Politics in 2017

[jollyjacktar]

Suddenly, Duffy doesn't seem like such a douchebag after all.  This guy does.

 

[Brad Sallows]

What gets missed in the heat produced by the history of residential schools is whether or not the schools were able to reliably deliver an education.  Those schools were founded with both good and bad motives.  They were founded in part - ironically - to remove children from abusive situations and ensure they got an education.  But they were also founded to enforce assimilation.

The worthwhile aspects do not outweigh the ill intentions and execution.  Nevertheless, it should still be permissible to talk about good as well as bad - of any matter.  Wronged people do not get to exercise a veto on what may or may not be discussed, and should be pushed back whenever they try to do so.

Politically, it's a foolish place to go, and it's unnecessary to go there.

 

[George Wallace]

As disgusting as this is, I have to wonder why the legal age of consent was dropped and why there is a tolerance for Child Brides developing in sympathy for a foreign culture(s)?

 

[YZT580]

It is only the chattering classes who show sympathy for child brides.  Most people are disgusted but ignored.  Don't mistake Ottawa and the press for normal people.  That is what the dems in the U.S. did

 

[a_majoor]

While this is a US based example, it seems that the erosion of trust and "high trust" society is not just confined to the United States (as noted on a multitude of other threads, erosion of trust in governments and institutions is a pan Western thing, and most likely behind incidents like Brexit, the rise of nationalist parties like AfD and the election of President Trump). Rebuilding "high trust" societies is a very long term process, and at this point will require building entirely new institutions and social structures. Instapundit may have summed it up best with:

NO, IT’S BECAUSE THEIR INSTITUTIONS HAVE BEEN TAKEN OVER BY CULTURAL ENEMIES

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/03/americans-have-lost-faith-in-institutions-thats-not-because-of-trump-or-fake-news/?utm_term=.ae1cf29c22ee

Americans have lost faith in institutions. That’s not because of Trump or ‘fake news.’
Everything about modern life works against community and trust.
By Bill Bishop 
March 3

The easiest sell of President Trump’s life is that a “corrupt” media produces “fake news.” After all, fewer than 2 in 10 Americans have “a lot” of trust in news organizations, the Pew Research Center has found, and we live in a “Matrix”-infused “conspiracy culture,” according to social scientists, where one is thought to be impossibly simple to not understand that the world is ruled by collusion and machination.

Trump has helped make trust a big deal for media types, and they are now searching for ways to regain the faith of their readers. To combat the “fake news” charge, the New York Times, for example, is running full-page ads and even bought a television spot during the Oscars declaring that “the truth is more important now than ever.” For some, the problem is that journalists have allowed too much of their personalities to creep into their work. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor David Shribman prescribes “less analysis and more reporting, less personality and more facts.” For others, there’s a need to demonstrate that journalists are not faceless elites but real people. Washington Post opinion writer Dana Milbank wrote of his newsroom colleagues: “They hail from all corners of this country, from farms and small towns, the children of immigrants and factory workers, preachers and teachers.” But even local papers, the ones most closely connected to their readers, are struggling to defend their integrity. One editor of a rural California paper accepted an op-ed about the danger of “fake news” in an attempt to instill some faith among the anti-press crowd.

You can hear similarly fretful discussions in dozens of other professions. The president has maligned politicians, scientists, judges, teachers, labor union leaders and intelligence officials, among others. “Donald Trump’s most damaging legacy may be a lower-trust America,” the Economist’s Lexington column predicted. Trust in American institutions, however, has been in decline for some time. Trump is merely feeding on that sentiment.

The leaders of once-powerful institutions are desperate to resurrect the faith of the people they serve. They act like they have misplaced a credit card and must find the number so that a replacement can be ordered and then FedEx-ed, if possible overnight.

But that delivery truck is never coming. The decline in trust isn’t because of what the press (or politicians or scientists) did or didn’t do. Americans didn’t lose their trust because of some particular event or scandal. And trust can’t be regained with a new app or even an outbreak of competence. To believe so is to misunderstand what was lost.

In 1964, 3 out of 4 Americans trusted their government to do the right thing most of the time. By 1976, that number had dropped to 33 percent. It was a decline that political scientist Walter Dean Burnham described as “among the largest ever recorded in opinion surveys.”

Of course, that intervening period brought a series of tumultuous events: the expansion of the war in Vietnam, the Watts riots of ’65, the civil rights movement and, then, assassinations and Watergate. These affairs have served as shorthand explanations for our decline in trust. After all, who could trust an incompetent government that brought us scandal, riots and an unpopular war?

There are at least two problems with this explanation. First, the decline in trust in government has been accompanied by falling trust in nearly every institution. Why should a riot in Watts lead to distrust of organized labor? Yes, the news of the day caused fluctuations in how Americans felt about their institutions. The Watergate scandal caused Americans to lose faith in their government. Conversely, after the country was attacked on 9/11, trust in government soared and people went back to church. After the impact of scandal and threat faded, however, the long-term trends returned.

Second, the erosion hasn’t been confined to the United States. “Declining trust in government has spread across almost all advanced industrial democracies since the 1960s/1970s,” writes political scientist Russell Dalton. “Regardless of political history, electoral system, or style of government, most contemporary publics are less trustful of government than they were in the era of their grandparents.”

We haven’t simply changed our attitudes. We’ve voted with our feet, walking away from the institutions we supported for generations.

For instance, historian Martin Marty describes a “seismic shift” in religion. “From the birth of the republic until around 1965, as is well known, the churches now called mainline Protestant tended to grow with every census or survey,” Marty wrote. And then, the pews started to empty. The six largest Protestant denominations together lost 5.6 million members — a fifth to a third of their membership — between 1965 and 1990.

And civic engagement has declined. Harvard’s Robert Putnam has counted the drop in members of the Lions, the League of Women Voters and, famously, bowling leagues beginning in the mid-’60s . The decline of these associations brought about a decrease in consistent social connections. Society began to fray.

The changes that seemed to erupt suddenly in the early 1960s actually began long before and moved slowly at first, as the globe shrank and societies modernized. As far back as the 1600s, travelers confronted by new cultures and novel deities began to question their own societies’ rules and institutions. “Not a tradition which escapes challenge, not an idea, however familiar, which is not assailed; not an authority that is allowed to stand,” historian Paul Hazard wrote. “Institutions of every kind are demolished, and negation is the order of the day.” This was the Enlightenment, a turning away from tradition and an anointing of reason, scientific inquiry and individualism.

Rising incomes and the welfare state brought Enlightenment individuality to the people. Political scientist Ron Inglehart proposed in the 1970s that as societies grow wealthier and less concerned about basic survival, we should expect a shift from communal to individual values: People express themselves more and trust authorities less.

Everything about modern life works against community and trust. Globalization and urbanization put people in touch with the different and the novel. Our economy rewards initiative over conformity, so that the weight of convention and tradition doesn’t squelch the latest gizmo from coming to the attention of the next Bill Gates. Whereas parents in the 1920s said it was most important for their children to be obedient, that quality has declined in importance, replaced by a desire for independence and autonomy. Widespread education gives people the tools to make up their own minds. And technology offers everyone the chance to be one’s own reporter, broadcaster and commentator.

We have become, in Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s description, “artists of our own lives,” ignoring authorities and booting traditions while turning power over to the self. The shift in outlook has been all-encompassing. It has changed the purpose of marriage (once a practical arrangement, now a means of personal fulfillment). It has altered the relationship between citizens and the state (an all-volunteer fighting force replacing the military draft). It has transformed the understanding of art (craftsmanship and assessment are out; free-range creativity and self-promotion are in). It has even inverted the orders of humanity and divinity (instead of obeying a god, now we choose one).

People enjoy their freedoms. There’s no clamoring for a return to gray flannel suits and deferential housewives. Constant social retooling and choice come with costs, however. Without the authority and guidance of institutions to help order their lives, many people feel overwhelmed and adrift. “Depression is truly our modern illness,” writes French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg, with rates 20 to 30 times what they were just two generations ago.

Sustained collective action has also become more difficult. Institutions are turning to behavioral “nudges,” hoping to move an increasingly suspicious public to do what once could be accomplished by command or law. As groups based on tradition and consistent association dwindle, they are being replaced by “event communities,” temporary gatherings that come and go without long-term commitment (think Burning Man). The protests spawned by Trump’s election are more about passion than organization and focus. Today’s demonstrations are sometimes compared to civil-rights-era marches, but they have more in common with L.A.’s Sunset Strip riots of 1966, when more than 1,000 young people gathered to object to a 10 p.m. curfew. “There’s something happening here,” goes the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth,” commemorating the riots. “What it is ain’t exactly clear.” In our new politics, expression is a purpose itself.

A polarized and distrustful electorate may stymie the national government, but locally most communities are either overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic. In 2016, 8 out of 10 U.S. counties gave either Trump or Hillary Clinton a landslide victory. In these increasingly homogenous communities, nobody need bother about compromise and the trust it requires. From anti-abortion measures to laws governing factory farming, the policy action is taking place where majorities can do what they want without dealing with “those people” who live the next state over or a few miles down the road. At last count, 1 in 4 Americans supports the idea of their state seceding from the union.

Solutions and action shrink to the size of the individual. Increasing numbers of New York state parents have been holding their children out of end-of-year school tests in a kind of DIY education reform. In some Los Angeles schools, so many parents opt out of the vaccination regime that inoculation rates are on a par with South Sudan’s as people make their own scientific judgments. The “we medicine” of community health, writes Donna Dickenson, is replaced by the “me medicine” of individual genetic testing, tailored drug regimes and all manner of personal “enhancement” technologies. And where once antitrust laws were used to break up monopolies in food markets, Michael Pollan concludes that today, we must “vote with our fork.”

These are all penny-in-a-burned-out-fuse solutions that don’t touch the big issues, such as economic inequality and climate change. They also avoid the question that now demands an answer: How does an increasingly diverse society govern itself democratically?

Political scientists tell us that democracies require a little faith. To engage with others, you have to believe that if you lose a contest or a debate, the winner will treat you equitably; that if the other side wins, it will act within the law and not send its opponents off to jail. You have to assume that institutions will be fair and that leaders will act in the country’s best interest.

“Aren’t you concerned, Sir,” CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Trump at last month’s news conference, “that you are undermining the people’s faith in the First Amendment, freedom of the press, the press in [this] country, when you call stories you don’t like fake news?”

Trump responded: “The public doesn’t believe you people anymore. Now maybe I had something to do with that. I don’t know. But they don’t believe you. If you were straight and really told it like it is . . . I would be your biggest booster.”

The president is right that they don’t believe. But he’s wrong to take credit for it — and wrong to suggest that there’s much that can be done.

 

[Remius]

What gets missed in the heat produced by the history of residential schools is whether or not the schools were able to reliably deliver an education.  Those schools were founded with both good and bad motives.  They were founded in part - ironically - to remove children from abusive situations and ensure they got an education.  But they were also founded to enforce assimilation.

The worthwhile aspects do not outweigh the ill intentions and execution.  Nevertheless, it should still be permissible to talk about good as well as bad - of any matter.  Wronged people do not get to exercise a veto on what may or may not be discussed, and should be pushed back whenever they try to do so.

Politically, it's a foolish place to go, and it's unnecessary to go there.

No, brad, the overall goal was assimilation and cultural destruction.  It's not an also thing.  Education and removal from abusive situations were the excuses and justifications given to do this. 

The good can be discussed but it needs to be balanced with what actually happened and why the good needs to be placed in context.  An example would be to say that medical advances were made in leaps and bounds because of the holocaust.  Medical advances are indeed good but the cost and the acts to get there are not good nor should they be given any justification whatsoever.

Victims most certainly have a right to tell people who don't have a clue to stfu.  In this case a white appointed politician lecturing everybody that they shouldn't just focus on the bad stuff and highlight the good stuff.  It was a foolish place to go and adds nothing to the discussion.

 

[Jed]

No, brad, the overall goal was assimilation and cultural destruction.  It's not an also thing.  Education and removal from abusive situations were the excuses and justifications given to do this. 

The good can be discussed but it needs to be balanced with what actually happened and why the good needs to be placed in context.  An example would be to say that medical advances were made in leaps and bounds because of the holocaust.  Medical advances are indeed good but the cost and the acts to get there are not good nor should they be given any justification whatsoever.

Victims most certainly have a right to tell people who don't have a clue to stfu.  In this case a white appointed politician lecturing everybody that they shouldn't just focus on the bad stuff and highlight the good stuff.  It was a foolish place to go and adds nothing to the discussion.

Remius, all you did there was say the same thing Brad said except you peppered it with a little more politically correct, liberal spin.

 

[Remius]

Remius, all you did there was same the same thing Brad said except you peppered it with a little more politically correct, liberal spin.

Nope. I corrected the misconception that the residentially school system was in part to remove children from abusive situations.  It wasn't part of the plan.  It was a reason to justify the plan to assimilate. 

 

[Eaglelord17]

As disgusting as this is, I have to wonder why the legal age of consent was dropped and why there is a tolerance for Child Brides developing in sympathy for a foreign culture(s)?

The high age of consent that currently exists is a relatively modern phenomena. The reality is our body tells us when we are able to, the rest is peoples morals. Some modern nations have very low ages of consent and lack many of the problems related to this issue we currently face in our society (Japan being the prime example, with a age of consent of 13).

It is a very difficult issue to tackle. From a moral standpoint most people agree with a higher age limit. From a practical standpoint we still have 15 year olds (and younger) screwing and getting pregnant anyways. Where do you draw the line? It also has other implications in particular with the rise of social media and online sharing, it has become significantly easier for child porn charges to be laid to minors, who use it to take and send photos and videos to their friends, and partners. Those aren't the predators lurking online trying to rape a 12 year old, those are kids who are making poor decisions and lacking the understanding of how poor the decisions are (and once they realize how poor they are can lead to things like suicide).

The real question you have to ask yourself is there really anything to be gained by having a higher age of consent? Say if it was 18 again, nothing is going to change (as people will keep screwing regardless) except more people will have their lives ruined (mainly youth 17 and younger) if someone decides to charge them with sexual assault (along with the added burden to the legal system, etc.).

In regards to child brides, I think it should be 18 to consent to marriage, though I accept the current laws in Canada on it (16 with parental permission). Anything younger is before the individuals involved have had time to really come to their own conclusions (i.e. the parents making the decision for them instead of them coming to their own conclusions).

 

[The Bread Guy]

As disgusting as this is, I have to wonder why the legal age of consent was dropped and why there is a tolerance for Child Brides developing in sympathy for a foreign culture(s)?

Quite the segue ....

 

[jollyjacktar]

Quite the segue ....

Which pulled us away from the discussion on the actions of the Chicken Hawk in the Senate.

 

[Scott]

Which pulled us away from the discussion on the actions of the Chicken Hawk in the Senate.

Likely because both recent own goals come from the Conservative squad.

If cannot spout hatred towards team red, deflect on issues concerning team blue.

 

[ueo]

Yes I experienced the shot to the head, the pointer across the knuckles and once the ultimate- the strap in the principal's office. Abuse, not really just an honest intent to reform  a recalcitrant youth. Didn't seem to have any effect as 40 + military service will attest. As to the sex side, never went there and consider it far on the worst end of the scale, but one must look at all orgs that have unscreened adults in charge of children and I can state, probably without fear of contradiction, that abuse by any definition has and will continue to occur in them all. At least all the other forms listed were overt and had a stigma attached.  Well in all but the tough guy/jock community where getting the strap was a plus to ones rep. We must try to guard against it and not allow what happened in a person's youth to be used as a defense for their actions as an adult. This is one of the few times, IMHO, that a person trumps the human rights of an abuser, regardless of all the opinions now becoming popular that the one trumps the majority.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Likely because both recent own goals come from the Conservative squad.

If cannot spout hatred towards team red, deflect on issues concerning team blue.

Even if they're only former members of Team Blue ...

 

[Kirkhill]

Nope. I corrected the misconception that the residentially school system was in part to remove children from abusive situations.  It wasn't part of the plan.  It was a reason to justify the plan to assimilate.

I think there is a fundamental issue at stake here.  I doubt if any individual in the residential school system saw the parents of the children as abusive in the modern sense.

The question was whether it was morally correct to allow the native community to continue with a lifestyle which did not result in the same outcomes as were available to the settler community.  Yes.  Hunter-Gatherer communities were problematic for the settlers and their definitions of property.  Stipulated and agreed.  But equally many of the consequences of that lifestyle - uncertainty, disease, life expectancy, hunger were no more acceptable to the Victorians or even the Georgians, than they are to modern sensibilities.

We can argue/debate the methodology.  We can even argue/debate the purpose.  But it does nobody any service to ignore some facets merely because they do not support a popular narrative.  Both sides of the debate get to put their facts on the table.

And by the way, the Hunter Gatherers of Rupert's Land were not a major problem for the settlers.  When the HBC passed from the direct authority of the British Crown to that of the Canadian Crown and was granted the opportunity to continue doing business under new taxmasters  the British-Canadian government of the day effectively negotiated terms with the locals that permitted the settlers to have access to that land that was best suited to settler activity.

The Bush Country continued to be a Hunter-Gatherer domain well into the 20th century.  It was possible to live and let live in the vast majority of Canada.  It is only recently - with the advent of modern resource development, that the settler-native dispute has moved into the bush.

An accommodation is overdue.

 

[The Bread Guy]

... The question was whether it was morally correct to allow the native community to continue with a lifestyle which did not result in the same outcomes as were available to the settler community.  Yes.  Hunter-Gatherer communities were problematic for the settlers and their definitions of property.  Stipulated and agreed.  But equally many of the consequences of that lifestyle - uncertainty, disease, life expectancy, hunger were no more acceptable to the Victorians or even the Georgians, than they are to modern sensibilities ...

In one way, it's like a lot of problems government tries to solve -- intent is one thing, execution can be quite another.

Also, if we're going to not ignore unpleasant truths, Canada allowing some Aboriginal kids to be used as controls for "how much better would others do if we fed them better?" research doesn't help cast Canada's intent in the most positive light.

It is only recently - with the advent of modern resource development, that the settler-native dispute has moved into the bush.

An accommodation is overdue.

:nod:  And complicated by the history, both cultural and legal.  All I can say is that if there were simple solutions, or if just money would solve things, it would have been taken care of.

 

[YZT580]

Why are you trying to re-write history?  My family sold their property in Nottingham for only a few hundred pounds.  Today the property is in the tens of millions.  Should I be allowed to take the British government to court (who expropriated the property to build a rail yard in the mid 1800's)?  Much of these arguments involve the same issue.  There were negotiations, a price was established, both sides agreed, end of story.  The residential school thing was bad.  No doubt about it but the folks that ran it, for the most part, were actually trying to help.  In hindsight the government of the day should have done something different. My teachers used canes, pointers, yardsticks and the strap to enforce order: not very often though because for most of us the fear of punishment, first at school and then re-enforced at home, ensured obedience.  Bad techniques, maybe but that was the method of the day.  In hindsight the government of the day should have done something different.  Should I now be eligible for compensation?  It would be nice but it isn't likely nor would it be right.  Where there is abuse, that is criminal and the law should deal with it, but where teachers and leaders were merely adhering to the standards of the day there should be no compensation.     

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Why are you trying to re-write history?  My family sold their property in Nottingham for only a few hundred pounds.  Today the property is in the tens of millions.  Should I be allowed to take the British government to court (who expropriated the property to build a rail yard in the mid 1800's)?  Much of these arguments involve the same issue.  There were negotiations, a price was established, both sides agreed, end of story.  The residential school thing was bad.  No doubt about it but the folks that ran it, for the most part, were actually trying to help.  In hindsight the government of the day should have done something different. My teachers used canes, pointers, yardsticks and the strap to enforce order: not very often though because for most of us the fear of punishment, first at school and then re-enforced at home, ensured obedience.  Bad techniques, maybe but that was the method of the day.  In hindsight the government of the day should have done something different.  Should I now be eligible for compensation?  It would be nice but it isn't likely nor would it be right.  Where there is abuse, that is criminal and the law should deal with it, but where teachers and leaders were merely adhering to the standards of the day there should be no compensation.   

You're going to put the whole modern Social Apology Industry out of business.  [

 

[Halifax Tar]

Why are you trying to re-write history?  My family sold their property in Nottingham for only a few hundred pounds.  Today the property is in the tens of millions.  Should I be allowed to take the British government to court (who expropriated the property to build a rail yard in the mid 1800's)?  Much of these arguments involve the same issue.  There were negotiations, a price was established, both sides agreed, end of story.  The residential school thing was bad.  No doubt about it but the folks that ran it, for the most part, were actually trying to help.  In hindsight the government of the day should have done something different. My teachers used canes, pointers, yardsticks and the strap to enforce order: not very often though because for most of us the fear of punishment, first at school and then re-enforced at home, ensured obedience.  Bad techniques, maybe but that was the method of the day.  In hindsight the government of the day should have done something different.  Should I now be eligible for compensation?  It would be nice but it isn't likely nor would it be right.  Where there is abuse, that is criminal and the law should deal with it, but where teachers and leaders were merely adhering to the standards of the day there should be no compensation.

I think its disingenuous to compare your family being paid to leave land 200+ years ago and some corporal punishment you went through as a student; to what the Government of the day forced upon generations of people from a specific culture.  This wasn't just some spanks and the odd pedophile this was a systematic attempt to erase a culture from the landscape. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system

 

[The Bread Guy]

My family sold their property in Nottingham for only a few hundred pounds.  Today the property is in the tens of millions.  Should I be allowed to take the British government to court (who expropriated the property to build a rail yard in the mid 1800's)?  Much of these arguments involve the same issue.  There were negotiations, a price was established, both sides agreed, end of story ...

If you're comparing the land purchase to the Treaties, did your family's agreement include a clause to take care of you into perpetuity?  If it didn't, we're comparing apples and drumsticks.

... My teachers used canes, pointers, yardsticks and the strap to enforce order: not very often though because for most of us the fear of punishment, first at school and then re-enforced at home, ensured obedience.  Bad techniques, maybe but that was the method of the day ...

And were you dragged against your will, and that of your parents', to go to school?  And told not to speak the language you spoke at home - on pain of punishment "of the day"?

You're going to put the whole modern Social Apology Industry out of business.  [

Maybe, but even the government* apologized for the system (also attached if link doesn't work for you) - from that document:

... The Government of Canada built an educational system in which very young children were often forcibly removed from their homes, often taken far from their communities.  Many were inadequately fed, clothed and housed.  All were deprived of the care and nurturing of their parents, grandparents and communities.  First Nations, Inuit and Métis languages and cultural practices were prohibited in these schools.  Tragically, some of these children died while attending residential schools and others never returned home.

The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian Residential Schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on Aboriginal culture, heritage and language.  While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools, these stories are far overshadowed by tragic accounts of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children, and their separation from powerless families and communities.

The legacy of Indian Residential Schools has contributed to social problems that continue to exist in many communities today.

(...)

The burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long.  The burden is properly ours as a Government, and as a country.  There is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian Residential Schools system to ever prevail again. You have been working on recovering from this experience for a long time and in a very real sense, we are now joining you on this journey. The Government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the Aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly ...

* - And this was done in 2008 -- not during a Team Red mandate.