It's an interesting argument: the US has a horrible president, and Canada has a horrible man who says he'd like to be prime minister. There's not a lot to choose between them.
I did hear that there were people in Alberta shouting "Lock her up" in reference to their NDP Premier. Nothing like as bad as electing Trump, but it does kind of make you believe that Trumpist rhetoric is a kind of infectious disease that can be spread.
Things are bad, but let's not start caring what Canadians think.
What is it referring to by, "America's food is radioactive"?
Don't unwrap a Hardee's burger in a dark room if you want to be able to eat them.
Or in full daylight either. Dark enough that you can't see the meat clearly but bright enough that the radioactive glow isn't visible.
I'm one of your Canadian lurkers.
The author of this piece is great on Twitter (@scaachi -- follow her!) But the piece falls into a common trap beloved of Canadian progressives.
Lots of Canadian liberals (mostly Liberals, but NDPers do this too) love to go on and on about how much better Canada is than the US. Lots of that going on and on involves making claims about how there is no racism in Canada and how we're all incredibly tolerant and diverse and great. These claims are absurd, and deserve the mockery they receive. (To borrow a line, Canadian liberals love to grade on a curve in a class of 2.) Scaachi Koul is a great source for such mockery.
A frequent response from Canadian progressives is to say "you liberals are so naive. It's just as bad in Canada as in the US!" They then provide lots of evidence that... Canada is racist (true!!), and pretty much no evidence that Canada is as broken as the US. It's almost as if no one considers the possibility that a) Canada is pretty bad, and b) the US is even worse.
My preferred illustration of this: the racial disparity in incarceration rates between whites and aboriginals in Canada is as high as the disparity between whites and Blacks in the US. ("We're just as bad!") But since the US is obsessed with putting everyone in prison, that means that *white* Americans are still more likely to be in prison that indigenous Canadians. (Maybe we're not just as bad after all...)
That sounds about right, but I base all my knowledge of Canada on The Red Green Show and one visit back in 1987 or so.
8: The part of the Red Green movie where they're in a car chase and Harold is hyperventilating about how the other car isn't even using their indicators is the most me scene in all of cinema, I suspect. (But my dad looks enough like Red Green that I really don't want to think about any further implications.)
There was a movie? Why wasn't I informed.
There was a movie that played on PBS. I'm not sure to what extent it was a movie movie.
I guess getting rid of Bob means missing out on international cinema updates like that.
I'll have to see if it's on Netflix.
I'm beginning to think about half of all Americans should be in prison, so the US is doing at least one thing right.
Thanks, MattD. That's definitely my impression, but I didn't know if things had become irreparably bad under Harper or something.
How do the polarization and regional disparities compare? Like, people say Alberta is right wing oil country, yet it elected an NDP government.
12 Hey I'm still around. Though I don't get out to the cinema as much anymore.
Except for last night: Marc Rothemund's powerful and unfortunately suddenly topical, though I hope not too topical, Sophie Scholl: the Final Days (on 35mm!) and tonight I'm heading out for Wolfgang Staudte's The Murderers Are Among Us (Die Mörder sind unter uns). So there.
But then pickings are slim here so I take what I can get.
It's a bit hard to compare polarization, since the systems are demographics are so different. But there's probably less polarization overall Partly, that's because there are 3 major national parties, and the Libs are normally the centrist one-- though they *ran* left of the NDP on some issues in the last election. (They're not going to actually govern that way, of course...)
There's certainly a lot less space between the Liberals and Conservatives than between the Repubs and Dems on policy, and so more voters (I think) move back and forth, although that's probably changing a bit on the Con side.
Still, at the federal level the Liberals elect almost no one west of Ontario (and absolutely no one in rural ridings west of Ontario).
The Alberta NDP thing was a bit odd. Up until last year, the same party had been in government for about a thousand years. The NDP win was as much due to a) vote splitting between 2 right wing parties, and b) Albertans finally deciding that they could vote the bums out. It's not clear Albertans are all of a sudden super left-wing: at the federal level they still elected 29 Conservatives, 4 Liberals and only 1 NDP.
Weak sauce, Barry. You need to start posting random excerpts from Marxist literary critics.
Thanks, MattD. Is there private and/or home schooling in Canada on any scale? And are there ideological bubbles in broadcast media?
18.last: Will you update on whether there's much with her super-hot undercut hairstyle? I felt a little guilty showing that to the stylist last time around but not guilty enough to not.
21: I will combine the two by posting random excerpts from Marxist cinema criticism.
While not offering significant insight into our modern condition, Rogue One does reflect the current state of things to a certain degree, particularly the militarization of American life. Populations are under constant surveillance and are policed at all times. The military does not hesitate to destroy "problem" cities with its new superweapon in order to tie up any loose ends that might embarrass the Empire, and some of the so-called rebels are strikingly similar to modern-day "terrorists" operating in fundamentalist militias.
22: Something like 6% of Canadian students are in private school. American rate is over 10%, I think. I suspect that homeschooling rates are also a lot lower here, though it certainly exists.
Overall, our public education system is much less dysfunctional. It's funded more equally, for one thing-- we don't have the phenomenon of tiny school districts in rich suburbs that are funded out of an entirely different tax base than urban schools. So we don't have the same dynamics driving school segregation and flight to the suburbs that Nikole Hannah Jones describes. (We do a terrible job of educating indigenous children, though!)
Broadcast media: we have a lot *less* of it, so there's less room for bubbles. The CBC, as a state broadcaster, creates a kind of "yay Canada!" bubble, not not a "yay one party or the other!" one. (Canadian right wingers do think that the CBC is a socialist propaganda plot. Nope.) The few private broadcasters are corporate centrists. We did have a clown set up a Fox News clone (Sun News Network) but it failed in spectacular fashion. Most of our newspapers are owned by one right-wing chain, though.
23 Cute, right? Unfortunately not the hairstyle chosen for the film: https://resizing.flixster.com/IOUPXjoWJwcXqYcf3gHZzsdAyVs=/300x300/v1.aDs0MzQ2O2o7MTcyMzU7MTIwMDs3MDA7NDYw
(I should say: we've got school segregation and middle class white parents doing unethical things at the school board. But it plays out differently and less dramatically.)
ANYWAY, in the correct thread now...
Cosign what MattD was saying with a couple additional thoughts. The discussion around the treatment of First Nations peoples is a pretty resent development. Obviously issues have come up through time (Oka standoff, residential schools, fishing rights) but the last ~10 years there's been sustained pressure on the government to improve things more broadly (water/housing, missing and murdered Indigenous women, etc.). I'd say some of this is due to Canadians being able to be (unjustifiably) smug about black racism in Canada compared to the U.S., i.e. we're taught we're the end/savour of the Underground Railroad and not much about current issues.
Also Canadians think they know more about the U.S. than they really do so when they hear about a U.S. issue, they'll assume the situation is the same. Like talking about health care. Canadians love to talk about wait times, the inability to get a GP, and the costs. Which are the same issues as the States. But like there's a difference between it costing $250 per ambulance ride if you really didn't need one and $350/month plus whatever $ for an ambulance ride you actually need. Or, that I can book whatever specialist I want without going through my GP but like again, a lot of money per month, and a lot more unnecessary tests and it's still a multi-month wait for an appointment (that I'm paying $$ for).
Anyway, if you can find Sara Benecasa's twitter thing about trying to complement Canadians, she basically describes this mindset (we're so weirdly pessimistic and unable to take complements (because we don't deserve them, true)).
This may or may not work:
https://twitter.com/SaraJBenincasa/status/826347638345773056
This one made me laugh:
https://twitter.com/SaraJBenincasa/status/826338855431262208
32: Bruno and Boots is so not wrong. If Canada had done nothing else, it would still be a win.
22: It's not quite as bad a situation as here, but my in-laws complain that the CBC is too liberal. Their preferred news show isn't like Fox though. They think the Clintons are sleazy, but they hate Trump.
It's a shame societies seem to have to choose between venerating egomaniacs and tall poppy syndrome.
Somebody orchestrated a trade of Bob for MattD? Solid move by unfogged's GM, I'd say.
Yeah, no shit. Thanks for delurking, MattD.
Hope we'll see more of you too, VW.
It was a good trade, but without revenue sharing, the small market blogs will never take a World Series again.
Aw, thanks folks. I've been lurking off and on for a long time-- I always learn stuff here.
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Aren't there some Trevians here?
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It's becoming my considered opinion that Canadian progressives basically need to pull their fucking heads out. There are signs of creeping Bernie Bro-ism in the NDP base that could be exploited to neo-nativist advantage, especially given the NDP's palpable desperation to land a glove on Trudeau image-wise. Presently they're howling about his backtracking on his electoral reform promise (which really, like 3 percent of Canadian households responded to the nationwide consultation call and the majority of those were "meh" about electoral reform; his only mistake was trying to engage in multi-party diplomacy on the issue in the first place), while appearing for all the world oblivious to the far larger dangers a Canada sandwiched between Putin's Russia and Trump's America is facing.
You guys will probably need nukes if things keep going to shit.
I could actually imagine it happening. Who can say.
43: The website for the parents organizing against Civil Rights day is some creepy stepford shit.
Aren't there some Trevians here?
I started writing a post about that last night, but as I looked up the people quoted, they turned out to be committed right-wing operatives (the most outrageous quote is from a guy with, surprise, his own AM radio show), which made it all seem less interesting.
New Trier should go whole hog. Bring in a speaker who will channel Calhoun, Fitzhugh, and some White Citizens Council types. Let people hear the other side. I'm sure the wingnuts will be fine with that. (Also, I do like the contrast with Milo Must Be Given a Forum.)
50: Maybe they should just invite Milo himself.
AM radio is mostly for shitheads.
Shitheads and minor league baseball.
I like minor league baseball, because cheaper beer and hot dogs. But it never occurred to me that they broadcast the games.
I mean, you can just go to a bar to get even cheaper beer and hot dogs, but nobody will ever shoot a t-shirt at you with a catapult.
I don't think I've ever been to a major league game, but I've never noticed the beer at minor league games to be particularly cheap.
Seconding what Matt D and hydrobatidae said, I guess. Somehow the Canadian centre seems to hold, sort of, but for reasons which aren't entirely clear and which I fear could dissolve at any moment. We have plenty of super-scary Trump fans who are feeling very energetic these days -- Canadian political Twitter is a sinkhole into hell itself.
50: I would happily volunteer to deliver the opposing viewpoint, specifically "The Case For Atimia: Why None Of You Idiots Deserve Civil Rights".
My academic association sometimes holds its annual conference in Canada, and in the wake of the Muslim ban there were a lot of calls to move it there for the foreseeable future. The problem is that--in addition to the absence of a facility large enough to host our huge conference--our international participants have faced far more trouble getting visas to Canada than to the US.
Anecdotally, Canadian immigration officers are much bigger dicks to Americans going to work in Canada than vice versa. I know a guy who was asked by an immigration office "Why are you coming here, taking jobs away from Canadians?" The officer didn't like his answer, and immediately deported him.
59 "Surely you meant to say, 'Why are you coming here, taking jobs away from Canadians, eh?'"
Anecdotally, Canadian immigration officers are much bigger dicks to Americans going to work in Canada than vice versa.
My dad was telling a story about that recently. A couple of years ago he was invited by the BC provincial government to come and talk at a event that was being organized. It was unpaid, but because it was an official event* he told the person that he was corresponding with that, if asked at the border, he would truthfully explain what he was doing, and that they should make sure that the appropriate paperwork was complete.
He got an official statement verifying that but, when he went to cross the border, the person was not happy, and said that just having a document on official letterhead was not a substitute for having the appropriate work visa.
That seems both predictable, and my dad understandably had the feeling of, "I'm not getting paid, I'm just doing this because it seems interesting, I have no interest in spending lots of time trying to sort this out. You guys figure out what it is that I need and tell me what to do."
* I am aware that, for example, sometimes a musician will cross the border to do a house concert and will plan on just lying and say something like, "I'm going to visit friends and play music."
"That's an accordion. Nobody with an accordion has friends."
61: There seems to be some sort of feeling that Canada and the U.S. aren't really separate countries. I know I fall into this thought process where I get super annoyed I can't ebank between countries or when I show up in Canada without any Canadian money. Or by colleague who forgot his passport for a work trip to Toronto (and certainty didn't have a work visa like he should have because apparently people just lie all the time).
The last time I tried to get a TN visa (which you get at the border), I got turned down because my offer letter wasn't detailed enough about my job qualifications and my suitability. I still got into the country because I had time left on my old one, fortunately, and then could apply by mail for a new one (and got my university to pay for it since it was there fault). Anyway, all the websites say there is no guarantee of getting into the country. You can go back the next day and try your luck with a new border guard.
The correct answer to why you're coming to the US/Canada to steal jobs is because there isn't actually anyone as qualified as you in the country to do it (which is actually part of the visa justification, even the TN).
My worst crossings where went two border guards needed to take the time to figure out what celebrity I looked like, print off a picture of her, show it to me, and then flirt with me like I was supposed to be charmed. Another time I had to listen to a official give me a lecture on Canada/US history that was totally wrong and I felt like I couldn't correct him. Oh and also when I had to prove that I had taken appropriate classes to be in wildlife when my degree is in Wildlife. Good times.
It's a good thing we're removing regulations on the banking sector, because they are clearly able to protect themselves.
I don't remember whether I mentioned getting turned back at the border this summer because I'd grabbed the wife's expired passport. The Canadian was friendly, but said not to risk it. The American, on re-entry wasn't as friendly, and it took quite a while, because the current green card is stashed inside the current passport.
The information technology in use to verify a 30 year green card holder was pretty underwhelming.
61: There seems to be some sort of feeling that Canada and the U.S. aren't really separate countries.
I think this may just be an example of the fact that when there is something that we do often, and which almost always works, we can start to assume that it will always work.
It's been snowing here recently and I just had the thought, "I think of myself as fairly good at keeping my balance on snow and ice because, even when I slide around a bit I can usually keep my balance." Then, I thought about it a bit more and realized that the difficulty is that sliding and not falling down doesn't hurt at all. So it's easy, if you haven't fallen down within the last couple of years (as I haven't), to sub-consciously think, "this doesn't feel risky at all."
You should try walking down the hill that goes to my bus. I'm always afraid that if I slip I won't be able to stop before I hit traffic.
Not to mention that it's been a fairly recent change in the Canada/U.S. border. When I first got here I could cross with a drivers license. Did we stop saying 'longest undefended border' yet?
According to Wikipedia, no, we have not.
I thought "undefended" meant no (significant) military presence, not zero-controls like the Schengen area.
Huh. Never realized despite the name NORAD is a joint US-Canadian organization. (Was trying to figure out if there was actual military presence along the border these days, as opposed to all the Border Patrol stuff.)
63.3: That's pretty much the answer the guy I know gave. It turned out to be the wrong one for that official.
56: the provincial Liberals in Ontario kind of puss meoff. why did they sell off a major road and why do they want to privatize hydro?
63: TN status was a pain for my husband. Now that he has a green card, I get treated better by Canadians at the border.
Eh, last night, at that other place, I was reminded that there are plenty of deplorable, would-vote-for-Trump-if-they-could people in Canada.
A woman in Winnipeg was found guilty of disposing of the remains of six infants in a U-Haul storage locker. The case is bizarre; gruesome; and awful. My working assumption is that the woman in question is suffering from some kind of very serious mental illness. I was shocked, and disgusted, to read comments like, "She needs death, and it should be painful."
The last execution in Canada took place in 1962. The death penalty was mostly abolished in 1976, and finally abolished even for military offences in 1998. Probably the majority of Canadians do not support the death penalty, but there's always been a vocal minority baying for blood, because what if it had been your mother who was murdered?
The difference between the US and Canada is that, in Canada, this vocal minority cannot achieve critical mass. Their hatreds and resentments are less easily mobilized for politico-electoral purposes, I guess. Which is to agree with edna k. that "Somehow the Canadian centre seems to hold, sort of."
But why? I bet clever people have written books about this.
Huh. Never realized despite the name NORAD is a joint US-Canadian organization.
Spot the person who hasn't played Twilight Struggle.
"Somehow the Canadian centre seems to hold, sort of."
It will until one day it doesn't. See Britain and France. Thecentre's obsessive adherence to neoliberalism may have something to do with the outcome.
80 is certainly true but I'm not sure I follow.
I mean I think the Canadian centre didn't hold for Harper's elections. Harper ruled like he had a mandate with a minority government. Then ruled with a majority.
Now we're all wobbily trying to learn how to government again after the last years of darkness. With the elephant having Ambien walking nightmares.
It seems like the only reason we didn't descend into total craziness is sensible people in the courts and military. And just that we don't have much power. Harper couldn't risk pissing off the U.S.
Was Harper really a not? I confess know literally nothing about his government except that Trudeau beat it some months ago.
He was full of weird grudges. He fucked up Canada's census for no intelligible reason.
He renamed the government in documents (Government of Canada -> Harper Government).
Let's not give Trump ideas about how to best perform shitheadedness.
Harper was the rehearsal run for a Canadian variant of the wingnut authoritarianism Trump and Bannon represent. Over his time in office he suppressed climate science, took up an adversarial relationship with the press (especially but not solely the CBC), undermined Elections Canada and outright broke electoral law more than once, selectively de-funded nonprofit groups that he saw as critical of him or his agenda, severely fucked up the Canadian prison system in ways that are still with us, evinced an outsized fondness for military pomp and theater (even while degrading the military itself and screwing veterans over), introduced legislation designed to permanently tilt the federal electoral map in favour of his party, and so on.
He worked up slowly to the open racism but eventually developed pointedly anti-immigrant and anti-refugee stances and introduced a Stasi-like "Barbaric Practices Tip Line" designed to whip up and reinforce Islamophobic hysteria. (When asked about missing and murdered Aboriginal women, a major issue in Canada, he seemed to relish smugly stating that it wasn't on the government's radar.)
It is heartening that he was beaten despite all of this. But many voters have short memories.
(Funnily enough, Jason Kenney -- a Harper-era hack who was party to the Barbaric Cultural Practices Tip Line and other shenanigans -- is now running to unite Alberta's provincial so-called "conservatives." He denounced Trump's Muslim ban as "ham-fisted demagogic theatre" but there are those who have certain doubts about his sincerity.)
At least Canada is a net exporter of oil. For the U.S. to suppress climate science isn't even in the money for us as a whole.
Agree with 79, 83, and 89, but in retrospect it's heartening and a bit amazing how little permanent, deep damage Harper seems to have accomplished. I think he probably did think of himself as a rehearsal, paving the way, moving the window, John the Baptist etc. but I'm not sure how much progress he really made on that front (though it's true that the CBC and broadcasting/journalism regulation may have sustained deep damage). He clearly would have liked to be far further to the right than his government actually was -- it was mostly stealth conservatism, meant to go almost unnoticed, rather than Trump-style bomb-throwing. And the real danger now is just the one that was always there -- that with a couple of bad breaks, a much bolder kind of hard right (eg explicitly racist) could indeed take over the Conservatives, get 30% of the vote, win a majority in the House of Commons, and have more power than Trump. If the lunatics ever do take over the asylum it'll probably owe as much to Trump and to Twitter as to Harper, but anyway it's a clear and present danger, and makes Trudeau's backpedaling on electoral reform especially despicable.
He renamed the government in documents (Government of Canada -> Harper Government).
Ugh. You've just reminded me of how much I loathe Stephen Harper.
He fucked up Canada's census for no intelligible reason.
One of the weirdest things he did. But maybe not completely unintelligible? Libertarian suspicion of Big Brother; rejection of evidence-based policy-making; resentment of bureaucrats, academics, policy wonks, etc...apparently the census pushed a lot of his buttons.
What's funny is that fucking up the census pushed so many Canadians' buttons so hard. It's practically Article 1 in everyone's anti-Harper indictment, which is kind of a tip off we've been lucky so far.
God only knows what havoc Trump will wreak on the 2020 US Census. But yeah, it's way down the list of things he'll wreak havoc on.
The census on which congressional districts are based? Maybe it should move up that list.
That's the one. Still pales next to nuclear war, though.
97: Well, yes. But one is kind of bound to proceed on the assumption of a going concern.
Well, sure. And I for one certainly am.
94: It's more like a tip-off that many Canadians don't truly grasp -- or accurately remember -- the real depths of what Harper aspired to while he was in office.
(We've been "lucky thus far" in that Harper was still beatable despite his best efforts. But had he won in 2015 much of what he wanted to do would likely have crossed a tipping point into permanence.)
And fucking with censuses (and stats and maps) is a backdoor to gaining permanence. Those things are actually foundations of the state.
This should be henceforth the accepted formal term for the President of the United States. The second epithet is what raises it above the ordinary.
I want it used on the proposed state visit to Ingerland: imagine some liveried flunkey puffing out his chest like a pigeon, medals rattling, "Pray be upstanding for his excellency the fascist loofah-faced shitgibbon of The United States of America, Mr Donald J Trump!"
Theresa May curtseys.
Senator Leach must have some Scottish ancestry.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-am-learning-so-much-cool-slang?utm_term=.ewWNZYKMN#.aaPKWyxlK
God only knows what havoc Trump will wreak on the 2020 US Census.
Early indications are that he wants to shift it from counting "People" to counting "Citizens."
104 that guy's my hero for the day.
Politically, this seems like an opportunity for ambitious backbenchers. Trump's tactics can very easily turned against him -- not merely by finding him deplorable, but finding him deplorable in the most extravagent possible terms. The Democratic base (by that I'm referring to me) is more than ready for someone to really come out swinging. And no matter how abusive one is to Trump, it's tough to overstate his awfulness.
Alan Grayson was a man before his time. I'll be interested to see if someone picks up where he left off. Someone should at least try it.
