Canadian Politics Today

Harvey Weinstein... #MeToo

too soon?

Either this is a fad, and will give way to new things maybe even important things or politics will just be about renaming hundreds and thousands of things for the foreseeable future.

I'm curious to how far the "decolonization" project will go?  I think there's a decent chance that once the baby-boomers die off and the whitey anglo is a minority in Canada we'll see serious efforts for Canada to shake off the Crown and become a republic.  They could easily just replace the Queen's duties with the GG title.  Quebec would love to get rid of the Brit royals.  And this will lead to conflict over "Crown lands" among aboriginal groups.

All these things happened after Canada obtained self government, blaming the Crown or colonization is a cop out.

Bill Burr on the things we cancel and don't...

I think this Oxford student sums the issue up quite well.

I learned nothing much at all from this verbose British toff, but some points to acknowledge:

-His focus was on social media cancelling... which is ok, but a different form of cancelling has happened throughout history and he did reference history in the later part of his monologue here.  But ok.

-I found he used 'ethical' when it was really an examination on public 'morality'.  Maybe he meant that it purports to be about ethics, not sure.
 
-Social Media is a machine with unauthorized destructive potential - YES 1000X YES.  However McLuhan pointed out that all technology is this.  For example, the automobile destroyed cities, neighbourhoods and cultures and no one suspected that would happen.

-His view on the morals of the future is apt, but Hegel pointed this out in the Philosophy of History 200 years ago

 
Edited to add:

Is cancel culture effective in changing behaviour ?  He says it's not but I think morality is the MOST likely communal aspect that can be expected to adjust to new technology. 

Also - there's a problem when we talk about these phenomena generally without examples: are we talking about Don Cherry ?  J. K. Rowling ?  Noam Chomsky ?  The Dixie Chicks ?

People might remember this from the height of the George Floyd BLM hysteria where so many people were being 'cancelled' for the slightest politically incorrect statements, acts or jokes. Three young women in Toronto were videoed horsing around and the video was posted to snapchat. Some nutbar in Toronto took a screenshot of one of the frames of the video and then began a social media campaign against them for being racist and mocking George Floyd's death. One of them had her offer of a well-paid job with the government withdrawn and was also turned down in her application with the RCMP due to 'character'. Another was fired from Boston Pizza. The third was a teaching assistant and was investigated by the Ontario Teachers college.

Only it turns out their horsing around had nothing to do with George Floyd at all. Their lives were turned upside down and they were hounded off the internet by thousands of angry people for no reason whatsoever. They recently won a court judgement against the woman who started the campaign but are unlikely to collect much, if anything, as she has no possessions and unemployed. The written judgement makes it clear that she has zero remorse, and refuses to admit any wrongdoing. It also makes clear just how vicious her campaign was against these women. She's a total shithead. But the real condemnation ought to be reserved for those institutions which took action based on a social media attack campaign without doing a thing to validate any of the facts.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ep4xdm/canada-border-services-fires-employee-after-racist-video-mocks-george-floyd

https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2021/2021onsc6661/2021onsc6661.html

Southlake school leader tells teachers to balance Holocaust books with 'opposing' views


Weird, I was told these bills were unproblematic and wouldn't cause any unintended consequences.

The person who said that about the holocaust is pretty bad at their job.  At least the other teachers on the recording were like "what???"