Conservatives

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 does the Republican Party attract the uneducated?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-Republican-Party-attract-the-uneducated/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

They use slogans and soporifics to reinforce tribal associations and loyalties while motivating them to unite in solidarity over perceived common causes.

“Low taxes”
“Small government”
“Fiscally conservative”
“Save the unborn babies”

They use slogans to ignite passions driven by anger, envy, fear, and hatred to motivate them to act in solidarity against perceived enemies.

“Voter fraud”
“Nanny State”
“Migrant violence”
“Killing unborn babies”
“Immigrants stealing jobs”

As long as they can convey their ideas within a few syllables and tweak people’s emotions while doing so, they never have to bother with nuance, insight, context, complexity within grey areas, or even hypocrisy, for that matter.

None of their positions are consistent in any way. They can’t be, but it doesn’t matter to the uneducated because they don’t want to parse their slogans for meaning. They want to remember them well enough to hurl them as weapons, while the extent of their political arguments amounts to the level of a cheerleader for a sports team.

They hate the “nanny state” but demand draconian government measures to rule their lives.

They want a government that’s so small it fits inside every woman’s vagina and monitors everyone’s lives with Big Brother oversight without realizing how that bloats the government. They demand government expansion to incorporate unnecessary and paranoia-quelling functions that increase the problems that would otherwise not exist without their efforts to make issues manifest as problems.

Trans people pose no problem to society, but because they don’t fit preconceived notions of what is an acceptable definition of a human, they’re rendered as threats without any justification for the unimagined threat they allegedly are. Ask them how another’s marriage impacts them, and they immediately resort to abstractions rather than concrete reasons why their personal lives are threatened. Wisps of the imagination threaten them because that’s the natural consequence of ignorance.

They want low taxes and think it’s only fair to lower taxes on the wealthy. They believe the rich people they envy will trickle down their wealth to them and improve their lives because they both hate intelligence and revere what they interpret as intelligence in the accrual of riches. They can’t discern between the two because they can see wealthy people all around them who are just as intelligent and under-educated as they are. That prompts them to believe they’re smart enough to become just as successful. In this case, they’re not far from the truth but overlook variables like privilege, luck, and association as primary influences of wealth acquisition.

Fortunately, the primary solution to the problems they cause in society is already presented within the question. Education.

We can improve our education systems so that people are not intimidated by education simply by teaching them to love education.

It’s not that daunting a challenge.

Much of education is a process of rote remembering rather than teaching critical thinking skills.

Education should equip all learners with the appropriate attitude of education as a lifelong process. Once people understand and embrace the value of an education-oriented mind, they become less prone to being led around like lost sheep and begin to parse information in greater depth. Once one learns to love education, they also learn to love nuance because they appreciate the subtle shifts in perspective the mostly invisible aspects of communication convey.

For example, people are fascinated by and love learning how scams are set up to exploit the naive because the insights they get improve their sense of security. Once one knows how a grift works, one feels less intimidated and more secure when encountering a grifter.

Most people no longer fear Three-card Monty because they know how the game works and often partake for the sole pleasure of spotting the trick moment that swaps out the card to fool people.

The problems in today’s world are far more daunting than a simple game, and the complexities we have to deal with in modern living are overwhelming to the undereducated. Without bringing them up to speed, we’ll see an increasing division between those who are privileged enough to gain a proper education and those who resent them for being deprived of life skills they’re daunted by but innately understand are necessary advantages in today’s world.

They will often mistrust the educated because they can’t figure out the game being played, and the paranoia of being manipulated by someone whose education intimidates them drives them away from the potential assistance they can gain from them. It’s much easier for the under-educated to affiliate themselves with others who echo their struggles. It’s much easier for the under-educated to trust someone who speaks in the same simple language they do because it makes them feel like life hasn’t left them behind.

Until we improve our education systems such that education is universally viewed as a fundamental support for a stable nation and make it universally accessible at all levels, we will continue to struggle with the impact of our failure to equip our citizens with the skills necessary to develop a fully manifested democracy. As long as we continue to abandon the under-educated to the wolves, there will always be a political party seeking power through the exploitation of their ignorance.