Zeitgeist

Yes it’s totally unacceptable. Listening to Algabra try to justify it is an exercise in forced stupidity. Creating new unnecessary barriers to travel for Canadians is against the interests of Canadians. The American government treats Canadians better entering the U.S. than the Canadian government treats Canadians entering Canada. It reminds me of visiting the Soviet Union. This is why so many Canadians are questioning what our government is up to.

No, you support irresponsible government. You don’t create massive new program spending when you’re critically in debt. It’s a moral catastrophe, like trying to cure a heroin addiction with a lot more heroin.

You’re unable to discern between behaviours. All are of equal value to you, which makes you a nihilist. You’re the man at the beginning of L’etranger:”My mother died today, or was it yesterday?” Freedom without purpose is meaninglessness. Didn’t you complete your existentialist phase in young adulthood? I can’t debate someone for whom nothing matters.

Are you trying to sell this ball of confusion?

More communist tax and spend handouts.

It’s not about someone’s sexual identity or orientation. It’s about policies. One can oppose someone’s lifestyle and still agree with that person’s views on certain issues, perhaps many issues. No one here wants to criminalize homosexuality, to my knowledge. Lantsman is a very admirable MP who deserves a Cabinet position if the CPC wins the government, in my opinion. I also admire Leslyn Lewis, a social conservative. As long as Poilievre lets people speak their minds and doesn’t throw people under the bus unless they are clearly mean-spirited or hateful, he has my support.

Trudeau hasn’t been turfed yet. Hope springs eternal.

But then you would be banned from posting. Lol

Excluding “trolls” from discussion is a terrible idea because some people think that anyone who disagrees with them is a troll. This is exactly why Musk considered buying Twitter and why many journalists have left Democrat-only rags like the New York Times or communist organizations like TorStar and the CBC.

You don’t know your stuff on these topics.

The Freedom Convoy was full of people of colour. The attempt to paint that movement as racist is the most disgusting attempt to discredit the views of Canadians by a Prime Minister that I’ve ever seen. Shame.

I wasn’t a Trump supporter, but locking up political opponents is new, especially when they have a real shot at forming a government.

Hariri has referred to humans as “hackable animals.” The Liberals see the masses as people who need to be told how to think and act.

It really is terrible. Who’s pushing back? They’re not even allowing Trump to be shown on TV and the FBI is basically looking for excuses to put him behind bars. DeSantis is strong. Poilievre is going to have a fight on his hands. Trudeau could have three more years as PM.

No, but I’m not sure we were measuring the temperature in Lytton or that so many people were living there. I tend to think that nothing much has changed and we’re working ourselves into a frenzy. It’s another War of the Worlds, but instead of aliens it’s climate change. We saw it with the Red Menace, the witch trials in Salem, McCarthyism, etc.

I do think that’s part of the core of Canadian culture. New France and the couriers de bois and pretty much everything running in a line from Halifax through Quebec to the Red River in Manitoba are also very core. The Arctic, prairies and coastal BC add to all this. Canada is many things, but it has to be strong and at least somewhat independent of foreign powers. Canada could become a bigger economic power than the UK. It’s already edging out Italy, a far more populous country. I just no longer trust that this government is looking out for Canadian interests. You can’t even get a passport in less than four months unless you tell the passport office where you’re going. You can’t enter Canada without an app that requires uploading impertinent personal information. Canada feels somewhat totalitarian. Many Canadians are hoping that Poilievre will scrap all this nonsense, and I’m sure the Liberals are losing support because of their overreach. It really makes you wonder why Trudeau is maintaining bureaucratic, inane, anti-democratic policies. I can only conclude that it’s because he cares more about international initiatives than the wishes and interests of Canadians.

Your Pollyanna naïveté and ignorance are on full display. You need to stop.

The ability to control behaviour is stronger than ever: freezing of bank accounts and doxxing of people by governments; the tracking of location by phone, satellite, and camera; collecting of personal information through digital apps: ArriveCan, digital ID, Facebook, Instagram; the ability to make people stay home or in one location and program behaviour remotely through devices….

People didn’t live on their cell phones and have all of their personal data digitally stored then, nor was there CCTV, social media accounts, digital ID, etc.

Yes but the Brits shot a lot more of their own. It shouldn’t have happened and speaks to the desperation.

I’m enjoying this so far. The shooting for cowardice was tragic but the conditions were harsh and soldiers had to stick to the mission. It was horribly bloody, but Currie could count real successes like Passendale. It was a terrible and needless war, quite unlike the second WW by comparison.

Well the risk of extreme surveillance and control, especially with A.I. running the data analysis algorithms, is a serious threat, especially when governments seek more power. We saw some of this at work fighting Covid and it can be used to engineer all sorts of behaviour to meet ESG goals. This tech must be contained when used for such purposes. McLuhan understood that the future battles would be largely informational. I think it’s worse than he thought. It’s the battle for humanity: Our freedom and living standards are under threat, but the threat is mostly of our own making.

Sounds like every year I can remember. With more people and more news, these events seem more extreme and widespread. Not sure much has changed. I still remember the terrible stories of floods in Bangladesh and earthquakes and tsunamis in the South Pacific from early childhood.

Maybe. I’m a big Steven Pinker fan. He basically says that, up to the pandemic at least, civilization has gotten better and better across almost all metros. Infant mortality, hunger, warfare, education levels, real purchasing power, etc. We have to ensure that we don’t ruin it in the name of some Puritanical idea of perfection: perfectly safe, perfectly healthy. However, I think all the technology necessary to virtually end greenhouse gas emissions is close. It’s happening. However, if we hurt people in the pursuit of perfection, we could have a lot less than perfection. We could literally destroy our living standards, freedom, and way of life. Not worth it.

Much of what’s healthy in our economy is driven by small transactions: $80 for a used table on Kijiji, a cash tip for the newspaper carrier, 10 bucks to the neighbour’s kid for shoveling the driveway. Running all transactions through the state will make it possible to control behaviour on an unprecedented scale. It gives far too much power to ideological activist governments who already play loose with constitutional rights and who treat political opponents like lesser beings or criminals.