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5 mo. ago

  • This is a good candidate to cross-post to c/newbrunswick. Sure that community is practically dead, but I'd love to see this change.

  • The Finland quadrant sounds more like where we started than where we're headed. We've just been relatively sheltered from the degree of political coercion being regularly exerted. That's why current events represent - in the long term - opportunity in similar proportion to threat.

  • That's one mighty thin defense. It almost says the quiet parts out loud.

  • I would not include "a pause in officer exchanges" among the helpful means to push back. If we start disentangling ourselves culturally, it'll be the death knell of any civilian resistance to outright war.

  • Ditto on both points. I'm genuinely struggling with the prospect of having to shorten my beard if I joined the reserves. I've been working for years to train/develop it into a distinctive style and I'm not even there yet.

  • The conditions (captured media, broken education, economic slavery) explain widespread ignorance about how leopards are going to eat their faces, but not the apathy when it actually happens. And hopelessness only suppresses resistance until you run out of things to lose.

    It's not like there aren't plenty of MAGA faithful currently Finding Out, either (and by that I specifically mean coming to realize either who the true oppressors are or what substantially worse looks like).

    Whether I understand it or not, however, I must remember that no group of humans is fundamentally different from another. Whatever makes them different in aggregate form does come down to conditioning - possibly over generations, but conditioning nevertheless. That knowledge is all that keeps me from permanently succumbing to empathy fatigue.

  • If we keep China out, fine. There are certainly reasons enough. But that had better come with a real push for domestic EV manufacturing. ICE vehicle's days are numbered outside pleasure/luxury use-cases, and it's ridiculous to be importing the majority of such massive, heavy, and complex devices on which a majority of Canadians rely to at least some degree.

    If things are going to be expensive either way, let me pay to support high-end Canadian jobs rather than cover shipping costs.

  • Ok this Wilkinson dude has my respect.

    I'm pretty heartened overall as I take a closer look across our nation and actually find politicians doing earnest good work, standing up to private interests, and collaboratively defending our nation. Names I'd never heard six months ago I count among heroes today. And the fact that they're even in a position to do anything at all is because a sufficient share of Canadians are voting for them - it does our nation a credit we can't afford to take for granted these days.

    I've never been prouder to be Canadian. 🍁

  • Training is what we need to promote - and broader training than just weapons usage and safety.

    I don’t have a firm enough position on gun control to want it costing us money right now, but that mainly opens me up to accepting whatever position is most politically expedient. I'll take bad gun control laws over a PP government every time, and I think you might have a sheltered view on what position is most popular.

  • The training is what we need to promote, for sure.

    I don't have a firm enough position on gun control to want it costing us money right now.

  • I'm not saying there won't be financial consequences, but they are well within their right to refuse. I would.

  • I figured it was loose grammar rather than explicit intent, but my inner pedant hates relying on assumptions. 🙂

  • Will the military leadership turn the ship around or should anti-Trump nationalists, push to defund/recreate Canada’s military?

    That's quite the hardline dichotomy, that presumes quite a dearth of reasonability within our own military ranks. I seriously doubt we harbor conflicts of interests that run so deep we'd have to build a whole new military.

  • Are neoliberals not ultimately conservatives? This is politics, where everything is doublespeak. Hence, Liberal is actually conservative, and Conservative is actually…something beyond that. Heck, consider how we even got the term neoliberal, i.e. freedom for businesses instead of people. 😛

    As much as I would prefer not to be cutting back on any ecological objectives, I have to admit we have a lot of really high priorities that are going to be very expensive. I won't pretend to be informed enough to stake a firm position, but at a high level it feels like a reasonable choice.

  • I've been pretty tuned into U.S. depravity and rightward slide since Dumpster's 2016 candidacy. I even attribute to him the final push that cured me of a religious fundamentalist upbringing. That sparked a process of re-evaluating everything. I'm pretty familiar with the contents of Project 2025, and aware of rumors that there's an unpublished part. I find the claims of a plot to deliberately implode the nation to build post-national techno-feudal societies disturbingly plausible.

    I'm still utterly amazed at the pace of events flowing out of the current administration. I wouldn't put anything past the key players driving this movement. But the truly amazing part is how quickly faithfuls are soaking up new marching orders, and how weak, disorganized, and noncommittal the resistance is at seeing their nation entirely restructured into a blatant fascist dictatorship. Who would have guessed that America has so little backbone and no fight in them?

  • I'm not in Quebec and I don't know what effects religious symbols are actually having. Someone who claimed to be from Quebec described a couple examples to me that sounded pretty reasonable - things like someone from one religion being condemned and sentenced/fined by a judge wearing overt symbols of an opposing religion. Until I have concrete data either validating or discrediting the impact or actual occurrence of such scenarios, I'm inclined to at least consider them.

    All examples were closely tied to religious influence on top of a substantial power imbalance and wouldn't really translate beyond that situation. I don't see it as being particularly different from trying to dictate who someone can date or engage in sexual activity. That's insane out of context - then add the context of a pre-existing boss-employee relationship.

  • I pretty much agree, but at least in the visible case I can construct scenarios where some marginal harm is possible. For example, displays that suggest biases so strong they cannot even be temporarily set aside while exercising authority would undermine the integrity of institutions granting that authority.

  • Surely any hidden symbol is that much harder to justify banning in the first place. It's pretty hard to attribute to that a negative effect on others who can't even see it.