wampus

joined 5 months ago
[–] wampus@lemmy.ca -3 points 4 months ago

It's not just that. There's another way to look at these groups....

Something like feminist equality pushes are basically advocating for women's rights/equality in areas that are advantageous to women. It makes perfect sense that they don't advocate for something like equality in terms of life expectancy, or male access to traditionally female occupations, because it's outside the scope of their mandate. They are not advocating for equality/egalitarian goals, they are advocating specifically to gain benefits (or remove impediments) for their niche group. They don't totally hide this bias, they put it front and centre in most cases, but the public 'reads' it as pushing for equality because of marketing and the inability to question the narrative without being labelled as a misogynistic arse, basically. It's not just feminist pushes, special interest rights movements in general are not about egalitarian goals / equality, but are explicitly about providing advantages to their special interest groups.

If you remove all the negatives from one side of an equation, without touching the other side, you don't end up with equality.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca -2 points 4 months ago (15 children)

Semi fair, removed.

Based on Canada's own posting, the HPV vaccine was made available to women in 2008. It was later made available to boys in 2017, based on what I referenced obliquely in terms of scientists going "Oh my, boys have higher rates!". So it still fits.

The case from my childhood was more muddle, admittedly -- a different vaccine (Hep B) -- I admittedly don't keep a close tab on these things. It does make more sense, as part of a regular health check screening to do with a foreign partner I had started dating, my doc recommended I get a Hep B vaccine prior to getting intimate. Elementary school, early 90s, fits with Canadas vaccine schedules and with the adult vaccine top up.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca -4 points 4 months ago

"Lived experience" counts for other groups, why would you think it shouldn't count for us? Plus, surprisingly perhaps, I have a bunch of friends that I don't work with, where we discuss this stuff. Part of growing up local (though most of my friends from hs are minority folks, technically). I've not lilypadded much, so four of my five bosses historically have been women -- the majority of most management in those orgs, women.

While I wouldn't question your lived experiences, my own, and that of people around me in real life who I generally trust more than a rando online, support my viewpoint. This also includes a few managers in the federal government, who are pissed off with the demographic hoops they need to jump through for hiring/promoting people. Like there'll be suitable local candidates, but the gov forces them to appoint people from the other side of the country to meet the racial quota.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 months ago

Wait, before you do -- feed that guys statement into an image generating AI. May as well get really really dirty before you get clean.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago

Issue proper travel advisories, blocking insurance for people visiting the states. An official travel advisory would cut tourist volumes down by quite a bit. No one wants to pay US medical rates.

Very unlikely to happen though.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago

I don't disagree with you -- I believe their line of reasoning was along the lines of getting all the operating funds needed for the 'government' from revenue generated from tariffs. One reason for aggressively slashing social support systems could be that they want to shift people's dependency for those programs more directly to corporate interests such as Google and Apple -- many tech companies have 'interests' in the medical field after all. The one area they would likely still want to maintain govt functions in, are military in nature -- the theory is that they want what are essentially geo-distant corporate city states that are connected via the internet, and protected by orbital weaponry / nuclear arms. Setting up a few blocs of this nature, and having them constantly feign conflicts with each other, will help to keep people placated as well, in a sort of horribly Orwellian sense. That sort of concern isn't really something for the ultra wealthy to be bothered by though, which's one reason oligarchies are so dangerous.

Still looks like the USA is sorta heading in that direction a bit, though obviously any of my musings are just guesses based on conspiracy theories I find plausible -- so I doubt it'd play out that way any time soon or anything. If there were 'real' flags of that sort of thing being imminent, I imagine some people in the govt would be making even more noise to us commoners, hah.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

And loss of trust / stability of the government makes the tech industry's push for corporate controlled 'freedom cities' much easier to get agreement on, allowing America's rich oligarchs to quite literally establish their own baronies ;P

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

In context of the Ops article, coming to a nation that's one "thread" seems to be "We're not THOSE guys"... when you're quite literally one of "THOSE" guys... is clearly grounds for concern.

And at a national level, to me as a local, having that be our main unifying thread concerns me.

I'm not as optimistic about Carney, though I do think he's the most practical choice in the running. I fully expect him to capitulate and sell out Canadians, and to take steps to appease the American administration -- he'll just do it with a sad face, compared to PP who'd do it with glee.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 25 points 4 months ago (6 children)

I seem to recall hearing Trump officials/project2025 sorts say they wanted to do away with income tax, replace it with tariffs. So, I mean, the IRS falling apart and not being able to collect income tax is sorta... on the roadmap, isnt it? Like issuing this warning is prolly just gonna be taken as a goal milestone achieved on the plan.... ??

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 0 points 4 months ago (3 children)

The OPs article doesn't really touch on the difference of approach to multiculturalism -- and I think your take is frankly dated (though true, as I recall hearing it that way in grade school years ago). Trudeau/the Liberals declared Canada a "post national" country around 2015, celebrating that Canada doesn't really have a cultural identity of any sort, nor any specific 'thing' that unites us. So while I agree that minority groups are celebrated, I disagree that there's a thread connecting us. People are more entrenched in an idea of being part of that minority group, than they are of being part of Canada, or a greater set of ideals that Canada stands for.

For a personal example, it's true that in school, all minority cultures are praised and the negatives of those cultures are completely ignored/absolved. My Niece has previously come to her parents crying, because at the end of a school 'lesson' where they'd learned a bunch of the great things from all her classmates' cultural roots, there was nothing said about anything great related to third Generation "Canadians" that don't identify with a specific minority group -- or about Canada more broadly. She was just the oppressor / colonial person who was ignored / had nothing special. Other kids take pride, and gloat (as kids do), about their races achievements, looking down on the Canadian kid, which's why she was crying. As far as I know it wasn't a 'lasting' negativity, as kids move on to other things, but the situation left a definite impression on us adults and our view of the education system. Canadian values, are not a thing. We're post national.

Likewise our laws and legislation are increasingly skewing in the direction of siding with cultural minority ideals, over broader Canadian values. You can look at the criminal justice system as an easy example, with its mandatory race-based reviews, specifically brought in for FN people. In Vancouver, we had a case where a FN guy literally stabbed an old white guy stranger in an elevator, killing him, and fled the scene. This guy faced zero jail time, as a result of the racial review. Canada no longer adheres to a notion that everyone should be treated equally under the law -- we explicitly force the law to treat some groups differently. Cold blooded murder is excusable, so long as the races of victim and perp line up. And the person who implemented the requirement for race based reviews, Jody Wilson Raybould, is a member the groups getting preferential treatment.

This isn't the only example of racism being excused/defended by our government. Another prominent example is Harjit Sajjan. While our Minister of Defense, he used Canadian Special Forces during the pull out of Kabul, to specifically, and exclusively, target non-Canadian Sikhs for rescue and streamlined immigration to Canada. A Sikh guy, directed Canadian forces, to rescue just his minority group. Our government responded by saying that accusing him of racism, was racism, and would be considered a hate crime... because we wouldn't think him racist for rescuing just Sikhs, if he wasn't himself Sikh. It's an insane argument, as expanding it to other races would absolve all white supremacists from being thought of as racist. So again, the government does not treat people evenly.

Further, many companies are openly racist in the private sector of major Canadian cities. They'll "hide" behind technicalities, like saying a specific language is required for a job posting -- which they can use to filter out any non-conforming race from the list of applicants.

You also see increasing cross-border associations of Canadians with the ethnic identities of people from other regions, more so than with other Canadians. This is partly spurred on by things like the Internet making "staying in touch" with a persons roots, or keeping up to date with the culture of a foreign region, so much easier. For example, Canada doesn't have a history of slavery (though our TFW program is sorta borderline imo): in Canada, slaves were outlawed long before BC and most provinces joined. In fact, that's one of the things that we "colonized" out of the FN on the west coast, where ~25% of their population were slaves from other FN groups. And yet, many black Canadians still push a very strong message that we should feel guilty for what happened to them -- even though we were literally where the underground railroad 'went' for them to have freedom/equal treatment. Drakes posturing as a 'gangsta' as an easy silly example. This is in part because of the saturation of our media with US black culture, where this sort of dialogue is far more pertinent. Calls for justice/antipathy related to racism is almost always directed at white people in Canada for a similar reason, as our media is often inundated with the US-centric view of the topic: even though actual events involving racism, such as the VPD cuffing a First Nations grandad for no good reason at a bank, are often committed by one minority group against another minority group.

In times past, if a person of a specific ethnicity, advanced legislation/laws that benefited their own ethnicity, that'd be considered racist / discrimination / wrong. Now it's considered 'reconciliation', or excusable, so long as it's a minority group promoting its own agenda -- calling out such behaviour as racist, becomes a potential hate crime under current Liberal laws. Minority cultural groups are increasingly insular and antagonistic towards Canadian institutions -- something like JWR's legal changes, including the practical removal of Bail requirements for minority groups (which are what caused all the revolving door issues we've seen since COVID started), are the very real, and in your face result: it was quite literally a change done for the explicit benefit of a minority group, to the detriment of the general public, carried out by a person in the highest offices in the land, who was a member of the minority group getting privileged. Canada's moved passed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- Section 15(1)(2) were converted into equity employment groups that exclude "just one demographic" (who are increasingly shifting right-wing as a result), and elevated minority interests/group identity above Canadian interest/identity. Gone are our traditions of "Peace, Order and Good Government" that were set out in the Canadian constitution.

The OPs article writer is right to be pensive/nervous in my view. As an American, she/her husband likely won't fit into one of the privileged minority groups in Canada. And there's increasingly divisions and conflicts between all of those racialized clusters, who tend to promote their own groups interests over the broader public's best interests. PP's popularity isn't a mirage -- and the only reason he's struggling in the polls at the moment is that pretty well everyone, everywhere in the world, is pissed off / amazed at the crap coming out of Trump's mouth, which they associated with PP's style of conservatism. But those issue still remain, festering under the surface -- in fact, if the 'backlash' against Trump style conservatives causes progressives to go even further on the massively unpopular demographic style politics, as they may take it as a 'mandate' to do so, it'll just make things worse.

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