Sunshiny Profile picture
Sep 25, 2020 25 tweets 4 min read Read on X
This is extremely disturbing. Another murder recorded.

The US has devolved into chaos.

How can this be resolved. An election is not the solution. What comes after the election hopefully is. Five more weeks to election.
And another 6 weeks between transfer of power.

I’m not sure the US will make it to January 20, 2021. Not in one piece.

It’s heartbreaking & terrifying to witness.

And yes, I selfishly hope it doesn’t cross the border. But I also know Red Deer incident means it already has.
Where is all this hatred coming from? It’s not fear. Protests are common in the US. Thousands annually occur with no violence.

It’s disinformation and fomenting of hatred from adversarial foreign and domestic influences.
This morning I caught a few minutes of Morning Joe on MSNBC. I saw the problem already metastasizing again in real time.

Joe Scarborough was discussing where the Republican party goes after the election.
Happily mentioning one of his heroes was Freidrich Hayek, Joe still professed continued belief in principles, fairness and small government.

Hayek is one of the architects of the destruction of American democracy.

I was flabbergasted & angry.
Hayek & Buchanan were members of the Mont Pelerin Society. Joe went on to call Reagan a hero and respected Republican leader. Through influence from Mont Pelerin, Reagan initiated the slow 40 year descent into fascism that we are witnessing now, using Austrian economics theories.
Trickledown economics, blocking the poor from higher education, labelling black women “welfare queens” and the Iran-Contra Affair. That’s Reagan.

Reagan was a stooge. Just like Trump is. He heralded the inclusion of the “Moral Majority” and other extremist Christian influence.
The last 40 years have been a concentrated effort of far right libertarian (not conservative) policy introduction.

Hayek and Buchanan were architects of the resistance to desegregation. Buchanan developed “Public Choice Theory” to legally escape federal law.
He created private schools and the school voucher system, so white middle class families could continue to segregate their children from black students who were entering the white public school system. History doesn’t lie.
In one Virginia district, public schools were shuttered and black children went without ANY education for 5 years.

Those are Scarborough’s heroes?

The time has come to debunk the myths of American libertarianism.

It’s a fraud. These beliefs and values are masked racism.
White washing of history can no longer be tolerated. We cannot allow people like Scarborough, former hardline Republican libertarians, to pretend that their beliefs and values are legitimate. Because they aren’t. They are based in racism and classism.
There is no honour or principle in racism and classism.

The classic liberalism professed by Hayek and Buchanan are well documented in Nancy McLean’s book “Democracy in Chains.” There is no honour or room to reclaim those beliefs and values in modern society.
There are no valid principles expressed in classic liberal values.

These beliefs are based in imperialism and white supremacy. And it’s time they are challenged and thrown in the dustbin of history, along with Trump & Republicans who enabled civilization to devolve into chaos.
I don’t know if Scarborough caught wind of the embedded video. But there is a direct line leading from his professed beliefs and values to the murder of an innocent peaceful protester in LA last night.

The mere suggestion that Republicans can resume a party is revolting.
The events of the past 4 years are an accumulation of 40 years of dressing up a fascist pig in lipstick and calling it a legitimate ideology. Giving Racism and Classism palatable cover.

To survive as a democracy, western civilization must expose & remove extreme libertarianism.
There is no place in modern society for these beliefs and values. Change is scary. Some will fight it with all their might. But we cannot continue to validate white supremacy or classism in its traditional form.

Socialism, the great equalizer, is also not an option.
We are not all equal in talent, intelligence, strength, health and wealth. Imposing policies that remove individuality entirely is also NOT an option.

We will not do well as a civilization being forced to live “equally.”
Millions have died under these conditions, because they aren’t natural or normal to the human experience. Diversity is our strength. Hardly a strength of everyone is considered equal in all respects.

I don’t want brain surgery from my neighbour. Unless she is a brain surgeon.
We will need to acknowledge our diversity and make room for variance in talent, knowledge and ability. We are individuals, but we are also interdependent.

No person is an island. And no society’s citizens are entirely equal. Equal in value, but individually distinct.
Throughout history, civilizations keep trying to force people into one of two corners. Libertarian structured existence or socialist/Marxist equalization.

I believe history has taught us neither of these options is viable. They don’t work.
A hybrid of the two is preferable. Social democracy seems to be the best option. Room for diversity, but regulated so extremism is shunned.

There will always be extremists. Those with visions of what they deem utopian. But utopia doesn’t exist. It’s a fantasy.
Just like all ideology is based on ideas not reality. It’s not real. It’s not meant to be real. It’s meant to be inspiration, hypothetical. A goal to strive towards.

Because humanity will always have problems to resolve. There will always be issues to tackle.
We are not anywhere near perfect and there is no utopia waiting for the perfect implementation of the best ideology.

The fact so many people believe their ideology is the solution, is the problem. None of us have the answers to perfect society. Because there is no such thing.
We are all imperfect. We have faults, biases, preferences, personal experiences, education, desires, wants and needs that are in constant competition.

Peace and democracy is a choice. We choose to minimize our differences and cooperate and compromise. That’s democracy.
Or we choose to fight & demand implementation of our brand of ideology, regardless of its merits or faults.

The choice is ours. But if we choose libertarianism or rigid socialism, we know what we will get. More animus.

History teaches us, if we care to learn from it.

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More from @sunnshiiny

Mar 20
Albertans must remember Alberta govt fought national standards for LTC. Refused to accept addition funds from Ottawa if strings were attached.

Nurses are gatekeepers and the strings would have kept them in LTC to maintain minimum standards accompanied by reports on progress.
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Somehow TBA and UCP will spin rationales and rhetoric blaming PMJT for their decision making depriving vulnerable people in care of health and safety regulations.

But this was why PMJT and the feds insisted on “strings” being attached. “Strings” keep people accountable.
Premiers compromised healthcare services, during a pandemic, refused additional funding from the feds if it came with reporting & national targets. The public accepted the reasoning of con and NDP premiers. Doug Ford was re-elected. Houston PC’s replaced a liberal govt.
Read 24 tweets
Mar 19
In 2020, I noticed a weird connection between North American Christian evangelicals and Israeli Jews. Stockwell Day sat on the Canadian version of the BOD for an obscure non profit International Fellowship of Christian and Jews that has raised hundreds of millions.
Some of the people IFCJ helps are Jewish settlers in illegal settlements. These are screenshots from the American chapter.


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And these are from the Canadian chapter. Stockwell Day, well known for his fundamentalist Christian beliefs, is still chair of the Board.
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Read 10 tweets
Mar 17
He’s not insane. He’s evil. There is a difference.

While Trump can easily be summed up as “malevolent narcissist” that doesn’t mean he’s insane. People with personality disorders are rarely insane.

For that matter what does insane even mean?
Generally it means not able to discern reality from fantasy created by their mental illness.

Like any of the following untreated mental illnesses:, bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, drug induced psychosis.

As far as I can tell, Trump knows his goose is cooked.
I’ve met people who committed murder while untreated and suffering from a mental illness. They are overwhelmed by how out of control they are. They can remember the events but did not have the ability to remain tethered to reality. Like the movie “A Beautiful Mind”.
Read 19 tweets
Mar 11
What exactly do people believe PP is doing with the names, addresses and emails of the people who sign up to his requests to “sign here”?

He uses the contact information to inundate them with disinformation. Duh.
We have all seen PP tweets that ask supporters to sign up to fight inflation, remove the carbon tax, get tough on crime.

Well, the people who do sign up are then inundated with varying types of information to sway their opinion. Snail mail pamphlets, email, texts, etc.
They all have a similar narrative, but not the same source.

The sheer number of messages convinces even the least gullible that theee may be some merit to this information since so many different sources are all saying the same thing.
Read 25 tweets
Mar 10
There are two sides.

Saskatchewan is indicating their abandonment of rule of law.

Federal authority is being used to enforce the law.

Saskatchewan premier is breaking the law.

Voluntarily submitting to the law of the nation is a condition of democratic governance.
Refusing to submit to the rule of law is an act of anarchy.

Presenting this situation as a minor tit-for-tat conflict seriously undermines the legitimacy of rule of law.

There are no options for rule of law. They either apply or they don’t.

That’s the conflict.
CBC might as well take out an ad supporting Saskatchewan’s premier and all the other premiers flouting rule of law (by refusing to abide by Supreme Court rulings).

Minimization of this issue comes at the cost of liberal democracy.
Read 38 tweets
Mar 8
Today’s RCMP news conference is disappointing. But it’s also an opportunity to use framing.

I don’t mean put a positive spin on it.

It is positive that suspected crimes were found. While identity of the suspects remains unknown, we know UCP inherently has corruption issues.
The fact charges cannot be laid is disappointing.

But when has corruption ever been so neat and tidy that an authoritarian takeover of a democratic government would be so easily halted with an arrest of Kenney, a perp walk and shame on the UCP.
People who commit crimes are not easy to charge. While we can witness suspicious behaviour, that is not enough to lay charges or prosecute. But that’s in a court of law.

The court of public opinion is not so limited.
Read 11 tweets

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