Zeitgeist

BS. Stop pretending you’re a special victim and purveyor of justice. You’re just as responsible for your productivity and happiness as anyone else here. Also what’s with your nickname? Should I call myself White-assed Honky?

It’s incredible how powerful the British navy was in North America, especially after Napoleon was shut down. They blockaded the US ports and sent around 20 ships near Baltimore after sacking Washington, but the Yanks put up enough resistance to make a treaty worth signing that left the borders where they were at the start of the war. The Brits could’ve taken more, but they left their forts on the US side and let the trade flow that helped both countries dominate the next two centuries. God Bless America and God Save the King.

True, though the smart phone was created in Waterloo, Canada by Blackberry. The Yanks can’t take away that distinction. Apple just made a cooler phone. Blackberry Messenger is still the superior texter. The War of 1812 was a stalemate, but by the end of it the Americans built a real navy and the Federalist and Democrat-Republican parties united in the cause of completing the American Revolution. However, the English and French in Canada united against the US, so that War consolidated two distinct North Americas, one under the Crown and one a republic.

Well you know how it ended: The Yanks burned down Newark and York in Canada then the Brits burned down Lewiston to Buffalo and Washington DC. They were stopped at Baltimore. They also failed to take New Orleans, where we see the career of Andrew Jackson kick into high gear. The Yanks defeated or betrayed the Indians in the south, but the Indians were brutal too. The wave of Manifest Destiny had a certain inevitability as people kept coming and setting farther west. They still are. Colonization continues in overdrive, and the Indians are profiting Big Time, either on the socialist end shaking down government through shame or the capitalist end selling and developing property and resources, running contraband tobacco and guns, or joining the settlers and beating them at their own game.

Well that’s one of the main reasons that I can no longer tolerate the Liberals and the NDP, because I don’t believe in programs that we all pay into only being available to select groups. Even the phrase “means tested” makes a sickening socialist noise. Why should all these gold plated programs only be available to the segment of the population that pays less for these programs than anyone else? Obviously the rich don’t need some of these programs, so they probably shouldn’t qualify for some of them, but they’re paying more for these programs than anyone. The federal daycare program isn’t really working.

They really didn’t know what to do. Integration, if it was even possible, meant giving up ways of life. Preservation of the old ways , which wasn’t fully possible, would mean having a relatively prosperous society alongside a much harsher one. The reserve system was a compromise. The topic is too big for a few paragraphs and requires ample reading about the Indian Act, treaty histories, the failed attempt by the Brits and Indigenous allies to create an Indigenous state (which fell apart in the compromise that ended the War of 1812). The people who whine today about colonization are the same people who push current immigration policy, which is colonization on steroids. Basically a society of hypocrites who don’t know their history (and by society I mean every cultural and racial group) aren’t really able to get their heads in contexts that no longer exist.

Try again, Hardner.

The Conservatives will blow it eventually, which is why we need term limits, at least for the PMO.

It makes Canada a weaker democracy. Hopefully people begin to see it and overturn the policies.

At least one US state gets it: https://prismreports.org/2024/03/13/florida-universities-eliminate-dei-positions/

I think it’s hard for Mike to believe that our country has declined to this point. Don the rose coloured glasses.

Hockey Night in Canada generated good revenue. They should bring back Don Cherry before he dies. Once they fired him I stopped watching the CBC, including all HNIC except Leafs playoff games. I do NOT watch intermission commentary.

The CBC will survive less government funding by having to produce more product that people want. Oh wait, that sounds like every business I know.

While it may not be nice to misgender and most people probably wouldn’t do it to someone’s face, making it illegal to misgender is wrong because there are reasonable grounds for not calling someone their adopted gender: believing that one is always one’s biological gender (not unreasonable), accidentally misgendering (easy to do if someone looks like another gender, especially the biological one), and religious grounds (my faith believes that you are your natural God-given gender (not unreasonable for religious people). I call someone their chosen pronouns and names, but it should remain a choice, as I may have legitimate reasons for doing otherwise. Also, I would no doubt face ridicule and alienation from the community for “misgendering” someone, as Canadian society is ground zero for woke mind virus. Already I know I would be fired for misgendering due to organization policies. It also appears that I would have to go before the Human Rights Inquisition — I mean Tribunal, to justify having a brain in a supposedly free country.

Yes government funding of all media is problematic, but especially so if the media being funded seems uncritical of the government doing the funding. Look, CBC has had some great programming over the years, but we’ve lost some of the great interviewing, reporting, sports coverage, and home grown comedy in exchange for more preachy identify politics that’s based on imported US narratives. What do you like on the CBC today? What has gotten better instead of worse?

Exactly. The Nazis claimed they were purifying humanity through eugenics. We see similar language used to by those who seek to purify the planet through climate policies or those who are willing to maim kids to assert the will to immediate and unlimited self-identity. We actually see straight up Nazi antisemitism in the wish to eliminate the “settler colonialists” in Israel. Indigenous activism gets this way in the efforts to give preferential treatment to “First Nations”, as though such people are better than others and never invaded or occupied places where people lived. I understand the idea behind the Prime Directive in Star Trek not to interfere with other cultures and nations, because forms of social justice often result in recriminations, no matter how apparently helpful people are. The progressives thought they were giving literacy, opportunities, and salvation to the Indigenous through residential schools. Now they are hated for it by today’s progressives. Sir John A. MacDonald is also hated by progressives today for talking about not giving food and shelter to Indigenous because it would make them dependent and interfere with their way of life. Context and details are everything. It’s so easy to judge the past through today’s lenses. Often the people who do so fail to understand how much worse conditions could’ve been had other courses of action been taken. I learned a long time ago when I was doing development work in a developing country that our organization was dangling a carrot of Western lifestyles and consumption in front of the locals, that I was creating envy where people had been relatively content. How helpful were we really? Not all is as it seems, which is all the more reason to keep speech free, so that issues can be openly discussed, warts and all. Be wary of attempts to penalize people for offending people.

And the fact that the current Canadian government does this undermines its credibility and Canadian sovereignty at the same time, as why should I trust a government that appears to work against the interests of its citizens?

I mean look, if equally qualified applicants apply for a job and I know that one of them came from a hard place, yes I’ll hire the less privileged. Could that mean that more people of colour fall into that category in the stories of applicants? Sure. It also means a white person can come from a hard place and get the job. The problem with the hard place autobiographies is that they rely a lot on storytelling rather than results like marks, job experience, degrees, letters about job performance, etc. That’s why we have to be careful not to give too much weight to fuzzy criteria, as it risks hiring without regard to merit. Measurable merit first, fuzzies second.

“Lived experience” is the term used to justify all sorts of behaviour that used to be considered bad or unhealthy. It’s the term used to justify hormone blockers for kids, MAID for the mentally ill, hard drug use, and all forms of alternative sexual lifestyles, including pedophilia. After all, Jeffrey Dahmer was just being himself. Who are you to judge?

Social justice and progress are good things. The problem is that some of the work taking place under the auspices of social justice and progress are actually top-down oppressive, economically damaging, and the opposite of justice. That’s why we have to be very careful to look at the details of policies and potential unintended consequences.

I give you a hard time because I know you’re smarter than some of the things that you say. The Canada you knew is gone, unfortunately, and restoring or improving it will take a lot more than softball criticism of current leadership.

Our federal government can’t handle the most basic federal responsibilities like national defence. They certainly poke their noses into provincial affairs, nevertheless.

Aren’t moderators supposed to be moderate?

Well the left today are the masters of rhetoric and sophistry. Tell a convincing story of oppression, change the definitions of words, or simply use words that mean the same thing but are new and therefore don’t carry the same stigma or baggage. It’s a game of outrunning careful analysis and facts. I’d go as far as saying that, at its worst, the radical left wants to deny facts, rewrite history, make all interpretations of inequality of outcomes about a Marxist oppressor-oppressed binary, and seek forms of theft and suppression of merit to make everyone equal. It actually gets worse: Facts are labeled offensive. Certain groups are favoured (in the name of de-centering certain groups), and the identities of individuals are reduced to superficial group identities, which become all that matter about a person: black, white, gay, trans, settler, Indigenous, etc. There’s no room for individuals in the cultural revolution. You only matter insofar as you advance the revolutionary agenda of the collective, which is to remake the world in the twisted image of the vanguard ideologues. Sadly, all major organizations, institutions, and governments in Canada are under the influence of these ideologues, even so-called conservative ones. Policies in hiring and admissions reflect these values, which are anti-Canada, as they have defined the nation state as settler colonial, racist, patriarchal, and genocidal. Not convinced? Talk to your equity department.

You don’t get off that easy. Have a good day where you take some time to reflect on your collectivist misdeeds and seek absolution.