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Nothing will change because no Canadian government will lower house prices and that's what absolutely needs to happen. 2024 was a banner year for voting agains

by jmyeet 2y ago

Nothing will change because no Canadian government will lower house prices and that's what absolutely needs to happen. 2024 was a banner year for voting against the incumbent governments worldwide. Globally we have a cost-of-living crisis, a housing affordability crisis and a years-long decrease in the standard-of-living. Generally speaking, each country has 3 forces that are in play: 1. Progressives; 2. Neoliberals / centrists; and 3. Outright fascists. The French election was a prime example of how this plyas out. Macron, a centrist, very much sided with the fascists rather than the progressives, such as who he picked to be Prime Minister after the snap election he called. Some say the UK is an outlier with Labor winning a massive victory. It is not. The former Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was weakened by a divided electorate so he could be character-assassinated in a coordinated campaign alleging anti-semitism to be replaced by a neoliberal centrist (Keir Starmer). Starmer actually got significantly fewer votes than Corbyn did in his two elections. All that happened was the right-wing vote got split between Conservatives and Reform. The US election played out similarly. Despite evidence of Biden's cognitive decline being apparent as early as of Spring 2021, he ran for reelection and was supported by the Democratic establishment right up until a disastrous debate performance made clear his position was untenable. Nancy Pelosi reportedly wanted an open primary at the convention. Instead Kamala Harris was anointed as the Democratic establishment feared a progressive candidate would win a primary. So we got a Wall Street approved centrist neoliberal platform that disrupted nothing and gave absolutely nothing to working people and had a policy platform on many issues (eg the death penalty, Israel-Palestine, immigration, deregulation) with almost no daylight between it and the Trump platform. Unsurprisingly that platform lost, badly. Predictably. The point here is that in every election, neoliberals are way more comfortable with (and will side with) fascists than leftists or pgoressives. Voters, eager for change, will choose populism because they aren't being offered any alternative. But nobody wants to address the root causes here: housing unaffordability and massive wealthy inequality. Too many people are invested in their house as an investment, as their nest-egg. House prices absolutely have to come down and nobody wants to hear that. Canada is a real estate bubble, just like pretty much every other Western nation. People will cling to their house prices as society crumbles around them.

AlexandrB 2y ago
> 3. Outright fascists. You say this like it's a given, but I'm not so sure anymore. The word fascist has lost most of its meaning by being applied to everyone from Donald Trump to J. K. Rowling. Can you explain specifically what you mean by this?
- eli_gottlieb 2y ago
  One steelman might be to replace "fascist" by "Malthusian populist", eg: someone who wants to decrease the national population of nonwealthy people to place less strain on what they see as a fixed pie of resources for the remaining "first-class" population.
- jmyeet 2y ago
  While there is disagreement on the exact definition, Wikipedia sums it up pretty well [1]: > Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy A good litmus test is to simply see how many parallels you can draw to Nazi Germany. So let's take a few points in relation to Trump: - "far right": the attack on the bodily autonomy of women, attacks on LGBTQ (particularly T) people, etc - "authoritarian": Hitler was elected (technically appointed) Chancellor before becoming a dictator. Trump was elected but it really took the Supreme Court to completely invent the idea of presidential immunity to make that happen. There is absolutely no constitutional basis for that decision. This, and various political moves to argue more power should be held by the executive, gets wrapped up in a psuedo-intellectual veneer like "unitary executive theory" [2]; - "ultranationalist": we just had an election campaign of outright race-baiting and villification not seen since 1930s Germany. It will be official government policy to build concentration camps and to use the military to round up undesirables; - "belief in a antural hierarchy": well, that's just white supremacy. As another parallel, it's worth noting that many on the right will argue that we need to root out "cultural Marcists" [3], which is eerily similar to Nazi-era "cultural Bolshevism" [4]. Another Nazi-era conspiracy is the Great Replacement [5], which has been resurgent in the last few years (eg [6]). This isn't unique to the US as you'll see all of these traits in other countries (eg Reform in UK, AfD in Germany, National Rally in France). Fun fact: one of National Front's founders (Petain) signed the armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940 so collaborated with Hitler as Vichy France [7]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory [3]: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2003/cultural-marxism-catching https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_t... [6]: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/25/1171800317/how-tucker-carlsons-extremist-narratives-shaped-fox-news-and-conservative-politi https://www.npr.org/2023/04/25/1171800317/how-tucker-carlson... [7]: https://www.france24.com/en/20180220-frances-jean-marie-le-pen-defends-vichy-leader-memoirs https://www.france24.com/en/20180220-frances-jean-marie-le-p...

by jmyeet 2y ago

AlexandrB 2y ago

> 3. Outright fascists. You say this like it's a given, but I'm not so sure anymore. The word fascist has lost most of its meaning by being applied to everyone from Donald Trump to J. K. Rowling. Can you explain specifically what you mean by this?

eli_gottlieb 2y ago
One steelman might be to replace "fascist" by "Malthusian populist", eg: someone who wants to decrease the national population of nonwealthy people to place less strain on what they see as a fixed pie of resources for the remaining "first-class" population.
jmyeet 2y ago
While there is disagreement on the exact definition, Wikipedia sums it up pretty well [1]: > Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy A good litmus test is to simply see how many parallels you can draw to Nazi Germany. So let's take a few points in relation to Trump: - "far right": the attack on the bodily autonomy of women, attacks on LGBTQ (particularly T) people, etc - "authoritarian": Hitler was elected (technically appointed) Chancellor before becoming a dictator. Trump was elected but it really took the Supreme Court to completely invent the idea of presidential immunity to make that happen. There is absolutely no constitutional basis for that decision. This, and various political moves to argue more power should be held by the executive, gets wrapped up in a psuedo-intellectual veneer like "unitary executive theory" [2]; - "ultranationalist": we just had an election campaign of outright race-baiting and villification not seen since 1930s Germany. It will be official government policy to build concentration camps and to use the military to round up undesirables; - "belief in a antural hierarchy": well, that's just white supremacy. As another parallel, it's worth noting that many on the right will argue that we need to root out "cultural Marcists" [3], which is eerily similar to Nazi-era "cultural Bolshevism" [4]. Another Nazi-era conspiracy is the Great Replacement [5], which has been resurgent in the last few years (eg [6]). This isn't unique to the US as you'll see all of these traits in other countries (eg Reform in UK, AfD in Germany, National Rally in France). Fun fact: one of National Front's founders (Petain) signed the armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940 so collaborated with Hitler as Vichy France [7]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory [3]: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2003/cultural-marxism-catching https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_t... [6]: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/25/1171800317/how-tucker-carlsons-extremist-narratives-shaped-fox-news-and-conservative-politi https://www.npr.org/2023/04/25/1171800317/how-tucker-carlson... [7]: https://www.france24.com/en/20180220-frances-jean-marie-le-pen-defends-vichy-leader-memoirs https://www.france24.com/en/20180220-frances-jean-marie-le-p...