This idiocy was all organized on social media. The convoys are overwhelmingly unpopular among larger Canadian society, but social media allowed them to organize in an echo chamber.
No comment on Germany, but I would be betting on things being similar there, not different.
My personal theory is that before social media, a lot of the people involved in this would have been bullied or shamed into not doing this by their peer group. But social media lets you set your peer group without geographical restrictions.
Social media is a factor. It's not the main factor, and Haidt's weird focus on it rather than deeply entrenched and growing economic disparities, lack of education in the US, the rise of the religious right, and other factors is in my view kinda silly.
Your insurrection did not kill 5 people by the way. I get that there's a weird urge to make that event some sort of insanely important historical moment but it doesn't mean you have to make up dead people.
Ironically, from a neutral outsider view, what happened on the 6th of January can also be described as "a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way and being absolutely obnoxious". It doesn't look that way when you are knees deep in american partisan culture wars, but Americans have a tendency to think that anything that happens in the US is exceptional and unique.
This is not totally true.
[1] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-pr...
And of course there are others. The US has quiet a bit of history around suspending rights.
This is the issue I have with these kinds of statements of, the sky is falling, this hasn't happened before. A co-worker did the same with masks. Masks mandate are the most egregious thing the US government has ever done. But apparently putting people born and raised in the US with Japanese ancestry in camps was less egregious than masks? States banned the use of the German language? The house unamerican activities committee ruined the lives of people by dragging them infront of congress for character assassination?
> This is not totally true.
> [1] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-pr...
> And of course there are others. The US has quiet a bit of history around suspending rights.
> This is the issue I have with these kinds of statements of, the sky is falling, this hasn't happened before. A co-worker did the same with masks. Masks mandate are the most egregious thing the US government has ever done. But apparently putting people born and raised in the US with Japanese ancestry in camps was less egregious than masks? States banned the use of the German language? The house unamerican activities committee ruined the lives of people by dragging them infront of congress for character assassination?
If you had to go back to 1862 you are proving my point. Canada didn't even exist then. I guess I should have specified "never happened post ww2".
I totally agree with your second point, I'm not saying that the measures were worse. The suspension of rights is though; the issue isn't really the mask/vaccine mandate it was the reaction to the protests against them.
It could be this was a first for Canada (not Canadian so I am not aware of a lot of it's history), but definitely not for western countries in general.
Probably because they didn't have to deal with a large number of numpties doing that before.
> Your insurrection did not kill 5 people by the way.
There were five deaths. One was from gunshot and the others were from other reasons. The fact that the deaths occurred among the insurrectionists doesn't change the fact that people actually died as a result of what happened, which from what I can tell is more than can be said about the numbskull protests in Ottawa.
> Ironically, from a neutral outsider view, what happened on the 6th of January can also be described as "a bunch of morons thinking they could get their way and being absolutely obnoxious".
Was some high-profile Tory premier instigating the protests in Ottawa with a rally there? Were his own officials involved in the planning? Was there a large number of people breaching the Canadian parliament building while it was in session? Were extreme right MP's feeding information to convoy organizers on where Trudeau was? Because while that's not what happened in Canada, it's what happened in the US a year ago.
I get what you are saying about Americans thinking anything in the US must be exceptional. I've seen that before myself, especially with certain members of my family. But there is a difference between idiot protesters occupying a capital city's downtown and having to be forced to leave and an attempted self-coup by an outgoing head of state.
So, the government can suspend rights of the people, while they are using those rights to protest? Is it only okay when the government does it if you "agree" with it?
Convenient.
That's not a good excuse, or reason - the government willy nilly choosing to enforce and invalidate it's own restrictions and human based rights based on "political feeling."
>There were five deaths. One was from gunshot and the others were from other reasons. The fact that the deaths occurred among the insurrectionists doesn't change the fact that people actually died as a result of what happened, which from what I can tell is more than can be said about the numbskull protests in Ottawa.
Stroke (Potentially Unrelated), Heart Attack (Potentially Unrelated), Crushed, Head Trauma (Police Officer), Shot.
Context matters - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-bu...
While not supporting the insurrectionists/protestors, I still do not see any mention of other riots that happened during 2020 which, IMO were far more deadlier, at 25 from direct physical violence on both sides - the protesters and law enforcement.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-kill...
Pretty much any coup attempt in history can be described like that. You can insult those people or underplay attempt to overthrow election as "being obnoxious" pretty much always.
That does not lowers significance of it.
"Social media is a factor. It's not the main factor, and Haidt's weird focus on it rather than deeply entrenched and growing economic disparities, lack of education in the US, the rise of the religious right, and other factors is in my view kinda silly. "
The newspaper and printing press back in the day was the social media equalizer. What about pamphlets like Common Sense by Thomas Paine? Was education more common back in those times than today? The average American in a day reads more information/published material than an "American" back in 18th century, or even 19th century.
Was there no religious fueled political class back in the 17th century? Isn't the point of Freedom of Religion?
Even going back, what about the availability of the Bible to the masses vs just the "educated" clergy.
What system is better than the one now, where people are free to come together to support their own notions and beliefs?
--
Reading your reply, and other generalized replies from other people with the same viewpoint is shocking. It feigns complete insight in the "other side" or that people can have different opinions but still come to the same conclusion or end goal.
It is this type of post that creates a "THEM" narrative blame game. It shouldn't be an US vs THEM - or Me vs You.
That's what makes Social Media so powerful, people are divided into their beliefs and opinions and then go seek people to re-enforce those those ideas because they are pushed from one extreme to another. It's the same with Pro Obesity groups, Pro Ana groups, Pro Sexual Fetish Groups, etc.
It warps what was normal into a narrow individual experience. That's only possibly by the ease of entry of social media vs, what was essentially a web ring back 20 years ago and needing to know a bit of html to host a page on geocities.
Every time I see this I just think it is peak “American exceptionalism”. You had a small group of red necks, who had what could barely be described as a riot, who walked into the government building and vandalised it a little. It was not an “insurrection”. That is language that was used specifically to create more division and fear.
I’m not sure what’s nuttier, the actual event itself or the fact that people still call it an “insurrection”. Either way, you are doing a good job of (unwittingly?) providing evidence for your own points, I guess.
I'm not one to downplay how bad the divisiveness in US politics is, but if you look a bit closer you'll see the EXACT same dumbsh*t happening in DE and CA, perhaps with less obviousness.
Take a closer look at what is happening in Germany's armed forces, Canada's use of emergency powers to remove...truckers.
The world has lost its collective mind, just as sure as if The Singularity or First Contact was happening tomorrow.
Meaning, the promise of the open 'net has been subverted and this is what we get. Facebook Pograms, the O.J. of NYC (Orange Joke) becoming PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, VV thinking he's the second coming of Ivan the Terrible.
This would all honestly make a lot more sense if Terry Crews was President.
It may just be a matter of time but here the Q-Anons and other divisive, Anti-Democratic groups are still more fringe than over there
What Germany is lacking in social media it makes up for in WhatsApp status updates and Telegram groups. The landscape is less homogeneous in Germany with only a minute fraction of people using Twitter, Snapchat or TikTok for example, but you're extremely underselling the overall magnitude.
There's a ouroboros of sharepics and clips spreading between Facebook/Instagram and WhatsApp/Telegram and vice versa dragging in additional people in every rotation. Instagram sharepics being shared in Telegram groups, TikTok clips showing up in WhatsApp status updates, and so on, often with direct links back to the source so people can jump right into the funnel.
I've seen it with the anti-mask and anti-vax protesters, now I'm seeing it with pro-Russian propaganda. Meanwhile the Querdenker movement seems to be slowly rebranding as a "peace movement", but always with the same broad strokes messaging to distrust the government and to be critical of every party other than the AfD. Whether it's anti-queer, anti-vax or "anti-war", the ideology is fungible and arbitrary, but the underlying message remains the same.
(Don't bother telling me it's against site guidelines to question downvotes; I know that. Just downvote this if you feel the need. The reason I am breaking the site guidelines in this instance is that I suspect that the fact that the only response to my question is downvotes is a symptom of exactly the problem being discussed in TFA.)
Fruit, logging, Disney, NFL, MLB, boating, cheap foreign imports, militias, and wild fires.
You sure about that? As recently as 1995, Canada was with 0.4% of a vote to split the country in two.
In the 1970's the deputy Premier of Quebec was kidnaped and murdered by Quebec separatists.
In 1990 the Canadian and Quebec governments used the military and authorized lethal force to put down an armed rebellion by the Mohawk tribe, after a Canadian court allowed the development of a golf course on native land.
Just because Canada is largely ignored by the American and International media, doesn't mean that everything is lovely and everyone is sitting around singing kum ba yah.
Just goes to show how insanely irresponsible the current federal governement's handling of the trucker rally has been in comparison.
(That doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to the Mohawk cause, or that I think the federal government should have used force against them.)
It's like as soon as something remotely similar to a movie they've seen happens everyone thinks, "omg it's happening!" Civil war is happening, just like in the movies. Time to invoke the emergency act.
People seem to have little patience these days to actually think things through. You have people like Trudeau running away and pretending to be sick instead of dealing with issues head on. Either they're out of touch, or something worse.
Canada is, politically, even more harshly-divided than the US is. We even have specific political parties for it: the Quebec Party, the Western Party, and the Largest Cities Party (the latter two will deny this, but that's the truth). Quebec has tried to separate from Canada twice in the last 50 years, and was within a Brexit's margin of their latest attempt not succeeding- for all Texas' bluster, they haven't even come close to this.
What makes the division worse here is that the stakes are raised higher- our legislature is unicameral, the executive is formed as a consequence of the vote breakdown for the legislature, every single vote is along party lines, and there's effectively no constitution (as an American would understand it).
The rough equivalent in the US is if there was no Constitution, and NYC and DC picked every single representative, senator, and the President.
The difference is that the average American would go to war if that happened, and the rhetoric downstream of that property makes their division look worse than it is; it's the opposite in the other parts of the world that are more stereotypically concerned with looking polite and respectable.
This is essentially the goal of those who complain about the electoral college and the Senate.
Under a popular vote California or NYC or DC wouldn't pick anything. States wouldn't vote, people would. One person, one vote no matter where you live.
Not true. California would have the majority of the House, but only two Senators. So they would not have the majority of the electoral votes.
It's a popular trope thrown mostly around by Americans, and is sometimes (often) a dog whistle for racism.
Canada is 72.9% European white and Gini is 0.728
The U.S. is 60% non-Hispanic white and Gini is 0.852
These numbers don't capture everything (e.g., distribution going in to Gini is important), but they do capture a lot. I think the conversation could do without the race-baiting, too :-(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Demogr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada
The EU countries just have more social safety nets that renders them more socially solid. So we are not doing as bad as America right now but don’t be fooled, the trend is the same one.
Assuming that social media is a primary factor, for the sake of argument, the solution to this problem isn't regulating the platforms via Haidt's proposals (which I should add seem to be too limited in effect). Instead, we should decentralize the platforms into protocols. While this will still allow stupid people to go into echo chambers (like with any forum or blog online) it will also limit their reach by depriving them of a singular place for a giant number of people to hear them all at once.
Look, we can spend hundreds of years debating over which foods are bad for us and which are good, or we can just use our common sense and cut out sugars and bad oils. That'll solve 90%.
Why waste time waiting for glacier-speed science to figure this out when we have this common sense. Stop anyone on the street and ask them if they think constant notifications, scrolling, phone addiction and apps like tinder, TikTok and Instagram are good for our brains.
I'd be sad if people didn't unanimously agree that it's poison
As ever, the answer is “Yes”.