Canadian Politics Today

It's not a messaging problem if that's what you're saying.

We're getting caught up in the stupid, is what I am saying

OK that's funny but you must agree it's getting stupider when the president tells people to research ingesting disinfectant and nobody wants to contradict him.

It's dumber than dumb now.

We're getting caught in the dumb fights. 

Without knowing what fights you consider dumb and why, it's hard to have a conversation, but a lot of the fightsI personally consider dumb are nonetheless important because of where they fit in the broader political scene.

If people want to say that 'Compelled Speech' is restricting their freedoms etc.  I would leave that alone.  The courts will help them if they have a case.

If people want to argue about Freedumb then they can stand on a tree stump and I will walk away.

Ask them what their root concerns are - loss of income is likely there.  And maybe get the details on that and what to do.

But ignore the dumb fights...

If people want to say that 'Compelled Speech' is restricting their freedoms etc.  I would leave that alone.  The courts will help them if they have a case.

If people want to argue about Freedumb then they can stand on a tree stump and I will walk away.

Ask them what their root concerns are - loss of income is likely there.  And maybe get the details on that and what to do.

But ignore the dumb fights...

I used to think (like, as recently as last week) that you could win people over by addressing to their material concerns. These days I'm much less certain.

I don't see a lot of genuine working class interests being represented in the media or by our political parties in this country. PP's populism is as much of a scam as the guy going door to door to patch your driveway. The most sought after political constituencies in this country, voter-wise, are old people and petite bourgeoisie who are primarily interested in keeping what they have and, increasingly, keeping others from getting the same. IDK how you get around those realities by "ignoring dumb fights".

1. I realized decades ago that working people were voting against their material interests for reasons of identity.

2. PP is full of it.  But what is working class ?  We don't have a real archetype in our stories.

Farmer? Factory worker? Nurse? Lumberjack?

That's why they have actors portray these in commercials.

Actor itself is a job and a hard one.  So is musician. 

They don't have them in commercials.

Start by rejecting hackneyed tropes.

Well we do, the problem is "working class" has gone from meaning those who have to sell their labour to an aesthetic marker (see the "working class" trucker convoy). It means white males in blue collar fields and not your Filipino home care nurse or your pink-haired university grad who is working at Starbucks because there are no jobs in ethnomusicology or even your typical office drone making mid five figures at a dead end gig.

Ok with the 2nd part... but why does "we do" apply then ?

I meant "there exists a widely held conception of who constitutes the working class".

This is kind of related, showing as it does the pervasiveness of the kind of myth-making we're talking about.

In Fall 2019, we conducted 35 focus groups across 26 communities, involving over 600 participants. In this Research Brief, we present the findings of 18 of those focus groups that made up Phase 1 of our study. From October to December 2019, we engaged over 150 Albertans from all walks of life (see Methodology and Appendix). Here is what we found.

When we asked them to “draw an Albertan,” we were very surprised at the level of consensus among our  participants. According to them, the typical Albertan was a middle-aged man working in the agricultural or energy  sectors. Regardless of their own backgrounds or political predispositions, most participants drew very similar  characters, suggesting there is widespread agreement about what it means to “look Albertan.”

PP's message may be broadly focused, but when he kvetches about the lockdowns from two years ago and praises the convoy, it's clear who he's talking to.

Ok but... so it's wrong then ?  Is that it ?

What's "it"?

My first thought is of Dolly Parton singing 9 to 5.