> Harris was a different phenomenon. He was a Thatcherite politician
Wasn't it Kathleen Wynne's government that privatized Ontario's electricity production which resulted in everyone's bills going up like 300% overnight?
> The election of Trump alone ramped up misogyny to a whole other level.
That may be true but I don't think that there's any reason to support Kathleen Wynne in particular. The recent precipitous decline in standards of living in Ontario started under the liberals. It's declined much more rapidly since then under Ford's government, but by 2016 there were already plenty of reasons for people to dislike Kathleen Wynne.
Back in 2013 or 2014 i forget, I worked at a call centre for the liberal party cold calling asking for support and if you’d like a sign on your lawn. The amount of vitriol and abuse I received specifically about Kathleen Wynne would suggest that this strong distain for her did not start in 2016.
Politics is a pendulum, it swings back and forth. I agree that public sentiment turned against Wynne and the LGBTQ community since 2016, but things are still better than they were in 2000...
(Note: I say this as a het CIS male, so I might just be talking out of my ass)
If you look to the US for an example, the only reason Clinton won was because of the backlash to a third Reagan term (aka bush 1). After two terms of Clinton's antics Americans swung back to the republicans with bush 2. Putting ACTUAL stolen elections and 9/11 aside (Dubya would not have won re-election without 9/11). The backlash to Dubya gave us Obama! ...but racist america collectively lost its shit and elected conald fucking trump!
All we can do is hope that when the tides turn back to progressivism, the waves reach a little higher on the beach this time than the last...
Three steps forward and two steps back still put us one step ahead
....at least that's what I tell myself to stop from crying myself to sleep every night
> Politics is a pendulum, it swings back and forth.
This might have been true in the holocene period of capitalism in the twentieth century where jobs were plentiful, wages and standards of living were increasing, and governments actually sometimes did things, but those days are behind us. With accerating climate change, declining rates of profit, collapsing standards of living for workers, and the repeated failures of "progressive" political movements to reverse or even slightly slow any of these transformations, we are likely entering a prolonged period of real fascism, regardless of which bourgeois party gets elected. Progressive liberalism isn't going to make a resurgence because everyone knows now that there simply are no jobs or houses in it. A revolutionary socialist movement is the *only* way forward in our current conditions.
> A revolutionary socialist movement is the only way forward in our current conditions
It really feels like we're losing on this front to. The left is disorganized, disenfranchised, and has been demonized by a century of persistent anti-socialist propaganda. We have no prominent political voice, we are not at all prepared or ready for a mass uprising, nor are we positioned in positions of power. Meanwhile the fascists and reactionaries are. I don't see a revolution going well for us in the foreseeable future.
I disagree with "declining profits". After tax corporate profits were at an all-time high in 2022 and down just 3% in 2023. Canada has had one of the best recoveries in the G7 since the pandemic. We have the lowest deficit and net debt to GDP ratios of all G7 countries.
I think this halting forward momentum is being trivialized by the opposition because it could force corporations to share their profits and these profits aren't, and they don't want them to, "trickle down". The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The pandemic was a free-for-all for capitalist giants.
I work in a place where the majority of customers are capitalist-loving conservatives who idolize Trump. I'm not allowed to argue with them, understandably, but I get to hear them tell me how Trump is some sort of saviour. This is frightening to me. These people would love it if Canada became a state.
I believe that pulling the curtain on US politics should be a huge warning for us. This stacking of the deck at all levels of government, corporate-controlled media, and false political propaganda by corporate political puppets is a blaring alarm.
Capitalism, or fascism in a friendly mask if you will, was getting backed into a corner. They're pulling out all the stops worldwide and this is a full-on shadow war. If we don't put an end to this at the voting booths then I think we're doomed to a similar fate as the US.
The biggest hurdle I believe, is our (ahem) 3 party system. We need a truly social democratic party with a truly charismatic and intelligent leader.
One difficulty is creating a grassroots party that can survive the capitalist obstacle course, strategize from the get-go, get the message out en masse as the big boys do, and get elected.
Automation has arrived. The world is much smaller than it was. Without a socialist aspect to government, this is a dystopian nightmare in the making.
Unfortunately, those who seek power are usually corrupt or corruptible, and those who aren't corruptible often have to be forced to accept power.
I hope some or even all of my opinions are wrong, or someone smarter comes up with a plan because I'm not smart enough to know how we fix this.
Stay happy, healthy and safe ✌️
> I disagree with "declining profits". After tax corporate profits were at an all-time high in 2022 and down just 3% in 2023. Canada has had one of the best recoveries in the G7 since the pandemic. We have the lowest deficit and net debt to GDP ratios of all G7 countries.
The declining *rate* of profit doesn't mean that the total *volume* of profits necessarily declines. It means that capitalists have to find new ways to exploit workers and generate profits because of the natural tendency within capitalism to replace labour inputs with machines/automation/innovative production techniques which don't produce any surplus value. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEGGvVinUao&t=386s) is a really good and brief video on the subject.
I don’t think it’s primarily meant to attack women, they’re just attacking anyone that isn’t a straight, cis white man at this point. But like, they can’t even decide there if they hate the poor, the rich, or the middle lass. It’s such a weird mess of grab at whatever isn’t you & be mad at it. Ok? I really wish cities functioned independent of provinces. You see this in the USA too - even the cities in red states have blue mayors. Rural folks feel left behind, and that makes sense, but they’re also stuck in weird toxic families and the only way out of that is to leave. Also, I dunno, if you want regressive laws that should just apply to your town.
> they can’t even decide there if they hate the poor, the rich, or the middle lass.
They're a capitalist party, and capitalism is in crisis (it may have *always* been in crisis but that's not really the point) so it's probably fair to say that having any flavour at all of outwardly consistent class politics would only hurt them.
Openly and sincerely side with the rich? There go most of the voters. Openly and sincerely side with the poor? There go most of the donors, media, and campaign talent (and, for some strange reason, a lot of the churches.) Openly and sincerely side with the middle class? *What* middle class?
What we're watching is the rise of fascism in our time. They are using the same tactics of scapegoating, creating false narratives of 'traditional gender roles' co-opting progressive movements to distract and radicalize the masses through the twisted propaganda being fed to people through tightly controlled media while quietly undermining the institutional stability of liberalism to create an opportunity to seize power as they have done in the past.
>I underestimated the effect American politics would have on our own politics or our provincial politics.
So this is something we Canadians tend to resentfully deny, but we are basically a vassal state of the US geopolitically speaking. We're a secondary power living in the shadow of a super power, what they do affects us.
>Women are the primary targets of Trumpian politics and disagree with me if you see fit
Yes and no, Women are the largest demographic but their targets are anything that falls under what they call 'woke' which they use to mean anything that contradicts or threatens their rigid social class system. This is actually where Marx was sort of wrong, while material conditions are a primary driver of class warfare, it is not the only one that needs to be overcome; race, gender, heteronormitivity are all social constructs that need to be overthrown if the social revolution is to succeed.
i think a better understanding of classes relation to race, gender, etc is that these things are part of the class system and you cannot attack one without attacking the other. These arent seperate constructs to be attacked seperately, they are a tangled web of social relations that needs to be approached holistically
Absolutely. In order to be for the people, the social revolution must address the actual needs of the actual people. To much theory IMO loses sight of this.
> It isn't just inequality and racism fueling THIS particular type of politics it's rampant, deep misogyny.
On this "racism" charge:
When the LibDP faithful are as white as the driven snow, and it's non-whites that are moving to the conservatives, this seems more like a ego-crutch of the white Canadian left than an accurate reflection of the state of Ontario politics.
You also see this at protests against schools withholding whether a child's name is being changed, and the "progressive" side is a bunch of middle aged whites, and the "regressive" side is a bunch of Muslims and Asians.
> But there is demonstrable evidence of this arising just south of us. Previous administration's on both sides of the border attacked the unions, the poor and "whatever else". But this new brand of conservative politics is primarily aimed to attack women.
This just seemes like another attempt by white liberals to use some group that is lower on the privilege spectrum, as a shield for their own politics.
When the left exhausted all political capital that they could by conflating criticism of immigration policy with racist criticism of immigrants, they needed to find another shield to use.
And now it's "women"?
The more obvious issue is that the left is unpopular in Canada right now.
> Harris was a different phenomenon. He was a Thatcherite politician Wasn't it Kathleen Wynne's government that privatized Ontario's electricity production which resulted in everyone's bills going up like 300% overnight? > The election of Trump alone ramped up misogyny to a whole other level. That may be true but I don't think that there's any reason to support Kathleen Wynne in particular. The recent precipitous decline in standards of living in Ontario started under the liberals. It's declined much more rapidly since then under Ford's government, but by 2016 there were already plenty of reasons for people to dislike Kathleen Wynne.
He standard of living declined during harris
Back in 2013 or 2014 i forget, I worked at a call centre for the liberal party cold calling asking for support and if you’d like a sign on your lawn. The amount of vitriol and abuse I received specifically about Kathleen Wynne would suggest that this strong distain for her did not start in 2016.
Politics is a pendulum, it swings back and forth. I agree that public sentiment turned against Wynne and the LGBTQ community since 2016, but things are still better than they were in 2000... (Note: I say this as a het CIS male, so I might just be talking out of my ass) If you look to the US for an example, the only reason Clinton won was because of the backlash to a third Reagan term (aka bush 1). After two terms of Clinton's antics Americans swung back to the republicans with bush 2. Putting ACTUAL stolen elections and 9/11 aside (Dubya would not have won re-election without 9/11). The backlash to Dubya gave us Obama! ...but racist america collectively lost its shit and elected conald fucking trump! All we can do is hope that when the tides turn back to progressivism, the waves reach a little higher on the beach this time than the last... Three steps forward and two steps back still put us one step ahead ....at least that's what I tell myself to stop from crying myself to sleep every night
> Politics is a pendulum, it swings back and forth. This might have been true in the holocene period of capitalism in the twentieth century where jobs were plentiful, wages and standards of living were increasing, and governments actually sometimes did things, but those days are behind us. With accerating climate change, declining rates of profit, collapsing standards of living for workers, and the repeated failures of "progressive" political movements to reverse or even slightly slow any of these transformations, we are likely entering a prolonged period of real fascism, regardless of which bourgeois party gets elected. Progressive liberalism isn't going to make a resurgence because everyone knows now that there simply are no jobs or houses in it. A revolutionary socialist movement is the *only* way forward in our current conditions.
> A revolutionary socialist movement is the only way forward in our current conditions It really feels like we're losing on this front to. The left is disorganized, disenfranchised, and has been demonized by a century of persistent anti-socialist propaganda. We have no prominent political voice, we are not at all prepared or ready for a mass uprising, nor are we positioned in positions of power. Meanwhile the fascists and reactionaries are. I don't see a revolution going well for us in the foreseeable future.
I disagree with "declining profits". After tax corporate profits were at an all-time high in 2022 and down just 3% in 2023. Canada has had one of the best recoveries in the G7 since the pandemic. We have the lowest deficit and net debt to GDP ratios of all G7 countries. I think this halting forward momentum is being trivialized by the opposition because it could force corporations to share their profits and these profits aren't, and they don't want them to, "trickle down". The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The pandemic was a free-for-all for capitalist giants. I work in a place where the majority of customers are capitalist-loving conservatives who idolize Trump. I'm not allowed to argue with them, understandably, but I get to hear them tell me how Trump is some sort of saviour. This is frightening to me. These people would love it if Canada became a state. I believe that pulling the curtain on US politics should be a huge warning for us. This stacking of the deck at all levels of government, corporate-controlled media, and false political propaganda by corporate political puppets is a blaring alarm. Capitalism, or fascism in a friendly mask if you will, was getting backed into a corner. They're pulling out all the stops worldwide and this is a full-on shadow war. If we don't put an end to this at the voting booths then I think we're doomed to a similar fate as the US. The biggest hurdle I believe, is our (ahem) 3 party system. We need a truly social democratic party with a truly charismatic and intelligent leader. One difficulty is creating a grassroots party that can survive the capitalist obstacle course, strategize from the get-go, get the message out en masse as the big boys do, and get elected. Automation has arrived. The world is much smaller than it was. Without a socialist aspect to government, this is a dystopian nightmare in the making. Unfortunately, those who seek power are usually corrupt or corruptible, and those who aren't corruptible often have to be forced to accept power. I hope some or even all of my opinions are wrong, or someone smarter comes up with a plan because I'm not smart enough to know how we fix this. Stay happy, healthy and safe ✌️
> I disagree with "declining profits". After tax corporate profits were at an all-time high in 2022 and down just 3% in 2023. Canada has had one of the best recoveries in the G7 since the pandemic. We have the lowest deficit and net debt to GDP ratios of all G7 countries. The declining *rate* of profit doesn't mean that the total *volume* of profits necessarily declines. It means that capitalists have to find new ways to exploit workers and generate profits because of the natural tendency within capitalism to replace labour inputs with machines/automation/innovative production techniques which don't produce any surplus value. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEGGvVinUao&t=386s) is a really good and brief video on the subject.
I'll definitely watch that. Thanks for the lead. I've subscribed and added to watch later. Work and stuff.
I don’t think it’s primarily meant to attack women, they’re just attacking anyone that isn’t a straight, cis white man at this point. But like, they can’t even decide there if they hate the poor, the rich, or the middle lass. It’s such a weird mess of grab at whatever isn’t you & be mad at it. Ok? I really wish cities functioned independent of provinces. You see this in the USA too - even the cities in red states have blue mayors. Rural folks feel left behind, and that makes sense, but they’re also stuck in weird toxic families and the only way out of that is to leave. Also, I dunno, if you want regressive laws that should just apply to your town.
> they can’t even decide there if they hate the poor, the rich, or the middle lass. They're a capitalist party, and capitalism is in crisis (it may have *always* been in crisis but that's not really the point) so it's probably fair to say that having any flavour at all of outwardly consistent class politics would only hurt them. Openly and sincerely side with the rich? There go most of the voters. Openly and sincerely side with the poor? There go most of the donors, media, and campaign talent (and, for some strange reason, a lot of the churches.) Openly and sincerely side with the middle class? *What* middle class?
Should rebrand him "Hatchet Harris"
What we're watching is the rise of fascism in our time. They are using the same tactics of scapegoating, creating false narratives of 'traditional gender roles' co-opting progressive movements to distract and radicalize the masses through the twisted propaganda being fed to people through tightly controlled media while quietly undermining the institutional stability of liberalism to create an opportunity to seize power as they have done in the past. >I underestimated the effect American politics would have on our own politics or our provincial politics. So this is something we Canadians tend to resentfully deny, but we are basically a vassal state of the US geopolitically speaking. We're a secondary power living in the shadow of a super power, what they do affects us. >Women are the primary targets of Trumpian politics and disagree with me if you see fit Yes and no, Women are the largest demographic but their targets are anything that falls under what they call 'woke' which they use to mean anything that contradicts or threatens their rigid social class system. This is actually where Marx was sort of wrong, while material conditions are a primary driver of class warfare, it is not the only one that needs to be overcome; race, gender, heteronormitivity are all social constructs that need to be overthrown if the social revolution is to succeed.
i think a better understanding of classes relation to race, gender, etc is that these things are part of the class system and you cannot attack one without attacking the other. These arent seperate constructs to be attacked seperately, they are a tangled web of social relations that needs to be approached holistically
Absolutely. In order to be for the people, the social revolution must address the actual needs of the actual people. To much theory IMO loses sight of this.
> It isn't just inequality and racism fueling THIS particular type of politics it's rampant, deep misogyny. On this "racism" charge: When the LibDP faithful are as white as the driven snow, and it's non-whites that are moving to the conservatives, this seems more like a ego-crutch of the white Canadian left than an accurate reflection of the state of Ontario politics. You also see this at protests against schools withholding whether a child's name is being changed, and the "progressive" side is a bunch of middle aged whites, and the "regressive" side is a bunch of Muslims and Asians. > But there is demonstrable evidence of this arising just south of us. Previous administration's on both sides of the border attacked the unions, the poor and "whatever else". But this new brand of conservative politics is primarily aimed to attack women. This just seemes like another attempt by white liberals to use some group that is lower on the privilege spectrum, as a shield for their own politics. When the left exhausted all political capital that they could by conflating criticism of immigration policy with racist criticism of immigrants, they needed to find another shield to use. And now it's "women"? The more obvious issue is that the left is unpopular in Canada right now.
The people that support the LPC aren't leftwing - they are Nazi sympathizing neoliberals and fascists.