Canadian Politics: Revenge of the small minds

[kairparavel]

OMFG. Honestly he seems like such a bro douchebag pre-politics that this is not shocking. Also, the 11th hour media drop is such fuckery. How long were they (Time) sitting on this?

Anyways, good luck Canada. It's all on fire now. 

 

[TrueMetis]

https://www.pscp.tv/w/1eaKbAoaDBZxX

Trudeau's apology.

He both admits it was racist and admits to having done similar actions before that. Better apology than most would make I think.

[JGP]

Sure, if the basis of comparison is a regular old racist no matter their political stripe.

He had a chance on that presser [I watched it] to get real, and discuss the insidiously systemic racism underneath his action, and actions like, but instead he just... Was a regular politician.

I find it unsatisfactory. I think Singh was planning on commenting after the presser. I doubt I'll disagree with him.

[TrueMetis]

That's a fair point.

[Fragile Bird]

I just saw the story and I thought, oh ffs. It took five years for someone in his school to show up with the picture?

I'm pretty sure the Christmas pantomines in Toronto did blackface all the time. We are such idiots in Canada. But in the US they pantomine slaves, in a country with a long history of slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynchings and voter suppression.

I'd say a PM who said "Let's bring in 50,000 Syrians" as his opening act as PM is not a racist, just a Canadian who was not 'woke' in 2001. When I was a teen Polish jokes and Italian jokes and Newfie jokes were considered perfectly acceptble. Forty years ago there were all these dead baby jokes. Thirty years ago it was Chinese driver jokes. I don't tell any of those jokes anymore.

And speaking of lynchings, out of curiousity I just looked up whether or not there were lynchings in Canada. The only lynching in Canada happened in 1884 when a group of Americans crossed the border into British Columbia, kidnapped a 14 year-old indigenous boy named Louie Sam, and rode back to the US. They hanged him 150 yards from the US border, then escaped into the US. The US government refused the Canadian government's demands for extradition. You learn something new everyday.

[dornishpen]

How can Quebec expect anyone to take their strong secularism seriously when their provincial flag is literally a big Christian symbol with a few smaller Christian symbols for extra decoration? 

[Fragile Bird]

23 minutes ago, dornishpen said:

How can Quebec expect anyone to take their strong secularism seriously when their provincial flag is literally a big Christian symbol with a few smaller Christian symbols for extra decoration? 

While you see Christian symbols, other people see French royal symbols. The white cross comes from French Royal Navy flag, the fleur de lys have been Royal symbols since the Crusades when they saw them in the Middle East and liked them so much they brought them back. The blue is for purity, which a hundred years ago represented Mary but now more likely represents the purity of French in Quebec. In other words, not likely to change.

[TrueMetis]

So Scheer, who just days ago said that as long as his party members apologized and took responsibility for their actions he would stand by them if they said or did racist things, is now calling Trudeau unfit to lead. Scheer and the conservatives have not in fact apologized or took responsibility for the shit they've pulled. Even when a golden opportunity is handed to the man he can't help but fuck it up.

[dornishpen]

21 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

While you see Christian symbols, other people see French royal symbols. The white cross comes from French Royal Navy flag, the fleur de lys have been Royal symbols since the Crusades when they saw them in the Middle East and liked them so much they brought them back. The blue is for purity, which a hundred years ago represented Mary but now more likely represents the purity of French in Quebec. In other words, not likely to change.

No one can seriously claim the cross isn't a Christian symbol, it's the ultimate Christian symbol. I agree it's not likely to change, but it represents a level of hypocrisy that shows the secularism law is more about discriminating against religious minorities than anything else. 

[Fragile Bird]

Like I said, you see what you want to see. The flag was brought in by Duplessis, a racist pig if there ever was one, but the person who started getting Quebec to stand up for itself. It’s not only a beloved flag, it’s considered one of the most beautiful flags in North America. 

[Fragile Bird]

35 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

So Scheer, who just days ago said that as long as his party members apologized and took responsibility for their actions he would stand by them if they said or did racist things, is now calling Trudeau unfit to lead. Scheer and the conservatives have not in fact apologized or took responsibility for the shit they've pulled. Even when a golden opportunity is handed to the man he can't help but fuck it up.

Amazing, isn’t it?

[JGP]

Scheer is a caricature of a man. 

If the NDP had an actual shot, federally, I'd support them. I mean, they have a leader who is capable of rising to the occasion, but I haven't seen him actually out there doing the work. There are provinces that he hasn't even been to in over a year. That's not how you build a viable federal alternative. Add to that a penchant for attracting the CDN equivalent of Bernie Bros and Sarandon types, with their purity politics and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

I am a white, cis hetero male. I'm good looking, have good looking kiddos, and I'm wealthy enough that I don't need to work. That's not a brag. It's luck. And here's the acknowledgement. There are few people more privileged than I am, in Canada, and if the Conservatives win I will directly benefit. The majority won't though, and those without will bear the brunt of it. The thought of the Conservatives winning in October makes me sick, and there's enough right wing Premiers that a Conservative PM could start fucking with the Charter.

So yeah, I feel sick, and also pissed off because I feel like we've been gamed by Trudeau and the Liberal's political calculus. He knew what he did, he knew it was wrong, and there's absolutely no way the party establishment didn't know either [vetting for leadership would've brought the brownface into the light, without question] but they chose to sit on it for fucking years instead of getting ahead of it during the last four years and now this close to the election it might enable the Conservatives to serve themselves?

So many people are going to pay if that happens. For what. For fucking optics? 

It's just... Ugh. I need to step off, I'm actually pissing myself right the absolute fuck off while I write this and I need sleep tonight.

Fucking guy.

 

[Fragile Bird]

It made me sick when I saw the story as well. The perfect time to admit what he did was when the controversy over the Virginia Governor happened, but he kept quiet. Extremely disappointing.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

It made me sick when I saw the story as well. The perfect time to admit what he did was when the controversy over the Virginia Governor happened, but he kept quiet. Extremely disappointing.

Seems as the news develops, his situation may have been worse than Northam’s. As my mentor is oft to say, Liberals (and it appears it applies to your country too) are the masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

[Paxter]

I feel like we are still far away enough from election day that this might not blow things completely off course. And the Conservatives hardly have the moral high ground on social issues. 

[JGP]

Maybe. I think the only save here, the one that might save us from having to spend the next decade cleaning up a Conservative catastrophe, is Trudeau either resigning [unlikely] or promising to resign should the Liberals remain as Government. I've got zero doubts that Chrystia could PM with her hands tied behind her back. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

40 minutes ago, Paxter said:

I feel like we are still far away enough from election day that this might not blow things completely off course. And the Conservatives hardly have the moral high ground on social issues. 

Keep in mind, liberals always punish their own for this kind of stuff while conservatives don’t care at all.

[Fragile Bird]

18 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Keep in mind, liberals always punish their own for this kind of stuff while conservatives don’t care at all.

Researchers found several Conservative candidates who made all kinds of racist statements on social media. The leader of the Conservatives said that ‘everybody makes mistakes when they are young’ and as long as they admitted what they did and apologized for it he would stand behind them. Three guesses what he’s said about Trudeau.

A third video has surfaced, looking like Trudeau was a very young teen. There was no social media then, someone took home video. This would have had to have been close friends of the family. Well, maybe at school? I’d like to know who the scum bag is who gave that to the Conservatives.

eta: my assumption is this was a teen party where the kids made each other up.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Researchers found several Conservative candidates who made all kinds of racist statements on social media. The leader of the Conservatives said that ‘everybody makes mistakes when they are young’ and as long as they admitted what they did and apologized for it he would stand behind them. Three guesses what he’s said about Trudeau.

You consistently see this. Just look at what's going on here. If Obama was accused of a tenth of what Trump has been, he'd already be in jail.

[TrueMetis]

Question, why do conservatives have such a problem with Justin Trudeau dancing? Honestly they seem more pissed off about all the times he danced than dressing up in Blackface. At least when they whine about him being near or hugging women that makes a sort of sense. Conservatives are sexually repressed and can't wrap their head around women having autonomy so they think it's just the action that the problem. Not whether or not the women involved was okay with it.