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Let's see if we can avoid our own Timbit Trump tomorrow!! If you're not sure of the best candidate to beat the cons in your riding, check out Smart Voting!  

Prime Minister Carney said of Poilievre yesterday, 

"It's easy to be negative when you've never fixed anything. It's easy to be negative when you've never built anything. It's easy to be negative when you're a career politician who has never accomplished anything." 

Taylor Noakes, agrees that Poilievre has accomplished nothing during his twenty years in Parliament:

"This isn't as much a political party as it is a ChatGPT-based slogan-generating algorithm speaking through the mouth of everyone's least favourite muppet. . . . The Conservatives have essentially made 'Fuck Trudeau' their ideology, and the average Conservative voter has made it their core identity. ... The Conservative Party have placed strict limits on who is allowed to ask him questions, and have further tried to prevent journalists from talking to party supporters and local candidates. ... According to a report by LaPress, Poilievre seems to have the loosest grasp on facts and the truth, as the publication found that he lied, embellished or misled far more than any of the other candidates during last week's debate. ... He has voted against the environment and climate 400 times ... against the Canadian Dental Care Plan, $10 a day daycare, the National School Food Program, the Canada Child Benefit, and raising the federal minimum wage ... against a proposed first-home savings account and a proposal to build four million new homes."

Bearing Witness

 Brandon Friedman wrote an important thread about what we do now. Here it is in full:

"This is a German woman being marched past the bodies of Holocaust victims. After World War II, it was common refrain among German civilians: They just didn't know. For that reason, many were forced by Allied troops to bear witness. Like this. 

I bring this up because fascism is now here, in America. 

If you're thinking, "but it doesn't feel like fascism, nothing in my life seems amiss," then congratulations, you have discovered what fascism is like. 

Only When It is Darkest Out Can You See the Stars

These are my summary notes from this excellent podcast from Andrea Pitzer on Next Comes What, "How We Survive This Mess." 

Pitzer previous wrote a history of concentration camps, One Long Night, and she relates much of this new US admin regime to historical cases. Some similarities: first, Hitler rose to power through legitimate means, but laws were stretched to allow him to run. Pinochet's coup used similar rhetoric, and we need to be aware of the similar tactics already on display: terror, shock, making a show of force, and trying to seize more power than they have. And Putin, who was brought in as a useful stooge, then stepped out only to return to be more powerful by removing moderates. 

The benefits to the current situation include that we have a date. It's not coming unexpectedly, but in a couple months, which provides a window to play in. The US military is officially non-partisan, so won't necessarily follow Trump's orders. Governors in key states are standing up, and it's important to build that out of the gate. There's still a partially functional court system and civil bureaucracy that can slow down any legislation. And the odds of Congress being up for grabs in 2026 are still good as there will likely be a massive backlash. She also claims that "these people are not that bright" which can help anyone trying to subvert their agenda. They got in only because it's really easy to generate hate; "it's not a sign of genius but of money and the willingness to do tremendous harm," which provides an opening for resistance and a likelihood of infighting that could decimate their control. They ran on ideas, not on governance.

Roundup of Election Views

There are tons of explanations for it. Here's a roundup of a few perspectives that helped me wrap my head around it all. 

Last January, British journalist George Monbiot predicted this possibility as a result of the American culture:

"People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world. People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likey to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration , dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour. 

Pandemic Historic Ties to Fascism

I'm very concerned with the public largely ignoring Covid despite a growing shift to get kids to replace workers who are lost to Covid deaths or disability after convincing us that everything's back to normal. If it's no longer an emergency, then governments no longer have to do anything, or - more importantly - pay for anything. And they're no longer on the hook for any potential lawsuits. So now a few places, like the CDC, are finally acknowledging the mess we're in, now that there won't be repercussions to the reveal. It's very disconcerting that we're so much on our own to deal with this ongoing pandemic. That didn't work very well in the past.  

A comment onling from x3r0gxx, 

"It's worth noting here how a lack of government response to pandemic deaths and financial devastation in 1918-onward directly emboldened the Nazi party, and the left failed to organize in response long-term. It's no coincidence that fascist organizing ramped up dramatically in 2020."

That's from an article on this paper, which shows that the less governments spend on their people, the greater the relative population decline due to the pandemic. That just makes sense. And it's terrifying!

On Late-Stage Capitalism's Slide into Authoritarianism

 A bit from former American journalist Nate Bear:

The almost universal desire to return to normal in a pandemic, despite normal being bad for most people, is one of the best examples of the hegemonic collusion of class interest as you will ever see. Brexit was another. Late stage capitalism is the most dangerous stage because at this stage class consciousness has been largely dissolved (as a deliberate strategy to fuel capital accumulation), leaving society open for opposing class interests to fuse in the search for safety as conditions deteriorate. But this fusing can only spur further deterioration of conditions. And this action-reaction dance between capital owners and workers becomes a spiral that, in the 20th century, ended in fascism and war. 

The institutions and economic settlements born from 20th century horror have both been broken, leaving us ripe for a new cycle. Right now, it looks like this new cycle will have one major element in common with the 20th century cycle: the acceptance of mass death as necessary for the maintenance of the security and safety of an imagined normal. Whether virus death or climate death, we are being primed to accept mass death as the cost of doing business, the only business, the business that, in the end, is best for everyone, regardless of the cost. We're running head first into ruling class fascism.

And then from UK journalist and author George Monbiot: