Gotta love that clean bill of health!

Sounds like a groovy time for both of you! A six lane road though?!? Are those common where you are? I can think of a handful that aren’t a highway in my city.

It’s been great thanks! Putting the (hopefully) finishing touches on a massive chunk of code for a work project. Also switched to Deezer (part of dropping all my American stuff) and found they have all the weird little folk punk my last few streaming services didn’t have.

May go swim some laps with a buddy tonight which is always a good preface to make the night’s beers feel earned. And then taking it easy cleaning and cooking tomorrow as my rec league soccer team finds ourselves in the Finals and Lord knows we’ve wanted these champion shirts for awhile. Strongest team I’ve ever played with, but it’s terrifying as I’m a decade older than most and not as good with the footwork but I’m still fast and play a mean/hard centre D role which is nerve wracking but fun as hell.

I mean, I really like the notion of training more tradespeople. Our lack thereof is a huge impediment to upping new home starts etc. But of course Polievre has to fuck it up and pair it with “and we’ll pay for it by gutting government.”

I hope Carney swipes the trades training thoughts from him and leaves him scrambling again just like the carbon tax.

I love a good jerk chicken:

https://dinnerthendessert.com/slow-cooker-jerk-chicken/

Honestly, I’ve had a lot of success recently using LLMs for suggestions like this plus whatever I have in my fridge. Came up with a tasty siracha maple and maple mustard pair when I saw a deal on shitty bulk maple syrup.

They’ve really let me take advantage of deals and sales etc.

Honestly, with the score between our species, could you blame that cow?

I am Canadian and I still don’t know what the right words are.

I will say that as much as I despise Polievre, I don’t think he’s come close to the authoritarianism of maga.

For us, I personally think we’d do well to emphasise the breathtaking incompetence, consequences and hollowness of these mindless and easy populist slogans.

The court of public opinion just sees fascism as “Jews in ovens”, so maybe that court shouldn’t be considered.

That’s literally the only court that matters when you’re trying to warn the populace of something.

Is this fascism? Especially with the benefit of hindsight it feels at least a little like the beginnings of it.

But I think this is exactly the issue.

Folks calling Bush a fascist 20 years ago weren’t saying “this is a little like the beginnings” which would be a reasonable statement (not sure how far I agree but I don’t think it’s lunacy.)

And I think that lack of distinction really hurt us and robbed the word of its meaning, which has cost us now.

I think it’s more that people have been using the word fascist as a perjorative for a while so it’s kind of lost all meaning. Like, folks were calling George W a fascist which seems to stretch the definition so far so as to be meaningless.

And then we did again in 2016 which seemed kind of more accurate but also a little silly to the point that when actual scary fascist shit happened at the end, people had tuned the word out.

Now, it just feels impotent, which is a very bad thing.

It’s sort of like how people kept claiming Israel is run by nazis etc, I get the appeal of the term and dislike what’s happening but goddamnit, just makes us look silly in the court of public opinion.

Year to date, stocks are down. 1 calendar year though, most are still up.

I’d say it’s a few things:

1. Stock market loves de-regulation. (Fewer rules -> more profit.

2. Stock market loves the promise of corporate tax cuts.

3. Even with tarrifs and nonsense, most American stock indices are heavily skewed to the magnificent 7, all of which besides Tesla are fairly immune to global trade.

What I’ve been pointing out is the mechanism by which extremism manifests differently under different electoral systems.

And that mechanism is leading to moderate parties in FPTP systems like ours and hate groups in PR ones.

You admit that

The rise of the AfD reflects genuine social concerns and tensions

So, why aren’t those tensions which are boiling over repeatedly in PR systems boiling over here? Again, simply put, do you think 1/5 Canadians are angry enough to vote for a far right group?

When you gear an entire economy to war, you simultaneously run the risk of economic collapse and conquering. It’s what happened to the Soviet Union in '89, the economy was in shambles but militarily they were still a powerhouse.

it’s just hidden until it captures a mainstream party from within. This “stealth extremism” is actually more dangerous because it lacks transparency and accountability. Look at how the Reform Party didn’t vanish – it simply took over the Conservative Party, with Stephen Harper (from Reform) becoming PM

This is exactly the silliness I’m talking about.

Do you literally believe the Canadian conservative party is seriously comparable to the AfD or Brothers of Italy?

Oooof, my bad! Thanks!

Like I said, I take the rise of these parties in Canada as an unacceptable risk to the vulnerable AND that these reflect growing dissatisfaction within the countries you wish for us to emulate.

You may not care about the vulnerable, I do.

I don’t know what else to tell you.

If you recommended a bar that had better drinks but every second night, 20% of the bar were alt right extremists, we’d think you had poor taste. The fact you want a similar government here, ain’t great look.

You can pretend that the groups you dislike under FPTP are similar to the extremist groups under PR but that’s absolute nonsense.

Late 20s. Full head of hair, putting on muscle happened almost accidentally etc.

I’m in better shape now but if I trained then like I have to now…

If I were on Carney’s comms team, I’d be giggling, high fiving and writing up attack lines for Carney to crucify him on this. The EU and UK are moving towards essentially having tarrifs for countries without industrial carbon pricing.

With the US being a dumpster fire, making it harder to trade with our actual allies is about as boneheaded a move as you can imagine.

I guess, from his perspective it’s worth it so he can say “ax the tax.”

Edit: Whoops, meant costs on countries without a carbon tax. Thanks Mongostein!

You keep blithely asserting that PR is dealing with extremism well. We disagree on this. You haven’t said anything new. I don’t think forcing a bunch of other parties to try to work around excluding almost a quarter of the seats is particularly good politics.

Look at the UK, where Brexit was pushed through by a Conservative Party captured by its extreme wing, despite most citizens eventually opposing it.

That’s a wildly incorrect misremembering of history, the majority of Britons explicitly voted for Brexit in a referendum about it. I know that despite demanding more representation you hate the results of people being asked things directly, but it’s pretty hard to argue that Brexit was against their will.

Your claim that PR coalitions can’t create “significant legislation” contradicts international evidence.

Honestly, just read to the end of the paragraph where I made this point. I’m not in the habit of repeating myself.

as we’ve seen repeatedly in the UK, US, and increasingly in Canada.

This is a nonsense reading. You compare a country with a fundamentally different set up, one where the extreme party is fairly moderate by the PR standards AND enjoys less support than extreme parties in PR countries and then our Conservative party, which is nowhere near as extreme as the extremist parties sprouting like mushrooms in PR systems. To put these examples in the same basket as the PR extremism is childishly ignorant and demonstrates you either have no clue about the subject matter or that you are willing to ignore reality to make a point poorly. I’m not sure which is worse.

Like I said, I take the rise of these parties in Canada as an unacceptable risk to the vulnerable AND that these reflect growing dissatisfaction within the countries you wish for us to emulate.

You may not care about the vulnerable, I do.

misunderstands how electoral systems interact with extremism.

How you want electoral systems to interact.

In the US, extremist views didn’t disappear

So you’re now cherrypicking a 2 party system as the equivalent of ours? Do you really not understand the structural differences of the American system and ours? For actual comparisons, you could look at the UK where Reform is their Far Right equivalent but is significantly more moderate than its PR peers and enjoys lower support. You might also note that there are no analogs in Canada.

What’s the evidence for this?

Most, if not all, of the changes you describe were set in motion a long time ago. In recent years, maybe it’s the rise of polarization, maybe it’s just the fade of the boom time of the 90s, but modern PR countries have struggled in the last decade+.

The rise of the AfD reflects genuine social concerns and tensions in Germany that would exist under any electoral system.

To be clear, the country rocking your utopian electoral system is going through such bad turmoil that 1/5 of its citizens are turning to a dog whistling neo nazi party, and this is a good thing in your books and has nothing to do with the struggles of Germany to pass significant legislation since Merkel? (I mean, you cited Ukraine, Covid and the climate a few replies ago, missing that 2/3 of those were pretty basic that most of Europe figured out and the other is based EU mandates and on legislation passed years and years ago.)

Basically, if you understand that:

The rise of the AfD reflects genuine social concerns and tensions

and these issues keep popping up over and over in PR countries, probably time to reconsider the merits of that system.

There are two answers to the rise of extremist parties in PR countries:

1. These actually would exist all over and secretly, a huge swathe of Canadians, despite all evidence would likely vote for a similarly extreme party.
2. The rise of these parties, like you say, “reflects genuine social concerns and tensions” that seem to happen increasingly often with PR.

Again, I take the rise of these parties in Canada as an unacceptable risk to the vulnerable AND that these reflect growing dissatisfaction within the countries you wish for us to emulate.

You and I personally are unlikely to be seriously affected by those awful outcomes but I care about those who will be affected. Maybe that’s the difference.