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1. Your statement is too wide and too general, I think. "Cannot be done" ? "No control" ? Democracy is a sound idea, and I guess you are saying ours has some flaws. Who would disagree, really ? 2. You need to use your imagination. In my lifetime I have seen giant changes that they used to call 'paradigm shifts'. A vastly improved society could be achieved pretty quickly. Think about how old and calcified the institutions and the demographic that support the status quo are. One election could change everything. Call me an optometrist I guess.

I've only recently been exposed to this philosophy, and agree with you that it would make a tremendous difference in how we would approach environmental issues if we considered a much longer time-line, something considerably past four years, or the next election.

As the kids say, shots fired! You are totally correct that we are one of the only Democracies in the world that did not need to use violence to gain suffrage. FWIW I think it is a rare and special thing when any group that holds power is willing to share that power without a fight, even though I disagree with a lot of what they did I do respect the fact that no violence was needed. The British at the time were IMO quite contemptuous of Democracy - "if you let the peasants vote they'll vote for a bunch of stupidity." So they "gave" us the Senate, to make sure that we wouldn't be able to vote for things they disapproved of. Democracy is a funny and frustrating thing. If you let people vote and count the ballots and the winner gains power, it's technically democracy, even if you only let a few people vote, or if you gerrymander your districts to intentionally disenfranchise their residents, or have an "electoral college" that ignores the will of the voters, or have a "first past the post" system that disenfranchises nearly half of those who cast ballots. "Democracy" can actually describe such a variety of systems that IMO it isn't really a very useful term in modern life. Lots of unscrupulous governments like to run their mouths about how much they value Democracy, even while they actively undermine their Democratic institutions. It is a problem.

Apparently the average person has gained 15 pounds since before covid-19. That's the average. A huge number. Also apparently 10% of people have gained MORE THAN 50 POUNDS. Tell me this is healthy and good. They represent an increase is stochastic death, due to obesity and health effects. In this case, millions of people are now obese in Canada who were not before Covid-19. Tell me this is healthy and good. But because the stochastic deaths are "hidden", they are invisible and not being reported. The revolution will not be televised. Will not be televised...

Nope. We both appear to talking about the same thing. However, I don't think Taxme is really talking about not enough government. Sounds more to me like he's talking about just enough. It's also possible to have too much. Mike and others seem to like that idea.

Israel launches a ground offensive into Gaza to destroy Hamas positions.

Income inequality is absolutely normal, and is less of a factor in a healthy capitalist society than anywhere else throughout history. Go check it out for yourself. The problem with being poor in America now is that there's extreme competition for low-end housing now because there's so much illegal immigration. It's not like homelessness didn't exist 6 months ago, and now there are 180,000 people apprehended at the border every month, plus all the people who slip by. That's a whole new wave of abject poverty, plus the fact that Americans looking for low-end housing and low-end jobs have huge competition now. It drives up the cost of housing while driving down wages at the same time. Add to that the fact that the prices of lumber, gas and food are also going up. The $15/hr bullshit that Dems are talking about is completely destroyed by the fact that they are undermining low income families every day with their open border policy. If wages do eventually get there it will happen despite the fact that it's lagging behind inflation. America is becoming a shithole, just like every Dem-controlled state already is one.

Please correct me if I'm misinterpreting you. Taxme had said, "All we the people want is to have lower taxes, less government, less rules and regulations and to keep our god given rights and freedoms." I was just pointing out that if we have less government we are creating a power vacuum and something else will fill that void. I am not aware of anything poised to fill that void in today's world besides corporations and oligarchs - it is possible there are factors I'm not aware of. You're right that we tend to follow America in most ways. Reading your post it occurred to me that "social media" is all owned by oligarchs as well, so twitter, facebook etc could just as easily be called "corporate media" as CNN or Fox. I'll have to think about that. Lost in the hullabaloo about "cancel culture" is the fact that there have always been groups of people trying to regulate the speech of others. Think of the "moral guardians" of the past. You may remember the Comics Code Authority - from the preamble in their wikipedia article, "At the height of its influence, it was a de facto censor for the U.S. comic book industry." The Ninja Turtles movies were highlights of my childhood - in the second one they never actually use their weapons, because concerned parents were worried about their children fighting with weapons, so they pressured the corporation that owned the intellectual property to refrain from having the Turtles fight with weapons. Organizations such as the National League of Decency, the Parents Television Council, the Parents Music Resource Center, and many, many others, have been working to try to limit some types of free speech to make society more "Christian," "decent," or to combat "obscenity," for decades. I think reasonable adults can debate when and why censorship is desirable - for instance, most people would probably support removing books that taught how to make bombs from school libraries, and most people would probably oppose a government that tried to make a religion mandatory, or forbid it entirely. For Corporations to lean left, they would need to, at the very least, advocate for using democracy to bring about socialistic policies (this would make them Social Democrat, or "left-of-centre"). The "culture war" going on right now isn't really about left-right policies, it's about dog whistles and distractions, and keeping reasonable adults arguing with one another instead of realizing that we have much more in common than we think. If a profit-driven corporation freely decides, all by themselves, that it will make more money by not printing, say, a few Dr. Seuss books, that corporation has not changed on the left-right spectrum. It is still a for-profit corporation, it is just doing different things to get its profit. "Left" and "right" are not about culture, they are about how a person or organization believes wealth should be distributed. You are correct that "Nazi" comes from "National Socialist." The reason they included "Socialist" in their name is because socialism was very popular in Germany at the time, so they were trying to get people who would have opposed them to side with them, or at the very least, remain neutral. In reality, Hitler *hated* Communism and Socialism. To this day, Fascists and Socialists are like oil and fire. From Wikipedia: "German communists, socialists and trade unionists were among the first to be sent to concentration camps." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust (press ctrl+f, type in socialist, press enter until you get there) I'm not sure who the "progressive socialists" you refer to are. I guess the likes of Bernie Sanders and Jagmeet Singh? Don't want to put words in your mouth though. Agree 100% with your post about the censorship of the Chinese government and how corporations are aligning themselves with China. For me, this is a good example of an issue that 95% of the right and left would agree on if we had better political vocabulary - sometimes a word that I think means X means Y to someone else, and then we end up shouting past one another instead of having a useful conversation.

Canada taking 650,000 AZ vaccines doses from COVAX...even though suspended. The comedy continues.

And that cannot be done in a system where democracy is equivalent to a political system run in election cycles with no control by the society. There, the paradox: to do something differently we would need to change in a meaningful, essential way. But we don't like change even tiny trivial one because it works anyhow and why fixing. Cannot do both, one would have to give.

Come to think of it, I was just reminded of something: The corporates are also allying themselves with China, as are globalists. I suppose you could make an argument for the idea that technically the Chinese government isn't specifically communist but again, whatever they are I'm against becoming it.

It's worth remembering that humans invented Capitalism before we invented government regulation of Capitalists. England used to have an industrialized, Capitalist society that was wholly deregulated. The results were awful and can be read about in most Charles Dickens novels. Herbert Spencer Visits Pittsburgh - Existential Comics The problems alluded to in this strip were solved by government regulation. The 8 hour work day and 40 hour work week, minimum wage, safety regulations, laws against child labour and union breaking, taxation, environmental protections, and so much more, were all brought about by government regulation, and they were brought about to solve real problems that were plaguing society at the time. I agree that government is imperfect and that politics is inherently frustrating, but if we weaken our government it creates a power vacuum that will be filled by corporations and oligarchs. Respectfully, it seems to me that you are using "we the people" as though the views you are expressing are representative of all Canadians. I don't think Canadians as a whole agree on very many things. I also wonder if you've thought of who will be the guarantor of our rights and freedoms if we neuter the government. As things are now, if a person believes their rights have been violated, they go to the government for redress. If we defund and disempower our government, who will enforce our rights? That said, I totally agree with your points about how our democracy has become subverted. Politicians make promises, some of us believe them enough to vote, nearly half of the ballots we cast don't elect anyone, then our politicians go and do whatever they please with very little accountability to us, until the next election rolls around. The reason that this doesn't serve as adequate accountability is because the next election isn't a choice between what we want and what we have, it's a choice between several different, imperfect politicians. We make our choice and the whole cycle starts again with the same result. Being able to vote out the last liar doesn't help us if all the electable candidates will continue to lie. For me, the solution is for Canadians, as a whole, to come together and have a lot of respectful dialogue so that we can figure out what we stand for and why we stand for it. Then we can make effective plans for how we will hold our politicians to account. As long as it is only one group of Canadians out of many who are upset about any given problem, the ruling elite can play us off against each other instead of addressing our problems.

The biggest single lesson I learned from Trumpers is that calling people stupid will not convince them of anything. Worth pointing out that being ignorant does not make a person dumb. This stuff is not taught in school and the media has been actively spreading misinformation for generations. I think the right often tries to paint the left as "lazy" and the left often tries to paint the right as "stupid." In my experience, the best way to find out how hard a person works is to go with them to do the things they want to do, and the best way to find out how smart a person is is to talk with them about the things that interest them. I think that "lazy" and "stupid" are not really helpful and keep the right and the left divided, angry and defensive. I believe that if we could get to the point where people can have respectful, informed conversations, the right and left will discover that we have a lot of the same political problems, and that those problems have a lot of the same causes, and that those problems have a lot of the same solutions. Well, that's my hope anyway, what do I know? ? I follow a lot of what you're saying here. I agree that many people have sincerely believed themselves to be "Communist" who were using violence because they had given up on conversation or because they believed the ends justified the means. For me, that's like a person who claims to value democracy while rigging elections, or a person who values freedom while instituting mandatory minimum sentences, building for-profit prisons and militarizing police. Those people exist, but they are not exemplars of their belief system, they are actively perverting the belief system they claim to follow. Violence is problematic - if you use it, you've lost moral authority, and if you don't use it you get to sit and watch while it is used unjustly by states and oligarchs against the helpless. Pacifism can reasonably be seen as ableism coming from the privileged and slow suicide coming from the downtrodden. I don't have a solution to that dilemna yet I am curious to find who are "our adversaries" whose ideological rhetoric is served by Chomsky's critique? From the context I'm guessing you mean the oligarchy, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. I am personally not trying to foment revolution, just to give people better information. If people knew what "leftist" actually means, no reasonable adults would think that, for example, Hollywood was leftist, or the media was leftist, or the government, or the CBC, or really any of our institutions except maybe unions. If we were more politically literate we could have more useful conversations with our fellow citizens and it would be harder for the forked-tounged rhetoricians of the world to jerk us around. Your point that Marx didn't really address the environment at all is a sound one. It seems he did not foresee that particular crisis. I like that you referenced indigenous philosophers, I think there is a lot of very useful stuff to be learned there, but it has been violently suppressed for so long that it's hard to find a good, undistorted source. Their emphasis on intergenerationality, in particular, is keenly missing in our society. I think if we saw ourselves as part of a community that comprised our ancestors, the living, and our descendants, we would make more responsible decisions.

Sorry that you had to be the bearer of bad news, but that decision was either 1) a joke or 2) more evidence that we no longer live in a properly functioning democracy. From your link: Why didn't Trudeau need to recuse himself? He was involved with We in the most unseemly way imaginable: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/trudeau-government-contributed-1-18-million-to-we-day-event-in-2017-during-which-pms-mother-was-likely-paid-to-speak There's already a track record here of Trudeau soliciting We to host events where his mom ended up getting paid to speak.She made over a quarter of a million dollars from We, and they gave her a Mercedes just to get to speaking events. We also makes gag-reflex-inspiring propaganda videos for Trudeau. How the hell does our 'ethics commissioner' feel like Morneau was guilty and la turd wasn't? How much more implicated could Trudeau have been with We?

Bill Morneau: "I was a baaad boy..." Morn-eau and Trud-eau, like two peas in a pod-eau... Link

BREAKING: Morneau guilty of ethics violation. Is there anyone in the Liberal party that isn’t?

And it went down to virtual zero last summer without vaccinations and herd immunity. Wishful thinking and finger in the sky, 6 thousand... 18... and why not 45 or 100 thousand, who's the next with higher projected number and severity of the next lockdown like is there a logical limit? is not a replacement for intelligent analysis and sound and effective action.

Because we do need a moderate amount of control to establish a "system" for civility. Rather than swinging from one extreme to the other, from totalitarian control to anarchy. Progs are extremists and out of their minds. Bring back Kings.

Lots of Canadians want to get vaccinated, but can't because of the federal government's vaccine development and supply fiasco. Some Canadians are not waiting around like sheep, and are going to the USA where Americans have to decide on Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna to fill their swimming pools. More transparency, consistency, and competence....is that too much to ask ? "Live Free or Die" - New Hampshire's state motto...and hardly a bastion for "right wingers".

I can't say I'm surprised that the original horror story of Canada becoming a communist state, would carry on page after page for a good while before lack of any coherence or evidence would lead it to run out of gas, like all the other anti-left themes. How many times do paranoid rightwingers conflate every conceivable adversary who doesn't buy their bullshit, as all being enemies of FREEDUMB and part of the same plot against democracy and FREE enterprize? Too numerous to count, I'm sure! But on that theme you seem to be heading towards: "I don't think there has been a Communistic government," that sounds like the usual trope that anarchists and Trotskyites pull up when confronted about the less than perfect communist governments so far. And as far as I see, all that the Noam Chomsky-inspired critiques do is to serve the ideological rhetoric of our adversaries. The Chomskyists for example, want to have it both ways, and have a safe space to criticize everyone. But I recall that when we still had real Stalinist hardliners making arguments, that their main point was: if you want to do more than just talk, and really want a socialist internationale, you have to start somewhere! That means fighting more than rhetorical battles and confronting real enemies, like the fascists who work on behalf of wealthy oligarchs, who richly reward them for protecting them....and their wealth from the people they exploit! The problem is that, you can end up like Che Guevara, and end up hunted down and shot, if the peasants either didn't understand or weren't willing to put it all on the line for the Revolution! But, I don't believe this is about starting the revolution at the right time or not at the right time and other claptrap from Marxist theories of a science of history. Because I don't believe in the notion of human progress and increased prosperity as history progresses. Prior the the so called 'Age of Enlightenment' most earlier scholars believed that history - especially earth history was a story of cycles, not an endless line of 'progress,' leading towards some kind of materialistic heaven! In that sense, Marxism is not really distinct from other humanistic enlightenment philosophies that developed in Europe 3 to 400 years ago. Both religious or deistic and atheistic humanism, developed from a framework that the human animal was somehow distinct and superior from other life on this planet, and could rule over life on earth. This is primarily why indigenous philosophers from around the world, were not inclined to adopting Marxism, except for the latter part about political and economic organization of workplaces. Marxists come very close to the contemptible attitude towards nature that capitalist adherents of enlightenment values share. And both sides today don't have a good handle on the ecological predicament all of this 'progress' has put us in in recent times!

They'll get Communism right this time, eh? I think we've heard that before a few times now.

Americans and Canadians have but one big huge and terrible problem. Gawd dam politicians. These buffoons have done more to harm our every day lives and phuk up everything they touch. Why do we have left and right politician political party's all the time? Why do we not have politicians that will work together by staying the hell out of we the people's lives? We do need a people's party, not a multitude of political party's. We the people only need a political party that believes in less taxes, less government, less restrictions and more freedom. Once we can get a political party that thinks and believes in this policy, Canada and America, and the rest of the world should become a better place to live. There is way way too much government bureaucracy and world organizations like the UN in our daily lives. If we keep allowing our dear f'n political leaders to keep ruining our lives, things can never change. The liberal democrats in America, the leftist liberals, progressive conservatives and the NDP socialist political party's in Canada have all shown themselves to be nothing more than a bunch of buffoons being allowed to keep running and ruining Canada and America. Trump's government was working well for America. Now America is stuck with a Marxist Bidumb leader who does not know as to what day it is. If our dear comrade leaders keep borrowing money like there is no tomorrow, we are all heading for one big market crash. I personally believe that this is the plan by the American democrats and the liberals in Canada. Bankrupt both countries and bring in the great globalist reset. This Covid virus hoax was designed as an excuse to do just that. trump and the GOP must take the house and senate back from the dumbocrats. Here in Canada, Canadians must vote for the People's Party of Canada. They are the only real and true conservative party left in Canada to vote for. To vote for the same old tired and corrupt political party's will allow this present day bull chit to go on forever. Covid is an excuse to install Marxist tyranny in Canada. Believe it or not.

My opinion he truly is, has all the elements of naivete and entitlement. Most entitled Canadian PM ever, and most dangerous.

Is Gerald Butts the Trudeau puppet master? Is this 'Great Re-set' the vision of others? Justin Trudeau comes across as a dolt . . . maybe he isn't though?

One of the characteristics of Marxist dictatorships is the people (or enough of them) worship the leader as if he is a god. This is the way it works in Communist dictatorships like N. Korea, China, and Russia, even though they are not strictly Communist in the sense of equality. There is a chain of hierarchy in the power structure. What it takes to set up that kind of authoritarian system is a leader who has a certain charisma that appeals to the mindless drones. That's it. From then on, the leader becomes a kind of god, especially to those who do not believe in the God of the Bible. The mental vacuum of these drones leaves them vulnerable to becoming idolizers of the earthly god. It doesn't take a large majority to do it. In fact in our system, it only takes between 30 or 40% of the population to believe and trust in such a leader. The reason is because of the divisions and number of political parties which split the vote. This leader can exploit his position if he so chooses and increase his power and security of position.

Hell, you can add Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and even China to that list. They've all handled things well. Discounting China's numbers, which are clearly dishonest, Canada has had more deaths than all the rest combined.

Misinformation. Predictions made in the early 1900s about the effect of greenhouse gasses have come true. Predictions made in the 1990s about change in weather patterns are happening now. Predictions about the melting of ice caps didn't go far enough. Yes, these are conversations that must be had, sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, Capitalists don't want to have those conversations because then they'd have to think about changing their business practices; it suits them fine if time is wasted on denying our role in climate change.