Canada

Why do Liberals trash Conservatives?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why do liberals feel it’s okay to publicly trash conservatives?”

It’s funny, but the only time I think of myself as a liberal is when an ideologue draws a line in the sand.

Whenever I encounter a nutbar, I think to myself that the idiot I have encountered is a nutbar. I don’t care much about triangulating their ideological affinity. I prefer interacting with people as people and not as idiotologues who are myopically affixed to a flag embedded in quicksand.

Sadly, though, it’s become almost impossible not to assume the nutbars I encounter are ideologically conservative. It has been so consistently this way for so long that I was surprised recently to discover a nutbar group that was ideologically left-wing.

I had to do a double-take because I hadn’t encountered anyone I could remember who had extreme views (from my biased perspective).

If you feel conservatives are unfairly trashed, then you are obliged to speak out against the people who have co-opted the conservative brand. It’s not like the MAGAts among you are the silently incognito types in your group.

You don’t get to complain about liberals mocking conservative stupidity because that’s the only brand of conservative appearing on the horizon.

“All that is required for evil to exist is for good people to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke

If you wish to identify yourself as conservative and be treated with respect, then you have a house to clean up.

Standing on the sidelines and complaining about being trashed isn’t defensible. It makes you a coward and a hypocrite.

If you have a problem with liberals trashing conservatives, then you should be going after the people who are giving liberals something to trash.

You should be screaming at the top of your lungs at the treasonous monsters who are making you look bad.

Complaining to liberals about being trashed only makes you look worse.

Grow some Liz Cheney-sized cojones and fight to take your party back. Clean out the trash clogging up your house and take the garbage people out with it. You need to stop behaving like a snowflake because you bear responsibility for this happening.

You’re supposed to work with your honourable opposition to create solutions to our common problems, not treat them like enemy combatants while mindlessly cheering for your team and trash-talking the other like politics were a sporting event.

Real lives are at stake, and your nation deserves better. The entire world deserves better. Democracy demands better.

Bonus Question:Why do many democrats oppose ICE deporting illegal immigrants?

Your question needs to be fixed:

“Why do many Democrats oppose ICE deporting people without first identifying and proving that they legitimately are immigrants who are in the country illegally?”

You’re welcome.

A bonus question you could add is, “Why does the Trump administration commit human rights violations against American citizens by ignoring an 800-year-old legal precedent from the Magna Carta that’s more than three times as old as the U.S.?”

Yet another question you might want to ask is, “Why am I not scared of being hauled away in the dead of night and sent to a foreign concentration camp?”

Being placed on an International Human Rights Watch list should deeply disturb you. If it doesn’t, you’re the problem, not the people who fight to protect rights you take for granted. Before rewording their protests to suit your biases, you should try to understand what they are saying.

Should Pierre Poilievre remain leader of the CPC?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Question for Canadians, specifically those who are Conservatives. Do you think Pierre Poilievre ought remain leader of the CPC following the loss of two elections and loss of his own seat? No rants please, I am looking for thoughtful answers.”

Have a look at this picture. It’s a photo of the ballot in Pierre Poilievre’s Carleton riding. It contains, I believe, about 91 names of candidates who are mostly independents.

This ballot contains over 85 people in his neighbourhood who were so moved to get rid of him that they chose to run against him.

This speaks volumes well above and beyond whatever national animosity he earned while in the public eye. These are people who know him on a personal level.

They know enough about him and his twenty years of service, accomplishing nothing of benefit for them while cultivating a misanthropic attitude toward them, as he consistently voted against measures that would help them.

They knew that he was no representative of their needs in government and went far above and beyond just voting against him or choosing to campaign on behalf of his opponent.

They wanted him gone and were not motivated enough to support any particular candidate, so they chose the only option they felt they had… to run against him.

This isn’t typical political animosity. This is personal animosity.

These people know him and hate him as a person.

When a leader with integrity loses their seat in a typical competition without this level of animosity toward them, they re-evaluate their success as a leader and do what Jagmeet Singh did — step down.

They make room in the party for another leader to step forward to allow them and the party an opportunity to succeed where they may not have succeeded.

Jagmeet had an uphill battle in this election because Donald Trump and the divisive Conservatives forced this into a two-party election. His party and the country value his contribution as a Canadian who loves his country. Respect for his integrity has only shot up because he decided to step down.

Canada, as a whole, has had enough of Conservative incompetence for a long time now. The ABC (Anyone But Conservative) voting strategy became popular because of Stephen Harper. Harper is arguably the worst PM in Canadian history, who has not only done significant damage to the nation and its safety net but continues to create harm on a global basis while supporting a fascist takeover of governments around the world.

All of their campaigning is focused on divisiveness, fear and hate-mongering while fabricating smear tactics taken straight from the Nazi playbook.

Since losing in Canada, they have escalated their divisive campaigning, and Danielle Smith, the Alberta premier, has just begun a separatist campaign in Canada as a power grab for their hateful ideology.

These people do not put their community, province, or nation’s needs above their desires for power. They don’t care about established law or treaties that predate the founding of their nation or province. (Just like what is happening to an 800-year-old precedent of due process in the U.S.) It shows in every one of them as they ignore the people’s wishes and carve out paths to authoritarianism worldwide.

A true leader of the people understands and respects that they are temporary custodians of a tradition of support for the people.

Everywhere you look where an authoritarian government exists, you see someone focused on egotistical concerns. They don’t put the people they are tasked to and trusted with a sacred responsibility to do their best for the people above their desires.

To them, the people are a means to an end, not the end itself.

Poilievre shows he is cut from the same cloth as Donald Trump, who was so upset with losing the prior election that he encouraged an attempted coup of the nation. Even now, he and his minions work toward having him succeed in being elected for a third term.

Poilievre is following in Trump’s extremist footsteps by insisting he remains the leader of the party and will likely try to supplant another party member to continue hanging onto power.

This should be a time of reflection for the Conservatives, to rethink their values and strategies for doing right by the nation they serve, but that’s not the case these days with Conservatives worldwide.

We are in the throes of a fascist resurgence as a direct consequence of the economic disparity forcing people into extremes of thought and action.

Everything we are struggling with today is precisely due to a distorted economic landscape. Consequently, Canada is now dealing with a mania for power that would almost appear cartoon-like were it not so threatening to global stability.

A leader who loses not only an election they should have won by a massive margin, but also one they would have won by 30 points according to the polls only two months ago, is a rank failure in leadership. If he were a person of integrity who cared about putting the nation first, he would have already announced his intention to step down. Instead, we are saddled with this cartoon of egotistical buffoonery.

One would assume the Conservative Party of Canada wishes to be taken seriously by Canadians as a party that cares enough to put country over party. If so, they must push Pierre Poilievre to step down.

Canada is not the U.S., which gives Conservatives a pass when they lie about putting Country over party and then proceed to betray the country for decades upon decades to allow a depraved monster to tear down what we have all worked hard and sacrificed much to build.

If Americans no longer want to lead the world in what it means to be a democracy, then Canada will handily step up to the plate and show the world that we will not allow another fascist regime to threaten our future as a people.

We will do whatever TF it takes to ensure the will of the people consistently overrides the will of any would-be king.

Where did Pierre Poilievre go wrong?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Where did Pierre Poilievre go wrong? How did he blow it?”

Rather than answer this question directly because it’s already been answered well enough, I want to explain why Reich-wing politics has been going wrong for a long time.

In a nutshell, they offer nothing beyond rage bait. They offer no vision, no solutions, no analyses. They offer no ideas for anything not based on imposition and an upward redistribution of wealth.

They have been wallowing in a cynically misanthropic view of their constituents and the system of governance they pretend to represent as wolves in sheep’s clothing for several decades now.

Trudeau may not have been perfect in every respect, but he came through when it counted. His heart and mind were in the right place. He is a man of integrity who realized that the public develops fatigue after a decade.

He chose to do what Joe Biden did by reading the room and putting country over personal aspirations.

He chose to do the honourable thing that a selfless person would do when they love their country. He made way for the next leader, who would be the right person to carry the torch for the next cycle.

Poilievre had a winning hand that he could have used to coast into leadership. All he had to do was offer the people some uplifting and inspirational ideas. Had he been capable of extolling the benefits of a vision that could align a nation in solidarity against a rapidly changing world where a long-standing alliance suddenly threatened our nation’s sovereignty, he could have been viewed as a potential hero for the people.

The trouble is that he’s not a people person. He cannot care about people, and he repeatedly demonstrates his misanthropic disdain for the people through numerous heinous examples, like denying the pain and suffering of families who have endured horrors like the residential school nightmare.

Instead of contrasting against the orange enemy to the south, he echoes him in attitude and virtually guarantees a similar destruction of Canada that Trump has created for our neighbours.

Poilievre, Trump, and CONservative notables worldwide have embraced this same ethos of disdain for the people and the democratic principles they have sworn to uphold.

Instead of presenting solutions to problems, they point fingers of blame at an opponent they treat like a foreign enemy and hurl confessions as accusations to stir up divisive public ire rather than messages of unity or a path to solidarity.

About four or so decades ago, Conservative campaign strategists discovered the effectiveness of negative campaigning and took to it like ducks to water.

Choosing that simplistic and simple-minded but winning strategy allowed them to abdicate their responsibility to devise productive strategies for motivating a nation to grow together.

Over time, they lost their ability to develop sound policy while focusing solely on attacking their opposition with increasing hyperbolic negativity.

Watching how that strategy has played out in the U.S. has made it clear to many Canadians that we don’t want to import that destructive nonsense. We’re better than that.

We’re getting tired of the negativity and want authentic leadership.

When a genuine leader stepped forward to present Canadians with a real vision, real solutions, solid ideas, and the courage to face down a legitimate enemy and tame him, it was immediately apparent to many Canadians that Poilievre wasn’t even in the same league of leadership.

It’s like comparing a junior league hockey player with a Stanley Cup champion.

The entire world has also been running out of tolerance for the childish antics of the narcissistic incel troglodytes and their perpetual nasal drip of toxic spew.

The endless hate-mongering is tiresome and emotionally draining. Living in a fog of pollution reminds me of the wafting odours I grew up with in a town with multiple pulp mills. There were days when the smell caused headaches.

I remember how people who were employed by the pulp mills expected shortened lifespans from their jobs, but extolled the benefits of getting a fresh coat of paint on their vehicles every couple of years because of the damage to the paint by just being parked in the lot while they worked their shift.

CONservatives today remind me of that toxic gas that one learned to endure as it filled the town’s air to overwhelm one’s senses. We learned to carry on with our days despite it. We also knew its long-term effects were destructive. We endured it because those mills were essential to sustaining our town’s economy.

We lived off the gas that poisoned us.

That’s what Conservatives have become for society and the people they revile as “woke” are waking up to how they hate being lied to and played like puppets for the benefit of a few who laugh at our naivety as they rip us off while calling us losers and suckers.

This is who and what they are. Until they can be incentivized to be better humans, they will continue to fill the air with life-threatening toxins.

Pierre didn’t “blow it” because he can’t be anything but a product of his grooming. He’s not a leader and never has been anything but a mouthpiece for those who gave him his marching orders.

The people responsible for blowing the lead they had been given on a silver platter are those who convinced a nation of 350 million people that a 34 times convicted felon would be a saviour of a country.

The toxic people who are motivated by hatred blew it because they presume everyone is as broken and toxic as they are.

It’s like every racist believes everyone else is racist. That’s the only way they can justify their hate-mongering and live with it. If they woke up one day and honestly faced the ugly truth about themselves, many would be so horrified by the ugliness in their nature that they would break into pieces.

We’re done with the negativity and want something to live for, not fight against.

Why are you a liberal (left-wing)?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-are-you-a-liberal-left-wing/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

I’m not. I hate ideologies because they kill brain cells and destroy one’s critical thinking skills.

I prefer focusing on issues, learning about them, determining the best solutions, and then identifying who tries to do the same. I also look for those who have developed agnostic ideas and proposed solutions that work best for everyone, especially the people, because the wealthy often don’t need help. The government has favoured them so much over the last several decades that they’ve become a threat to the rest of the world.

What I identify with in the founding principles of liberalism are the values of “liberty, fraternity, and equality,” which often align me with liberalism, but not always. The only political party I’ve ever been a member of is the now-defunct National Party, also known as the Progressive Conservative Party. That party no longer exists. Their views have been stripped from them to become the Frankenstein’s monsters of humanity called the Maple MAGAts in Canada. They are a “light version” of the American MAGA movement, and mainly because the Koch parasites who have corrupted the American political landscape have been doing the same in Canada while focusing on Alberta and its oil wealth.

The results have led to corruption in that province in ways that run counter to Canadian values. Their current Premiere is an example of toadying for power, and how it perverts community values and cultivates a misanthropic attitude toward the people they’re supposed to serve.

My thoughts align with the direction the Canadian Liberal Party has taken, and I’m pretty excited about a full Prime Ministerial term with Mark Carney at the helm. I was initially hesitant because he was an unknown, but his interview with Jon Stewart quickly won me over. The more I see him in action, the more I like him.

While Jack Layton was the leader of the NDP, I was drawn to his party because his values focused on everyday Canadians. Governments have focused far too much on developing the corporate sector, which has been a detriment to the people and the nation.

No nation can exist without its people. Corporations are supposed to serve the people, not rule them. It severely disturbs me that what should be a community development function for governments has become a sociological corruption, supporting a sociopathic, profit-chasing national development model.

If I were to encapsulate my political views, I would describe them as a community development-oriented vision for politics and social leadership at all levels (and most notably, at this stage in my life because of specific issues that have been draining my attentions in an incredibly destructive way involve “encouraging” the police to review their function in society to align themselves with the ethos of protecting and serving more closely. I’m of the mind that they’ve become so corrupt in a heinous militarization strategy that they’ve become little more than a government-sanctioned domestic terrorist organization.)

How do Canadians and Americans feel about each other?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “How do Canadians and Americans really feel about each other?”

This Canadian thinks of Americans in ways not too dissimilar from how I think of fellow Canadians. Most are decent human beings at heart. Many are misguided and gravely misunderstand the nature of today’s dysfunctionality in society. A few — or more than just a few, but a minority nonetheless, are toxically stupid to the point of being beyond redemption.

All but the third group are reasonable and amenable to working together to identify the best solutions which meet the broadest range of needs of the citizenry. Our cultures are similar but unique, while, as a whole, Canadians appear to have more insight and respect for the values declared by Americans as being core to their identity.

Much of the discord in America, for example, in the value of freedom, lies in the difference between Canadians being more community-oriented. Americans tend to breed an isolationist degree of individualism. The resulting perception of freedom between the two nations is that Canadians regard freedom as derived from our community, and Americans appear to interpret freedom as the ability for an individual to do whatever they please whenever they please.

If we were to track this difference through Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development, we can see a distinction in the degree of moral evolution this represents.

Caveat: Like all models, this is not a universal prescription defining all people in any culture, and so this may generally describe some fundamental cultural differences, the overlap between cultures exists in the developmental differences between individuals.

Canada has no shortage of people who fail to grow beyond the pre-conventional stage. We do have our flavour of Maple MAGAts — the toxic form of extremist conservativism plaguing the planet. It is certainly more prevalent in the U.S., but that’s entirely due to economics.

The U.S. has always had a much larger budget that has always been more attractive to society’s predators. IOW. The economic success of the U.S. has been its most fundamental weakness.

It is in the best interests of those seeking power to ensure the populace is developmentally stunted. Keeping people on the level of pre-conventional development makes them more malleable and amenable to influence from authorities. Teaching them to fear punishment keeps them in line and converts them into sycophants addicted to chasing their self-interests.

This works for most of the population, which functions as workhorses to keep the machinery of society operational. Still, the next level of conventional morality is also necessary to function as an administrative body to keep the rabble in line.

All nations leverage this developmental dynamic through intrinsic and extrinsic punishment and reward systems. Canada and the U.S. are no different in this regard because this is a dynamic cultivated by power structures.

The causes of the distinctions between nations begin at the third and uppermost level of development, in the post-conventional stage. This is where philosophies and ideologies live that define the visions guiding all citizens in their perceptions of themselves and as members of a community.

This is where the distinction between “melting pot” and “multicultural mosaic” lives and flows throughout society to form a cultural identity.

It appears ironic that a nation that values individuality is adamant about conformity, but that’s explained in the differences between these two perceptions of national identity. One cannot truly value individuality when their culture homogenizes its citizens through a melting pot. (Many) Americans consider Canada a “socialist” country, but we value individuality, and freedom, by extension, more than Americans because we embrace and celebrate diversity as core to our cultural heritage.

I am proud to have Quebec as a part of Canada precisely because their contrast has kept Canada from falling into the same self-serving traps of insular arrogance that Americans have. They’ve been regarded as pains for many westerners, but so have westerners been regarded in similarly disparaging ways by our French-speaking members of our family. However, the dynamic between divergent cultures characterizing Canada makes us strong and coherent as a nation, which values its people above those who would rule us.

Americans would do well to learn from our dynamic and begin to treat their Spanish-speaking population with the same respect. It would help you grow as a nation with something more nuanced as a culture beyond the bombast of commercial ostentatiousness and avoid being viewed as the meth lab we live above.