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Instead of a growing middle class as it should be, we're devolving into Feudalism with the great barons living behind walls while you toil in the virtual fields among the invading hordes. Yeah...a little betrayed. But no worries...you'll own nothing and be happy. Your new MS-13 neighbor promises to mow his lawn...soon.

I've actually given a ton of thought to this and to be perfectly honest I think a lot of the fault lies on what I'd say is "over-liberalization". I don't know how to explain it perfectly, but I think there's a lot to be said about how liberal governments have been ignorant/dismissive of more conservative viewpoints, specifically in rural/non-metro areas. I've lived in both over the years and it's like two different worlds sometimes just driving an hour away from Toronto. We can mock and ridicule a lot of the conspiracy nonsense that gets rambled about here, but there's a kernel of truth to some of the rage we're hearing. Things like excessive government bureaucracy (like the public sector's salaries rising faster than private, and their unions' power), over-reaching political correctness and public services that rural provincials pay for but don't have access to are all things that have contributed (I think) to a general sense of disenfranchisement. Cancel-culture and self-righteous outrage have (IMO) wildly overreached and gone well beyond keeping people safe and giving them fair opportunities. The conspiracy theorists aren't completely bullshitting us when they talk about the "woke mob" and how quickly and sometimes unfairly they'll judge and dismiss someone because they're not agreeing 100% with whatever the prevailing viewpoint of the day is. That doesn't excuse some of the stupider bullshit that some of them come up with, but when they see the "woke mob" overreact too many times, it's hardly surprising they grow resentful and mistrusting. The fact that such a sizeable part of Canada's population has convinced themselves that COVID is a conspiracy and that the vaccines are some sort of scheme is pretty damning commentary for how off-the-rails everything's been getting. For most of these folk, it's not even really about the vaccine. It's about being forced to do something that the government and media they can't trust is telling them to.

Other mediums is right. I think that part of the reason that podcasts have overtaken radio is the fact that it's so completely merit-based. People don't get hired to do podcasts based on their popularity, or because they check all of the intersectionality boxes, they just start them up by themselves and then they sink or swim. And even if the CBC lucked out and hired a guy like Joe Rogan he'd be unceremoniously dumped at the first sign of 'controversy' anyways, and by controversy I mean 'the first time that he said anything worth listening to'. Leftist snowflakes think that unless a show blows sunshine up their arses 24/7 it needs to be cancelled and the CBC is as mamby pamby as a dithering butterfly.

I think the obvious problem you have with your argument is that "the general public" are NOT held to the same standards as "the news media". See...Karen at Wallymart, or Hank the trucker, didn't study Journalism. Thus, I would not expect John Musselman at CTV to be able to drive a semi from coast to coast. He might be able to, but his effort would be more likely to end in a crash, than say Hank's daily efforts with an identical truck and task. RUMOURS...quite often have 'some' truth to them. For instance, the RUMOUR that some people on the internet have made...less that tasteful comments. Only someone who's lived his or her life in a complete bubble, would be surprised by this. And were the actual data analyzed, I'd bet there are tasteless infractions from both sides. But we don't know for sure because, our independent media chooses to not say such. And if the trusted journalist doesn't say it, or report it, it doesn't exist for many. Their rational would agree with the assumption...but argue against it till their blue in the fingertips...because John Musselman didn't report that. Instead, John chose to only report the disparaging internet chatter and also these "fringe" groups, in a crafted effort to present blame and shame on people who...Gawd friggin' forbid...actually support a removal of all current restrictions and mandates. He didn't mention that Karen at Wallymart has posted some pretty bloody outrageous crap as well. That wouldn't help his...goal. Which brings us, inevitably, back to the same ol' problem. Our "Journalists"...for the most part (hence the term 'MSM') don't sit down to type-up a report about any particular even AS IT HAPPENED without taking the opportunity to slightly warp WHAT HAPPENED to meet their particular point of view, or the point of view they've been told to present. This is nothing new. The media has been doing this, to some degree, all along. They choose to editorialize every report. Hell they teach that in the Journalism schools now. But its never been so...in your face. I have never experienced the level of pure vitriol...pure bias...and down right pure BS and lies...than I have from our "Free Press" of late.

On Chante Et On Prépare A Manger Pour Les Camionneurs.

I think Trudeau is suffering from extreme imposter syndrome and we are witnessing a psychotic break. After a life of luxury and privilege, he has no baseline for personal success. Normal people take a loss and move on and put it in perspective. For him, this is the final proof that he is a failure. He is an imposter. He is not loved. He is not respected. He is not Prime Minister because of his unique talents. He is there because he was groomed to play a role and he is failing miserably. His country is in revolt. He is dangerous right now.

Justin is trying to paint the massive movement against restrictions and mandates as fringe and radical. The CBC started their coverage tonight with dramatic close ups of Trudeau badmouthing the convoy. It didn’t ring true. CTV was more even-handed. I sense a transformation in public sentiment. If Trudeau isn’t careful, he may soon be quoted back to himself as dismissing a majority of the country. He looks like a phoney. Normal, good, smart people from all backgrounds, education levels, and income levels are challenging pandemic measures. Trudeau has miscalculated.

This right here is right on the money. Populism is a backlash to the globalism we've seen since the 1990s. Unprecedented rates of wealth inequality, constant trampling underfoot by government and corporations, etc. The reaction you see to the populism is calculated by politicians. You can take any "conflict resolution" in school and you'll learn all about avoidance, aggressive, collaborative etc approaches. You see those coming out when the press who's largely controlled by the same folks who own politicians start using terms like "fringe". When the movements get to be too big, they'll switch approaches kinda like how corporations monetized the BLM movement or the Occupy movement and have hijacked those now. Most see things through the lens of how corporate interests want you to see the world. We take in way too much marketing material. None more evident than the constant screams of "you are going to die" during Covid to push you to take a vaxx

I find nothing too radical about the man. He speaks from his heart and others can see that...many others. His detractors seem to have to invent stuff about him in order to smear him...my observation. And there are many others like him with their chunk of the media viewing audience. Sincere people trying hard to be heard while speaking their minds. The MSM and their politicos view that as war...war on their territory. How dare these rebels exist let alone broadcast. They must be crushed. So we'll see...

It did scare the convoy. The death threats and wishes that have been leveled against anyone who doesn't support mandatory vaccinations have been building, inflamed by Trudeau. Some in the convoy have reported they feel a definite "cold shoulder" in Ontario. It's the first province they've gotten F fingers and stuff thrown at the rigs, etc. If there's more violence - it won't be from the truckers.

And what do you think the results will be of dismissing the convoy as some fringe element and suppressing its important message? Trudeau has underestimated the public’s intelligence. Blanket, blunt instrument restrictions and mandates are not serving us well. People have complied and sacrificed in untold ways. Omicron impacts the vast majority of people like a flu. It’s fair to demand that restrictions be eliminated given the high toll they have taken after so much vaccination and compliance. Covid is here to stay. Does that mean restrictions should be too? We have to live normal lives taking whatever precautions we see fit for ourselves, not living under endless dictates, waiting for permission to live our short lives.

It always comes back to trust and the lack thereof and it clearly works both ways because the politicians don't trust us. They meet in-camera because they can't trust us to not go off the deep end if we hear something controversial. I mean it's perfectly understandable why the owner of the biggest fishing fleet on the coast would love to bend the ear of some fisheries minister in private about quota allocations. No doubt the last thing the SNC Lavalin lobbyists wanted was anyone else in-chamber with them and Canada's Justice Minister during confidential discussions regarding its issues with the legal system. Private and confidential my ass. The fish belong to the people of Canada and that's the public's legal system. Anything that falls within the public's domain should be open to the public to enable us to look after our interests ourselves, directly. There is a clear distinct difference between secrecy and privacy and all too often they're conflated or misused in ways that demand a much stricter definition with regards to the public's right to know. In-camera private discussions are appropriate for more mundane matters such as an employee's drinking issues impacting their performance - secrecy is for when a pulp mill operator wants to double the amount of effluent they're dumping in some fish creek. I think doing away with in-camera lobbying would also defuse a lot of the media's ability to speculate, spin, trigger and do whatever it is they need to do to peddle themselves. After decades of living in this limbo of distrust, mistrust, disinformation, misinformation and just outright bullshit it's no wonder society is coming so unglued.

I barely remember it ... not because of the doob though. I'm not hippy material. I'm tweed, man. TWEED.

The problem that we have today here in Canada is that we have programs and agendas that cater to leftist liberalism and NDP socialist ideology. Both party's believe in socialism and want the government to run everything. The liberals and the NDP party's are both against Canada becoming a great wealthy nation where all of it's citizen's could live the good life. Instead, those two anti-Canadian party's are both trying to destroy Canada's economy. They both are trying to de-industrialize Canada as quickly as possible. Those two misfits are truly the enemy of we the peasants. They both have done nothing for Canada except to raise more taxes, give us more government, and constantly attack and are working hard on trying to take our freedoms and rights away from us every day. Castro Trudeau keeps borrowing money from the banksters and spends that money willy-nilly on useless and wasteful socialist nonsense. It's no wonder our inflation is going up and up every year in Canada with this lefty buffoon in power. They both want socialism and not capitalism and they are both willing to borrow as much as they can to get there. We are seeing some pride today thanks to this truckers convoy that appears to have been able to wake up the many sleepy head Canadians that have been dozing off for years. Hopefully, something will finally come out of this truckers convoy fight and gain back all the freedoms and rights that we have lost for the past two years. GO,TRUCKERS,GO. Ride those trucks. ?

If one truck goes 8 km/h over the speed limit they'll all be branded as terrorists.

Some interesting quotes on ending mask and passport mandates (BBC). Mandatory masks are gone including in schools, immediately. "We must learn to live with Covid in the same way we live with flu" Looking ahead, Mr Johnson said the government would set out its long-term strategy for living with coronavirus. Governments have no unlimited privileges to impose restrictions on citizens whenever they like and for however long they wants. All and any restriction must be necessary, accountable and proven to be effective. This is also an important, even critical test for reason-based democratic governance. If the cases remain under control and no disaster ensues it would be difficult to deny that restrictive policies are unnecessary; not effective and are dragged out beyond reasonable and justifiable artificially, with no oversight or accountability.

Absolutely. Much in the same way that God, Allah, Buddha etc are 'real' because the belief in them creates so many real consequences on our planet, the value that people find from those 'messengers' is real. I can say something true and important here which has no value because very few people see it and only half of them will agree with it. Trudeau can make a false, bigoted, hateful statement which will reach millions of people and influence them to hate their fellow Canadians. It has value, but it's negative value. There's value [negative] in a BLM message because it helps convince their followers to destroy cities. The fact that Joe is reaching so many people makes his message valuable to millions, and the fact that his show has so much useful messaging makes it valuable [positive] to the continent.

Fucking cites...nobody cares or looks...but it's used as a bludgeon. "The sky is blue." "Cite!!!!" "Uhhhhh...." "Not true!!! Not true!!! Not true!!!"

Yup...he's genuine and that just pisses off the authoritarians like those wanna-be Nazis posting here. How dare he go against what they hold dear...he must be silenced.

People appreciate the honesty, bigtime. He gets up to 13M listeners to some podcasts. Meanwhile CNN gets about 600K viewers per show. Joe gets more than 20x as many listeners as CNN ?

Have you observed fish in water? Did it look like "it knows nothing about it"? If we are not performing a mental check of what we hear, even very wise sounding (or coming from very high on, very learned, empowered entitled etc), against obvious reality how would we know that it makes sense? A wolf doesn't know anything about snow and rabbits. A sailor knows nothing about the sea. What's the meaning of this wisdom? What kind of information does it carry? Thanks for a great example though. It can be applied readily to the reality around us. Look we have another all-time high and it means that our policy works great!

Go Canada - 12000 of our USA trucks crossed the border with no problem and joined the convoy

" MADISON – A Waukesha County judge ruled Thursday that absentee ballot drop boxes can't be used in Wisconsin, potentially upending aspects of the spring elections and the fall's high-profile contests for governor and U.S. Senate. After hearing three hours of arguments, Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Bohren determined state law allows absentee ballots to be returned in person or by mail — but not in a ballot drop box. "It's all good and nice, but there's no authority to do it," Bohren said of the use of drop boxes." https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/01/13/judge-bars-use-absentee-ballot-drop-boxes-wisconsin/6512589001/

Some folks will be on the wrong side of history. Some will have nothing to worry about. Some will lose everything.

Mask and Covid passes are ending in England. This is how we will know what Covidocracy is all about. Is it about public health and safety of the population? Or is it about unaccountable and unchecked authoritarian-like control over the society, indefinitely.

I think the anger is ultimately rooted in the inability of politicians to be straight with people and the sense that not being straight has a purpose that's rarely in their interests. People aren't oblivious to when they're being left in the dark but they do seem to be susceptible to the speculation that attends not knowing. That speculation is now turbo-charged via an internet and social media and the angrier the speculation gets the angrier people are.

"ummmm......errrrrr.....ah.......fringe minoritiy....ummmm.....errrrr.....nothing to ahhhhhhh......see here folks......errrrr.........ummmmmm......vaccination is the......ahhhhhhh....errrr.....only way out......errrrrr....."

I think restrictions played a necessary short-term role before we knew more about the virus and how to treat it. Once everyone who was eligible for a vaccine had the opportunity to get it, there was no justification for restrictions. With 90% of the adult population vaccinated, there’s no need to impose mandates, passports, etc. It’s a grossly unnecessary affront to democracy.

My boss listens to his podcasts every day, so I have to listen to his podcasts every day ? I find the same thing - Rogan has people, doctors, scientists from both sides. They discuss. There is no other platform that allows debate from both sides. His interview with Sanjay Gupta (SP?) was interesting - he's pro-vax of course. But Joe got him to admit that CNN totally mislead the public about Ivermectin by calling it "horse dewormer." There was never anyone ODing on it, the same as there's no one drinking urine, which Dialamah insists is being done and promoted by "anti-vaxxers" but I'm all over the alternative news sources and I still haven't seen that mentioned even once. Only ever heard that here. By her. Sort of like her, "Waitresses everywhere are being harassed daily by anti-vaxxers and I question every waitress about it and they are just in tears, crying and breaking down from the great amount of abuse they take from anti-vaxxers." Mmmm Hmmmm?? The "anti-vaxxers" who can't go into restaurants? How are they bringing all these waitresses to tears and trauma?

I find reddit very not well suited for political discussions for many reasons. The first one is the corporate involvement in Reddit, in how it is financed by shady entities, enforcing rules on speech on this platform in the shadows. The second thing I find rather grotesque is the way messages are displayed, making some conversations impossible to follow especially when there are lots of discussions for a specific post. Finally, I would say that the moderators of Reddit have all around been pretty uneven, some subreddits have very lax moderators, while others have strict speech rules that you have to follow, although it is the same website, rules differ from subreddits to other subreddits. Some people really hate Reddit mods so much, that the Reddit mods are by themselves, memes that are widely recognized around the Globe. Seems like the stereotype desplayed in the meme below is quite on the money.

This country is so divided right now it is hard to know who is who, the right and left will not listen to each other at all, the unvaccinated and vaccinated are so divided that they want to jail and tax the other side...We have a PM that adds to all this shit, i mean does anyone really trust this government at all, or any federal party. It is not a segment but the majority of the population, that are beyond piss, with us starting our 3 rd year of this shit storm, and no relief in sight they are done... they want change, they want it now.

Lack of good paying jobs, economic mobility is stalling, inflation, wacky wars at the start of the XXIst century, public money that is mismanaged, freedoms eroding... Lots of reasons. The biggest one is: no one is listening, like you said in the title.

The DARPA papers that just came out with the Fauci emails showing he knew the virus was from the Wuhan lab when he testified before congress - he was outright lying and trying to cover up what he's done. I'm waiting to see what will happen, but imagine if Fauci and cohorts intentionally released the virus, so they could sell vaccines. There is video of him lamenting the fact that he cannot experiment with his vaccines on humans, that it takes too long to get a vaccine to market. There's too much sketchy stuff going on here. But I think we will get to the truth eventually. More and more people are waking up.

I just hope the media covers this without inserting a biased interpretation. Something tells me the movement to end restrictions will grow. If it doesn’t, we’re in trouble.

I agree. I don't know if you heard, but in Windsor a trucker who doesn't agree with the convoy smashed his own truck into one of the convoy trucks.

I know people who just got back from Hawaii - no masks, no restaurant restrictions, life is normal. But the stupid testing added over $1000 to their trip. And they're vaccinated. It's just a money grab now.

From Youtube, check it out before it disappears. Probably won't melt the ice on some of your triple-jabbed hearts.

The Debaters is good as are a few shows from the old days that live on. Quirks & Quarks, for example. Indeed CBC Radio suffers at the expense of the other mediums. Which is really too bad as when we lose radio...which is free for the most part...it will not return in our lifetimes as we knew it. I felt that way when much of Canada abandoned AM broadcasts. Well...that's gone. The car trip just got boring... Oddly, it's things like Chinese, Pakistani language stations that are granted AM licenses now. But the AM band is a joke compared to how it used to be. Thousands of radio stations from far-far-away. Pay Radio? Meh...soulless. College Radio...the last hope for the medium. But it has always been the last hope. And the 'staff' turnover is...as you can imagine...frequent.

Why would anyone think foreign media doesn't have the same issues?

There's really not much to discuss with this sort of thread. Up until you posted it looked like it was just going to get ignored, which was all the attention it deserved.

Folks like Mr Mike want to believe that stuff like weaponizing a virus is the stuff of conspiracy theories. Never happens. Never-mind that MANY deadly viruses have been weaponized in labs over history...from variola to the pneumonic plague.

I watch and read news from around the world too and aside from a few more local stories usually near the end of their broadcast, the news is much the same everywhere you look. I strongly suspect if I drill down to the level of local TV stations the day to day similarities of people's lives will be even more familiar. When everyone is usually reporting the same thing on any particular day it's because it's what happened. Colour me surprised when I tune in Euronews, al Jazeera or CTV on Dec 25th and lo and behold everyone's talking about Christmas. It's like there's an agenda or a conspiracy or something. Is it insidious? Based on my own experience I'd have to say your reaction to Canadian media is due to an exaggerated bias of some sort. How do you know you're not seeing the same biases internationally. You think the globalist's agenda is just a quaint localized custom peculiar to Canada?

Nope...zero warning points.

That reminds me. I can get a tad...opinionated...at times too. Maybe I should check if I'm close to being in the penalty box...

Buying off the media, 100%.

DeSantis saves lives and you don't like it because Biden is killing Floridians by depriving them of their medicine and you would prefer nobody noticed because it casts shade on your ideology. What does that make you? A participant in evil, I think. Willing ignorance or pretending not to notice is no excuse.

They played that audio clip on Glenn Beck's show this morning and they raked Trudeau over the coals. Rightfully so. We currently have something in common with our American friends in that both countries are led by abysmal leaders.

The infringements on freedoms for the vast majority of Canadians are unprecedented in Canada. You’d have to look at Nazi occupied Europe for an analog. It was done also to Black slaves and in the resettlement of Indigenous. This business of requiring digital passports to enjoy basic freedoms, the state-mandated closure of businesses, restrictions on gatherings, and more is breathtaking in its overreach. It is totalitarianism.

WTF? Do you think that what he did was ok? He's a lying, hate mongering piece of shit by any reckoning. I'd love for you to find an article from someone who supports what he said.

I am learning that if I have an emotional reaction to a story, good or bad, it would be a good idea to consider it suspect. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ examines sources and rates them as left-bias, left-center bias, center, right-center bias, right-bias based on their use of emotional words and stereotypes. I've found it useful from time to time, and maybe others will as well. If you want some least-biased sources, check out this page: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center/