too long to get in. By the time he realized the whole field was made up of people of no substance and lunatics and jumped in it was too late for him. I look at the American politicians showing up on my TV and internet news feed every day and I rarely see anyone that strikes me as anything but a brainless moron (AOC, Trump) or self-serving political whore (Pelosi, McConnell). I now well-understand Tom Clancy's feelings about American national politics, which he gave vent to in a book which had someone crashing a 747 into congress during the state of the union address and killing the whole of the senate, congress and supreme court.

Jonathan Haidt says exactly the same about diversity and anti-racism.

Every virtue, when taken to an extreme, becomes a vice. Some nationalism and national unity is good. Too much is bad. Too little is bad too.

I only made that claim today, so no, that's not w hat bothers you. You've been raging about me and immigration for years. It sticks in your craw that not everyone feels your love of other cultures filling the streets. As for the criminality of certain immigrants. I've already offered up plenty of evidence. Nope. Wrong again. Most Canadians aren't as rabidly intolerant of other views as you are. Just the progressives.

Uh huhhh. Here's the thing. You can wish an instinct away all you want. It isn't going to have much impact. Yes, tribalism taken to extremes can be bad. But without the instinctive sense of community that draws people together it's hard to have a unified nation. It's hard to get people to agree to paying taxes that benefit others when they don't have that sense of brotherhood/nationhood/belonging. It's hard to get one part of society to compromise or sacrifice in favour of another if they don't even think that other is part of their society.

Because as Jonathan Haidt said, if you don't have a shared sense of identity you don't have a nation. We are instinctively tribal. We see the world as 'us' and 'them'. If you're not a part of our tribe then you're an outsider. The people of influence on the Left seem to have broken from that shared sense of identity because they're wallowing in an endless flood of guilt and self-loathing. They don't like their country any more. They don't even like each other. As a previous poll showed, one on 'in group loyalty' which is that sense of tribalism I mentioned, white liberals in the US were the only group to ever demonstrate NO in-group loyalty. In fact, they demonstrated out-group loyalty! The statues being torn down started with Confederate leaders. But that has spread now to the founding fathers, to Washington, Jefferson and others. They've repudiated the American founding (see the NY times 1619 project) condemning the origin of America as nothing more than an orgy of brutality towards natives built on slave trading. All their founding fathers had social views which, while normal for their time, outrage todays liberals. We see the same in Canada with tearing down statues of Sir John A Macdonald and taking his name off buildings, and that of others of the fathers of confederation, too. And of course, their view of history is ludicrous, wrong in almost every respect, both here and in the US. The actual details and reality are being warped to cater to the liberal orgy of self-loathing. So the Left have rejected that sense of shared national identity. They began doing so years ago, as they embraced this religion of 'anti racism'. Then they began to disdain those who refused to worship with them, sneering at those ignorant, unwoke folks, especially the rural ones, the ones from smaller cities, the 'uneducated', ie, those who didn't go to liberal arts colleges. That's a major part of the reason why Trump was able to win last time around. As one of the commentators, perhaps David Frum pointed out, the Democrats used to be the home of blue collar "lunch bucket' union members. They've utterly rejected such people now because, well, they're too uncouth. They have 'deplorable' views! And those people have, by default, gravitated towards the Republicans. So in the last election Clinton didn't even bother to visit some of those states with the unwoke people, and lost them all. And the Democrats are in the process of doing the same again with their embrace of BLM and all the other identity politics crap.

The moderator has repeatedly in the past ignored me when I have reported posts and when I follow up so stop the crap with references to polite discussion. The point I made was and went zip over your head is that responding to something not considered of topic, I.e., derailing can't be unless it introduces a different topic that might be. It's not derailing to challenge an allowed subject. Ifanything what I might have been banned for was supposedly using insulting words. You even know what derailing means? You know what trolling means? When is something off topic? Are you telling me that when certain people go off topic on this forum they are moderated? You read the gawd damn posts. You see the double standard on who can say what whether it's off topic or rude. Itsvinconsusteng and it comes about based on a moderator becoming bias from moderating too long and losing their neutrality and listening to certain complaints but not others and cultivating negative familiarity. Telling someone their analysis was brilliant that is a point off? Why? Please tell me. Telling someone Churchill stands for the exact opposite of what they said for is insulting? That is unacceptable? Bullshit. Taxme who I directed that to has engaged in white supremacist neo Naxi opining on this board and I challenge it. You support his opinions good for you. I do not. On a thread with a Churchill statute ban as the topic what the phack did his comrade Trudeau have to do with it? How was that not derailing but my response to it was? How did I go off topic on something not off topic? Tell me how that works. Tell me how does Taxme sho supports racist views about whites support Churchill? Tell me? How is saying that point went zip over his head a point off? You explain. How am I a liar calling these inconsistencies out?Kind of ironic a moderator telling me not to insult responds clearly with one. Yah yah he can I can't. What if I say zip over your head will you call me a liar? Of course not. I have given up trying to figure out the inconsistencies of Taylor.. ...I also argue all moderators need to be changed they lose their objectivity. Moderation needs to be consistent with everyone equally. Ask Charles Taylor if he know the difference between a moderator and a prosecutor. Ask him if he really believes he is not overly familiar with certain posters from being a moderator too long and needs to call it quits now.

His opinipn is based on subjective, selective standards as to who the poster is he feels is doing the insulting and that is evident on the kind of comments allowed on this forum with some but not others. The inconsistency in who he allows to insult and who he allows to be insulted has rendered his role as a moderator a farse. He is harming the forum and not protecting free speech but engaging in personal vendettas against certain forum members he likes and dislikes. That is unfortunate.