Zeitgeist

Zero violence from protesters, but you know, protests that try to change policies are “concerning”.

They appointed a Liberal to assess Liberal decisions. That’s Canada now. The courts and media are run by the same people. There’s no critical distance from government. Canada is an echo chamber of government policies and talking points.

No they don’t set curriculum but can sit on advisory committees. Their role is parent advocacy. Basically the board screamed “human rights” and slammed the door without explaining how the matter of a student’s gender discernment was of no concern to the students’ parents. There has been no thorough public discussion of the notion of gender affirmation, let alone of whether parents have a right to know what their children are considering that will have major life-changing consequences. I see much of this as the unintended consequence of making transgender rights human rights without making it clear what constitutes a transgender person and without referring to biological facts. Dysphoria is still listed as a mental illness in the DSM, yet now we can’t even talk about normative facts. The revolutionaries don’t understand bell curves or normative ranges. They think describing phenomena as abnormal is immoral, without understanding that normative basically means most people. In our effort to make everyone feel accepted, we’re ignoring biology and affirming feelings that may be fleeting in children. Really education needs to stay out of this business and leave it to families to inform schools, after medical follow-up, if any such gender changes will be registered. Only in cases of documented abuse should there be any question about whether to inform parents. The default should be informing parents. The education system is clearly under the tight control of a small group of highly-biased appointees.

There’s an overwhelming sense that the public are not requiring the government to represent their values, but rather, the government seems to actively suppress the values of the public. I hope that’s not really the case because that’s dystopia. I do think we need a much more vociferous questioning of recent government policies on a slew of issues. Somehow we ended up affirming 58 plus genders, assisted suicide for the mentally ill (mass murder?), and legal access to hard drugs. We’re watching dangerous inhuman social experiments unfold. I won’t even get into the fraught obsession with race. What a mess, from pandemic emergency measures to this. This news today: ”But the most alarming endorsement is that the government of Canada should extend eligibility for MAID to include minors “deemed to have the requisite decision-making capacity.” For now, MAID should be restricted to mature minors whose death is reasonably foreseeable, the report said, “at least initially.” National Post Does any of this feel like evil to you? Any echoes from the darker past?

You became a leftist totalitarian in your sleep.

Basically the report is a political angle on her remarks. It’s more alarming evidence of why this country is broken.

That report is an extremely politicized opinion piece cloaked in legalease. “Well-settled” human rights are referenced as being abrogated with no explanation as to how. What a sad disaster. Parents should be livid that their interests are silenced by a political faction that has railroaded the education system.

Do you know why? You don’t know how those words are being used to describe a very wide swath of cultures and how loosely that term is applied to people, including students for innocuous perceived privilege. It’s got nothing to do with intent either. You’re oblivious to the inquisitions underway. How long since retirement, Mike?

It’s becoming very clear that mere opinion-based school board policy such as “gender affirmation” of students by educators without informing parents is being mandated without parent input. Even school trustees representing a large number of parent opinions are being banned from meetings merely for questioning such policy. This is not an open or fair process. What’s more, these board policies, which are highly experimental, may be causing lasting damage to children, constituting child abuse. It’s time for parents across Canada to band together, push back, and take legal action if necessary. The silencing of parent voices that represent a significant percentage of the population sets a very dangerous anti-free speech precedent. Parents are feeling powerless and school boards seem to face no obligation to table different opinions and defend their policies. One end of the political spectrum is dictating policies. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-school-trustee-trans-policy/wcm/46c5cc0e-6e49-49d2-9cc4-43760f19e642/amp/

Unfortunately Tory is already pretty left of centre. He’s another politician who won’t say no unless it’s uncontroversial.

It’s funny, I think that people are good…but then some people say and do things that upend that notion. You’re the guy who takes the job at the political prisoner camp and can’t understand why people are upset with you when the regime that gave you the job is turfed. I can see you wearing the fancy commissar coat and snitching on neighbors in Stalin’s Soviet Union.

You don’t see a problem with the state assisting people with killing themselves, which in actual fact makes the state complicit in the killing of citizens. You also don’t see the tremendous opportunity for abuse in the context of a state-funded healthcare system that will never have sufficient funding. I now understand why our public healthcare system is worse than a private healthcare system (with a second rate universal safety net for those who can’t afford or get private insurance). Making doctors who are there to cure the arbiters and aides of suicide is a conflict of interest, clearly. As for the same-sex marriage question, I’m not sure we understand the impacts long term on children with only one gender role-model, though we know the stats on hardship for single parents. I know that there are highly successful children of single parents and of same sex couples, but I don’t think they’re ideal situations for kids, which in the context of marriage, a religious institution, is important. Religion is about striving towards God and perfection. Couplings without the possibility of having natural births makes sexual union about pleasure primarily. I realize that these are more traditional views by current Canadian social standards, but I think Canadian social conditions are in decline. The fabric of society has weakened. I also understand that this view relates to political, ethical, and religious perspective, which is fine. We’re supposed to have freedom of religion and thought. For tax purposes, the state has civil unions that it calls marriage, but these have nothing to do with marriage in the traditional sense.

It’s true. The NDP wanted property rights left out, so yeah, much easier for Canada to slide into communism than the US. I think if the government overreach paternalism and handouts get too extreme, Canada could break up along those lines. Resource development and individual rights are under pretty heavy assault in Canada.

You can’t get out of an Ontario hospital in less than 4 hours. Generally you will sit in triage overnight. After several hours, hopefully, a doctor will see you for 5 minutes. If you need an MRI because of possible terminal disease, just hope that the disease doesn’t advance too far before your scheduled appointment months later. I’m sure if you’re having a heart attack you’ll be seen to fairly quickly, so the next time you’re very sick and your family doctor’s office is closed, have a heart attack and you’ll be seen to at the hospital right away.

You’re the perfect communist citizen.

You’ve been raised to depend on handouts and believe that you’re useless and need to be taken care of. That’s obvious. The really sad part though is that the parties that you think stand up for the little guy are doing the opposite now. They’re using phoney progressive rhetoric and the distraction of insane, unethical, and unscientific identity politics to cement themselves into power. You’ll always vote for them because they seem to offer you more freebies. The price you pay is the inability to think and do for yourself. In the end it’s your problem though, and your histrionics tell me that the leopard isn’t changing its spots in this lifetime.

Yup, had to join the Communist party to get the best jobs. Canada is into compelled speech now, which isn’t much different from using torture to exact a confession. Basically if you want a degree and job opportunities, you must read and sign the script. Western universities are no longer institutions of open discourse, learning, and debate. They are purveyors of credentials based on strict compliance to radical left political ideology.

Nope. Your totalitarian wannabe crowd go down in history as the coward sycophants of government overreach. The Convoy was an important international movement of resistance against very real threats to our democratic freedoms. Trudeau only relented because he had no choice. There was too much concern among the sizeable portion of the country that supported the protest against mandates. The Senate saw this and were opposing the emergency measures, so Trudeau removed them. The next day, “Look over here, invasion of Ukraine!”

Basically the radical left running the rest of Canada and the US is pummelling Alberta into submission. Yes that’s obvious.

Unfortunately the radical left are running our institutions now. I’ve spent hours already this week at work being lectured about white privilege. There’s no sense of context or perspective. Rather than saying that our society has grown more diverse and our values are changing, there’s an attempt to interpret events in the distant past as though we’ve always lived in 2023. The main reason that 50 years ago most of our books and films had white themes and characters in Canada wasn’t a white supremacist plot. It was because the vast majority of society was white and the people created the culture in their image. We became more aware of how our natural tendency to be around people who look and sound like us hurt minorities as the racialized population grew and we heard more stories. It’s also true that the main reason Indigenous were educated in residential schools was because providing free public education was seen as a social good and only the settlers were providing it. It’s only through today’s lens that we better understand the impact on the cultures and families. The largest groups tend to dominate the narratives, which is the main reason we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to protect the rights of minorities and individuals. Unfortunately progressivism, while generally good, tends to devour itself because when it takes on revolutionary fervour, one can never be progressive enough and everyone must go to the guillotine. That was the lesson of the French Revolution. Most countries aren’t in a perpetual state of apology, shame, and purging of the laggards, as we find ourselves in today. Canada is weakened by the failure of the current public and its representatives to understand and appreciate the efforts to build this country. By failing to value that hard work, we risk losing what we’ve built. The signs of decline are clear: fading meritocracy, emphasis on identification by race and/or ethnicity and/or sexual identity and/or sexual orientation as the determining qualitative identifications of a person. Work ethic, moral values, talent, skill, and personality are deemed less important by today’s revolutionaries. We’re afraid to refer to each other by our biological genders and to raise children as males and females complete with the transference of responsibilities associated with gender role models This is leading us to new and greater divisions and a sense of hopelessness for our families, communities, and country. I’ve never seen so many confused young people. I won’t even get into our healthcare system and the creeping growth of assisted suicide in Canada, which now has the most permissive euthanasia laws in the world. What a mess. It took less than a decade to get us here. I don’t know how bad it will get, but I do know that this is happening on Trudeau’s watch.

Is Justin back in the classroom? Sneaky guy.

Yup, the liberals promote servitude. Their political class’s existence depends on it. Party of slave owners. Of course the revolution they’ve unleashed will come for them.

Well that’s why parents are upset about CRT, because it appears to tie race to economics in a race-based version of Marxism. Basically take property from its owners and give it to the designated racial group. There’s policies of equal outcome irrespective of what someone does to merit getting something. It’s Bolshevik property redistribution based on race instead of economic status.

It’s just another way of letting a committee decide who’s in and who’s out. We pay a lot of money to have the CRTC beat us with a stick, limiting competition and duplicating regulatory policies south of the border, mostly so we can slap a maple leaf on it. Any artists whose work is worthy of attention generally get it. There are Canada Arts Council and other grants for artists. If I feel like some kind of content is being pushed on me, I won’t read or watch it.

Feels like a way of making a case for expanding the military industrial complex.