Subscript5676

Given the current situation in Canada: a poly-crisis where many feel like they’re just not making it out well in life, it’s the perfect conditions for fascists and populists to come in and peddle hate and false solutions to a confused and angry public, and Smith plays very well in these sorts of situations, as a serial liar who will lie for anything that would benefit herself and her benefactors. And it’s especially easy these days, with the States and various far-right parties around the world as samples of what she can do.

Unfortunately, the Western world is becoming more and more polarized due to how effective right-winged leaders have been able to sell to a lot of people a convenient false reality, and capture and direct their hatred towards incumbents, and sell themselves as the solution to all their problems, a common fascist tactic we’ve seen many times in modern history by now. Trump’s supporters down in the States are very much captured by this and would believe almost any reality Trump would propose, and we all know Trump is a successful conman that will bend his interpretation of reality to whatever fits his narrative. Smith is playing exactly that same game here. Frame every problem as an existential crisis and label dissuaders as enemies for the force that’s threatening your wellbeing, and you have a group of supporters whose minds will be difficult to change by others.

And the unfortunate reality is that for many many years, internal politics in the Western world has been relatively calm and stable enough that many have become complacent and think that world events and politics aren’t important to their lives, and have ended up taking politics for granted. When they can’t find a job, can’t earn enough to live, or can’t get to live the life that they’ve come to expect to live in, blaming the incumbent is an easy answer, even if they don’t necessarily understand what or why their situation has anything to do with government policies, especially when they don’t even know which level of government is responsible for their plight.

And some recent publications have revealed that people will gladly support whoever that speaks their plight, and rationalize whatever problems there are with the speaker. In the case of Trump, people support him in spite of his crimes, and you could even say it’s because of his crimes, as they see him as a rule breaker that will do whatever it takes to do what he says he’ll do for them. Christian evangelicals rationalize their support for Trump by using their history about a king who wasn’t a Christian in the past who purged their enemies. There are also many amongst the Republicans who believed they could keep Trump reigned in once he helped get them into power, and we all know how that turned out in Trump’s first term. And we see similar episodes playing out, not just in the States and Canada, but also in the EU.

This whole situation around the world is just nasty and sad. In some ways, it’s not too different from the many past empires where a significant group of people are essentially brainwashed into supporting the very people who are making their lives worse, and be used to further the agenda and pockets of a few.

I’m part ranting, but all I want to say that it’s just really difficult to have other Canadians convince Albertans that nobody else is out to get them and take advantage of them like Smith is claiming, aside from Smith and her cronies and those behind her, precisely because of how the propaganda machine is ran. And I want to say thank you for actually coming in and voicing your thoughts as a non-Canadian (though, I’m actually not one myself either, though I am a PR living in Ontario). Unfortunately, lemmy.ca is mostly left, and are frequently technologically inclined, whereas people who’ve bought into the right wing narrative are generally on Meta’s services, X, and Reddit, so your voice might not reach them from here.

Ehh… If anything, his whole “Canada Is Not For Sale” thing only had me thinking that he’s been really consistent at being a populist. It’s right on brand.

Thank you for sharing this article @Sunshine@lemmy.ca. I must admit that I’ve been rather pessimistic about the election outcome, that 41% of the votes went to the Cons, that I forgot to sufficiently celebrate the fact that 44% voted for the Libs, many of which were out with the intention of denying the Cons government. That I forgot the fact that the fact this happened gives us all, at home and abroad, hope that the fight goes on and that we stand a chance at decency. Thank you!

Sorry, I can’t help myself.

… Would you say they stole your taco?

I think it’s worth pointing out that the LPC is not really in a good place, even if they did win the election and formed a minority government. People were frustrated with them, and we know this from earlier polls, the popular vote, particularly on the fact that the CPC is right on their tail, and the fact that too many of the ridings were extremely close calls (yes there’s vote splitting, but I’d say that’s only one factor in the CPC’s huge surge). If Carney does anything funny, it doesn’t just cost him his political career, it would wipe out the LPC in the next election, and may even effectively paralyze the political centre and left for years to come (given that we now have a much weakened NDP, and only 1 Green seat). People in the LPC should be aware of this, or at least I hope they do, cause it will most likely be the end of most of their political careers.

So I believe there’s pressure within the LPC to keep Carney in check.

Sure, he could blindside literally everyone and do things that would benefit Brookfield, but there’s no guarantee that it would actually benefit himself due to the blind trust. Carney would become a pariah to Canadians, and make people even angrier at Brookfield, which may, in turn, even if not immediately, hurt their bottom line. We haven’t even gotten to the legal battles that will ensue. Carney would have to be pretty stupid to make that kind of gamble, compared to actually just working normally as a politician and get his pension and live ultra-comfortably. But, we do have lots of dumb politicians that would do that, all over the world, so it’s an understandable worry. Just look at recent kleptocratic episodes, and how a good chunk of these kleptocrats barely served jail time and/or paid back what they’ve stolen.

I can’t say I’m familiar with the political history that far, but that does seem like a disastrous episode for them, at least from reading about it. Disastrous, but not fatal. They were down to 2 MPs at one point after the 2011 election. Damn.

I was just thinking that BQ still have their leader on, but naur, they’re almost wholly regionalistic that it’s not really worth talking about in terms of a national leadership reset. It would be straight up disastrous for BQ as a whole if Blanchet wasn’t even elected as MP.

That said, PP has a chance at staying on as leader; he may have squandered the last few months leading up to the election, but from the various polls we’ve seen, the gap was closing between the LPC and the CPC, and PP has the historic vote share to pressure the party’s leadership into letting him stay

Jagmeet is unfortunate but his time was far over. You could argue that the NDP was sacrificed for the LPC (f you FPTP), but in many provinces, their seatsand even vote share were somewhat evenly split between the LPC and the CPC, so it’s not purely a consequence of strategic voting; the CPC definitely ate some of their original pie. Not only is this bad news for the NDP (cause it means they’ve really disappointed their supporters), but that some of these disappointments may have led to voters swinging to the other side. We’ll have to wait until we see voter turnout data to give us more hints about what else we should takeaway from this election.

The LPC, well, Carney’s already a new leader, so the reset’s already done there, but the other people aren’t likely to change, at least there hasn’t been an indication of that. They have their work cut out for them this time, and it will be a really tough 4 years ahead, or shorter. If they disappoint, and couldn’t solve at least a few of the crises we’re in right now, they might really get fully wiped out. I hope they actually are aware of that fact, especially given how dangerously close the CPC is to them (vote share, not seats, though they’re arguably pretty close in seats too).

I really hope the LPC actually recognizes that they’re deep in the water right now, and that there are people in the LPC with visions that’ll prioritize the longevity of the Canadian center and left by implementing PR, in case they actually fail to deliver and get wiped off the national stage.

The TLDR is, no, I don’t think it’s true that Canada didn’t want anything to do with what pp has to offer. And the proof is in the vote share. If the Libs f up, I believe that the Cons can easily re-campaign on a similar platform, and they will, quite likely, handily win the next election.

Now for the long version…

Unfortunately, I don’t think the results were that simple. Not only have the Cons gained a lot of seats this round, they also gained a lot in vote share, at a historic level not seen since the 1980s. They’re also trailing behind the Libs at 2.1% (around 410k) votes at this time of writing according to the CBC. Had people not rallied behind the Libs and the vote-splitting were any worse, we might’ve ended up with a Cons government (worth noting that given their track record, it’s unlikely that they would be able to function as a minority government, so if they are to form government, they almost have to win the majority). Regardless of what we think of pp’s politics, he’s been able to garner a lot of support through amplifying and channeling the anger that people have due to current issues, to bring about this historic vote share for the Cons. This is one of the key takeaways of this election IMHO.

Yes, I believe the Libs have the potential to do Canada good and protect Canada from the US under Carney. Yes, pp’s a terrible leader by many metrics and is highly unlikable by the general public. And yes, most Canadians don’t want to be like the States and the anti-wokeness bs is clearly not as pervasive here.

But we are not without problems. Problems that pp has successfully gotten people to be mad about and channel their anger in the wrong direction. We’re in a poly-crisis, and such scenarios give the perfect conditions for fascists to swoop in and gain support, and pp has definitely taken advantage of that.

And I also do not, for a single second, think that the anti-woke, Maple MAGAts days are over. They are clearly part of the Cons’ base. There are voices saying that those people will only vote for the PPC, who has earned less than 1% of the vote share, and declared those dead, but some of those voices are from the Cons themselves, and pp was vocal about his support for the Freedom Convoy and that he repeatedly campaigned on anti-wokeness. The fact that the Cons have not imploded over their leader’s affinity to the far-right (iirc pp has had multiple appearances in far-right podcasts) should be a testament to who their base includes.

It only means “we have this bunch of people that we say are ‘the enemy’, but we keep the definition vague so that it can be anyone or any group that is convenient for us to use, as per the fascist playbook.” The purpose is to channel hate and people’s frustrations into a movement for their own purposes, and it doesn’t matter to fascists (or neofascists, or pseudo-fascists, etc) if it’s actually built on nothing.

“Woke” meant something, and there was the “anti-woke” people, and the right took advantage of that hate, twisted and muddled it into basically a meaningless but convenient tool today.

I meant to reply after looking into Withings but I forgot about it. Thank you for sharing about Withings!

Withings looks good. Privacy policy (iirc) lists all of the third party services it uses that may hold customer data, and not many of them are from the US either (and when they do, it’s meant for US customers). Didn’t sound like they share much with these services either.

It’s a bit of a shame that you need a subscription for the health and fitness improvement stuff (via Withings+), but it does look like you get all the regular metrics with just having the watch.

I do wonder if those data can be exported without having to go through Apple Health or Health Connect, but I guess I’m not gonna holding my breath there.

I initially thought I’d give them the benefit of the doubt cause I’ve seen them around, and they sometimes say things that look like they can think and hold some kind of conversation. But from the reply they’ve given me, it looks like it was not needed. I was basically Ben-Shapiro-ed there.