The ongoing "culture war", however defined, is often used to describe current political talking points and debate in our current climate. However, what makes a particular political issue part of the culture war? For instance, why is health care not a part of the culture war while transgender rights is?
How is your country’s main sub oriented? I know some subs like r/Polska are usually more left-leaning than actual Poland, and many other subs are farther right than their actual country. It’s not always even a left/right dichotomy thing, like how r/wales is dominated by Plaid Cymru types.
For me for example, r/California is significantly to the right of where Californians actually are. You don’t see Californians in real life simping for unregulated gun ownership or electing Republicans. Recall Newsom is popular-ish, but not nearly as much as people on that sub make it look like it is.
Keep in mind this is just theorycrafting.
As pointed out by other people, Canada is severely lacking in industry. Even skilled labor doesn't pay that great. For example, software engineers in canada generally can make significantly more in the US if they move there. Outside of the major cities our economic output is low. Most small towns rely on tourism nowadays, if they're in a nice area anyhow.
On paper the economic forecast is dire. The government saw a way to inflate the GDP using the housing market so they did it. At a glance our economy seems to be doing okay, but if you dig into the details you'll notice that about 30% of our GDP is the housing market. Literally one third of our economy is just housing. It's insane.
Over the past handful of decades our federal leadership has been slowly building this jenga tower economy and planning on being out of the spotlight when the tower finally reaches its limit and collapses.
I guess it was kind of unavoidable. When you transition from an industrial economy to a financial service-based economy the only direction to go is downward.
This might be why none of our political parties have the willpower to actually admit this is happening. Once you dispel the illusion then what? The party that goes this route basically has to contend with the fact that their legacy will be knocking over the jenga tower economy. Even if they had noble intentions, they will be the party that willfully popped the bubble and had to deal with the (probably devestating) fallout.
Obviously it's better to admit there's a problem instead of ignoring it, but i can see why there's no political will to do anything. The whole situation is fucked. I guess this is just late stage capitalism finally playing out.
From the article, which is a public post and can be shared freely:
Central to "Canceling Comedians While the World Burns" is the question of whether the western left wants to win. Watch my 50-minute discussion with the author.
The philosophy professor and writer Ben Burgis is as much on the political left as it is possible to be. A writer at the socialist magazine Jacobin, vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders, and advocate of socialist economic policies in the name of stopping corporatism and neoliberalism and elevating the quality of life for the working class, the bona fides of Burgis’ leftism are impossible to contest.
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Yet his new book takes critical aim squarely at the political faction in which he resides. Entitled Canceling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique Of The Contemporary Left, the book explores the numerous recent developments in leftist politics in both the U.S. and the west generally — particularly new cultural dogmas — which he argues are driving away and repelling the very people leftist politics ought to be attracting and representing. The portrait Burgis paints of dominant sectors the left is one that is often dreary, joyless, repressive and intolerant. The book signals not Burgis’ renunciation of the left but his attempts to argue how it can attract rather than repel people.
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I spent roughly fifty minutes in the video below discussing with Burgis his new book and contemporary leftism. It was a wide-ranging and candid discussion that examined whether the political left really wants to win or prefers its narrative of persecution and victimhood, whether there is more overlap than people realize between the populist or anti-establishment wings of the left and the right, whether contemporary leftism can be meaningfully reformed without jettisoning its fundamental principles, and whether these categories of "left” and "right” now obfuscate more than illuminate. Burgis is an honest and insightful thinker, which I why I found both his book and this discussion so worthwhile.
Our nation has been destroyed by political toxicity. This tribalism between red and blue has decimated polite discourse, has inundated media with a tug of war between “your guys” and “my guys”. Even in the comments section, the at times sad wedge between our people’s is disparaging. We are all citizens of the USA. We are all afforded the same rights. It doesn’t make us less because we disagree. It makes us more. It makes us stronger. And, no matter who wins the election, the peaceful transition of power is a hallmark of our nation. I truly hope this too is not taken from us by hate, tribalism, and zealotry.
