I do not suggest that your observations are uninteresting. Or that controversies in the United States are irrelevant to what goes on in Canada; since, of course, we share a news and information eco (echo?) system. Indeed, we are deluged by American news media and drowned in America popular culture. So, we cannot avoid the political and e…
I do not suggest that your observations are uninteresting. Or that controversies in the United States are irrelevant to what goes on in Canada; since, of course, we share a news and information eco (echo?) system. Indeed, we are deluged by American news media and drowned in America popular culture. So, we cannot avoid the political and economic influences that slip over the boarder, like the illegal handguns that fuel gun-crime in our cities. And the fact is: there is much to be said for Pierre Trudeau’s “sleeping with an elephant” metaphor.
However, I would have welcomed your assessment of what this “polarization” means in the Canadian context - which, with respect (and because of its different history and constitutional arrangements), simply does not automatically mimic US political behaviour. And in the result, problems like racism, have a different texture in Canada, as Joseph Heath tried to do in this piece:
Accordingly, I would have welcomed something more like that; and less like something that I can read in the Atlantic or in the New York Review of Books (that is, if I were interested in the role of yet another Kennedy in the goofy US electoral system).
So I hope that at some point, you have a follow up piece which adds that perspective.
I do not suggest that your observations are uninteresting. Or that controversies in the United States are irrelevant to what goes on in Canada; since, of course, we share a news and information eco (echo?) system. Indeed, we are deluged by American news media and drowned in America popular culture. So, we cannot avoid the political and economic influences that slip over the boarder, like the illegal handguns that fuel gun-crime in our cities. And the fact is: there is much to be said for Pierre Trudeau’s “sleeping with an elephant” metaphor.
However, I would have welcomed your assessment of what this “polarization” means in the Canadian context - which, with respect (and because of its different history and constitutional arrangements), simply does not automatically mimic US political behaviour. And in the result, problems like racism, have a different texture in Canada, as Joseph Heath tried to do in this piece:
https://induecourse.utoronto.ca/against-the-racialization-of-everything/
Accordingly, I would have welcomed something more like that; and less like something that I can read in the Atlantic or in the New York Review of Books (that is, if I were interested in the role of yet another Kennedy in the goofy US electoral system).
So I hope that at some point, you have a follow up piece which adds that perspective.
Hey Richard, I'd say that this dispatch is really just an American-oriented riff on my report, which is specifically about the Canadian context of polarization! https://ppforum.ca/publications/polarization-democracy-canada/
PS: thanks for the link to your report, which I had not seen, and look forward to reading; because it is ostensibly precisely what I was looking for.
Let me know what you think!
The same trends are happening
across Europe, I think Canadian media have played down the risks to us. That it takes a slightly different flavourful is irrelevant