Only thing I said that I think might be worth downvoting is “unified society,” which might have unintentionally implied society was once completely unified. It felt so obvious I couldn’t possibly mean that, it didn’t even occur to me to be more precise there. In hindsight though, what I should have stressed is that we’ve been getting less unified than ever. We’re losing the ability to see the humanity in one another, and have been for a long time.

Folks who sow division want to make it about culture or politics, but it was always about class or more fundamentally, power. The more willing we are to play the hierarchy game, the more power goes to the ones on top.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t agree with such a move, but X is an exception. We’ve seen the platform owner directly interfere with politics in multiple countries and we know what crowd of terrorists he’s been running with both on his platform and elsewhere. The platform owner is definitively a traitor to Canada, aiding a malicious enemy who has threatened our country and set out to harm us. But I do wonder what reaction the average Canadian (who just uses the most popular social media because everybody else is on it and hasn’t participated at all in alternatives like the Fediverse) would have. If we manage to elect a non-CPC gov’t though, maybe they can use that mandate.

Doubling down on tribalism won’t save us from their ignorance. The degradation of a unified society by means of Us vs. Them thinking is how we got here in the first place and how things continue to get worse.

There are those at the fringes of that style of thinking that can be reached by those of us who are adjacent to them (via family, mutual friends, workplaces, etc.). Those folks at the fringes can reach those adjacent to them. We’ll never get 100% of them on side but we can at least weaken the well-funded machine that continues to keep them uninformed by relating to people as human beings instead of stoking division like oligarchs intend for us to do.

I did a DDG search with the terms tariff site:https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/ -"live updates" and got article results about tariffs that (at least as far as I checked) are still paywalled. :/

*edit - Maybe it’s just going forward? The video of Trudeau’s speech from yesterday works, but there’s no article with it.

Alternatively if you can live without a bleeding edge device, maybe next time you could get a used one (assuming there’s a reputable seller within Canada). To my knowledge, that shouldn’t benefit the company other than people seeing you use it, and it’s also more environmentally friendly.

Also, big donors are angry at them, so I guess they’re trying to win those donors back.

It’s also reported here. This fits with the reports of complaining that Democratic Congresspeople have been doing about the progressive wing of the party wanting them to fight back against DOGE. They and party leadership may well be aiming to not just talk like it, but fully become the new Republican party, in hopes of having a stampede of “moderate” Republicans who aren’t happy with Trump come their way.

We can point people to Gary Stevenson for down-to-earth explanations on how this should work. He’s been campaigning for wealth taxes in the UK, but also acknowledges the issue is global. He has a playlist you can point people to that want to understand the issues better. Long story short though, he emphasizes taxing difficult-to-move physical assets like commercial properties.

Recently, clips have circulated where he debated Piers Morgan and Dave Rubin at the same time on why excess wealth must be taxed. That said, I think he explains things just as well and in better detail on his own channel.

Yes it is, but unfortunately there is a real risk if the crazy keeps multiplying throughout Trump’s administration they will just end up using prison labour rather than having dignified modes of assistance and decent-paying jobs.

I was thinking the same about him lately. The federal NDP running on a platform that respects the dignity of the working class with a smiling Wab Kinew out front would be inspiring. But he won’t be free for a while yet.

Despite how poorly thought out this one seems to be, I don’t think all petitions are bad. They’re just a check on how popular an idea is. Obviously there should be further research and input from experts before anything a successful petition supports can happen. For example, there’s probably a compelling case experts could make for the public interest in relation to another petition I saw referenced on here recently.

Repeating my comment from the other thread I saw about this survey:

I would rather he be prosecuted for treason, though I acknowledge that would require us to already be at war with the US (so he could be shown to be aiding the enemy). Too many innocent people (especially activists) could be affected by the precedent this would set-- especially the next time a Conservative government comes to power, though I could even see the Liberal Party mirroring Europe’s recent police harassment of Palestinian-friendly journalists if not Trump’s deportations of activists for Palestinians’ human rights that Poilièvre would likely copy. Despite seeing myself as Canadian all of my life and being here for decades, I already feel less safe in this country, considering rising fascist sentiments like these out there. I’m not eligible for citizenship in the country of my birth either. I know the backlash from just stripping him of his citizenship outright would be directed to people like me.

Any measure used to remove the rights of one repugnant wealthy person introduces a needless threat to politically inconvenient non-wealthy people.

I would rather he be prosecuted for treason, though I acknowledge that would require us to already be at war with the US (so he could be shown to be aiding the enemy). Too many innocent people (especially activists) could be affected by the precedent this would set-- especially the next time a Conservative government comes to power, though I could even see the Liberal Party mirroring Europe’s recent police harassment of Palestinian-friendly journalists if not Trump’s deportations of activists for Palestinians’ human rights that Poilièvre would likely copy. Despite seeing myself as Canadian all of my life and being here for decades, I already feel less safe in this country, considering rising fascist sentiments like these out there. I’m not eligible for citizenship in the country of my birth either. I know the backlash from just stripping him of his citizenship outright would be directed to people like me.

Take every drug you need.

True, and they also removed any restrictions on hate-filled content, according to a report I heard recently.

I guess they don’t feel the need to launder their reputation anymore. They obviously never cared in the first place.

You mean Republicans were successful at identity politics (i.e. manipulating people through exaggerations, distortions, and outright lies about equality movements). Democrats yet again failed to effectively listen, validate, and address the public’s most pressing concerns about how the status quo (with which centrist parties are generally associated globally) isn’t working for them.

I was just making an abstract sci-fi joke based on how cold fusion has been presented like a Holy Grail in the past. Obviously a better source of energy isn’t going to solve all our problems, no matter how good it is.

It’s not that it’s especially effective. It’s that the wealthy have been consistently pumping money into blaring division and individualism into every corner of society they thought relevant for decades upon decades. They’ve had plenty of time by now to figure out enough of what does and doesn’t work for them (including types of journalistic reporting to promote and suppress) in terms of manipulating the news, and promoting division in many ways (including not just stirring up controversy about social issues, but other forms of division as well).

We were never going to outspend them, so I think our best bet was always to out-human them. (And probably to set up parallel economies if things get really bad.) For now, we can still start at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy and meet people we want to reach where they’re at. If they aren’t surviving well, they’re not going to be as focused on other issues. Wherever they’re at, we should focus on listening and empathizing first, then poke holes in the lies they’ve been told once they feel heard and respected. People who have been where they’ve been are the most likely to reach them. To me, all the MAGA regret we’re seeing now in the US, and all the chemical spills and natural disasters that don’t get major media attention and which local governments are too underfunded to help with are an opportunity for somebody to reach some of these people (ideally with monetary aid from an organized movement), so they can get their heads right and get to work on waking up those to whom they’re adjacent.

Maybe if it runs longer, we all get to jump to a better timeline. 😅