Off the cuff news reactions

[sabotabby]

 I don't post about the news much because it's overwhelming and there are smarter people saying smart things that I reblog elsewhere. Anyway.

Here in Canada we have a new Prime Minister, which is cool. It's not like I'm a big fan of Mark Carney but he's the person polls suggest can beat Poilievre, so this is good news. Poilievre is an outright fascist who has to go down and go down hard if we're going to survive the endless assaults on democracy and sovereignty coming from the US. Also, there is a delicious irony in the idea of the sensible banker who kept us from the worst of the 2008 economic crash defeating the guy who wants to replace our economy with bitcoin. Ultimately Canada is a fake colonialist country but the left is not really in a position to change that so we must make do. As I said in the other place, I would much rather protest Carney than have my right to protest banned under Poilievre.

Speaking of protesting, the Americans have recently disappeared a German tourist, a UK children's book publisher, and a pro-Palestinian graduate student with an American wife who's 8 months pregnant. The latter case is the most disturbing, as it's a direct result of Trump ordering the rounding up and deporting of Palestine solidarity activists. I know a lot of Jews who even now are more concerned about seeing a keffiyeh than the fact that literal seig-heiling Nazis are in charge of the US government, so I will draw everyone's attention to this article in the Forward that describes where the law that they're using to disappear people like Mahmoud Khalil came from. I think at the moment the majority of Jews in the diaspora are, by and large, misreading the point in the Niemöller poem that we're at, and if this isn't a wakeup call, I'm not sure what is.

Meanwhile Israel has just cut off Gaza's electricity. All reporting I can find is remarkably anodyne. "Trims" is one word I saw, which is a strange term for things like "now there's no potable water" or "life support in the shattered ruins of hospitals cut off again." 

And Ukraine. Fuck. I want to slap some of my fellow leftists stupidposting on Facebook but that's not the real enemy, is it? Little exposes the raw truth that international law is more of a polite suggestion more than the ability of one country to stroll into another and just take it, and the world's biggest economy handing it over on a silver platter to their fellow fascists.

I enjoy reading JD Vance's absolutely fake story about running into pro-Ukraine protestors who scared the 3-year-old human shield he was walking. Obviously people like that don't spend time with their offspring, or walking among the common man, so it is made up, but it just drives home the irony that exists at every level of reaction, this belief that "our" children must be insulated from learning uncomfortable truths while other people's children cower in makeshift shelters while the bombs go off.

It's hard to tell how much any of the horrors are penetrating people's consciousness. I mean, everyone I know is shit-scared all the time, but a significant number of "everyone I know" is queer and trans folks who've been sounding the alarm bells for years. I don't come off as shit-scared because my existence is one of perpetual anxiety and existential horror so I don't expect anything good to ever happen anyway. I was like that with covid until people stopped being afraid of covid and then—as now—I remain baffled as to what is wrong with people and why they can walk into a crowded room unmasked as if they're not risking permanent brain damage every single time.* I don't really have a barometer for how normal Americans react to things anymore, if there are even any normal Americans left.

What am I going to be doing, just blogging through the death throes of Western civilization? 

*And yet, I've done that a few times. Normalization is a powerful force, which is why our first priority needs to be to resist it.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

What am I going to be doing, just blogging through the death throes of Western civilization?

Print a copy and future historians will bless your name.

What is a normal American? I don't know if I've ever known. goes to read about the legalities of my government pausing in its self-dismantling to vanish people

There are opinions I disagree with but understand. I do not understand the tankies supporting Russia's aggro.

hugs you tightly

[sabotabby]

I suppose by "normal" I mean "low-information voter." People who don't think about politics all the time and analyze whether what they're being told is true or nah. The possibly mythical American who makes decisions based on the price of eggs. I don't know anyone like this.

I do know tankies and they're baffling. To me Israel's actions in Gaza and Russia's actions in Ukraine are more similar than they are different—a larger power has always believed territory that other people live on belongs to them, some pretence allows them to invade, and they are willing to flout international law to completely annex the territory. And yet liberals are fine with the former case and tankies fine with the latter, and accuse anyone who says something like "you shouldn't be able to just waltz in, kill a load of people, and take their shit" as lacking in important nuance or historical context.

[frandroid]

I was reading on BlueSky about people picketing and leafletting at Tesla dealerships, and many of the people they meet on the street have /no idea what's going on/. They don't know what DOGE is. They don't know that Trump and Musk are wreaking havoc on over half a century of American government and political structure. It's incredible. (I'm also Canadian so my exposure to Americans is also just online with friends and communities, and not on the street or in the workplace.)

[ioplokon]

Yeah, we'll see. Generally seems to be kind of a center left on economics, or at least not mindlessly pro-austerity (big on infrastructure investment especially) + obviously knows what he's doing w/ monetary policy. I'm a bit worried by his endorsement of Rachel Reeves & that we may be getting Starmerism through the back door (otoh, it was pretty easy to spot Starmer's game in advance; also Carney appears to have a spine).

But it would be both morally good and incredibly funny to see PP fumble and eat shit, so... there is that.

[sabotabby]

Yeah. Not perfect. Best available candidate, imo, and amenable to reason.

Here in Canada we have a new Prime Minister, which is cool.

[blogcutter]

Count me amongst the people who gasped in horror to learn that Chrystia Freeland only garnered 8% of the vote. I mean, unlike Mark Carney, she has experience as the Deputy PM, stood by her man through all Justin Trudeau's shenanigans (and he certainly hasn't stood by his women over the past decade, despite trumpeting sunny ways and gender parity in Cabinet "Because it's 2015!"), and is fluently multilingual. MarkCarney is no Liberal and as a former Bank of Canada (or Bank of Anywhere) Governor (just like judges and other people who are supposed to be independent of hard-core political processes, ought not to aspire to this position. He also struggles a bit in French, although not to the extent of our back-in-the-day PMs.

I'd love to know more about the reasons why other aspirants to the race, like Chandra Arya and Ruby Dhalla (and probably others I never heard about) were disqualified. Definitely something suspicious going on there. Big Bankers are great at raising Big Money for their campaigns but that doesn't make them great politicians!

That said, you're absolutely correct about ex-Governor Carney being preferable to Governor Poilievre or Premier Trump!

Re: Here in Canada we have a new Prime Minister, which is cool.

[dewline]

I would have preferred Freeland myself because Putin and Trump actively fear her. Given that she and Carney are on good terms, though, this might not be the disaster it first appears. If Carney brings her back into cabinet, that will count for a lot.

Dhalla is suspected of being a Modi regime asset. Modi, in turn, seems to be cut from the same authoritarian cloth as Trump, Putin and Xi.

Re: Here in Canada we have a new Prime Minister, which is cool.

[sabotabby]

I have zero affection for Freeland given that she's soft on Nazism. Which, ironically, is coming from the same reason she's good on Ukraine. I also know Indigenous Bluesky was very happy she performed miserably.

Re: Here in Canada we have a new Prime Minister, which is cool.

[ioplokon]

stood by her man through all Justin Trudeau's shenanigans - I think this is the main reason she didn't get more votes. Not necessarily a judgement on her, more people seeing it as a liability in the election.

[dewline]

I'm trying to make my peace with the idea that I may end up bombed to death along with my mother at her care home by the USAF if things go sufficiently sideways re: Trump. Because Trump, Vance and Hegseth seem like the kind of people who will do as Putin (Chechnya, Syria) and Netanyahu (Gaza) have done...

[sabotabby]

I'm like. Is there a reserve/civil defense thing I can sign up for? I'm a decent shot, could get better if I practiced more.

[oracne]

I'm freaking the fuck out as I have been for a while, and also taking what actions I can, none of which have been dramatic. I'm also pouring some of my anxiety into writing. And watching escapist tv almost every night, unusual for me.

[sabotabby]

My escapist TV has been Severance and The Good Fight, both of which are all-too relevant.

[gingeriana]

The three-old scared by Ukrainians is probably what he "saw in stories", or tiktoks, his primary, very serious source of information.

I've watched the Liberal debates as if I actually have a citizenship and the right to vote, lol. And he seemed like the most solid option. And I am kinda supposed to be for Khrystya and I really wanted to be for her. But the amounts of empty bullshit she is producing is really exhausting. And she is behaving not very nicely with us, the diaspora, pulling the Ukrainian card of her heritage only when it's urgently needed, not cool at all.

In the unrelated thoughts: what's Niemöller poem? I am not familiar.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I don't trust her. She's in theory for Ukraine but that seized airplane and frozen oligarch assets were sitting there a long time when Ukraine really could have used them. Also, she's for Ukrainian Nazis.

The Niemöller poem is the "first they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist" one that everyone misquotes. (And is not necessarily accurate, as iirc first they came for the disabled kids, depending on what you consider "came for.")

[lynnenne]

I would much rather protest Carney than have my right to protest banned under Poilievre.
100 percent.

Re: Americans, I work almost exclusively with USians who are all Democrats, well educated, and despise everything Trump is doing. But I haven't heard anything, from any of them, about any sort of political activism. :(

[sabotabby]

God that's depressing.

[yhlee]

anecdata not data and admittedly as a usan i am socially in a wildly liberal bubble but almost every usan i know who is able to-has- been doing activism, exceptions are either medical limitations or in a couple places federal workers who have additional security limitations (edit: specific to their roles) on what they can do legally (i'm aware of federal workers chaos but it's complicated)

apologies for typing i am on mobile recovering from morning surgery

[rachelmanija]

I'm doing activism but I'm not sure I'd discuss it in the workplace, especially now.

[smhwpf]

It is seriously terrifying. At least a court has forbidden ICE from deporting him without a court order, though whether the regime will pay any attention to the courts is another matter. And there does seem to be some significant resistance building at least, but God it is bloody terrifying.

As you know, I've been contemplating a trip to the US this year, but I'm seriously wondering if it's too dangerous. I'm a US citizen, but going through an airport or other border is somewhere they can do all sorts of shit to you even if you are a citizen, and for all we know they might be rounding up citizens by then. I am not high profile, but my pro-Palestinian activities are not concealable, I've been on Al Jazeera spouting my views. Plus the deportation from Israel. I mean for now it still seems unlikely that I'd have serious problems, but unlikely is not impossible.

But don't worry, Canada is still on the agenda! Unless Trump has invaded already.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I mean. Am I a threat? No. Am I more of a threat than a nice British children's book publisher? Yes.

[sovay]

What am I going to be doing, just blogging through the death throes of Western civilization?

There are worse things to be than a zamler. In the shorter view, I am glad to read you.

Speaking of, I read this review of the Ukrainian Museum's Tatlin: Kyiv and thought at once of you.

[sabotabby]

Oooooh I wanna gooooo. New York is not even far. And yet.

[historicalmuse]

JD Vance is a fucking bastard, and Pollievre is much the same. I weep for Ukraine. (I have family there!!)

[sabotabby]

Oof, I'm sorry. It's really beyond belief.