OTTAWA – A smug man from Canada wasted no time this morning chastising Americans for re-electing terrifying liar and felon Donald Trump, despite the fact that he plans to vote for terrifying liar and asshole Pierre Poilievre in the next Canadian election.
Matt Hunter, a 36-year-old barista, took time away from attending a Poilievre rally to rant about how stupid Americans were for falling for Trump’s fascist bullshit.
“I just can’t believe that someone could look at a petty asshole running on slogans, lies, and faux outrage and think, ‘Yeah, this guy will be good for the country,’” Hunter laughed, taking a quick second to repost an “Axe the Tax, Build the Homes, Fix the Budget, Stop the Crime” tweet on X. “It makes no sense. Luckily we up here in Canada have more common sense. Pierre says so.”
“When Poilievre becomes Prime Minister next year, he’s gonna stand up to Trump. They’re so different in ways that I can’t even describe. Don’t even ask me what those ways are. Just trust me, bro. He’ll bring Canada home again.”
Spot on.
This is Canada’s largest weakness: we put the bar at American stupidity, and anything marginally better gives us insufferable smugness.
I did the same with my idiot brother. :-/
sigh
This isn’t even parody. I know know several Matt Hunters.
I haven’t met anyone yet who was pro Trump and didn’t have a “fuck Trudeau” bumper sticker or flag or whatever.
But I do live in Alberta where there are just straight up genuinely people, in droves, that are pro trump antivax idiots.
The other day several people all in a group tried to convince me that electronic voting was unreliable and only hand counting votes could be relied on…
I love my province, but I feel an incredible sadness for most of the people that live here.
Electronic voting is an absolute security nightmare. As a software engineer, the relevant XKCD sums up my position nicely: https://xkcd.com/2030
I’m talking about electronic counting machines. Which have been repeatedly demonstrated to be far more accurate than counting by hand.
As an engineer, you should know that no system is perfect and there are several trade-offs and threat models to consider. And electronic voting can’t be discussed in a vacuum, but measured against existing voting systems which are also full of their own kinds of issues and risks.
Trust the engineers.in the actual software domain then, electronic voting is a terrible idea. Not because it cant be done well, but because it wont be done well.
The counting machines are more than sufficient.
Trust the engineers.in the actual software domain then
Yes, which I am. Though who I’d trust the most here are the cryptography researchers that dedicate their life to researching electronic voting systems.
wave that’s literally me minus the research into electronic voting systems in particular. do not implement voting systems in software. see my initial response. its not about the technical underpinning of if we could. This isn’t a discussion. literally every person worth their weight in the space will tell you the same thing.
its the in-feasibility of doing it well and its completely unnecessary. our current system is more than sufficient using paper ballots that prevent all sorts of fuckery and are auditable. its impossible to hack a paper ballot without a ton of effort manual and physical access. its incredibly easy to hack counting machines and any electronic implementation and it only takes 1 mistake to expose everything.
there is absolutely zero reason to expose voting systems to a digital threat vector and the loss of the paper audit trail would be catastrophic for verification.
The current system gives you the best of both worlds, easy counting and a verifiable paper trail for verification after the initial counts are in. quick answers and incredibly hard to game.
the loss of the paper audit trail would be catastrophic for verification
Which is why researchers of electronic voting defend the use of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
But anyway, “this isn’t a discussion” is consistent with statements like “there is absolutely zero reason to expose voting systems to a digital threat vector” so I guess there are things we seem to agree on.
And any researcher who is advocating for the paper trail should trivially realize that soon as you add that, then you literally have the system we have today with counting machines and we dont need to invite all the issues with electronic voting.
As i said take it from people who actually write software as a career. We’re literally telling you its not worth the effort/risks.
It’d be prohibitively expensive and borderline impossible due the fact you’d need to audit hundreds of millions of lines of code.
We’re literally telling you to not pay us to do that work because its a bad idea.
I like my bubble of Edmonton. The rest of the province scares me
My antivax sister in law moved there two years ago
There’s no shortage of those kinds here in Ontario. I’m sure it’s not nearly as many, but I’m only trying to point out that, it’s not a uniquely Alberta phenomenon.
It genuinely confuses me that people can have their whole identity be defined by “Trump good, Trudeau bad”
Are people really this uninteresting? I mean, I have opinions on politics, even US politics. I don’t feel strongly enough about any of them to put a bumper sticker about it on my car, nevermind buy or fly a flag about any of it. I don’t even put political signs on my lawn (nor do I allow anyone else to). I just have so much going on that I can’t be arsed to advertise that I even have an opinion on what’s going on in politics.
I try to always vote, and show up for every election, unless there’s a very good reason why I can’t (like being very ill, injured, hospitalized, etc). But I am not my political views, and I can’t understand people that build their identity around a politician. Surely something else you do is important? No? Okay then.
It’s kind of interesting that someone’s personality boils down to “I am evil”
I came across an absolutely horrendous term the other day, “Maple MAGA”. Used un-ironically by someone I kind of know. I am quite concerned about our next election as most Canadians do NOT remember this tool was in charge of the housing portfolio under Harris. They also have not interacted with him as a low paid employee. I guess no real work experience doesn’t really matter either, only ever a politician. At least Trudy, with his trust fund, was a teacher.
Maple MAGA?
What the actual fuck. They know what “MAGA” means, right?
Yeah… I don’t get it myself but… We may have issues
Pierre Pollievres inevitable upcoming victory is just depressing as shit. I hope Quebec votes bloc just for the middle finger factor, but the sad truth is they will probably break conservative too.
Lil’PP is about to lose Quebec big time based on polls numbers but he will have a majority without Quebec like Harper managed to get once.
Last poll i saw (when he tried to reverse gov) was 50%+ bloc followed by 25% ish cfor the con
I normally vote NDP even though where I live is usually a Liberal stronghold, but this time I’m tempted to vote Bloc.
It’s fucking ridiculous that the only party with significant seats that doesn’t want to expand the tarsands also want to break up the country. Maybe Canada is too stupid to exist.
Canada is very much a collection of separate interests that banded together for pragmatic reasons. All this nationalist nonsense people espouse is entirely manufactured. The idea that there even SHOULD be a national identity is bullshit. There should absolutely be a way for groups to leave again when it is no longer in their pragmatic interest to stay.
I mean, Quebec doesn’t evenn really want to leave. Legault has found a winning strategy that will keep his party in power for decades: Never hold a referendum, but leverage that notwithstanding clause and general nationalist animus to take and horde as much power in this province as possible forever. That way everything that goes wrong is because of the feds, and everything that goes right is because of the glorious CAQ.
Have you seen Legault’s numbers? 😂 His party is getting wiped out of Quebec come next election and the PQ will be reborn unless the Liberals elect the Messiah as their leader!
Glorious, I love to see it. At least the PQ pretend to be progressives when they aren’t selling out the north to foreign mining companies, restricting minority rights and generally sucking shit.
As much as the public sentiment is against Trudeau, voting for whoever can best prevent a Conservative majority is my pragmatic protest vote.
ABC is always my vote (that means green for me). This could actually be quite the opportunity for NDP/green to pick up seats. If Mr.PP really steps in it andloses support and NDP gets off their ass and gains support it wouldn’t be totally impossible to have some freaky 5-way power struggle. Probably wishful thinking, but I think with a lot of coordination and luck it could happen
I am firmly planted in your dream/vision, thankfully my riding usually goes NDP
If you’re in a region where it might go either way, vote strategically to get anyone but conservatives in, if that’s the Bloc then so be it. I personally have always voted for them since I live somewhere where it’s either them or the Liberals and I believe in what the Bloc stands for, but remember, in the end they’re there to defend Quebec’s interests first and foremost and provincial policies impact you much more than federal ones and even if there’s a referendum at some point you can just vote against it if you’re not a separatist.
If there was a Bloc rep in my Ontario riding I would be carefully considering them vs my own NDP rep.
It’s surprising that no other province or group of provinces ever created their own version of the Bloc…
I doubt we could do much worse if we just elected 11 different provincial/territorial lobby groups that have to caucus together to pass laws.
That’s my opinion as well, or even grouped lobbies (BC, prairies, Ontario, Quebec, Maritimes + NFLD, territories)
The only provinces where this would have any impact at all are Quebec and Ontario. Ontario has just over a third of the seats, Quebec has about a quarter. British Columbia and Alberta have just over 10%, everyone else has less. If everyone in New Brunswick voted for the hypothetical New Brunswick First Party, whoever actually ran the show quite likely wouldn’t even think of the whopping 10 votes they could bring to the table. Moreover, Quebec is the most homogeneous province in Canada, so a province first party has better odds there than anywhere else.
I’d much rather we had national parties that were looking for the best interests of all the regions, and citizens that didn’t seem to firmly believe that a benefit for someone else implies harm to them.
“Quebec is the most homogenous province”
Eh…
More visible minorities than all the Atlantic provinces, all territories and Saskatchewan and that doesn’t even take into consideration the white Anglo no minority.
You could also have groups of provinces with their own party so they would have some weight to them.
Also defending the interests of a province first and foremost doesn’t necessarily go against the interests of other provinces as the same gains apply to them as well.
If you count all white people as one group, yes, it is more diverse than some provinces. Given the years of wars and political division between two particular groups of white people that is behind those divisions, I don’t think visible minorities are a particularly relevant point in this topic.
Did you look at the website? Choose all visible minorities, Quebec is at 13%, which is more than all the places I mentioned. What is homogeneity if not the % of people that are ethnically part of the majority, i.e. not part of the group that’s considered diversity?
The white Anglo minority also counts as diversity as they’re culturally different from the white Franco majority, just like in other provinces the white Franco minority counts as diversity because they are culturally different from the white Anglo majority.
I’ve learned from previous elections (and possibly too late) that I shouldn’t be voting “strategically”. If does the same as I do then we’ll keep sliding right l,like the US.
Vote for what you believe in and let the party politics follow. Anything is a betrayal to yourself. Don’t feel bad for voting for the unlikely candidate - especially if you’ve already voted for election reform.
I worry that Pollievre will happily invigorate the Quebec separatist movement.
I’m at a stage in my life where I value stability. I feel like my family can weather many storms, but Canada crumbling isn’t one of them.
what even are the options this time? I’ve spoken to a few people saying they woulf be voting for polievre but they didn’t even know who else was running. I’m not feeling very hopeful about any of this considering being loud and worse than stepping in shit barefoot clearly works
I think it’s because the Conservatives are the only ones campaigning right now. I’d imagine once an election is called Trudeau and Singh (or whoever replaces them) will start campaigning a lot more.
But yeah I’m not overly hopeful either…
Don’t worry we in Germany have the same Problem. According to the polls trump would have gotten like 15% here, but our conservatives and straight up fascists are at about 50%.
Well, the fasch got around 15%. I suspect it’s the same 15%.
The only thing I can hope is that after seeing Trump’s disaster south of the border people steer away from Poilievre.
However at this point I’m terrified they’ll actually embrace it and prove we’re no better than they are.
