Canadians

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.

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.