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The "Third Way" in liberal politics involves saying things that working people love, but doing things that sociopathic plutocrats love. It works …right up until voters notice that you're not doing the things. That realisation breeds cynicism and fury and paves the way for fascist strongmen.
It's really ugly, and no one does it uglier than Canada's Liberal Party. Remember that time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marched with Greta Thunberg to protest Canada's shitty, planet-wrecking climate policies?
Gee, Justin – it sure would be great if you could have a word with the fella who decided to bail out America's doomed tar sands pipeline and vowed to pump and torch 173,000,000,000 barrels of Canadian oil:
Trudeau's "Third Way" eventually proved so unpopular that he opened the door to an authoritarian takeover of Canada by an otherwise totally unelectable, Trump-aligned far-right maniac. The only thing that saved Canada from a fate dumber than Trump was Trump himself, who wouldn't stop promising to make Canada the 51st state, an idea that was even more repellent to Canadians than five more years of Third Way bullshit:
And boy did Canadians find a Third Way bullshitter to move into 24 Sussex Drive: Mark Carney, an austerity-crazed central banker who will endorse incredibly progressive policies…provided he never has to do any of them. When it comes to championing working Canadians while royally screwing them, Carney is the only Canadian politician capable of out-Trudeauing Trudeau.
But we shouldn't reject Carneyism due to the mere fact that Carney refuses to deliver Carneyism. The problem with Carneyism isn't Carneyism itself – the problem with Carneyism is Mark Carney.
Take Carney's policy promise to charge US tech giants a 3% tax, a move that would defeat their incredibly clever gambit of pretending to be Irish and thus not owing any tax, anywhere:
That was a good policy! So was Carney's "elbows up" policy of sticking it to America in retaliation for Trump's flagrant violation of CUSMA, the free trade agreement negotiated by (checks notes) one Donald J Trump:
Unfortunately, Mark Carney didn't get the memo from (checks notes) Mark Carney, and the very instant Trump arranged his face into his trademarked confused scowl, Carney dropped the tax, apologising profusely:
In the last days of the Trudeau government, the Liberals passed a bill that transformed Canada's Competition Bureau from the weakest antitrust regulator in the world into one of the strongest (on paper, at least):
It's impossible to overstate how useless the Competition Bureau was before this bill passed. In its entire history, the Bureau had only challenged three mergers, and had never successfully challenged a merger. Canada's do-nothing competition enforcers allowed the company to be captured by Made-in-Canada oligarchs whose ripoffs and abuses would make the Hudson's Bay Company blush:
If Canada was ever going to be a real country (and not just two monopolists and a mining company in a trenchcoat) it needed a serious competition enforcer. Nominally, it has one, thanks to the 2024 Competition Act. The only problem was Carney, who made sweeping real-terms cuts to the Bureau's funding. Thanks to Carney, Canada has a Competition Bureau with all the powers it needs to save Canada from its oligarchs – but it can't afford to do any of that stuff.
Monopolists rip Canadians off like crazy. We even have a guy who mistook Les Miz for an HBR case-study, and embarked upon the country's worst-ever price-fixing campaign, gouging the country on bread prices:
(The Bread Bandit isn't solely to blame for the price-fixing scandal. He had help! The plan was actually devised by Pete "Third Way" Buttigieg. Mayor Pete cited his work setting up Canada's bread cartel as his proudest accomplishment from his days as a McKinsey ghoul:)
You don't have to be a monopolist to steal from Canadians. Ripping off Canadians is the game everyone can play! Consumer protection agencies are incredible value for money, saving the public hundreds for every dollar that we spend on them. Guess who just eliminated Canada's consumer protection agency?
Oh, to be a scammer in Mark Carney's Canada! Whatever Galen Weston doesn't steal is yours for the taking!
But again, the problem isn't Carneyism – the problem is Carney. Carneyism is great. Carneyism gave us that remarkable speech at Davos, where Mark Carney declared a "rupture" in the US-dominated global system of trade and politics, promising a future of "minilateralism" in which "middle powers" like Canada band together for mutual prosperity:
If only Mark Carney had been there to hear those stirring words! He might have understood what a fucking insane idea it is to turn over Canada's military to Palantir, the company that, more than any other, has fused itself with the Trump regime's domestic program of ethnic cleansing and its international program of extraterritorial aggression:
Carneyism isn't merely a rejection of the old international order. Domestically, Carneyism promises technocratic excellence, skilled leadership that delivers first-class services for the Canadian people. This is a great pitch! It got Mamdani elected, and Mamdani's sincere pursuit of governmental excellence thrills New Yorkers in new ways every day:
Here, too, Carneyism is entirely sound – the problem is Carney's vicious anti-Carneyism and his plan to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with AI chatbots. It's not just that chatbots are terrible substitutes for skilled public officials, they're also controlled by US corporations that are entirely beholden to the Trump regime:
Unlike Mark Carney, I support Carneyism. Carneyism promises protection for Canadians, from monopolists and mad emperors, petty thieves and potholes. But Carney himself ardently opposes these policies. This will only get worse when the AI bubble pops and vaporises a third of the US stock market, spreading contagion to global capital markets. That will be Carney's cue to roll out his favourite go-to tactic: austerity.
We cannot afford this. Austerity is how we lose the country. Austerity – more than any other force – drives working people into the arms of fascists:
The thing is, Mark Carney has shown his political opponents how to beat him: just embrace Carneyism. The things Carney says are incredibly popular. Now we just need to elect someone who'll do them.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Neoliberals promise to bring about populist changes then as soon as they're in office it's just too hard and no longer realistic so they abandon it in favor of corporate handouts.
Neoconservatives promise to bring about populist changes through horrific methods that would never improve anyone's lives, then get credit for "following through on their promises" even though it never gives the results they claimed it would.
I'm instituting a new policy of "if I can't easily read your crusty scanned PDF then I'm sending it back to you, telling you to get your shit together and save your .docx as .pdf, and causing snakes to manifest inside your house"
this but also if you are in accounting and you have an Excel file please do not save it as a PDF or take a screenshot of it and then paste it into another Excel file
Good afternoon to everyone in the notes having a horrible time! Y'all are fighting demons I never knew existed!! I think every person that makes you do stupid time wasting shit like this because they refuse to learn basic computer literacy should be fired!!
i love when pets huff or sigh dramatically. like i am sorry. you're so right. you live such a laborious life. it must be so difficult to take naps and get pet and fed treats and played with all day. really a packed schedule youve got there boss. how do you manage it all. well no matter i'd say it's time for your well earned 7th afternoon nap
bestie boo, let me fill you in on something: if you're going to take any part of 'good grammar' and randomly assign it to She's A Witch! AI, you might as well give up. It's over. You're cooked. Anyone who has spent the last decade or more learning to type properly, anyone who has spent any time writing articles/papers/essays that require you to use 'good grammar' is going to fall into that 'oh no it might be AI' trap.
Stop hunting like it's 1692. You're not going to find Goody Proctor at the ChatGPT sacrament. What you're going to do is exactly what happened back then: harming people who've done nothing wrong.
robby’s suicidal ideation is so much scarier this season than last. last season we were inside his head. this season we’re experiencing him like the people around him are—temperamental & selfish & basically given up. he’s pushed the audience away as much as he has anyone else.
i feel like the visual storytelling is really supporting that in a few ways; we're not accompanying robby into private, quiet moments anymore, we don't see his flashbacks and the way they affect how he treats the people around him in their aftermath, we're not seeing him try to stay calm & collected for other people's behalf.
and as robby's behavior likely becomes more erratic and angrier as the day goes on, as he pushes the people that love him further and further away... it's going to be interesting to see if the show frames that kind of breakdown. because it's just as much of a mental health crisis, but it's a significantly less easy one for the audience to sympathize with when the show is keeping us at arm's length.
i think that that's an immensely interesting storytelling decision and i am really, really excited (and terrified) to see how it unfolds.
women characters will be competent workers and then go home and dress in baggy clothes and live in a mildly messy house and drink booze and people will trip over themselves to call her a loser
an environment that embraces and encourages razzle-dazzle @tindog - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
