Zeitgeist

Yup, and since the failure to bring justice to the Air India bombers, Canada probably isn’t held in high regard for addressing threats to India.

But those are reasonable remarks. Are you alt right or something?

Why would I be sympathetic towards murderers? Get real. You enjoy causing outrage. It’s irresponsible.

The problem with your diatribe is that I was a leftist at the same protests, all punked out. I was left of Liberal and only recently started seeing myself as conservative, but the parties often swap positions. Now the left are the establishment. Not really of course, because their behaviour doesn’t match their rhetoric. Generally the elites today cloak themselves in socialist rhetoric. I also opposed the second Iraq War and wanted Gore over W. I also liked Obama and I didn’t vote for Harper. I wrote on this forum about my distaste for Trump. A lot changed over the pandemic and shortly before it.

I got to experience the DEI nightmare first hand. I’ve read all the BS: DiAngelo, Saad, Kendi. We got to watch the shaming and experience the racism. You’re no expert and clearly haven’t taken any anti-black racism training. Feel free to destroy your own kids, but keep your groomer friends out of my kids’ schools! It’s too late actually. The indoctrination is well underway. The Muslims are probably the only resistance to gender ideology left.

You’re so blind to reality it’s sad. Those aren’t conspiracy theories. Get your head out of MSM and do some reading. Pharmaceuticals pay for the news you watch. The three biggest pension investment firms are redeveloping Ukraine, and the war justifies the military spending. Everything I just said used to be considered left wing btw. Any value the left once had as champions of workers has pretty much evaporated. You traded food stamp programs for F-16’s.

You don’t seem to know the Democrats’ racist history or that the Republicans under Lincoln ended US slavery. The conservative approach is tolerance, but the radical loony left is demanding approval and grooming of kids to violate science and the religious beliefs of millions on gender and homosexual sex and marriage. You don’t get to bring everyone down with you. DEI is basically a pseudo-scientific return to racism, by claiming that all white people are privileged and need to be aware of how racist they are and that the way to solve problems is by interpreting all economic class distinctions and social problems as a matter of race. Being a person of colour under this scheme makes you an oppressed victim requiring that reparations and special treatment in hiring be given by white people who owe them something strictly because of their skin colour, even though the people alive today didn’t cause these problems, and even though Asians beat whites academically and financially. As racist oppressors, white people cannot think clearly or understand how the world works, so the DEI trainer must be believed and never questioned. Ask Blitzko. Oh no you can’t because that principal committed suicide after being shamed by a DEI pseudoscience expert. As for Trump, maybe he did some sketchy stuff, some of it straddling the lines of criminality. I wasn’t a Trump supporter and wasn’t there. It’s very obvious from the volume of charges and the petty nature of most of them that they’re politically motivated.

Yet our government continues throw around our money and drive us further into debt so they can look good “on the world stage”. Millions of dollars in funding announcements each month that have nothing to do with helping Canadians. This government doesn’t work for Canadians.

Eliminate carbon taxes, slash government spending on fluff programs, allow portable housing on former industrial and abandoned lands as well as parts of the Greenbelt, deregulate and boost energy supply, restrict governments’ spending and scope. Slash taxes across the board. End the funding of DEI departments. I think those are starts.

But bloated socialist redistribution won’t save the kids. It will create the Hunger Games Meets Brave New World Meets 1984. Only freedom and opportunity will save them, I think. That means upward mobility through lower living costs and deregulation of the markets. It means kicking out the climate/public health/identity politics authoritarians, who are basically elites trying to purify the planet for themselves at everyone else’s expense.

Yes, but you remember all the deaths through Cold War proxy wars: “Fight them there instead of here.” The Neocon military industrial complex that runs the State Department, along with Big Pharma who have an outsized influence over government and mainstream media, are complicating and obfuscating our democracy and free press. It’s hard to separate fact from the propaganda of the stakeholder capitalist partnerships between government and business. It’s hard to see where international interests override our national interests and naive politicians like Trudeau become duped Manchurian Candidates. My only resolution is to continue to try to understand what the hell is going on and do my best to help family and community. We say our pieces on national and international issues and hope the public sees good sense and votes accordingly. Yes, we must face Russia with a broad sword, but the sword of justice requires that we reflect on the ways that we ourselves push people and countries to the brink of evil. This is as true on domestic issues like the culture wars as it is on the battlefields. One is an ideological reflection of the other. I believe it’s really a spiritual battle we fight each day.

Yes and it gets more complicated with A.I., transhumanism (nice Blade Runner connection), and the totalitarian forces that want to change human behaviour at all costs to “keep is safe” from disease and the “climate crisis”. The only defence is a highly responsive pro-human, pro democracy, pro responsibility, pro Canada leadership that actually works for the people. I’m not holding my breath.

I see much of what happened with the rise of Hitler as a result of the winner takes all attitude of the victors at the Treaty of Versailles. It’s why instead of making a conquered Germany pay reparations at the end of WW2, we instead got the Martial Plan, which actually helped rebuild Germany and Japan. Analogously, we have to be careful that we’re not making the same mistake with Russia. We won the Cold War and turned many of the former Soviet satellites over to NATO while excluding Russia. If you push people too hard there will be a reaction. Yes sometimes the people aren’t in agreement with a country’s leadership, which becomes oppressive to its citizens, but so far Putin has most Russians on-side with a narrative about Russia being mistreated that has at least some validity. I know people have strong feelings about this, so I won’t go further. Getting back to the issue of this unhinged act of evil against a Muslim family, what could make someone so out of touch with basic human decency? I don’t think there can be any excuse except insanity or evil. Either way, such a person can’t be allowed access to the general public.

So under those assumptions, which I think are quite astute, extremism is mostly a result of power imbalances or perceived power imbalances and desperate attempts among those who feel disempowered to assert dominance. I’d add that we don’t have as many ways to make people feel heard and part of the community as we used to. I always cite Fulford’s Bowling Alone. There used to be many social clubs and community events. It was harder to feel isolated. The internet tends to tribalize people into separate camps as the algorithms feed people’s particular beliefs rather than challenge them. Also, anonymity prevents us from seeing ourselves and others as real people with feelings and frailties. There are certain unresolved difficulties that most people face: Not everyone can win. Not everyone has equal levels of talent, strength or beauty, or is born into the same level of privilege or circumstances. Generally people lean on their particular strengths and over time those who are consistently effective in an area are recognized as such, but equality is elusive and the world is unfair. I think if conditions reach a boiling point for someone who is unstable or deeply frustrated, it can erupt into evil acts. The problem of evil is something we must deal with, which is why we have incarceration. I’m not sure it’s entirely solvable because it’s present wherever people exist.

When a minority government feels like a dictatorship, well, clearly we’ve lost the plot.

Yup. The Canadian federal government has become a bloated, overreaching, inflationary, ineffectual mess. The amount of bureaucrats has increased 40-50% under Trudeau. They’re constantly throwing taxpayer money at causes to which Canadians haven’t consented and are driving up the cost of living through rampant immigration, carbon taxes, added regulation, and inflationary overspending. What’s more, they impose their creepy radical left activism on employers, schools, and families. They denigrate and attempt to criminalize political opponents. They can’t even get the basics right. Crime is up. Lines run out the mall entrance to passport offices, internationally Canada is ridiculed for bringing nothing to the table except “gender language”. Quite simply, people are worse off and the government doesn’t seem to serve Canadians. I hope the next government slashes taxes and reduces the scope of federal programs to keep these creepy activists from destroying our families and our living standards.

But the science is inconclusive in terms of human impacts and the potential for mitigation, mainly because of the volume of variables and our limited ability or rather inability to measure them everywhere all the time. For example, what is the CO2 absorption rate of underwater plants and algae in all oceans/seas? Is the absorption rate growing or falling? More CO2 should result in more oxygen producing and CO2 absorbing plants. Is the rate of volcanic activity increasing or decreasing? Where? How does that impact overall GG emissions? How much of this is absorbed locally by plants? Where are we in terms of interglacial warming or cooling and sunspot activity? Are we able to account for all of the impacts of El Niño and the anomalies like the cooling Pacific patch? Those are just factors that help us separate out natural versus human impacts. Actually reducing human made greenhouse gases is another can of worms. What level of sacrifice is required to do this in the short, medium and long term? It’s highly arguable that impoverishing people in the short term to make reductions will prevent us from developing better, cheaper solutions in the long term, as poverty makes us less educated and technological. The bottom line is that climate action has to actually make a measurable difference and it must come cheaply or it will stop happening. Living standards always trump fuzzy probabilities.

You make too many assumptions here. Define “deny climate change”. Stop pretending that there’s one position on climate change. People can believe in climate change and have a wide range of opinions about the extent of human impacts and what to do about it. That’s not crazy or misinformation. Saying that it is causes outrage.

I wonder if Biden and Son’s acceptance of hundreds of thousands of dollars from China, Ukraine, and others have compromised him in any way. I wonder if his party is protecting him. They certainly aren’t allowing other candidates to debate him. January 6 had its excesses, but throwing hundreds of people in jail, sentencing some to decades in jail, and attempting to imprison the former president over it is clearly politically motivated.

It’s the system we have and better than most, but it doesn’t always work for everyone.

No I didn’t. Justice isn’t universal. If you don’t see that, you’re a fool. I wish it was otherwise. Part of the problem is the partisanship for sure. Another part of the problem is equity: fairness is not sameness. It’s given judges a green light to apply the law differently to different people based on what judges think people deserve as opposed to the extent to which a law is broken. Juries do this now too. I understand looking at histories of good or bad behaviour, hardship, etc., but it seems that some figures are targeted because they’re disliked or given light sentences because of shared political perspectives. It’s complex and case by case.

Yup, carbon taxes are added multiple times along the supply chain and have a multiplier effect on prices. I use equipment that uses taxed energy to produce goods. My workers demand higher wages to pay the taxes on the fuel they use to get to work and the transportation costs on the materials shipped to build their homes, deliver the food they eat and the furniture they buy. Every item shipped to and from the factory gets the carbon tax. How does my plant afford to compete with China and India and even the US? Production is pricier, the cost of living gets higher, and the emissions rise all the same.

I’m saying the judges aren’t always neutral. Some prosecutors are blatantly political. The NY cases are over the top political. It at least looks like some of these cases won’t see the light of day until after the election.

Disingenuous remark. These are so clearly politicized attacks. I didn’t like Trump but this is obvious. If any of these carry water, they are relatively minor and will backfire on the Dems.

To own one is to know how little energy it provides and how expensive it is.