- cross-posted to:
- Canada@50501.chat
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Man, Charlie Angus has really been the man of moment here. He’s doing the same speech all over this country, seen it in a bunch of places. I know that sounds like a criticism - how can he be genuine when he’s repeating himself and refining the message? Isn’t that just a stump speech?
But it’s not. First of all, anyone who knows Charlie Angus’ record knows this isn’t new territory for him.
Second, the reason this feels so genuine is because it’s how WE feel. We aren’t being told what to think, we’re having our feelings put into words right in front of us.
And finally, these lines aren’t stupid slogans or focus group tested pablum. These are things I’ve heard other Canadians say to each other, things I’ve said, way before any political leader was saying it. He’s speaking in plain and easy language, in the exact terms Canadians think about this.
Populism and patriotism are heady, dangerous drugs. So quickly, they can pour over into mob-mentality, anti-intellectualism and nationalism. We have to be careful, and we have to be smart. But right now, man, I am riding this high. Elbows up!
I appreciate that he also takes time to focus on a positive message. Democracy, diversity, all that. Populist movements that celebrate diversity are just not that scary to me.
Eh, I see this guy around and hear his speeches now and then. I don’t really find his speaking points all that convincing, and some are not quite the ‘win’ that gets depicted.
Like saying we all support DEI is nice and all, but he acts like he doesn’t even know what it is or why there are a lot of guys (typically) who are pissed off about it. Like I’m an older millennial, who has memories of being explicitly denied employment with the government because I didn’t “Identify as an equity employment group” – which is defined as any non-male or non-caucasian person (so no cis white guys were allowed to get past round 1 of the application for the jobs I was applying for). I was also asked, and stupidly/naively agreed, to step aside for scholarships/bursaries so that women could win the awards and pad my highschools stats - something that meant I had to work all through university, while those awards went to 1%er women who were too busy vacationing in their summer homes to even bother going to the award ceremonies. Our government literally releases a report about hitting its DEI hiring and promotion quotas – it’s less about finding the best person for a position, and more about determining the minimum requirements, and then shortlisting people based on race. It’s not a meritocracy once implemented, even though its proponents like to claim as such. And from a white guys perspective, seeing a bunch of women and minorities in power, who block you from getting a job / benefits because there are… too many white guys who have privilege… ain’t gonna leave a positive perspective on the thing. Like imagine if everyone you interacted with was a white guy, and when you tried to work with them, they said “Nah man, too many women / minorities work here, go somewhere else” – that’d feel like blatant discrimination, but when the races are reversed its celebrated as DEI.
There’re very real, historical issues that some of us have with these programs and the way they’re implemented. Similar story for being ‘woke’, and how adherence to some ‘woke’ principles means denying science/evidence – Canada implementing legislation that makes it criminal to discuss non-scientific/subjective-based things, like blind adherence to a narrative about history, is an easy example. Rich old white guys pretending like its not an issue, aren’t speaking to the “young” (under 50) disenfranchised male voters who’ve been negatively impacted by it on a personal level. Charlie/the left acting like it’s “Support DEI or else you don’t support Canada!” is nonsense. Politicians / white guys like Charlie, who did well and avoided all the negative stuff about these sorts of programs, aren’t great spokespeople – let’s see some guys who have lived through the negatives of DEI up there supporting it, guys who’ve lost job opportunities / career paths due to its implementation and their gender/race, doubt you’ll find too many who’d cheer it on. Like bring out Erin Weir, the guy who Jagmeet Singh kicked outta the NDP due to an unfounded accusation of misconduct – when investigated, the most they found was that he raised his voice when talking about the carbon tax, and that he stood a bit too close in the elevator sometimes. Get him to explain how his getting kicked out for BS reasons is actually “good” and “Canadian”.
The liberals will likely win this round, but its more because of anti-american sentiment, than a sudden embracing of this sort of nonsense – sorta like ford riding a patriotic wave back into office, despite his policies / history. If the left/progressives don’t pay attention to these sorts of concerns, things’ll just fester. Asking men to vote against their interests didn’t work in the USA. Some areas in the states have realised this and are trying to do better – NBC just had a piece highlighting whitmer and moore attempting to build more programs to support young men. Let’s hope it doesn’t take similar circumstances for the Canadian left to do better.
Some points I understand your frustration, but now if you flip sides and see that that happens to women and minorities all the time, for decades past and even now.
Imagine being a woman of colour that is interested in a typically male field, she would not stand a chance, while the good old boys go for a boat ride and beer to solidify a hire.
DEI might be a poor implementation of a good thing, and occasionally screw a white dude. Hopefully we have a more low level system one day where all people have access to care, training and funds so everyone gets a shot by merit.
Some points I understand your frustration, but now if you flip sides and see that that happens to women and minorities all the time, for decades past and even now.
Are you saying wampus is totally okay to suffer because someone else did? That sounds like vengeance.
Or because someone else victimized someone else? That sounds like collective punishment.
Or that he should be happy to be barred from a vaccine when it was suitable for him based on genetic makeup?
You seemed to be saying “change one intrinsic attribute and it if feels wrong, then it is” except then you kinda lost the plot.
You are fishing for words that aren’t there. Move on troll
No woman in my age range that I’ve encountered in real life has stories of being denied employment due to their race/gender – unless they’ve immigrated from another country. Many men in my friend circles do. I’ve literally seen women government regulators say to industry “I can’t work with these people”, and excuse almost every male from a board of directors.
I don’t deny that women were treated poorly in generations past when it came to the labour force. My point is that for the current generation that’s coming up, it has been almost completely flipped. The gender imbalance in the federal public service, is now more lopsided in favour of women, than it was in favour of men in the 1980s when this sort of legislation first came in. We reached relative ‘parity’ around 2000 – two decades, a whole generation of people, and we’re still preferencing women as though they’re this poor downtrodden minority, and we just watched that imbalance get more and more out of whack. But there’s no talk of relaxing those pro-woman hiring policies amongst politicians, let alone enacting pro-male hiring campaigns to sort out the “new” imbalance/reality. Just an authoritarian, discussion killing mantra of “Canada is DEI!!”.
DEI and woke stuff is not inherently Canadian. Framing the current issues and political issues with the states, as being “Canada is woke and DEI! And the states hates us for it!” is not helping things.
That might be survivor bias no? The employed people you talk to in your age range are employed, you aren’t hearing from the person that is moving somewhere else because of lack of job.
As a white dude that has been privvy to conservative male bosses, I have heard direct statements of :
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we won’t hire HER because she might get pregnant
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we won’t hire HER because she won’t know about mechanical things (even though resume was from a tool shop)
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he didn’t get hired because he was black, he was the best candidate, but the owner doesn’t like black people (owner was Asian)
“Lived experience” counts for other groups, why would you think it shouldn’t count for us? Plus, surprisingly perhaps, I have a bunch of friends that I don’t work with, where we discuss this stuff. Part of growing up local (though most of my friends from hs are minority folks, technically). I’ve not lilypadded much, so four of my five bosses historically have been women – the majority of most management in those orgs, women.
While I wouldn’t question your lived experiences, my own, and that of people around me in real life who I generally trust more than a rando online, support my viewpoint. This also includes a few managers in the federal government, who are pissed off with the demographic hoops they need to jump through for hiring/promoting people. Like there’ll be suitable local candidates, but the gov forces them to appoint people from the other side of the country to meet the racial quota.
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Activist groups that fought for equality, never thought to disband after equality was achieved. Current higher education enrollment is heavily skewed female now. Gender identity shouldn’t be made a hiring criteria.
It’s not just that. There’s another way to look at these groups…
Something like feminist equality pushes are basically advocating for women’s rights/equality in areas that are advantageous to women. It makes perfect sense that they don’t advocate for something like equality in terms of life expectancy, or male access to traditionally female occupations, because it’s outside the scope of their mandate. They are not advocating for equality/egalitarian goals, they are advocating specifically to gain benefits (or remove impediments) for their niche group. They don’t totally hide this bias, they put it front and centre in most cases, but the public ‘reads’ it as pushing for equality because of marketing and the inability to question the narrative without being labelled as a misogynistic arse, basically. It’s not just feminist pushes, special interest rights movements in general are not about egalitarian goals / equality, but are explicitly about providing advantages to their special interest groups.
If you remove all the negatives from one side of an equation, without touching the other side, you don’t end up with equality.
I saw him live at an earlier event. He’s a fantastic speaker. 🔥🔥🔥wish he was NDP leader. He’s the left populist Canada needs.
I love Charlie Angus, I’m proud he’s from northern Ontario (I love Cobalt & the tri-towns)
Canada is lucky to have Mr. Angus in this time.
It’s unfortunate that this is going to be his last term (although I don’t blame him for wanting to retire).
I just saw this, and I’m fired up! We need more of this energy, every day.
Very good/strong speech, but usual US programming infecting Canadian minds apply. The specific “democratic values” identity is actually problematic, but will address last.
I went to NATO meeting and all of our allies were silent when asked to support Canada.
Trump, in his antagonism of all allies, has successfully made them more divided with Russia and China. Especially Canada, even to Mexico. Cowering individually is surely a losing strategy for all, but increased divisiveness with Russia and China whether or not it is collective, is definitely a losing path. Internalizing US enemies as our own, is US mind control and US sycophancy. Divisiveness against US enemies is self destructive, and direct treasonous assistance to US pressure against us. We need closer relations with countries who do not cower to US. Europe approach/reaction is loser joke.
Trump wants Arctic to gift it to Putin
It is offensively stupid to believe that Trump/US empire doesn’t want domination of Canada purely for US empire benefits. Going full Tropic Thunder on blaming Russia for it, leads to idiocy that war on Russia must be the solution, as if that wasn’t US empire objective all along to make us a proxy. Russia does not need our Arctic resources, and if they do, they will pay us for access. They will not be invading Canada, ever.
Golden billion democracy, democratic values, is the ultimate value
Democracy in US is no protection from Oligarchy and Zionist supremacim. An additional factor in US allied democracies is US colonial control over those democracies. Our wonderful democracy doesn’t prevent extreme divisiveness lately, and it is a direct result of unsustainability, and the oligarch forces that want profits a few extra years over sustainability. Collective stupidity, or acceptance that world/country/master ally is unsustainable, is a big factor, and I assure you that war on Russia and China is no solution.
Good/humanist national governance comes without our major divisive and evil flaws. Economic pluralism where affording a family is possible, where sustainability of education and healthcare can be hoped, Sexual and marriage freedom is pluralism too, and a notably appreciated Canadian freedom/value. Language and cultural freedom is pluralism, also a Canadian value. Canada’s labelling of apartheid ethnostates who have suspended elections as “wonderful democracies” is simply political distortion of pluralism/humanist values. Gender/identity supremacism is not pluralism.
China and Russia have economic pluralism. Syria had some sexual pluralism. The freedom to be divisive, destructive, and treasonous representative of a colonial power should stop being considered a utopian value.
When you say “Zionist supremacim”, what exactly do you mean, buddy? Like, very very very precisely.
Also, am I right to understand that you consider …Putin’s Russia a country that we need to develop closer ties to? Like, this place?
Zionism has only considered colonialism in its quest for Palestinian land. Not purchases. The line for supremacism could be drawn there, or it could be set at refusal to stop colononialism and peace with Palestinians, or could be set at current genocidal levels.
What I meant by it specifically, is the pure zionist allegiance of all US elected politicians to Israel whatever its current agenda is. Zionist first rule over US, that extends to US first rule over Canada.
Russia a country that we need to develop closer ties to?
Instead of measuring a country by how much divisiveness they put up with, measure it in terms of corruption and submission to foreign powers. The danger for Canada is isolation based on “fantasy values purity” that never existed, and were always US projections to better control us.
Going full Tropic Thunder on
Is that leveraging the “I’m the dude playing the dude” bit? If so, brilliant.
In fact, this entire comment is excellent.
You never go full tropic thunder if you want to get nominated for an award/taken seriously in life.
Thieving traitors have always told Canadians to fear that Russia is coming for our Arctic resources, in order to steal our tax money to defend from the phantom. Canada is far away. Russia would spend a lot to develop far away and then ship back to their home market. They would require absurdly expensive military defense of a resource development operation. Our waters have only ever needed defense from US fishing incursions. But if US had control over Canada, it won’t be to gift it to Russia. That is a lie of such extreme absurdity as requiring full tropic thunder to say or believe it. Russia may have Arctic development expertise. They are cooperating with Chinese on projects in their waters. If they can help us (or USA), then great, they can help us. But that is only scenario (cooperation) they will ever be interested in. The damage in suggesting that Russia may be gifted our resources by Trump, is that Canadians only understand more war on Russia as the solution/distraction to US war on us.