A Deeply Fractured US

[ytz]

Oh so now American oligarchs are in with Red China? Whatever will the Republicans do?

Like everything else, they'll bitch and whine until BYD puts up a factory in a red state and then they'll act like BYD EVs are the greatest thing sliced bread. Not like those woke American EVs made in California.

Two weeks ago, Chinese EVs were security threats (which I somewhat agree with).... But suddenly the Trump administration is happy to consider them, as long as they get their cut.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Are you saying that religion imposing constraints on how one lives one's own life is OK, but,. without it one would have to, somehow, have to figure out how to react to someone else's attempt to do so? No!

I claim that for a lot of people, religion is the difference between dealing with their frustrations peaceably and dealing with their frustrations expediently.

 

[Brad Sallows]

So to be clear. You are triggered and went back and forth because of "sea level rise". That's enough for you to think American senior officers should stop being sent to graduate programs at Ivy League schools?

I suppose you see it that way. As I see it, I made one unflattering remark about the example (and suggested there were better ways to make arguments against the administration's policy) and you were triggered by that one thing into launching yourself into a bunch of "climate risk" strawmen.

Don't concern yourself with what you think I understand about scope and breadth. I read the links I posted, before I posted them.

 

[Brad Sallows]

We've gone from cancel culture from the left to cancel culture from the right. Horseshoe theory at work.

Not horseshoe theory. Tit for tat. The people using the left's tactics first warned the left that those tactics could be used by anyone, then talked about using them because the usual gentry Republican turn-the-cheek behaviour wasn't working, and finally are using them. That interval in which they noted the problem and expressed their frustration was when American progressives could have had whatever kind of civil war they needed to have to fix the problem, but didn't.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I looked at Rubio's speech. It may have had some positive bits too it but - IMHO -what it said is that the US and Europe can get along. But that has a condition. “We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who together with us are willing and able to defend it.”

Boy. You really want to know what culture and heritage he's talking about. I guess I'm okay, Jack - mine's German.

An easy guess is that it's "code" for "stop letting Muslim immigrants take over local government and replace western civilization with theirs". No particular European culture need be identified.

 

[FJAG]

Sure. But like everything else they have to turn it into some culture war nonsense with two lesbos in a Prius dying of heat. It could have been an email.....

By the way start-stop doesn't turn off your AC. And hybrids don't work like that.....

Also like doesn't change anything for anybody who already has it on their car....

I've stayed away from hi-tech stuff - it's just another thing to break that costs a lot to fix and - more likely then not - makes it impossible not to fix it.

Until this last one which came with quite a few bells and whistles including Start/Stop as standard. I'm not fond of it either. When I pull into the garage and stop the engine turns off - but the car isn't off - if you get what I'm saying. There are times I get out of the car not realize its still "running." Not a problem. Easily gotten used to. Nothing to make a Federal case out of it.

All in all, I'm using about 20% of what the car can do. My favourite by far is the adaptive cruise control.

 

[FJAG]

An easy guess is that it's "code" for "stop letting Muslim immigrants take over local government and replace western civilization with theirs". No particular European culture need be identified.

You see, that's where my theory of having a Constitution that guarantees "freedom from religion" is much more useful then one that guarantees "freedom of religion."

The last one is only useful until there's a block of folks that is even more attached to their religion then you are to yours. Then they become a threat.

You know that "woke" institutions don't exist because the majority of the people are in favour of "woke." "Woke" institutions are the product of small activist groups that really care about their theory of society and who make the effort to finagle their way into local, then regional and then federal governments and institutions. Most of us are far too lazy to get involved. We're happy to let other folks do it and barely show up for elections. We let them make our society "woke."

We've had this immigrant thing before. Talk to the Irish and Russians and Jews who came back around the 1890s and thereafter about how easily they could integrate. Look into the KKK resurgence in the US in the late 1900s to 1930s. Hell, I grew up in Toronto when Poles, and Italians were the standing butt of all jokes.

I've always believed in "progressive conservatism" as the proper balance between respecting what needs to stay and what ought to move forward. I've had a troubled relationship with just plain old "conservatism" or , what's worse, a call to turn the clock back being what's needed to make things great - again.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I've had a troubled relationship with just plain old "conservatism" or , what's worse, a call to turn the clock back being what's needed to make things great - again.

A given set of conservative principles can be maintained only if no-one changes anything. As soon as someone changes something, "turning the clock back" is the only alternative. If there is nothing that can be improved (restored) by undoing changes, what is the point of conservative politics?

 

[Blackadder1916]

. . . Hell, I grew up in Toronto when Poles, and Italians were the standing butt of all jokes.

What? No Newfoundlander jokes?

 

[FJAG]

What? No Newfoundlander jokes?

I don't want to sound dismissive, but Newfoundlanders never really entered into our consciousness in Toronto (Scarborough actually - it makes a difference). There was no world north of the 401 nor east of Markham Rd.

 

[lenaitch]

we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who together with us are willing and able to defend it.”

Read: white, Anglo, Christian.

What? No Newfoundlander jokes?

No critical mass. There has never been an equivalent to Little Poland, Little Italy, Greektown, Chinatown, etc.

 

[ytz]

I don't want to sound dismissive, but Newfoundlanders never really entered into our consciousness in Toronto (Scarborough actually - it makes a difference). There was no world north of the 401 nor east of Markham Rd.

Hello fellow Scarberian. Although from a different era. Guessing my 90s childhood home in Malvern was a cornfield when you grew up in Scarborough. I think the house was built in the early 70s. Though the area my parents live in now was forest and fields when I was in high school. Was Johnny's Burgers and the Markham Station Restaurant around when you were growing up? Those are landmark institutions for me. Likewise the bakery at Warden Station.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Of all things in the world to get worked up. You got SecDef cancelling Ivy League educations. And the White House is focused on cancelling start-stop:

Have you ever drove a car with that? Maddening.

 

[PrairieFella]

You see, that's where my theory of having a Constitution that guarantees "freedom from religion" is much more useful then one that guarantees "freedom of religion."

The last one is only useful until there's a block of folks that is even more attached to their religion then you are to yours. Then they become a threat.

You know that "woke" institutions don't exist because the majority of the people are in favour of "woke." "Woke" institutions are the product of small activist groups that really care about their theory of society and who make the effort to finagle their way into local, then regional and then federal governments and institutions. Most of us are far too lazy to get involved. We're happy to let other folks do it and barely show up for elections. We let them make our society "woke."

We've had this immigrant thing before. Talk to the Irish and Russians and Jews who came back around the 1890s and thereafter about how easily they could integrate. Look into the KKK resurgence in the US in the late 1900s to 1930s. Hell, I grew up in Toronto when Poles, and Italians were the standing butt of all jokes.

I've always believed in "progressive conservatism" as the proper balance between respecting what needs to stay and what ought to move forward. I've had a troubled relationship with just plain old "conservatism" or , what's worse, a call to turn the clock back being what's needed to make things great - again.

The thing is the intelligentsia of the modern conservatives in the US and increasingly across the West arent really conservative - theyre regressive. Theyre trying their damnedest to tear down systems to build them back up in some twisted view of the glory days of ole, its a purely revisionist and revolutionary worldvoew wrapped in flag and bearing a cross. A conservative accepts change is necessary and tries to guide it sensibly and in a modest fashion, viewong change through the lens of convention and tradition. As a cohesive political ideology it arose in the UK in response to the worst excesses of the French Revolution.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may be in change, without any of the inconveniences of mutation.

Edmund Burke, 1792

 

[Blackadder1916]

I don't want to sound dismissive, but Newfoundlanders never really entered into our consciousness in Toronto (Scarborough actually - it makes a difference). There was no world north of the 401 nor east of Markham Rd.

When they lumped Newfoundlanders in with Maritimers. The Newfoundland Diaspora has been continuous for well over a hundred years. From before the First World War, the majority of migrants from the island headed to the Northeastern US, Boston and New York being the primary destinations. It was the Second World War and Confederation that moved the focus to Canada.

Some excerpts from an article that perhaps give a sense that Newfoundlanders (and Maritimers) were indeed a noticeable presence in Toronto and environs in those days, despite not entering your consciousness. They were just as much migrants as the post-war influx of Europeans.

View of Confederation’s Casualties: The “Maritimer” as a Problem in 1960s Toronto | Acadiensis

The1951 census revealed, for instance, that nearly 4 per cent of the city’s population had been born in the Atlantic Provinces. An additional 12,000 lived in the remaining areas of York County. Thousands of former Newfoundlanders lived in greater Toronto by the mid-1950s. By 1961, 4.7 per cent of Toronto’s population had been born in the Atlantic region and they represented 49 per cent of all interprovincial migrants.

. . . between 1966 and 1971, Ontario was the destination of 61.6 per cent of out-migrants from Newfoundland and 41.7 per cent of those from New Brunswick.

Prior to the 1960s there appears to be little negative stereotyping in the Toronto media of Atlantic Canadian migrants as a group despite their significant influx into the area. Evidence of their presence included church, athletic, and social organizations and activities, and at least one weekly newspaper, The Newfoundlander, established in the late 1960s. By 1968 greater Toronto, in the words of one journalist, contained a large “assimilated” community of former Atlantic Canadians that included thousands of Newfoundlanders and five thousand Acadians.

Some “positive” commentary on regional culture was also problematic, such as a Globe and Mail column in 1965 that attributed Newfoundland’s high birthrate to a combination of poverty and a joie de vivre: “They sing, dance, drink, go fishing, make love and generally get the most they can out ofexistence.”17 This was the period, according to Larry J. Orton, that the “Newfie” joke, which parodied Newfoundlanders’ lack of intelligence in a manner similar to “Polack” and other ethnic jokes, first became popular in Ontario.

In 1965, Alderman Michael Grayson stirred controversy by denouncing Atlantic Canadians who moved to Toronto in order to exploit welfare benefits. In doing so he helped create a lasting stereotypical image: “You have a fellow drive up here in a broken-down car, climb into the St. James Town area, get on welfare and he’s having the time of his life.”27 This controversy was framed against the backdrop of a perceived social crisis surrounding affordable housing in Toronto’s older neighbourhoods. Mayor Philip Givens clarified for the media that most residents of the St. James Town slums had been born in Ontario, not the Maritimes.28 But that same year a magistrate in the city of Burlington, near Hamilton, Ontario, stated that young male migrants from Quebec, Newfoundland, and the Maritime provinces were especially prone to stolen property charges.29 Although serious crimes involving “Maritimers” were limited, regional identities were included when such crimes were reported.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The thing is the intelligentsia of the modern conservatives in the US and increasingly across the West arent really conservative - theyre regressive. Theyre trying their damnedest to tear down systems to build them back up in some twisted view of the glory days of ole, its a purely revisionist and revolutionary worldvoew wrapped in flag and bearing a cross. A conservative accepts change is necessary and tries to guide it sensibly and in a modest fashion, viewong change through the lens of convention and tradition. As a cohesive political ideology it arose in the UK in response to the worst excesses of the French Revolution.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may be in change, without any of the inconveniences of mutation.

Edmund Burke, 1792

The best summary of American conservativism I've read is "The Conservative Sensibility" by George Will. Understanding it requires understanding there isn't just one kind of conservative.

 

[FJAG]

Hello fellow Scarberian. Although from a different era. Guessing my 90s childhood home in Malvern was a cornfield when you grew up in Scarborough. I think the house was built in the early 70s. Though the area my parents live in now was forest and fields when I was in high school. Was Johnny's Burgers and the Markham Station Restaurant around when you were growing up? Those are landmark institutions for me. Likewise the bakery at Warden Station.

Howdie. Yup I'm an older one. We lived in Birch Cliff Heights, just two blocks up from Birchmount Park CI. In fact I took my Grade 9 at RH King and then transferred from ST&T to A&S so that I could go to BPCI which had just opened that year.

I can't ever recall being in the Malvern Area in those days but certainly recall that one didn't have to go very far up Kennedy or Warden before you hit farm fields all the way up to Markham. As kids we used to bicycle along the CNR mainline to Highland Creek and it wasn't too far past Markham Rd that you started running into farmland in all directions with the odd small town or fledgling subdivision. I think Melvern didn't start growing beyond being a small farm town until just around the time I left for my basic officer's training in 1969.

Never ate at Johnny's Burgers although it was around then. Our hangout before cars was the Woolworth's lunch counter at Stop 14 on Kingston Rd and after cars, the Red Barn - loved those Barn Busters. Fun times.