Some of them might be real people.
Scapegoating is an extremely successful technique. Instead of dealing with the complexities of the modern world, the supposed strong man can just give people easy and reassuring answers.
Americans problems are not because of unchecked capitalism and the wilful dismantling of the scientific, legal, economic, and political systems designed to help them. It’s because Canada, led by its Mexican Drug Cartels, are taking advantage of them.
Never mind that it’s patently stupid. Never mind that the system of getting access to our raw materials for cheap so they could process them in their countries and their industries was overwhelming as good for them as it was bad for us.
Never mind reality — what matters is that an easy answer was given. It’s not them, they don’t have to confront any harsh truths, or take any painful looks in the mirror, or have to step out of their comfort zone. The Americans were given the answer to their problems by their King, and that answer is Canada.
So the “strong man” strikes at Canada to show how tough they are. And to no one’s surprise, Canada doesn’t take it lying down. We stand up for ourselves and hit back — saying that surely when they see pain they will stop and reflect.
But no, they don’t. Because our hitting back justifies our already-established status as villain. How dare Canada threaten to levy energy exports, says the King. The Canadians have no decency.
And so, feeling the pain we caused, the Americans listen to their King, and they blame us because that is the easy answer. They don’t have to think, they don’t have to pause the sportsball game or the reality tv marathon. It was Canada all along.
So yes — there may be bots and such, but make no mistake that the vocal opposition to Canada will only grow inside America as the trade war escalates.
Respectfully, I don’t think you want to go down this path.
Having a third party setting up a complex software with no commitment for ongoing maintenance leaves you in a bad spot when something breaks or needs updating. And even if this software is great; all technology stacks eventually need some maintenance.
So I think you need someone from your community to step up and be willing to take this on with at least an intention of being there for ongoing maintenance and support. Or, paying for a commercial service who will do this for you.
If you find that person, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll give them some pointers about how to get this up and running and answer some questions about best practices and such. I’m not familiar with Friendica but the setup seems relatively straightforward if you have a web host who supports running Docker containers.
Awesome — where was this taken?
It is rare… rare enough that my only memory association on the topic is over 20 years old.
I feel and share your rage about the inaction by the American mainstream left.
My hunch that they’d change their tune before allowing their country to engage in outright war with Canada is nothing more than combination of a hunch and naive optimism.
We certainly can’t bank on my hunch — we need to prepare as if you’re correct.
A couple decades ago I used to have an hour long commute and would listen to The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti almost every day.
She would interview people who would go on with their talking point nonsense, and I'd whip myself up with frustration about what they were saying. And then Tremonti would just... say what was in my head, and make the person actually respond to reality and stop just spouting their rehearsed bullshit talking points.
It was so breathtakingly wonderful, and it happened time and time again. I miss that so much.
We need biased reporters. Biased towards reality and truth, biased against lies and empty slogans. Challenge the mistruths and misrepresentations made by almost any media-savvy participant, be it political or corporate or anything else.
I would LOVE to see HBC reborn as a costco style membership club that sells good quality Canadian products at reasonable prices, and is incentivized by the membership system to focus on providing customer satisfaction not short-term profits.
I've given up Costco for the boycott, but it hurts so much buying overpriced stuff from the grocery cartels. Imagine if a reborn HBC could fill that role?
These types of claims are incredibly difficult for a layperson to evaluate. There are at least two explanations for charging very little profit as is suggested BYD and similar companies are doing now.
Incumbent monopolists will absolutely use prices to bully competition out of the market so they can enjoy a longer period without pricing pressure later. This has been well documented across many industries. However it's also a normal occurrence where a disrupting upstart will apply a low profit margin or even operate at a loss in order to build market share and achieve higher efficiencies of scale.
I am at least mildly concerned that the Chinese EVs seem better fit the mold of the disrupting upstarts, and not that of the incumbent monopolists. If they are serving a lower-price-point aspect of the EV market that the traditional manufacturers are not filling -- that is a good thing. This is a role that many of the brands now considered mainstream once filled when they were newer to the western markets.
However, your points towards forced labour are absolutely on point. This is a greater issue that affects all trade with China, and it's one that we have largely been ignoring for a long time. Every time we buy something made there with it's unknown providence, we are participating in a system that must be described as evil. I wouldn't want to drive one either.
I apologize for my ignorance then, and appreciate the correction. Lets build upon this foundation, it seems a lot more useful than 88 ludicrously expensive foreign jets supplied by our biggest threat.
But personally I believe the US would descend into civil war before this happens
Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare for this possibility, starting yesterday.
We can use the money we were pissing away on F35s to create a national corps, who would be trained in the types of guerrilla warfare we’d need in this scenario. And be cross-trained to respond to climate emergencies such as floods and hurricanes and fires. And help build out infrastructure to shore up our east-west corridors and access to the north.
We can see from their Russian masters how an American invasion would take.
They’d try to grab and hold strategic areas and resources, while using missiles and aircraft to cripple the economy and infrastructure and spread fear nationwide.
However, we can remember that the US has tried to invade many other countries and they’ve failed every time. And while we may never have the tanks and aircraft to match them in open warfare, even much poorer countries than Canada were able to successfully repel the American forces.
And in this scenario we’d have a massive untamed border to use to make counter strikes, and would likely get significant military support from allies around the world and in the US as well.
So it would be monumentally devastating on both sides. It would be a catastrophically stupid endeavour. Which doesn’t rule it out, they have extremely stupid people in charge.
But personally I believe the US would descend into civil war before this happens, with “blue” states having suppressed voting rights trying to secede.
When it was just about tariffs I cut back on purchases from American-made goods and from American companies.
But once the seriousness of the sovereignty threat became more apparent I moved that to full scorched earth on my shopping lists. A company like Costco that treats its employees decently well? Nope, even they get the boot. Not just groceries — American media products, household goods, service companies, tech products — as much as I possibly can.
In the end it’s surprising how little they are actually needed.
Only excluded because I wasn’t thinking straight due to blind rage and insomnia.
Sigh… yeah it’s crazy one can have so many reasons and still not even mention that.
It is crazy.
It’s crazy that a serial liar, who defrauds his customers with false marketing claims and naked market manipulation isn’t in jail.
It’s crazy that anyone would spend money on a product one of his companies makes, given how he has shown such extremely poor judgment and discipline.
It’s crazy that someone who defames people trying to help people in need, someone who promotes hate and bullying, someone who would lie about something as petty as pretending to be among the worlds best video gamers — it’s crazy he could have a cult following.
It is crazy that Americans handed this lunatic access to their own social safety net, and crazy that they have dismantled the checks and balances to prevent it despite clear warning signs.
It’s crazy that any single Canadian would purchase a car or service from someone who said that ours is not a real country, and works side by side with the person working to invade our country.
It is crazy that someone who does these treasonous things is allowed to maintain Canadian citizenship, despite no ties to the community.
It’s crazy that a single penny of our taxpayer dollars would go to this man.
It’s crazy that it’s even a topic for discussion.
You’re goddamn right it’s crazy.
Unfortunately haven't, I don't rely on any of my personal domains for email.
I did just re-check to see if the email forwarding was working correctly, and it is -- but if it was failing sporadically I'm not sure I would even notice because my usage of it is so minimal.
For what it's worth, I did need to use their email support once and they were very pleasant and easy to work with.
Canadians had become accustomed to expect special treatment, which in this context means the barest shred of humanity coming through.
I don’t get a vote if Canada gets special treatment by their country or not. If it was up to me, I’d rather that Canadians not get hauled off in chains for making a mistake, but that’s up to Americans and that’s what they chose.
But what I will do is remind Canadians that they aren’t getting special treatment anymore.
Obligatory reminder that “no special treatment” means you get treated like a Haitian or Mexican or Muslim trying to enter the US. Yes, even a white Canadian.
In no way am i blaming the victim here, but we can learn a lesson from her experience: Don’t go.
I moved my domains over to EasyDNS.ca because they are supported by both letsencrypt and acme.sh — happy with their service so far and zero complaints.
We have been lazy, and worried more about not offending America than doing what's best for us. If nothing else the current situation has started to wake us up to that fact.
I don’t feel like you were accusing me specifically, but the shoe fits.
Subconsciously I think I thought we were safe in Canada. Too white, too much cultural and shared history. Sure we knew we had to separate ourselves but we could do that tomorrow and we had other problems today.
And like you said it’s been a wake-up. For me certainly.
The time to wonder how they’d respond has passed. They already have responded; they are working to destroy us.
I don’t know what they’ll do. They’ve lost every time they’ve tried to occupy a country and they will have the same experience here. But that hasn’t stopped them from repeatedly trying.
It would bring ruination upon both countries but we cannot control them. I hope they realize that before they try.
And at the risk of being a jerk — you should feel scared. I’m scared. It’s scary stuff! But I can find some comfort in standing up what’s right for our people.