swirlsofhistory posted:

Has any party member acknowleged the big black veil in the room from the last election? We have Prime MInister Weedman for 4 years thanks to their 'principled stand'. I mean, I didn't vote for them and nothing he said about Muslims could've changed that, but a lot of people** cared.

Well someone reminded me that all of that was media generated, probably a lot of it through grey area political financing too, so it was more like just one of the issues the pro-liberal bourgeois types used to wedge trudeau in. A comparable one would be like John Tory in 2007 in Ontario where the liberals and unions basically paid to devastate Tory on the issue of whether some private schools should get tax credits. it's an issue so wildly out of proportion to what people actually probably care about that it's just used to frame the ballot choice through vague media impressions that people decide their vote on.

i think part of it is random chance but like.... the planning that goes on now to manage elections is insane. i'm reading a book partially about recent mailers and such where one misleading piece of mail designed basically to confuse a voter in a helpful way generates like 2% increase in turnout or something like that.

swirlsofhistory posted:

**Old Stock Canadians

this is totally off topic but i think this is a really interesting phrase from a linguistic perspective because it only makes sense if you speak english and french and you live inside the ottawa-montreal corridor, but outside of it it just sounds like batshit insane xenophobic racism that no one would ever say out loud. it really highlights the cultural and linguistic differences between English Canada and The Ottawa-Montreal Corridor version of Canada.

(it's from "canadiens de souche" which very literally means "original canadians" or figuratively more like "true canadians", which is just as xenophobic and racist as it sounds, but being racist in Quebec is publicly acceptable so no one minds)

drwhat posted:

swirlsofhistory posted:

**Old Stock Canadians

this is totally off topic but i think this is a really interesting phrase from a linguistic perspective because it only makes sense if you speak english and french and you live inside the ottawa-montreal corridor, but outside of it it just sounds like batshit insane xenophobic racism that no one would ever say out loud. it really highlights the cultural and linguistic differences between English Canada and The Ottawa-Montreal Corridor version of Canada.

(it's from "canadiens de souche" which very literally means "original canadians" or figuratively more like "true canadians", which is just as xenophobic and racist as it sounds, but being racist in Quebec is publicly acceptable so no one minds)

that's a good point. it was also sort of an interesting trajectory from his initial extreme anti-quebec stance early in his career and then finishing it by essentially borrowing language and policies from the quebec far-right nationalists, with a wild ride in between of trying to essentially absorb mario dumont supporters.

swirlsofhistory posted:

Outfoxxed by the wily media, I guess it's hard to compete when only 90% of coverage is favorable to your party.

Read -> Comprehend -> Post

aerdil posted:

sometimes i wonder if socialism will be possible in our lifetimes if the average person can be so easily misled by the dumbest campaign tactics and patronizing advertising campaigns. has capitalism made people such credulous idiots or are they just stupid, this and other reactionary and classist sentiments coming to you from aerdil on this season of the rhizzone

i think most people are pretty smart but that irrationality clusters together and reinforces itself powerfully, as well as the very real lesson that individuals have almost no power over politics in the absence of collective power and that collective power is quite often systematically destroyed when it appears. like once the average person is put into a situation of direct confrontation with their boss or something they basically start writing lenin tracts spontaneously because a lot of it becomes obvious. the problem is more that in those situations of confrontation people tend to start seeing collective action as a matter of delegation, so they put their faith in a leader, which makes it extremely easy for a bureaucracy to form or just freezes them within the current system which is just a non-starter. like look at how many thousands of people show up to see bernie speak, that's good in itself i guess but they are all facing the front and that probably has limited sustainability.

swirlsofhistory posted:

We have Prime MInister Weedman

*wakes the fuck up to Canadian politics*