I am Groot

I am not 'generally' unhappy. I'm specifically unhappy at the way we are being deliberately divided by government policy because the Liberals see this woke shit as politically advantageous in attracting left-wing voters who might otherwise vote for the NDP. I'm specifically unhappy at a government which has allowed our national security interests to take a greatly secondary priority to their electoral interests in attracting Chinese voters. I'm also specifically unhappy at them allowing our military to deteriorate to the point of uselessness because they don't see military spending as being politically beneficial enough. I'm specifically unhappy at how this government has worked against our natural resource industries instead of taking advantage of them, embraced climate change penalties for those who need energy - thus impoverishing us all while driving manufacturing offshore, all while accomplishing nothing. I'm specifically unhappy at drawing in massive amounts of immigrants to overwhelm our infrastructure, greatly increasing housing costs while holding labour costs low. I'm specifically unhappy that Canada is falling further behind our OECD competitors in wealth and economic well-being - as well as their attempts at hiding this by importing massive numbers to increase our GDP (while lowering our GDP per person). There are a lot of reasons to be unhappy here, and specifically unhappy at this government and its actions, statements and policies.

You're correct. _I_ don't need that. But there clearly are a number of men, principally young men, lost men, who do. And if his advice helps them then I certainly have no issue with that. There's lots of angry people out there. And aside from when dealing with imbecilic woke people who consider anyone who opposes multiple genders to be akin to Hitler I rarely see him as 'angry'. And speaking about imbecilic woke, I give you,this.

I doubt Marx is ever entertaining. I do watch Thomas Sowell, who famously was a Marxist when younger. He says his first real job working with numbers dealing with US employment figures, incentives and behavior cured him of that forever. Besides, why spend time on an ideology which is only occasionally 'good'? I rarely even watch Peterson. I'm not sure what he might have been referring to. It's not like he doesn't believe in climate change, AFAIK. He just thinks that the proposed solutions are largely unworkable and that humankind would be better helped by devoting that money to things like education and nutrition in the third world. His view is the only way out of the climate change issue is scientific/technological innovation and discoveries. Again, AFAIK. I don't devote much time to him. I just recall seeing an amusing and somewhat interesting little snippet on climate change from a question/answer session he did at Cambridge.

Do you think marginalized men (I've never heard him referring to simply white men) are not perhaps encouraged to be less whiny and to take responsibility by listening to his advice? He's not incorrect about the problems faced by young men and boys, who increasingly perform less well, academically, than young women and girls. He's also not wrong in trying to tell them how to do better.

I don't care enough about Marx to bother. It's a failed ideology, a failed economic model. What about what he says is incorrect?

No. That's not how I work. I ignore him on certain subjects because he sound silly. On psychological topics, though, he sounds quite sensible most of the time. And I believe Marx, and I am far from an expert, produced an unworkable system which ignores human motivation. On climate change, he has his opinion just like you do. My opinion tends to be similar to his in that I believe the scientists but also believe the proposed solution brought down by politicians is unworkable and will never achieve anything of substance but increasing poverty levels.

Which NDP? The Mulcair NDP or the Singh NDP? I'm not aware of any NDP policies on nationalization but the Mulcair NDP vowed fiscal discipline and to be more business friendly. Liberals have raised taxes already on higher earners while lowering it or eliminating it on lower earners. Would the NDP do it more enthusiastically? Perhaps, but the rate is already nearing the limit beyond which talented people leave the country (some already have) and the heads of major companies move their head offices to the US.

Jesus, assuming He existed, would have seen the way people act in life as a progressive learning experience. Life is but a minute aspect of the eternity of a soul's existence. And if you act up you go to hell for eternity. You will be judged at the pearly gates so not much need to punish criminals here on Earth. Oddly, those who are the most fanatically religious seem to be the most determined to severely punish people here on Earth anyway. And those who are the least religious, in general, are the least interested in earthly punishment.

Ok, this is about you not liking Peterson. I have no opinion on that. But it's generally a good idea to box your emotions and put them aside when doing analysis. Are you suggesting Peterson has never read Marx?

It was his main campaign plank in 2015. https://www.reuters.com/article/cnews-us-canada-politics-trudeau-idCAKBN0NP1RP20150504 Don't make assumptions. You're putting the cart before the horse and assuming I don't like Trudeau and so am criticizing his policies. Isn't it just as likely that I believe his policies have been bad and deliberately divisive and that is why I don't like him? What do you regard as being on the Left? Castro? Trudeau has largely absorbed the policies of the NDP. And I make a distinction here between the federal NDP and its western counterparts. The federal NDP is the creature of college academics and public sector unions. It couldn't care less about blue collar workers, who don't speak their language and have often offensive views. It cares primarily about identity politics - same same as the Liberals.

I disagree. I DO agree that he's veered into dumb places a lot since his near death experience with antidepressants. But he doesn't need to cash out anything. The guy has been raking in millions since he became a public figure. And I might point out that one of the things he's often been quoted as saying is that more money does not bring more happiness. That once you have enough money to pay the bills and live a decent enough life extra money is largely unimportant. He still can make some very interesting and worthwhile points. I recently saw an interview/discussion between him and Glen Loury where they discussed the problem of people with really low intelligence, and what place there might be for them in the world (almost none). And how that accounts for like ten percent of the population. Quite interest. As for the 'incel' comment, which is a kind of routine insult flung his way I really don't see it. His number one theme is that people, esp men, need to take responsibility for themselves, need to clean up their lives, do something worthwhile. And that a man who doesn't is worthless to women. I've never heard him blame women for anything. As far as I know his view is if women don't want you that's almost certainly your own damn fault and you should change the way you act and behave. Women don't like weaklings and whiners.

Strike never and substitute 'has not worked in decades'. It's a different world. No, Trudeau started out blaming 'the rich' and promising to take more money from them and give it to the more 'deserving' middle class. He appealed to people's resentment and greed. His time in office has been marked by him blaming people for various improper ways of thinking and behaving in order to curry favor with specific identity groups. Or to draw in another topic you and I were just discussing, to make things sound worse than they are to Muslims and then set himself up as their protector. "Look at how much danger and hatred of Islam there is! Only I care about you. Only I can protect you! Vote for me!" People seem to always be calling out populism from the Right but largely ignore it on the Left. Perhaps because our society and culture have been influenced by the revelations of how evil the Nazis were but has never taken in how evil the Communists were to the same degree.

This topic is about advice to Poilievre. And the advice of 'be nice and appeal to people's niceness' has never worked politically and never will. That's why no one uses it. Not the Liberals, not the NDP, not the Greens, not the BQ and not the Tories.

It is a rare populist who can enrage people who are not already angry. In most cases what they do is harness existing anger and direct it at the government. Or if they're the government, then at someone else. People are not angry because of anything Poilievre has said or done. They're angry because of shitty healthcare, impossible to afford homes and rents and rising food costs while the government throws away millions and billions on buying votes.

Not a chance in hell. The Liberals and NDP are too ideologically committed to the current Cuban-style system. And that system only works in an authoritarian dictatorship where the government gets to set all prices. Including the salaries of doctors and nurses. It does not work here. And it can not work here. Not with the way the prices of pharmaceuticals and hospital equipment keeps rising. Things will have to get worse. And then we'll need a conservative in office willing to bear the wrath of the Left in order to shift us over to a more European-style of healthcare which will be more sustainable. The outrage in the minds of the Left that anyone might make a profit off healthcare will stop the needed changes until that happens. It is ironic that the Left so admires Nordic countries until you suggest we switch our healthcare system to resemble theirs. Then that admiration turns to fury at such 'far right/alt-right/hateful conservative' views that profit only 'the rich'. The Left are literally willing to let people die in large numbers in pursuit of their imagined nirvana where the rich have to wait in long lines the same as the poor. Even though that does not and never will happen.

Why were you surprised. If anyone knows anything about Indian history (other than them) it ought to be brits.

Which had 68 instead of 71. Big whoop. Would you similarly approve of Christian groups demanding prayer rooms in public schools? And this is going to do that, how?

Why? Islam has never accepted Hinduism as a legitimate religion. It regards any religion which came after the 'one true religion - ie theirs' to be illegitimate. And it has a particular hatred of polytheism and henotheism. Islamic warlords spent centuries rampaging through northern India slaughtering millions. The reason Pakistan and Bangladesh, once traditionally part of India, are Muslim is because Muslim conquerors murdered or drove off all the Hindus who wouldn't convert.

Who wants you to do that? Not 12 foot ladder... Anyway, I just tried it and for some reason it doesn't seem to be working on this story. Not sure why. You should be able to read the story on the Globe site if you delete their cookies on your computer or phone.

I don't believe this is for subscribers only. The G&M paywall is a soft paywall that allows you to read a given number of articles per month before it blocks you. So if you delete the cookies it installs on your PC you're free to read articles - except for those marked subscribers only. There's also 12 foot ladder to help see over paywalls. It usually works on the Globe.

The bill is bad in all aspects, from what I can see. But it continues this government's almost bizarre fixation with regulating everything to the Nth degree, and insisting on multiple forms from anyone and everyone involved. So it is with this bill. The surface purpose seems unlikely to produce any lasting results other than to drive small producers out of business, unable to meet the regulatory burden to be recognized as 'Canadian content'. Right now such people are pushed higher on the search functions because they're local. If Google obeys this law they will be declared 'unCanadian' and pushed to the bottom. Getting a production certified as Canadian requires a raft of paperwork to prove, among other things, that its crew comprises a minimum of Canadian citizens, and that any funding is at least 75 per cent Canadian. Not only is it a fair bit of red tape to drop on Canada’s not-insubstantial cottage industry of internet content creators, but in the collaboration-heavy world of YouTube and Instagram much of their work would not meet the CRTC threshold. This was one of the reasons Liberal appointed Senator (and writer) David Richards was so angry about the bill. And why Margaret Atwood echoed him. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/liberal-senator-censorship-bill Margaret Atwood has weighed into the debate about Bill C-11, saying “bureaucrats should not be telling creators what to write.” In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Ms. Atwood said bureaucrats also should not be deciding what’s Canadian. “All you have to do is read some biographies of writers writing in the Soviet Union and the degrees of censorship they had to go through – government bureaucrats,” she said. “So it is creeping totalitarianism if governments are telling creators what to create.” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-margaret-atwood-on-bill-c11-and-why-bureaucrats-shouldnt-tell-authors/

No it would not be. The Harper government tried to bring in a milder version of this and few conservatives supported it.

Over 70 churches have been attacked. https://tnc.news/2023/01/16/a-map-of-every-church-burnt-or-vandalized-since-the-residential-school-announcements/ Then it would have been a good idea to have found an integrated Muslim to represent this instead of one who hates Canada and whose primary goal seems to be go get Muslim prayer rooms in schools. And in any event, you should know by now that Justin Trudeau couldn't care less about Islamophobia, or racism, or transphobia, or anything else. I mean, he cares in a fashionable, dilettante sort of way. But it's so far down the list of his concerns as to be almost negligible. Since he got elected every word he's uttered, every policy pronouncement, every law, every action of he and his government have been designed with the sole purpose of enhancing their popularity. This appointment, and the millions of taxpayer dollars going to it and its office, are not designed to attack 'islamophobia'. Their sole purpose is to enhance Liberal election fortunes with Muslims.

Certainly more widespread. There have been two attacks on Muslims I'm aware of. Rather a lot more BY Muslims which no one ever seems to want to acknowledge. I fail to see how appointing a textbook example of the kind of Muslims people who hate Muslims are likely to hate is going to in any way, shape or form do a single, solitary thing to convince them they're wrong. If Trudeau was actually looking to do something to address distrust/dislike of Muslims he'd have appointed a thoroughly assimilated Muslim to show people they need not be afraid of 'the other'.

What is your issue? If their ancestors weren't here they could hardly have suffered from our racism, now could they?