This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The Canadian Truckers Won. Everything.
by Kulak
What I don't think is well appreciated by some, either in certain bubbles or outside Canada, is that, while the protest was very controversial, its support was quite broad. This was not like some fringe far-right or populist movement that all respectable people were against. Throughout the pandemic, a lot of people across the political spectrum thought the Covid restrictions had gone too far, but they tended to be quiet about it. Not all of these people supported the trucker protest, but a lot of them quietly did. I know some pretty progressive people who weren't too vocal about it, but they would say things like "enough is enough, what do they expect people to do?". I know well-respected successful progressive professionals who donated to it. There was a very widespread feeling, from people who wouldn't ordinarily support something like this, that you can only push people so far and that something had to give. Canadians tend to be very trusting of and deferential to their government, but I witnessed a lot of that trust get burned up by its handling of the pandemic.
I don't know if I agree that the protest was successful though. My impression is that the covid restrictions were reversed the moment the polls showed a majority were against them. I followed the pandemic policies pretty closely for the first two years and it seemed like the politicians, especially Trudeau, were just doing whatever the polls said was popular.
More options
Context Copy link
They won nothing. The COVID stuff was eventually repealed, but the leaders of the trucking protest were jailed, everything the government did to them was upheld (even if the Emergency Act declaration had to be pulled from judgement to avoid rebuke, that WORKED). It is now understood in Canada by all that matter, both in government and by opposition, that the opposition does not get an effective voice and may be put down by any means necessary. The normies now think of the truckers as a bunch of hateful noisy boors who got what was coming to them, not that the normies matter anyway; they'll do what CBC tells them to do.
I know several normies that supported the truckers, which is not something I have witnessed for any other remotely radical political movement.
More options
Context Copy link
Bullshit a province's government fell, an major party did a complete 180 on its position, litterally every policy demand was changed within a year or less...
Compare that to anything that was expected in December January 2021-2022 and its a total victory.
Do you care about actually winning the policy victories you want and actually getting people what they want, or do you care about getting gibs for your activist class whilst nothing gets better?
"Within a year" everyone got rid of Covid restrictions. That has nothing to do with the truckers.
This was NOT a given. And the Trucker protest and sister protests in other nation were a MASSIVE cause of restrictions ending.
All the talk in Dec Jan 2021-2022 was of making lockdowns semi-permanent and ramping up the vaccine passport system ever further to crush dissent.
A small percentage of the talk in places like this, maybe. This certainly wasn't a widespread, mainstream idea, much less a dominant one.
More options
Context Copy link
It was pretty much a given, because it's what happened in every single other western nation.
In Australia at least, many politicians went out of their way to divorce themselves from further covid restrictions while the trucker protest was a blazing political dumpster fire in the international media.
Lifting of restrictions was already planned there, but I remember it gaining impetus due to the protests and even prompting copycat protests.
Australian Covid hysteria quietly died in Christmas of 2021. The governments ruined the Christmas of anyone travelling across the border, only for Omnicron to come and sweep the country. Within a few months nearly everyone had had the disease and found it to be no biggie.
Politicians quietly rolled back all the mandates etc. But in Canada they were still doing it and were only talking about changing things when the Truckers hit.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I've said it before and I'll say it again: you have got to chill out with the rampant ellipses.
Is he actually omitting stuff, or is the original like that? I was assuming the former, but if the latter, that's just plain incorrect. It's like ending this post with a comma,
More options
Context Copy link
It really adds 30 years.
More options
Context Copy link
Like cheesy sexting.
More options
Context Copy link
But how else would I imagine William Shatner narrating his posts?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I admit I don't follow Canadian politics too closely, but I remember the protests happened in early 2022. The ever helpful Wikipedia confirms it was end of January 2022. 8 months from that is October 2022. Nobody had restrictions in October 2022. It's not some heroic achievement. It's like claiming you punched your enemy and he died, 80 years later, in the age of 103. Whatever happened, he didn't die from your punch, that much we could be sure of. In fact, 4 months is June 2022. California lifted its general indoor mask mandate in March 2022 and for schools, prisons and other dangerous spaces in April 2022. Israel (which reacted to covid with very severe restrictions) scrapped their Green Pass system in February 2022 and its mask mandates in April. Removing restrictions in June 2022 is not something that can be seriously taken as a big win of the protest movement.
The aftermath is: Trudeau put Canada under effectively dictatorship for 9 days, and suffered no noticeable consequences. The commission they tasked with whitewashing the ordeal after the fact successfully whitewashed it and confirmed the dictatorship was the appropriate measure to take (which means, in similar circumstances, the Canadian government won't hesitate to do it again). Note also that this is the only use of the Emergency Act ever - thus confirming that this is exactly what it is for, suppressing dissent. The weapon of asset confiscation have been successfully deployed against political enemies, and again, no consequences to speak of, and again, fully confirmed as appropriate and in fact, "unavoidable". Absolutely nothing was "overthrown", or, in fact, changed and absolutely no power was moved from one hands to other. Some victory.
You remind me of Russian liberals in early 2020s (before the war), where they would assemble a protest, get brutally crushed and beaten up, then parade on social media proclaiming "Putin is afraid! We showed him we are the power!" and invent a new form of "creative protesting" - white strips, flashlights, flashmobs, whatever. It ended up with their head person - Navalny - miraculously escaping the murder attempt and ending up in prison, likely for as long as Putin is alive (if he's not murdered by an "unfortunate accident" or "commits suicide"). And all their movement and their goals achieving squat, short of landing the more brave (or less smart, if you will) ones in prison and more smart (or less brave, if you will) ones in exile, where they can continue babbling about how Putin is deathly afraid of them. I'm sure Trudeau is "afraid" of the truckers in the same way.
DID YOU READ!?
A province's government changed, the second largest politcal party switched from vehemently pro to anti-lockdown with the Pro-lockdown losing their jobs, Trudeau's government is basically crippled all of his policies since have failed as seen with his gun ban falling through...
And the emergencies act failed to be extended, the relevant powers were lost when its 7 (not 9) limit expired without the power to extend it.
The fetishism of defeat. The desire to be powerless in the case of clear and undeniable victory is disgusting.
Your enemies can be absolutely as irredeemable, corrupt, and tyrannical as their worst critics imagine, AND STILL BE WEAK.
The hell do you want? Do you want the CBC to pat you on the back and say "No its OK. You won"
Grow up. Politics is war by other means, casualties on your own side are acceptable in the pursuit of victory.
And the truckers won a complete victory. Every freedom I had lost from 2019 to 2022, everything I expected to never get back and to suffer across decades of insurgency trying to claw back... Was restored, mostly within a month, and the rest in half a year.
THAT IS TOTAL VICTORY.
I will not let blackpilled moldbuggians tarnish it with their own impotence.
FLYOVER country won whilst all the theory-cells and blackpilled cosmopolitan right wing wing intellectual wrung their hands... Becuase the flyover rubes are better than you. More fit to rule. More fit for combat. More able to organize. And now it is the job of the right wing intellectuals to catch up with the 40 year old small businessmen and conpsiracy theorists who've shown themselves more capable that the entire right wing political class
Be less antagonistic.
More options
Context Copy link
Everybody is anti-lockdown now. In fact, nobody even knows anybody who advocated for the lockdown except their political enemies. It's not fashionable now, so everybody has been always supporting what is fashionable now, and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. This is not victory - once the need arises, the agenda will turn back as quickly and you'll find the same policies implemented again - only now, with full knowledge that there are no costs, except maybe having to move on to the next cushy job as the winds change. This rotation happened in Canada, happened in the US, happened in many other places. Attributing it to the power of the protest is a delusion.
I don't really see how Trudeau failing to pass the largest gun ban in history of gun bans (while still feeling free to enact various smaller gun bans by executive order) means he is "crippled" on "all policies". This ban was not especially popular before the protests, and claiming its failure is the direct result of the protests - and that it extends not only to this one but all policies - is a bold claim that needs some better substantiation than just proclaiming it.
No, I want some sign that it's not business as usual for all involved except declaring fascism on demand is now confirmed ok.
Man, whatever makes you feel better. You think introducing fascism, doing exactly what they wanted, taking away every freedom with no consequences whatsoever, causing thousand deaths and billions of economic damage on the way, then giving some of them back when the need is no longer there, and to make it a total mockery, make an "investigation", which confirms - yeah, we did everything exactly the right way and will do it again - this looks like victory? Well, your "victory" doesn't look anything like what I would want.
Who needs "decades of insurgency" if you have fascism on demand? The government would just take your freedoms when they are an impediment to them, do what they need, then declare "ok we're done, you can proceed as before" and you'd be happy. After all, they have stopped punching you and even though they didn't return your lunch money, they didn't take any more than all you had - until the next time they want your lunch money - so, everything is well and it is TOTAL VICTORY. If that's victory, how does the defeat look like? Some weird BDSM fantasy where the government comes to you personally to oppress you on schedule with whips and shiny leather? That's not how it works. Nobody cares about you to oppress you when they don't need to. When they need to, they have the option to get their way, when they want it and how they want it, and you can do absolutely nothing about it. In other times, enjoy your total freedom and TOTAL VICTORY.
Except I don't see the victory. Removing the restrictions a bit later than the other countries who didn't experience the "victory" sounds like copium, not victory.
Capable of what? The only organized protests that happened have been crushed with the rubes that gave their lives to them now have their lives thoroughly ruined, bankrupted and getting insanely long sentences, while their supposed leaders are afraid to even say something in support of them. All freedom restrictions are removed when and only when the government decided it's no longer necessary for their purposes, with full confirmation that every single one of them was legal and fully kosher to use again when desired. No significant pushback happened to neither lockdowns, nor nationwide riots and abandonment of the rule of law, nor to the wholesale overhaul of the election system, nor to the complete absorption of the big business into the woke agenda. Where is this superior capability deployed and what is it achieving? TOTAL VICTORY?
NAME ONE LONG SENTENCE. ONE.
You are projecting Jan 6 and the failure and symbolic flagellations of it onto the trucker convoy.
Two entire different protest in two vastly different countries with VASTLY different outcomes.
Canada removed restrictions FASTER than the US after the Trucker convoy. In the Angloshpere and Europe it was by no means that the restriction would be removed at all. After the Convoy and sister protests in Europe and Australia exploded these contries opened faster and removed travel restrictions faster than the US.
The American restrictions on entry were only removed in May of this year, last month.
Stop projecting your American Doomer bullshit onto other Countries. Canada had a political revolution over the past year, the Netherlands had a complete political upset with the Dutch Farmer aligned BBB winning major political offices.
The fact YOU are under the thumb of your elite with no effective means of resistance or organization becuase Trump sucked all the energy out of the room and then tried to bargain it away to the elite, does not mean that resistance has failed in other countries.
It isn't often that we get a mention in this place, but as in all things, foreign takes on smaller nations' politics are nigh-universally mistaken. This is no exception.
First-off: people saw BBB's victory coming a mile away. Something isn't an 'upset' when it's been well-predicted in advance, so I'll take issue with the phrasing you're using here.
Even aside from that, this kind of thing isn't unprecedented, or really uncommon in Dutch politics. Charismatic protest movements do really well in elections all the time. In this millennium alone we've had the LPF, TON, PVV, FVD, and now BBB doing the whole run-around; when you get a new bunch of these guys every election cycle or so it's not so much EXCITINGLY NEW as it is business as usual.
Except, you know, that doesn't sell clicks, and foreigners love to map stuff abroad onto their own politics and vice versa, so now and then we get to roll our eyes. So it goes.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not "projecting", I am specifically considering them both as parts of the same phenomenon, because behind the local details, it's the same system at work in both places. As the comment on your claim "Becuase the flyover rubes are better than you.". They may be better than me, for sure, but I am not seeing them achieving anything near TOTAL VICTORY. I'd love for them to do this, but that's not what I am seeing happening. Nor in Canada, nor in the US. In fact, in Canada even worse than in the US, since Canada does not have US's constitutional freedom protections and it is way further on the road to fascism than the US, in general. One bad gun bill failing doesn't reverse all of that.
If, as you say, the flyover rubes were some kind of super-predator capable of overwhelming revolutionary victories, the same victories would be happening, many times over, in the US. They are not. Which puts this claim superiority into question. Unless Canadian rubes have some specific qualities that US rubes do not - which ones then?
Very small number of people cares about entry restrictions in the US (and, I suspect, except for the US-Canada border, same goes for Canada). The flyover country person certainly doesn't. All the rest of the restrictions - important ones, ones that affect an average small business owner in a small flyover city - has been removed way earlier. The international ones lasted that long because nobody cared for that enough to push it. If you show that the internal restriction removal was affected by the protests, we'd have some basis for discussing it. But "we protested and in mere 8 months we got restrictions nobody cared about removed" is not something that can be seriously considered.
If we consider the internal ones, the ones that affect the average person, I find this claim very suspicious. "The US" is very different - Florida, California, Idaho, Alabama and New York had very different restrictions and timelines. So claiming Canada removed all the restrictions faster, and this was due to the protests (and not the number of cases and deaths dropping, for example) - I think needs some better support than just capital letters.
I'll believe it when I see Trudeau prosecuted for abuses of power or at least a legislation enacted preventing further abuses, and there would be some way to ensure that this legislation would not be just ignored when inconvenient. Until then - enjoy your TOTAL VICTORY until the next time the government needs to squash you like a bug.
More options
Context Copy link
Canada has had no revolution, you are imagining these things. The Netherlands had an election upset, but are the policies the farmers were objecting to -- the plans to shut down much of Dutch agriculture -- going away? No, because they're being pushed by Brussels, and without Nexit, there's nothing to be done.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My general feel is that, when the protests were taking place, the Western governments were already hard in the process of considering how to gradually start ramping down the unworkable lockdown/mandate/fear cycle that had characterized the Covid response. The most visible parts of the Covid response were generally wound down everywhere at roughly the same time, ie, Jan-Feb 2022. Of course at the same time Ukraine also started to gain more and more importance as an issue in the eyes of the political class, even before the invasion itself.
As such, I'm not sure if the Freedom Convoy propagated these processes or simply came at a time when the consensus had started to form that these things should be wound anyway. It might have even delayed the process (in Canada, at least) by making it an issue of maintaining face for Trudeau.
More options
Context Copy link
I remember the uncertainty of the outcome of the protest as it was happening and the discussions about whether hard or soft tactics from the protestors would be more effective. It's good to see that the soft tactics did enact change in the end.
More options
Context Copy link
What about this: Windsor police officer who donated to convoy protest will work 80 hours unpaid? That's 80 hours of unpaid work for a $50 donation, that was given by a person who was on unpaid leave, and never went through because the accounts were already frozen.
More options
Context Copy link
Good synopsis and I think you're correct.
But there are two types of "winning", and the truckers only got one of them. It's true that they achieved their policy goals - and how! But they didn't personally win. The truckers aren't being ushered into the halls of power in the manner of Lech Walesa or Aung San Suu Kyi. No, they they are still reviled by the elite. There will be no statues on Parliament hill of a brave trucker, CB in hand, fighting for freedom. And I doubt they'll ever be given the credit they deserve. Truckers, and people like them, don't write history.
Do you care about getitng your policy goals? Or getting spoils for your activist class?
The left has won none of its real policy goals in 30-50 years (no income equality, no real improvement in the quality of black lives, no eviromental improvements) but they won tons of spoils for their activist class.
The leading trucker acitvists paid a high price... But a year later literally every single policy goal was achieved. (Canada has no covid requirements of any type)
Any true supporter of any cause would much prefer a trucker victory to a DEI victory.
If you think there have been no environmental improvements, you have a very short memory. And clearly there have been massive successes re discrimination against all sorts of groups. People here are constantly complaining about the left's successes, so presumably they exist.
People complain about the lefts EXCESSES... their successes are non-existent. Look at black test scores failure to do anything or their hand wringing about how global warming will end everything and nothing's improved or rising inequality that's only accelerating in its rise.
We're just so used to political activism achieving nothing except "do something" initiatives that yield no results and spoils for the activist class, that actual 100% pure and total policy success look irrelevant...
We've been trained so long to thing policy is meant to fail and victory is getting your allies into positions with perma salaries the idea that with politics you could actually achieve the totality of your stated desired results in an reasonable timeframe is completely alien.
If we define as "success" achieving one's goals, then the left is quite successful. Their goals has never been improving "black test scores", if you believe that, please urgently contact me about a lucrative bridge ownership opportunity I have available for you in New York. Their goal is power, which is to be used to fundamentally transform the society along their ideological guidelines. Until that is achieved, their theory states improving anything is impossible, and in fact, it can be considered harmful, as it only entrenches the broken capitalist racist white supremacist cisheteropatriarchical sexist oppression system. Dismantling this system is the ultimate goal, and the reason why some score is not improving is because the goal has not been achieved yet.
And if you realize this, you can see that they have a lot of power - political power, organizational power (they own the Deep State by now), cultural power (they own the academia and the entertainment industry) and they are pretty close to taking over the military too. And the institution they have hard time to take over - like the police, which is very decentralized and thus have been quite resistant - they are openly undermining and destroying. You can not ignore that and claim it's not their successes.
Now, if you looked at the country already fully ruled by the Left - then their goals have to be identified differently. You can't say Communist Party has been very successful in the USSR since 1920s - because, achieving their first goal, to take over, they then failed at many other goals (most of them, in fact, and ultimately at the main second goal - keeping the power). But for the Left in the West, their takeover and rebuilding the society has not been complete yet, so their first goal is not achieved. And their success has to be measured against this goal - and there, we must realistically admit, they have a lot of it. Which is nothing to be happy about - because if they manage to achieve the first goal, the inevitable failure that waits for them past that will affect everybody, and cost very dearly.
More options
Context Copy link
Their goals are not to do something about global warming or improve black test scores or combat "rising inequality". Their goals are to use those things to arrogate power to themselves. Non-improving black test scores demonstrate the need for more and more DEI programs. Inequality demonstrates the need for more confiscatory redistribution. Global warming the need for carbon taxes and micromanaging of people's lifestyle.
YES! Exactly.
Which is why its so remarkable the truckers emerged out of nowhere claimed massive amounts of cultural and politcal power, changed the major perrsonel of multiple politcal parties and provinces, and achieved 100% of their policy goals... within months. Canada opened vastly faster than even the Us after the Trucker Convoy, even red states didn't have the complete removal of requirements that existed in Canada in October 2022
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You must be reading different posts than I if you think people only complain about excesses.
And given the number of states that have outlawed anti-LGBT discrimination, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1991 and others I am missing, the aforementioned environmental progress, the Voting Rights Act and its repeated renewal, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, laws re bilingual education, etc, it is pretty hard to say that their successes are non-existent. But I understand that it might feel good to pretend otherwise.
No that's the thing.
The left has massive stated goals they never achieve or even meaningfully pretend to be trying to achieve...Every single one of their policy fails, and was basically intended to fail so that the people hired to execute the policy never lose the jobs created by it.
Meanwhile the Truckers achieved their stated plain highest level policy goals, the majority within a few months, and 100% entirely within a year.
This would be as if MLK marched on selma and one year later black and white test scores and median incomes were equivalent.
The crazy thing is that I think you believe that.
No, it would be as if MLK marched on Selma and five months later the Voting Rights Act passed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link