GrittyLeftist

First off, some points I totally agree with - people are not independent if they can't own their own money, etc. The reserve system, and being a status Indian in general, are imperfect, wasteful systems that are prone to abuse and a reasonable argument can be made that they disincentivize virtuous behaviour on the part of individuals and groups. Some reserves are wealthier than others and many reserves are financially destitute. I would emphasize your point about "comparing it to the standards of the time," and take it significantly farther. As much as I find Colonialism to be abhorrent by today's morality, when I look around the world and see what was happening in other places at that time, it is possible to see Canada as comparatively benevolent. Also, the arguments made by early colonizers are valid (if not sound) - if you accept that this life is an illusion that exists only as an opportunity for the worthy to achieve eternal paradise, and if you accept that Christ is the only way into heaven, and if you accept that a given church has a monopoly on accurately interpreting Christ, Colonialism makes a great deal of sense and can even come across as quite far-seeing and benevolent. There is a dialectic here between moral absolutism (some things are always wrong, everywhere, for everyone - very useful for holding those we dislike to account for their "bad" actions) and moral relativism (sometimes morality is different for different people, or under different circumstances - very useful for excusing those we like from their "bad" actions). Unfortunately, terms like "dialectic," "moral absolutism" and "moral relativism" do not make it into the public education system, so there are plenty of intelligent, reasonable adults who haven't had the chance to put the work in to arrive at a nuanced understanding. This, IMO, is why the left and the right spend so much time shouting at one another - the knowledge of how to have useful political conversations has been intentionally withheld from us, so that we will be reliant upon our "betters" to solve these problems for us. Most of all, I believe that "shoveling more money at the problem" (I'm totally paraphrasing here) is very unlikely to achieve a better outcome. For me, this problem will not be solved by making Canada "pay a fine," it will be solved by creating some new kind of Canada that obeys its own laws and doesn't need to have exploited underclasses in order to have a functioning economy. What does that Canada look like? Gruntandshrug. Regarding land claims, I think there are some really difficult factors that make it hard for anyone to know the actual truth of the matter. Here's my best current understanding of how semi-nomadic peoples used land, please correct me if my understanding is incomplete. In the summers, we have three different places we go - we probably have a favourite that we usually use because it's the best, and we have a couple of backups because there might be freaky weather or herd migrations or other people showing up to kick our asses and take our stuff. Then in the fall, we have a few different places we go, and again in the winter, and again in the spring. However, we have to travel from spot to spot. Do we "own" the land that we need to transit in order to go from place to place? Suppose we have three spots. Can we use those as the points of a triangle, and claim all the land within those spots? What if some of the land in there was only rarely used? Suppose we have three dozen spots. Can we claim everything within those spots? Can we only claim those spots and the travel routes we used? What if our stories don't mention which routes we travelled by? Also, some of those areas are shared with other groups. We would conduct political negotiations and end up with something like "we share our backup spring spot once every three years in return for the ability to use their backup spring spot once every three years." Those political arrangements would be in a constant state of flux. The geography itself changes sometimes. Maybe there is a big landslide that changes the course of a river, and now one of our spring spots is no good anymore. Maybe there is a forest fire and we can't use one of our summer spots for the next 20-80 years. Finally, war is a problem all peoples encounter. Maybe we've lost too many fights and our population is lower so our resource needs drop, or maybe we've won a bunch of fights and our population is higher so our resource needs increase. That probably translates into losing or gaining territory. This process goes on for thousands of years, then along comes a series of plagues that kill a little over 90% of us in the space of, say, 20 years. We don't have libraries, instead, we have elders, and we rely on their memories, and the stories they tell, to provide our historical records. The old are more likely to die of the plague. We have enough time to take a few measures to mitigate the loss of our history, but not enough to prevent it. Now along comes the RCMP, taking our children away from us. Those children aren't learning the stories that are our history the same way that they used to. It will be more difficult for us to accurately pass all of the stories down because we aren't in charge of raising our own children anymore. This goes on for more than a hundred years. Now today, what is left of those stories? Surely there will be some sincerely held yet wrong beliefs. Surely there will be reasonable adults who have good reasons to believe that their ancestors used a certain territory. But what if that territory is also claimed by someone else? What if that territory was never used by their ancestors? Oral history is currently allowed as legal evidence of land claims, but the ability to maintain a continuous oral history has been severely undermined. Suppose that your people used an area for a thousand years then lost several battles and had to abandon the territory? Suppose further that another people came in and used that area for a couple of hundred years. Both of you may have stories of your ancestors using that area, but those stories have become too... tattered? shredded? incomplete? distorted?... to be able to know the truth of the matter. Suppose your two peoples negotiated peaceful sharing of those areas, and you have stories of using the area, but no stories of the negotiations that lead to peacefully sharing those areas? https://www.bctreaty.ca/map This shows several areas that are claimed by multiple groups (you'll have to mouse over the various logos to see the areas they claim). If you are the government, what are you supposed to do when two sets of oral history, which are legally considered valid evidence, contradict one another? If you are a member of one of the groups, what is the best course of action? If you are a random Canadian trying to make sense of all this, what are you to do? Best extremely scientific answer I have come up with? "Beats the hell out of me." This whole mess is damnably complicated, and IMO the talking points of the left and the right are both incomplete and unsatisfactory.

Fair enough. The "event" was an allegory - a story that can be interpreted to reveal meaning. That said, I grew up on unceded land - my raising and education was funded by felling trees that were, according to Canadian law, not Canada's legal property. Vast swathes of what used to be 600-1000 year old trees are now slash piles, although to be fair, some replanting has been done. Even the many of the local loggers think that the logging practices here are outrageously wasteful. The only old growth trees left are the ones that are protected - we're currently cutting our grandkids' trees to keep the industry going. Several billion dollars worth of raw logs have left this area in the last century, and all that has come back are whatever part of the loggers' wages that they spend in the area. There were almost no benefits for the FN folks who, according to Canadian law, were the legal owners of those trees. You have not addressed the premises or the conclusion of the argument. To be clear, I am not making a moral argument. This is entirely unrelated to the normal dialogue that goes on between the left and the right about indigenous issues - IMO this argument does not get made because it could be financially ruinous to Canada as a whole, and even the NDP knows that. I am making a specific, factual claim that can be evaluated for truth or falsehood. 1)Ever since 1763, it has been the law in Canada that Aboriginal title can only be extinguished by negotiating treaties between the Crown and whichever group claims the land. 2)Canada broke this law. 3)Therefore, Canada has a legal obligation to accept justice, under its own laws.

From Guide to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Canada.ca Charter rights include life, liberty and personal security. "Not dying of the plague" is not in there, but I would argue it is under the right to "life". The Charter also gives people the right to travel and live in any part of the country. So some people's Charter right to travel freely is clashing with other people's Charter right to life. The Principle of Harm states that we ought to be free to do whatever we want, provided it does not harm others. If I want to go to a diner, but my doing so risks harming others by potentially giving them covid, this would seem to be a pretty clear violation of the Principle of Harm (the Harm Principle is a philosophical argument, not a legal one).

Humans are not perfect creatures. If you require a person to act on their ideological principles consistently in order to take them seriously, you might end up inhabiting a world full of people who you can't take seriously. Heard this nice allegory recently: Suppose we're both in Toronto. I want to travel to Winnepeg, and you want to travel to Vancouver. We can travel together for part of the way. Maybe I buy the hotel rooms and you buy the gas and food, or something like that. Even though we aren't going to the same destination, we can both profit from cooperating. Maybe politics is like that. I definitely agree that the "Rules-Based Order" effectively means that America sets a bunch of rules and bullies others into obeying them while America flouts them. The MSM is comprised almost entirely of for-profit, privately owned propaganda machines. Spewing BS is what they do, it's why they are, and it's not going to change anytime soon The best solution I can think of would be to go back to the rules that limited media ownership to (I believe) two newspapers and one tv station. I would also bring back the Fairness Doctorine. Problem is that this wouldn't touch the hot mess that is social media and youtube. I think we are already seeing the US receding and becoming less. So far it appears that the power vacuum they leave behind will be filled by China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. I sincerely hope you are right about Russia and China being less murderous than America. Worth pointing out that nobody has been able to say 'no' to America since WWII - I'm skeptical that China or Russia would handle being a hyperpower any better. I think it's bad for a person, or a people, to have the kind of power over others that America had for about 70 years. I think one of the big lessons of Trump is that the status quo being awful does not mean that things can't get worse.

That is because those wars are not fought between great powers - they are either non-nuclear powers squabbling, or nuclear powers bullying non-nuclear powers.

I see where you're going with your critique of anarchism, but I think you may be conflating some individuals with the philosophical school of thought. I have no doubt that individual Anarchists have done many abominable things, but the idea as a whole has not. That said, I think I understand you to be arguing that Anarchism is basically an unworkable idea that only exists on paper so we should probably focus our energies on things that are possible. Please let me know if I don't understand correctly. FWIW, I've heard people make those same arguments against Communism. It is certainly a fact that people on the far left put as much effort into fighting one another as they do into anything else. Here's a good comic about it: Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophers VII: Left Wing Adventures - Existential Comics Sounds like you are more knowledgeable than I about that period of US history. Good for him for managing to reduce America's military budget. American values are really strange to me - they don't want to be taxed for anything that could help Americans, but they are super eager to be taxed to pay for dropping bombs on helpless people. Weird that you can love your country while also hating half of the people in your country. I suppose it would make sense to me if I had been born there?

To avoid miscommunication (and another gigantic essay :P), I've put this into standard form and simplified it as much as possible: 1)Ever since 1763, it has been the law in Canada that Aboriginal title can only be extinguished by negotiating treaties between the Crown and whichever group claims the land. 2)Canada broke this law. 3)Therefore, Canada has a legal obligation to accept justice, under its own laws. Arguments such as "we gave them science," or "they had it bad before we got here," or "the world is imperfect so of course Canada is imperfect too," are reasonable but do not address either the premises or the conclusion of this argument.

Thanks for your post, it reads as though you made it in good faith and I respect that. This is a tough issue to talk about because there are lots of commonly accepted "facts" which are actually false, and a lot of the truth has been suppressed. Sometimes reasonable adults end up shouting their "facts" at each other and nothing really gets discussed. You are correct that different groups of people abused and dispersed each other before Canada's arrival. That does not change the simple fact that Canada broke its own laws by acquiring and keeping much of its land. Similarly, Canada instituting reserves does not change the fact that Canada broke its own laws. The argument I'm making is not "Canada did morally bad things so now they should have to pay money to help the less fortunate." The argument is "Canada is a convicted criminal entity that has never faced justice for the crimes it chose to commit and chooses to perpetuate." The only laws I am considering are Canada's. There are many Canadians who believe the myth of "free education" for first nations folks, but it is more complicated. For instance, all on-reserve schools are federally funded, and long story short, they are funded around 30% less per student than off-reserve schools are. Indigenous programs spending increases were capped at 2% in the 90s. Given that indigenous populations have increased by 42.5% since 2006, a great many of their programs are chronically underfunded. This means that their schools are actually getting less funding per student every year. https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/first-nations-schools-are-chronically-underfunded Each band only gets a certain amount of funding for post-secondary grants, and when that money is gone, it's gone. They are often unable to fund everyone who wants to attend university. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/debunking-the-myth-that-all-first-nations-people-receive-free-post-secondary-education-1.3414183 There are lots of reasonable, well-intentioned adults who believe that all natives get free tuition. This belief is false. Haha while living in Yellowknife I met several adults who sincerely believed that all natives get a brand new truck every two years from the taxpayer! At the time I was a child and I found their sincerity convincing, now I am old enough to do my own research, although I can't help but chuckle at the outlandishness of that particular claim. I mean, let's assume half of native folks are too young to drive - that is ~800,000 adults, so 400,000 trucks per year, google says the average truck in Canada is 37,345, so Canada would be spending a bit under 15 billion dollars per year on new trucks! SMH You are also correct that replacing the Indian Act is very contentious. The reasons are very complicated - I haven't put the work in to understand why. This post is going to be super long as it is so I'll just skate past this particular minefield for now. You are definitely correct with the "strange sort of two-tier citizenship," and you are not the first to point that out. Keep in mind that the Indian Act was imposed by Canada, not negotiated freely. There have been lots of attempts to remove, replace, or amend it, and some of the amendments have succeeded but that's it. Again, super complicated and I haven't put in the work to understand all the history, but I'm pretty sure that the actions of both sides would make sense to someone who had put that work in. I personally don't think that McDonald's refusal to fund generous welfare programs is what made Canada's treatment of indigenous folks a genocide - it was more about his efforts to exterminate their identity as a people, which is, admittedly, not what the word "genocide" actually means. My read on that situation is that the word "genocide" is being stretched from its intended meaning of "attempt to exterminate a people" to include a new meaning of "attempt to exterminate the identity of a people." From what I understand, the people who authored the Truth & Reconciliation report were well aware that a report just like it gets made every decade or two and then ignored, and they wanted this one to be impossible to ignore, so they chose a very inflammatory term, hoping Canada wouldn't ignore it again. I don't really approve, personally - I think words have specific meanings, and language becomes much less useful when those meanings are lost. That said, I understand that the problem of Canadian ignorance and apathy is a real one, and I don't have a better solution. I don't agree with what they did, but I at least understand why they did it. At any rate, the Canadian government deployed militarized police officers (the RCMP) to take children from their parents and deliver them to residential schools, and if the children escaped, the RCMP were tasked with tracking them down and returning them. This went on for more than a hundred years. However, any potential compensation that may or may not be owed to native folks for this would be a moral argument, and not a legal one, because it was legal in Canada for the RCMP to kidnap children at gunpoint and take them away, if they were native. By contrast, it was illegal in Canada to gain sovereignty over native lands using any means except treaties negotiated through the Crown. I prefer to avoid the term "reperations," because it is already used to describe what American black folks are trying to get from the U.S. government. It is also a moral argument, not a legal one - to the best of my knowledge, America did not need to break its own laws in order to institute and maintain slavery. Canada's theft of unceded territory is a legal argument. It has gone to the Supreme Court on numerous occasions. Canada broke its own laws by acquiring unceded territory, it broke its own laws by keeping that territory, it broke its own laws by harvesting resources on that territory, and it continues to break those laws by refusing to give that territory back. Whatever happened to the Loyalists in America is between them and the American government. If they have a legal argument to make, they should make it. It has nothing at all to do with natives or with Canada's criminal actions. If France has a legal argument to make for New France, they should make it. Other countries crimes have no bearing on Canada's. People have proven in court that Canada stole unceded land. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/delgamuukw-court-ruling-significance-1.5461763 "The First Nations appealed and eventually the case made its way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which found Aboriginal title could not be extinguished, confirmed that oral testimony is a legitimate form of evidence, and stated that Aboriginal title rights include not only land, but the right to extract resources from the land." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haida_Nation_v_British_Columbia_(Minister_of_Forests) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsilhqot'in_Nation_v_British_Columbia There are many, many more. I didn't read these because I've already done a couple hours of research while writing this post and my brain is getting tired. Basically, you don't need to trust my word, or anyone else's - the truth is out there. Problem is the truth is so damn complicated, and there are so many nice, profitable lies, oversimplifications, and half-truths. Anyways, hope this made sense okay. Thanks for reading!

You forget that we live in the present. The next war isn't going to be "defend the homeland from an invading force." It will be "somebody pushed a button that did something unspeakable, hopefully enough humans survive to do anything more than envy the dead."

Suppose your family used to have a plot of land and it was taken from you illegally several generations ago. When your family had it, it was forested, had a lake, and had some mineral deposits. There was game in the forest and fish in the lake. The people who stole it from them cut down the forest, mined out the minerals, and dumped all the tailings into the lake. Now there is no lumber, there are no minerals, there is no game, there are no fish, the land is polluted and the lake is toxic. Suppose you proved, in a Canadian court of law, the truth of all of this. In theory, you could sue for the value of the land, the value of the lumber, the value of the minerals, the value of the game, the value of the fish, and the cost of the environmental cleanup. Royal Proclamation of 1763 - Wikipedia TLDR, according to Canadian law, both past and present, the only way to take sovereignty from indigenous peoples is through treaties negotiated by the Crown. This means that, according to Canadian law, nearly all of BC and Quebec and most of the Maritimes and territories are not part of Canada. This was the law from back when we were British North America, it was explicitly kept as part of the Constitution in 1982, and continues to be the law today. When people talk about "unceded land," what they mean is "land stolen by Canada but we don't want to actually say that it was stolen because then Canada would have to answer to its own laws for that theft and Canada would also have to give that land back and that would be really awkward because Canada isn't done pillaging it yet." Arguing over whether America owes reparation's is a moral argument - slavery was legal in America and, according to American law, no laws were broken by making them slaves. By contrast, whatever Canada owes is a legal argument, because according to Canadian law, those lands were never part of Canada, and Canada has chosen to ignore its own laws in this manner for every moment of its existence. It's darkly hilarious to me that, when a Canadian fails to obey a law, Canada calls that Canadian a "criminal," and yet no Canadian has ever been as criminal as Canada is. After all, even the worst Canadian was not actively breaking the law *right this second* for most of his life - the same cannot be said of Canada.

RE: the whole "Women in the forces sub-thread:" Advances in science have rendered physical strength less important for building and destroying. Some of you will have heard the stories of Paul Bunyan or John Henry - these are stories of the decline of the importance of male strength. The giant strapping lumberjack is outproduced by a mousy suit wearing city dude with a chainsaw; the working class hero dies trying to keep up with a steam powered rock drilling machine. Not to say that soldiers don't need muscle power, but do want to say that a woman can do lots of jobs in construction and destruction either just as well as a man, or nearly as well as a man. Hard to see why, for instance, snipers or pilots couldn't get by with below-average strength. Also, for every 10 people in the military, only 1 of them sees actual combat. This sounds incredible, but it turns out that the job of getting the soldier where they need to be, with the things they need to have, before the enemy gets there, requires many more hours of work. Can you be a quartermaster with below average strength? A code breaker? A logistics officer? Here's a military saying - amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics. If we got a generational talent at logistics, would we disqualify that talent if it had a vagina? The other argument historically raised against women in the forces is that women are where babies come from. There have been societies that sent their women to fight, but none have existed for many hundreds of years to the best of my knowledge. The problem has to do with the fact that, eventually, you are going to suffer losses. Say you lose 9 out of 10 men in a battle. That 1 survivor can fertilize many women. However, say you lose 9 out of 10 women in a battle. Your next generation of soldiers will be pretty small. This argument doesn't really hold water anymore - basically, there is no shortage of humans, and we aren't talking about sending *all* of the women in Canada to fight, only the ones who *want* to. Finally, to the very revealing comments that some have made about how "women in the army is feminism's fault" and "what do you think will happen if you tempt all those poor hapless men?" Anyone who thinks there isn't a rape culture in the military, feel free to re-read these past few pages. Personally I found it very concerning. People are responsible for their own actions. If a person is tempted by something they know is illegal and/or unethical, it is their responsibility to resist temptation. Period. We would not excuse a thief for stealing unattended valuables, no matter how tempted they were. The idea that "if you put men and women together the men won't be able to help themselves," is rapist-enabling tripe. When we desegregated the work force, we encountered problems with sexual harassment in the workplace. With time, education, and changes to how these institutions operate, we have made some progress there. No reason we can't do similarly for the armed forces. Suppose, though, that you are a man who genuinely doesn't know what is ok in your workplace. Here are some popular sayings you may have heard to help you out. "Don't dip your pen in company ink." "Don't say something to a woman at work that you would not want a man to say to you in prison." "Rape is illegal." "No means no." Last of all, the idea that "if it weren't for all these feminists, we wouldn't even have this problem." We like to talk about freedom in the West. Look back over the past few pages of this thread and you will see many posters complaining that the government is taking away their freedom. If the government tells women they can't join the army, the government is taking away those women's freedom. Do we value freedom, or do we only value OUR freedom?

I tried googling up the article you mention, was unable to find anything by Chomsky on thenation.com before 1999. If I equated "saying or doing something I disagree with" with "being an idiot or a traitor" I would not be able to collaborate with anyone. FWIW Neoliberalism was well entrenched in the West well before the Berlin Wall fell. The fall of the Soviet Union did not cause the West to swing to the right, that swing was already well underway. Agreed that there are problems with American imperialism. I've learned that "opposing a bad thing" is not the same as "being a good thing." I suspect if we traded American hegemony for Russian or Chinese hegeomny we would end up with buyer's remorse.

Worth remembering that before Capitalism, we had Feudalism. I don't think there are any reasonable adults who want Feudalism back, so if we're getting rid of Capitalism we'd better have something tangible and effective to replace it. At this point in time I don't know what that would be. While FDR was bringing in the New Deal, Bennett was all about laissez-faire economics - he thought that if the government helped Canadians, they would , and by the time Bennet brought in his version of the New Deal it was 1935 and people viewed it as too little, too late. As a result, Canadians suffered a longer, deeper depression than Americans. Useful googles for anyone interested in this period of history include 'the on-to-Ottawa trek', the 'Bennett buggy" and Section 98 - Wikipedia. Pierre Berton's "The Great Depression" is very good, if sometimes depressing.

I completely understand being frustrated by the covid situation, I am too. The government actually paid us for months to stay home, but a few of us weren't willing to do that. The government asked us not to travel internationally, and a few of us weren't willing to make that sacrifice. Then the government put in insufficient measures to protect us from each other, and some of us weren't willing to follow them. Now we are here. This problem is not caused by the government, it is caused by citizens who won't take responsibility for their beliefs and their actions. How have we reached a point where grown adults think their right to go get a haircut is more important than someone else's right to not die of the plague? How have we reached a point where the rest of us will just sit there and watch superspreaders ruin our economy and needlessly increase the death count? Where have all the grown-ups gone? I'm 40, barely old enough to remember when there were adults who talked about their responsibilities. Now all I hear are grown children demanding their rights. FWIW, if the government actually were totalitarian, they could invoke the Emergency Measures Act, which would allow them to temporarily suspend civil liberties. Those restrictions could be challenged in court but would stand in the interim. They could have suspended the right of the press to platform covid deniers, they could have suspended the rights of people to travel internationally and in between provinces, they could have suspended the rights of people to attend religious services in person, among other reasonable measures. They did not do any this. Personally, I wish they would have, because I value the right of people to not die of the plague above the aforementioned rights. Given they have let tens of thousands of Canadians die rather than restrict people's rights, it seems pretty silly to say this is a totalitarian government. I would, however, say that this is a government that values the rights of the privileged over the survival of everyone who isn't privileged. I would also say that the people holding the levers of power shouldn't be.

Thanks for your post, it contained a lot that I was unaware of. Was not familiar with Gloria Steinem, just wiki'd her. Gotta say, it's a bad look for a person who spent decades involved in federal politics to have been having secret involvement with the CIA. Makes her look bad, her causes look bad, American politics look bad, and the CIA... well, looking bad is sort of what they do best. That and assassinations, drug smuggling, election interference, etc etc etc. I also hadn't heard of George Meaney. Super weird to me that someone that virulently anticommunist ended up becoming the biggest figure in unions for decades in the US. Guess that's America for you. Read his wikipedia article, sounds like he played an important role in stamping out communism and, in the long run, weakening unions. Ironic because it sounds like weakening unions was not his intent. I know that America was hip-deep in "regime change" in Latin America for decades. I'm not an expert, but to the best of my knowledge, the general pattern was that a democratically elected left wing government would be removed and a hard right junta installed in its place, which committed enough atrocities against their own people that the people were unable to resist having their natural resources pillaged for pennies on the dollar by american corporations. For anybody who is unfamiliar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America. Truly a shameful story. Regarding Chomsky, I see the world as made up of good people who sometimes do bad things and bad people who sometimes do good things. I see the difference between the two as being mostly a matter of time, circumstance, perspective and, of course, choice. I can appreciate some of the good Chomsky has done without needing to make him out to be a saint. In particular, the work he has done creating academic "proof" of many of America's misdeeds has IMO been very important. On a personal level, I am indebted to him for Manufacturing Consent (which was in collaboration with Edward Herman). It forever changed the way I view and consume information. I don't always agree with him, and I also don't always understand him (I haven't yet put the work in to figure out whatever he means by "anarcho-syndicalism" for instance). I think one important difference between America and the Soviet Union is that America did not find it necessary to murder Chomsky. I have no doubt that he would have been executed, sent to the Gulag, or simply "disappeared" had he lived in China or Russia. I've listened to interviews where people ask him why he was a fiercer critic of America than of the Soviet Union (I think the question has come up several times but can't remember which interviews). His response was that as an American, he is more responsible for America's crimes, and as an American, he is more able to do something about America's crimes. As much as I can criticize the Soviets and/or Chinese "Communist" governments for their authoritarianism, abuse of their citizenry and needless brutality, it is definitely worth bearing in mind that America is as, or even more, violent. The biggest difference I see is the scope and justification - the American war machine spread death and destruction on a much vaster scale, and the American propaganda machine is far more effective than the Soviets ever were. I guess America has committed fewer large scale atrocities against their own citizenry, so yay?

Definitely agree that there is a balancing act necessary. When I'm talking to people about socialism, I often like to say, "Nobody is saying that fire departments should be privately owned and operated for profit, and nobody is saying that professional wrestling ought to be owned by the taxpayer and operated for the common good." Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot, problem is I think the sweet spot is constantly changing as our circumstances and values change. JMO.

I don't have a position on the "Great Reset," myself. It's hard for me to distinguish between what it actually is, and what various other people say it is. I do think that the wrong people are in charge of society, and I would welcome some radical changes, provided they are well thought out and we are able to gain a broad consensus of support. Any paradigm shift that is not consented to (and I mean informed consent) by at least 70% of the population is IMO doomed to fail. Right now I think there are few changes that 70% of Canadians would agree on. My hope is that if more Canadians understood rhetoric and were more politically literate, we could build that consensus on our own, from the bottom up, then force our government to implement whatever changes we could agree on.

With apologies to any Haida folks for any inaccuracies, here is my best attempt at explaining part of their philosophy. Yahguudang Translates literally as "respect." A very useful idea that binds together elements of many ethical frameworks. My (limited) understanding is that "respect" applies to ourselves, other individuals, other peoples, animals, the land, water and air, and the interconnectedness and intergenerationality of all life. When we give all of these types of respect we become worthy of it ourselves. I agree that those in charge of our society are too short sighted. If I had my druthers, our elected politicians would be responsible for short-term, tactical decisions, and the Senate would be responsible for long-term, strategic decisions. That said, I'm not really sure exactly what that would look like in practice, so at this point it's sort of pie-eyed dreamscaping.

Please correct me if I'm misinterpreting you. Taxme had said, "All we the people want is to have lower taxes, less government, less rules and regulations and to keep our god given rights and freedoms." I was just pointing out that if we have less government we are creating a power vacuum and something else will fill that void. I am not aware of anything poised to fill that void in today's world besides corporations and oligarchs - it is possible there are factors I'm not aware of. You're right that we tend to follow America in most ways. Reading your post it occurred to me that "social media" is all owned by oligarchs as well, so twitter, facebook etc could just as easily be called "corporate media" as CNN or Fox. I'll have to think about that. Lost in the hullabaloo about "cancel culture" is the fact that there have always been groups of people trying to regulate the speech of others. Think of the "moral guardians" of the past. You may remember the Comics Code Authority - from the preamble in their wikipedia article, "At the height of its influence, it was a de facto censor for the U.S. comic book industry." The Ninja Turtles movies were highlights of my childhood - in the second one they never actually use their weapons, because concerned parents were worried about their children fighting with weapons, so they pressured the corporation that owned the intellectual property to refrain from having the Turtles fight with weapons. Organizations such as the National League of Decency, the Parents Television Council, the Parents Music Resource Center, and many, many others, have been working to try to limit some types of free speech to make society more "Christian," "decent," or to combat "obscenity," for decades. I think reasonable adults can debate when and why censorship is desirable - for instance, most people would probably support removing books that taught how to make bombs from school libraries, and most people would probably oppose a government that tried to make a religion mandatory, or forbid it entirely. For Corporations to lean left, they would need to, at the very least, advocate for using democracy to bring about socialistic policies (this would make them Social Democrat, or "left-of-centre"). The "culture war" going on right now isn't really about left-right policies, it's about dog whistles and distractions, and keeping reasonable adults arguing with one another instead of realizing that we have much more in common than we think. If a profit-driven corporation freely decides, all by themselves, that it will make more money by not printing, say, a few Dr. Seuss books, that corporation has not changed on the left-right spectrum. It is still a for-profit corporation, it is just doing different things to get its profit. "Left" and "right" are not about culture, they are about how a person or organization believes wealth should be distributed. You are correct that "Nazi" comes from "National Socialist." The reason they included "Socialist" in their name is because socialism was very popular in Germany at the time, so they were trying to get people who would have opposed them to side with them, or at the very least, remain neutral. In reality, Hitler *hated* Communism and Socialism. To this day, Fascists and Socialists are like oil and fire. From Wikipedia: "German communists, socialists and trade unionists were among the first to be sent to concentration camps." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust (press ctrl+f, type in socialist, press enter until you get there) I'm not sure who the "progressive socialists" you refer to are. I guess the likes of Bernie Sanders and Jagmeet Singh? Don't want to put words in your mouth though. Agree 100% with your post about the censorship of the Chinese government and how corporations are aligning themselves with China. For me, this is a good example of an issue that 95% of the right and left would agree on if we had better political vocabulary - sometimes a word that I think means X means Y to someone else, and then we end up shouting past one another instead of having a useful conversation.

It's worth remembering that humans invented Capitalism before we invented government regulation of Capitalists. England used to have an industrialized, Capitalist society that was wholly deregulated. The results were awful and can be read about in most Charles Dickens novels. Herbert Spencer Visits Pittsburgh - Existential Comics The problems alluded to in this strip were solved by government regulation. The 8 hour work day and 40 hour work week, minimum wage, safety regulations, laws against child labour and union breaking, taxation, environmental protections, and so much more, were all brought about by government regulation, and they were brought about to solve real problems that were plaguing society at the time. I agree that government is imperfect and that politics is inherently frustrating, but if we weaken our government it creates a power vacuum that will be filled by corporations and oligarchs. Respectfully, it seems to me that you are using "we the people" as though the views you are expressing are representative of all Canadians. I don't think Canadians as a whole agree on very many things. I also wonder if you've thought of who will be the guarantor of our rights and freedoms if we neuter the government. As things are now, if a person believes their rights have been violated, they go to the government for redress. If we defund and disempower our government, who will enforce our rights? That said, I totally agree with your points about how our democracy has become subverted. Politicians make promises, some of us believe them enough to vote, nearly half of the ballots we cast don't elect anyone, then our politicians go and do whatever they please with very little accountability to us, until the next election rolls around. The reason that this doesn't serve as adequate accountability is because the next election isn't a choice between what we want and what we have, it's a choice between several different, imperfect politicians. We make our choice and the whole cycle starts again with the same result. Being able to vote out the last liar doesn't help us if all the electable candidates will continue to lie. For me, the solution is for Canadians, as a whole, to come together and have a lot of respectful dialogue so that we can figure out what we stand for and why we stand for it. Then we can make effective plans for how we will hold our politicians to account. As long as it is only one group of Canadians out of many who are upset about any given problem, the ruling elite can play us off against each other instead of addressing our problems.

As the kids say, shots fired! You are totally correct that we are one of the only Democracies in the world that did not need to use violence to gain suffrage. FWIW I think it is a rare and special thing when any group that holds power is willing to share that power without a fight, even though I disagree with a lot of what they did I do respect the fact that no violence was needed. The British at the time were IMO quite contemptuous of Democracy - "if you let the peasants vote they'll vote for a bunch of stupidity." So they "gave" us the Senate, to make sure that we wouldn't be able to vote for things they disapproved of. Democracy is a funny and frustrating thing. If you let people vote and count the ballots and the winner gains power, it's technically democracy, even if you only let a few people vote, or if you gerrymander your districts to intentionally disenfranchise their residents, or have an "electoral college" that ignores the will of the voters, or have a "first past the post" system that disenfranchises nearly half of those who cast ballots. "Democracy" can actually describe such a variety of systems that IMO it isn't really a very useful term in modern life. Lots of unscrupulous governments like to run their mouths about how much they value Democracy, even while they actively undermine their Democratic institutions. It is a problem.

The biggest single lesson I learned from Trumpers is that calling people stupid will not convince them of anything. Worth pointing out that being ignorant does not make a person dumb. This stuff is not taught in school and the media has been actively spreading misinformation for generations. I think the right often tries to paint the left as "lazy" and the left often tries to paint the right as "stupid." In my experience, the best way to find out how hard a person works is to go with them to do the things they want to do, and the best way to find out how smart a person is is to talk with them about the things that interest them. I think that "lazy" and "stupid" are not really helpful and keep the right and the left divided, angry and defensive. I believe that if we could get to the point where people can have respectful, informed conversations, the right and left will discover that we have a lot of the same political problems, and that those problems have a lot of the same causes, and that those problems have a lot of the same solutions. Well, that's my hope anyway, what do I know? ? I follow a lot of what you're saying here. I agree that many people have sincerely believed themselves to be "Communist" who were using violence because they had given up on conversation or because they believed the ends justified the means. For me, that's like a person who claims to value democracy while rigging elections, or a person who values freedom while instituting mandatory minimum sentences, building for-profit prisons and militarizing police. Those people exist, but they are not exemplars of their belief system, they are actively perverting the belief system they claim to follow. Violence is problematic - if you use it, you've lost moral authority, and if you don't use it you get to sit and watch while it is used unjustly by states and oligarchs against the helpless. Pacifism can reasonably be seen as ableism coming from the privileged and slow suicide coming from the downtrodden. I don't have a solution to that dilemna yet I am curious to find who are "our adversaries" whose ideological rhetoric is served by Chomsky's critique? From the context I'm guessing you mean the oligarchy, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. I am personally not trying to foment revolution, just to give people better information. If people knew what "leftist" actually means, no reasonable adults would think that, for example, Hollywood was leftist, or the media was leftist, or the government, or the CBC, or really any of our institutions except maybe unions. If we were more politically literate we could have more useful conversations with our fellow citizens and it would be harder for the forked-tounged rhetoricians of the world to jerk us around. Your point that Marx didn't really address the environment at all is a sound one. It seems he did not foresee that particular crisis. I like that you referenced indigenous philosophers, I think there is a lot of very useful stuff to be learned there, but it has been violently suppressed for so long that it's hard to find a good, undistorted source. Their emphasis on intergenerationality, in particular, is keenly missing in our society. I think if we saw ourselves as part of a community that comprised our ancestors, the living, and our descendants, we would make more responsible decisions.

I really wish I could say you're wrong. Sometimes the NDP has ended up holding the balance of power, so I suppose you could make an argument that *sometimes* votes for the NDP aren't wasted. I guess I'd say that this seems to reveal that our democracy either isn't working properly, or was never intended to actually function as more than a way to trick Canadians into thinking we are in control of our own government.

Very reasonable and I've been there myself. Respectfully, I would urge you to consider a protest ballot. The system responds to people not voting by blaming the non-voters - "if you don't vote you don't have the right to complain," is a refrain I have heard dozens of times from self-righteous older folks who were secure in the knowledge that no matter who won, their concerns would be addressed. Vote for the Rhinos, or the Greens, or scratch out all the names and write "none of the above." At least then those in power won't be able to dismiss you and your concerns as easily. It might also be helpful to keep in mind that politics isn't about voting for the perfect candidate, it's about voting for the least flawed candidate. I have felt less anger towards politicians since realizing that, and it helps. Not being mad at, say, O'Toole, really helps me hear what he has to say with an open mind. Then, even if I still disagree with him, I'm better able to understand why other people choose to support him, and I'm less angry at those other people as well. Just a thought, hope it's helpful

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "community experiments" and would welcome an example or two. The wording makes me think of anarchism. Anarchist Organizing - Existential Comics Anarchy in the UK - Existential Comics There have been many violent anarchists, these comics ignore them although they are acknowledged briefly in the grey text below the second comic. Not trying to say "anarchists were perfect angels who would have made a utopia if not for those dastardly cops and oligarchs," just trying to say "mainstream society's view of what anarchism is, philosophically and politically, is deliberately distorted to serve the needs of those with wealth and power." Both comics have a grey box underneath them that give more historical context. You can google the names and verify what they were arrested for. There have been people who set up small communities based on consent and mutual aid. Some have failed on their own merits, others have "failed" because they were unable to defend themselves from State violence. I don't think I'd take the anti-police bias as far as the author does, but I do understand the point he's trying to make. I get where you're going with laziness and greed - they are problems, and pretending that people aren't flawed is just that - pretending. Hard to build a real government based on a fantasy. For me laziness is... not false, exactly, but not a helpful term. Strength without purpose is waste. It would make no sense, for example, to build up a massive military if you didn't have an enemy to use it on. It would make no sense to harvest food that you couldn't eat or store. It makes no sense to do work unless there is a reason for that work. This principle is in our genes, and to the best of my knowledge it is repeated throughout the animal kingdom. The easiest, healthiest calories are the ones that are consumed first. Like many things in life, this can be taken too far, but by itself I don't think it's a bad thing. Likewise with greed, it's not false but maybe not helpful to see ourselves in such a negative light. It is reasonable to fear a possible future where we do not have enough. In this light, it makes sense to take more than we need today. Neoliberalism has really pushed the idea that "greed is good," and that is definitely a problem, but that's not something that has been a historical constant for the majority of humans as near as I can find. To be fair, the majority of humans never had the chance to become greedy - serfs and peasants being able to get by with very little was more about survival than virtue. Anyways, I'm definitely not trying to convince you that we should all go become anarchists, just trying to give a richer understanding of what anarchism is and isn't. Until a couple of years ago, I thought of "anarchy" as being "the period of chaos in between governments" like it is in the Civilization games. Was very surprised to discover the truth.