It’s just a step or two removed from “our institutions are corrupt Democrat deep state.” Though to be fair, this is one area where Poilievre actually knows the Canadian term. It just doesn’t seem like he understands it.

It’s actually really handy when right-wing influencers tell Canadians not to listen to them.

My guess is the “moderating” force of an official election season kickoff bringing a few more apolitical folk into the conversation. It’s probably too early to read anything into it.

There isn’t nearly enough runway before mandatory elections anyway. It won’t matter one lick how well he’s actually doing when the economic pain reaches full force and standards shift from him vs someone obviously much worse to him vs everyone’s abstract, idealized personal fantasies.

The article’s definitely giving “old man yells at clouds.” The (alleged) hyper-credulousness of an entire generation is quite a lot to put on students not being required to memorize names and dates in history class. Much like the other various subtle anti-woke undertones throughout, strip away the biased framing he puts on modern education and the only functional differences (to my knowledge) are ditching the memorization, and making space to pursue more individualized selections from a wider, more inclusive sampling of historical knowledge.

I guess we just can’t possibly contextualize or interpret current events without the specific curated (sanitized) historical narratives and nationally approved biases that shaped his world view. “Post-national” really means learning to work with a wider, more diverse community because that’s a key skill in modern society. You know, like having peers with different knowledge than you. It also means maybe just a bit of time spent honestly looking at ourselves.

Sorry Gen-Z didn’t all get inoculated with a standardized America-wary but Canada-special curriculum. I guess without the author’s specific brand of unifying indoctrination, we’re all just cooked. Somebody learned about residential schools instead of the war of 1812, and now they’ll never know America bad. Meanwhile, I was homeschooled for religiously motivated reasons, using American-sourced curriculum that was mainly focused on two top priorities – that I read good and reject evolution. I got zero training in critical thinking, and American exceptionalism came preloaded.

What I didn’t have was a broadband brain-rot feed, with direct access to deliberate disinformation campaigns and intellectual groomers.

Historical knowledge is not why our newest voters are lacking patriotism and buying into American exceptionalism. Elsewise, the things we’ve learned about ourselves nationally over the past decade or two would be curing all ages of national pride. But acknowledging the bad doesn’t diminish the good – it explores the better. Speaking of better, an education that instills wariness toward the U.S. is good, but I bet it won’t help solve the housing crisis. And you know what might give Gen-Z a stronger connection to Canada? Yeah, it’s housing.

So I’m still going to put my money on social media and especially right-wing influencers sinking their claws in young impressionable minds, before their critical thinking/analysis skills are anywhere near adequately developed for an ecosystem that’s rotting plenty of adult brains too – including those with a similar age and education to the author’s. I think most middle and high-school teachers will indicate they’ve already figured this out, as half the commenters in here are also doing. I’m not sure why the author can’t.

Sure, pulp mills a few hours drive away are doing layoffs and running under capacity, so that makes perfect sense.

The worst people on the planet are saving a nation by unambiguously showing Canadians what to reject. It’s too early for me to feel relief, but the way things stand at the moment, national politics are mirroring my province’s recent outcome in a way that I hadn’t even dared to hope.

Slogan the grift!

This. Her priorities and values are transparent as baby oil. I’d use glass in the simile, but comparing her to anything that is neither oil nor gas would be quite a stretch.

I would consider the various issues you describe are as fair examples of what I described: difference in magnitude rather than kind. The Democrats pay many of those same values lip service – or at least did, before thinking this time maybe their problem is the lip service rather than miniscule action. In no way do I mean to imply that those differences in magnitude are marginal. By magnitude I mean you could relatively score them by moving decimal points.

But I want to conclude with what I think is my most important point/position. I’m fully on board the LPC train this round. Electoral reform is my longstanding top issue, but the disaster down south and the clear path Canada has through it easily displace that (for now). Heck, the CPC threat had me struggling with my vow to never vote LPC under Trudeau until someone delivered electoral reform. If a Carney-led LPC gave us proper electoral reform, I could end up considering LPC a very long-term top option rather than strategic defense. But considering the dangerous optics of repeating Trudeau’s broken promise, I don’t even want it mentioned right now.

Right now its 💯 elbows up.

I think I really only completely responded to half of your critique previously, so let me fix that now. I stand by carefully restricting myself to technically and precisely accurate facts, as much as I am able. But that’s responding to how you expounded your point rather than the point itself.

You say I should be less apologetic, and if by that you meant my tone rather than the substance of my perspective, I think you’re right. On retrospect, the dismissive vitriol that inspired my comment really didn’t come through clearly at all.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have opened the comment so provocatively. You can see I concluded it in a manner that contradicts the opening. So first off, I’m mad as hell. But I never want to let that control my actions or cloud my judgement – and correctness matters, deeply. Standing up for what’s right is best served by maintaining unimpeachable honesty.

I’m plenty furious at Smith over this and so many other things. I believe she’s also associated with the hate group that tried to manipulate New Brunswick’s recent election. None of my anger requires her actions to qualify as treason, and good thing because as (very narrowly) defined in our laws it simply isn’t. I don’t even know yet if anything she’s done is actually illegal. And let me assure you, I want to say some of these things are. The best I can do is say that at least some of the things we already explicitly know should be, and that if they aren’t then patching our laws around foreign collaboration should be a top priority.

Her list of demands is also pretty disgusting to the rest of the nation, and though I think she means to appeal to Albertans, I think even the majority of them ultimately won’t even consider following down that path. I also think with that specifically our emotional response is part of the plan. She has potentially criminal charges breathing down her neck related to medical procurement, and now on top of that got caught implicitly inviting foreign interference. Her every action seems inspired by the Dumpster’s playbook, and that includes rage-baiting as a distraction; it’s a way to control the narrative.

…this situation goes rather beyond just advocating for a single industry to the detriment of the electorate, as blatantly corrupt as that itself is.

See, I actually don’t think even treason against a nation is worse than treason against humanity. I love my country, but I literally cannot survive without my planet. And in this specific case it’s not just selling some people out to a corrupt industry – it’s helping that industry make this entire planet less livable for everyone. There’s even some degree of success in that endeavor that could prematurely end the human race.

You are right that her actions cannot be allowed to set precedent. Such inaction will be as disastrous here as normalizing Dumpster’s behavior has been in the U.S. When I heard about how Luigi did his thing, I immediately let out an involuntary fist pump and verbal cheer. I was unreservedly elated, because of the precedent. I felt nothing but pure joy at seeing demonstration that there was a level of evil not even the law could protect.

In Alberta, the law has not failed us – yet.

Are you sure I’m not mad enough?

You can use the shorter .be url – just only copy up to (not including) the question mark.

If you’re disinclined to endure any inconvenience, you can put this in a userscript to strip the tracking code automatically (including what the copy button saves):

const listener = new MutationObserver((mutations, observer) => {
    // query blindly until found - it's never listed as an addedNode
    const field = document.querySelector("#share-url");
    if(!field) return;
    field.value = field.value.split("?")[0];
    // SPA and navigation events/functions not catching anything, so just listen forever :/
    // listener.disconnect();
});
listener.observe(document.body, {childList: true, subtree: true});

I attribute increased radicalization on both sides to the failed promise of electoral reform. By which I mean having FPTP is a main underlying cause, but rug-pulling the opportunity to change it really accelerated things by making the center intolerable.

This problem isn’t going away until we get electoral reform. LPC is what we need in this unique moment, but the fundamentals haven’t changed.

Yeah, I think I’ve already talked myself out of worrying where the NDP goes next anyway. I hate how things went with the federal Greens but at this point they’ve still got as much shot at representing the left as the NDP.

I’m smelling a theme in leftist parties, where good leaders seem disproportionately difficult to replace.

At least the effort diminishes over time. There are a lot fewer mainstream journalists than articles.

I would like to see more non-profit effort into making this information plainer and more accessible, in a way that has wide reach yet doesn’t depend on media cooperation. Heavily promoted robust (and free) browser extensions, for example, that can parse out publication and author and will automatically show terse bios, or autogenerate (or select from a comprehensive bio) author/publication background information relevant to the specific article. The signal-to-noise ratio has to be super high so a tiny amount of additional information is highly informative and also pervasive.

Tools like Ground News or the 3rd-party publication rating systems don’t go nearly far enough and don’t have enough reach nor reduce user effort enough.

It doesn’t even need to be specifically targeting the U.S. Canada should require all media operating in Canada with a physical presence to have Canadian majority ownership/controlling interest. That is (I believe) enforceable as well as non-discriminatory and fully justifiable as a matter of national security.

On top of this the top two (at least) biggest blue bubbles in that graphic are rather questionably blue. Trevor Noah is about as much grey as blue and TYT whatever color best signifies rage farmers.

This housing plan was the first I ever heard of Wab Kinew, and it made a pretty strong first impression. I think there’s a lot riding on it working out well enough and over a long term, and am feeling pretty hopeful so far. Even if it falls short of ambitions, I won’t be soon forgetting the politician that was willing to really try.

What a fantastic and timely historical object lesson – especially paired with this video that’s circulating.