Well, yeah - the true believers are just that: true believers. They didn't look at the internet one day and say "Well, kids: we gave this whole woke thing a good shot, but it's not working out, so we're all going to be Lockeian liberals again." Right now, the true believers are feeling bewildered, betrayed, and disillusioned that their political tide is rushing out. Those political impulses are going to last a long time, just like the old '70s left wingers who will still work themselves up into a fury talking about Reagan or Thatcher. If they stick around long enough, in 40-50 years they may even have a brief resurgence of relevance like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders: everything old becomes new again to a new generation, and the old fossils who couldn't change their minds suddenly start looking "authentic" rather than pathetic.
I look forward to the day when our intrepid Line editors finally admit to themselves that every not-explicitly-right-wing media outlet in Canada has been thoroughly captured by the Liberal Party.
Lately most behave as press-release, PR spin, bad-story-burying and consent-manufacturing organs for that party and its ideology at least as much as they perform really any other function. Just because it's not every single journalist at every single moment intentionally doing this, does not mean it hasn't happened in aggregate. Their livelihood and prestige are totally connected to one party remaining in power forever - what do you expect is going to happen?
February to April 2025 could not have happened in a media environment that wasn't this clusterfuckingly captured.
The day people admit institutions have been captured and the Line editors stop treating Bad PR as innocent mistakes arising from bad communications strategy, is the day when Canada will start to get on the mend.
If you want the Palestinian perspective read the G&M or La Presse. Every day since October 7, they have given a "nuanced" interpretation of what was happening. TIFF has no need to seek sympathy for the Palestinians.
President Trump is unreliable but what is the alternative for American Jews and Israel? The Democrats? The future major of New York? Canada? France? Britain?
The idea that journalists are immune to a conflict of interest is what all professions believe about themselves. If the federal government is paying the piper, they call the tune. Overt bias, unlikely. Subtle support, absolutely.
Woke is not dead, it has just gone to ground. Better to refer to it as the omni-cause. The CMA is suing the GoA for refusing to fund puberty-blocking drugs, TIFF and a film, the Polari Prize. The list is endless, the academy is infested. Right wing authoritarianism is a threat, but like any fight, finish off the first adversary, then the next one.
Congrats on the 5-year milestone and continued success! To the extent that you continue to have a sizeable and growing audience it truly portends well for the future of the Country.
That being said, if I may offer a critical observation, I think your continuing concern that *in Canada* the woke pendulum has swung too far in the other direction is premature. I think your instinct that the pendulum could swing too far is absolutely a good instinct – I share it. However, it sounds to me like your instinct is being activated by *events occurring in the USA* where the pendulum has indeed swung crazily too far. I acknowledge that I may be biased here and will revise my take if presented with some evidence but that’s my point – where is the evidence of actual right-wing authoritarianism in Canada? All I ever see *in this Country* are examples of left-wing authoritarianism and it seems like you never have to search too far to find a good recent example. Step right up Andrea Horwath!
I agree that we are past peak woke. I also agree that there is even some actual retreat – see funding issues arising for Pride events, Doug Ford (finally!!) trying to reign in crack-pot schoolboards etc. But if peak woke is at 1 o’clock on the pendulum and total right-wing authoritarianism is at 11 o’clock on the pendulum, I don’t see how we are past 3 o’clock at the moment. There is definitely a segment of the population for whom right wing authoritarianism has appeal (hence the good reason to always be alert to the pendulum over-swinging) but where in this Country, be it in government, academia, media or corporate towers, are there people with actual power behaving in that way?
Elsewhere, I do totally agree with you that (with very few and maybe even no exceptions) Canadian journalists are not churning out progressive clap-trap as a result of government funding. Chomsky nailed it years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nBx-37c3c8
Gordo - you nailed it with your take on the pendulum in Canada. I couldn’t agree more. In fact I’d say we’re in a bit of a sweet spot up here even at the moment (if still suffering from a Trudeau hangover a bit). Canada has not tracked evenly with the USA here.
I agree that TIFF's handling of the Oct 7 film has been terrible. But I am uneasy with Jen's double-bill hypothetical solution, or at least conditionally so.
I'd be fine with it if TIFF had a general practice of showing pairs of controversial films taking different perspectives on the same topic. Not even for every controversial film, because there aren't always multiple high quality, timely films on the same topic, but at least where possible. But if, as I think is the case, TIFF has for decades shown controversial films with strong views on important topics, and has never before seen a need to offer a feature-length reply, it's a problem to single out a pro-Israel viewpoint as the one and only perspective that cannot be reflected in art without rebuttal.
It reminds me of politicians who wholeheartedly and unambiguously criticize anti-black racism, discrimination against Indigenous people, or anti-LGBT attacks, but then when somebody shoots at a Jewish day school, feel the need to decry antisemitismandIslamophobia.
I'll echo many comments here - if you think the woke pendulum has swung too far the other way then you're too mired in politics and not enough in people's real lives.
There has certainly been a shift in discourse with the 2nd Trump term, Elon buying Twitter, etc.
But this is mostly superficial. If you work at any institution large enough to have a bureaucracy, or have friends who do, not much has changed. There is less public obeisance, but the reality on the ground is not that different from a few years ago. Maybe they call it something other than DEI now, but again its purely a superficial change.
The institutional capture is still in exactly the same place. And its not just TIFF - it's at very conservative institutions. You know anyone high up at banks? Its wild. Never mind universities or professional institutions. And people are still afraid to talk.
All the groups and power centers who were pushing "woke" haven't disappeared. They haven't been fired. You just see them less as a journalist.
Both leftists and rightists succumb to outrage pr0n, they both are reactive and take oppositionally defiant bandwagon positions in response to it. The centrist version of this is to refuse to ever take a side or make a strong claim, mortally afraid of being associated with either side - oppositional defiant both-sidesism disorder.
I still contest your claim about a 'pendulum swing' because I can't look back to any point in the last several decades and see where Canada existed in a state of right wing moral tyranny equivalent to the woke era. Seems to me since at least the 60's it's been a steady ratcheting up of progressivism. You say the swing will be worse, but I can't see how we'll get to a state where *rightists* will be shaming, persecuting, and hounding classical libruls like you two out of the newsroom
The segment of the right that has fallen sway to a superficial authoritarianism, that is now more dangerous than the people who were sickened by the sight of the Canadian flag in 2022 - who and where are they? Are we talking about trump? Max Bernier?
I agree the pendulum is swinging but I’ve yet to see the opposite-of-woke equivalent to, say, Wendy Mesley being blasted off the earth for uttering the ‘’n word’”.
In industry, when you have something go sideways, there is always a post mortem. Politically, you sweep it under the rug. Only the UCP from my recollection did a post mortem on Covid and they got ridiculed for the discussion of Ivermectin. Meanwhile we have ArriveCan, the Phoenix pay system, EV subsidy, immigration, etc. that have all failed under previous governments.
My sympathies about having to raise a family under Covid. As a senior, the problems were much smaller. This possibly explains the reason why women over 55 forgave the Liberals more quickly.
In your celebratory mood I think you might have been a tad generous in your discussion that Woke was basically on its way out in 2020/2021.
"The segment of the right that has fallen sway to a superficial authoritarianism, that is now more dangerous than the people who were sickened by the sight of the Canadian flag in 2022."
Also suggesting the above, that Conservatives are more authoritarian than the Liberals, after not being power for over a decade, or that the banking restrictions were put on 'only a few dozen' Canadians during the trucking convoy, so therefore no Biggy, are over compensations on the path to social cohesion.
I believe the real reason(s) TIFF cancelled the Israeli movie was/were 1) pro-Hamas protestors would attend and disrupt the screening or 2) TIFF would receive a massive social media storm by pro-Hamas correspondents. Their concern was reputational damage to their progressive self-image, which is probably staunchly held by many TIFF employees. As a forecast of such protests, last winter York’s pro-Hamas groups tore down posters showing stills from Hamas videos of Oct. 7 rapes and murders.
Re reality bites for the TMU Law School students who signed an open pro-Hamas letter, several Bay St. law firms announced shortly after its release that they would blacklist all names on the letter. No articling jobs, no lawyer hires. Your 10 year retrospective question may be how many were able to pass their bar exams and practice?
Segment 2
The US State Dept report identifying declining press freedom in Canada. Matt & Jenn decried that lack of nuance, plus the currently outrageous source being the Trump government. No disagreement. What will give the report legs among Canadian media is our reflective, insecure reaction to everything the US media says about us: “Hey, they noticed us!”
My observation about the debanking of Freedom Convoy participants is it was pure revenge by Trudeau that this “fringe minority” raised more donations in a week than the Liberal Party could do in a year.
Segment 3A
You claim that Canada achieved peak woke in 2021. I challenge that perception by referencing Toronto bike lanes, Alberta trans laws, pro-Hamas on campus after Oct. 7, safer supply and professional colleges censoring Jordan Peterson and Amy Hamm. All these have occurred since 2021 due to the existing and ongoing absorption of woke principles by governments, courts, schools and professional bodies. What woke features have been so absorbed? That there is one truth and disbelievers are heretics, who must be silenced and banned. Matt said “demolishing the guardrails of society”. That is the actual if unspoken goal of woke. Woke is not interested in consensus; they know they are right and others are wrong. Free speech must be controlled because so much of it is wrong. Jenn’s comment that there is no Canadian centre to capture the pendulum swing to the right I believe is too reflective of US culture. We don’t have Maple MAGA groups of any significance that will overturn government-mandated DEI rules.
3B
COVID. Canada needs a White Paper on COVID. Social cohesion and public trust are severely damaged. We need an official naming of names and pointing of fingers. We need official mea culpas. The public health “experts” who live and die on the preventive principle (zero risk) must acknowledge their error and expansive pronouncements based on limited knowledge. Our lack of preparation (physically and culturally) for COVID 2.0 is rooted in our belief that our governments and profession collectively failed Canada during COVID 1.0. A note of the NS walking ban. The 2010 fine for setting a wildfire in NS was $237.50. The objection to the ban is not the ban per se. It’s the outrageously large fine attached to a harmless activity.
Wrap
You two are my A Team. I look forward to your weekly doses of clarity, humour and hope for us all. I anticipate with pleasure your efforts to rebuild social cohesion and trust among Canadians.
Social media and the internet have enabled both the "woke" era and right wing populism/authoritarianism. We're in this weird zone where a new technology has had an immensely democratizing effect of opening up channels of communication, but people still assume we're operating under the old paradigm.
Print and broadcast were scarce commodities and expensive to access. That empowered gatekeepers, who largely were responsible about the accuracy of what they published or broadcast. They also tended to hew pretty close to mainstream public thought, not necessarily because of their own views, but because of the imperatives of appealing to a wide audience. When people won access to those channels, it marked them as significant and gave them credibility.
With the internet, just about anybody can publish or broadcast their ideas. Social media platforms help people find others who share their viewpoints and amplify them. You might've been the only person in your town with a particular hobby or interest 50 years ago; now you're going to find tens, hundreds, or thousands of others around the world. The problem is that we're still conditioned by the old media paradigm to grant these published/broadcasted voices credibility *because* they've managed to publish or broadcast. However, they haven't gone through any gatekeeping. Nobody's checked their facts or claims. The result is people treating content as though it's the product of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal when it actually went through less scrutiny than the old tabloid "Weekly World News" (Asked whether they checked out the veracity of their sources, one editor said "Now why would you spoil a good story by asking 'And what mental hospital are you calling from?'")
On top of this, people and institutions are shocked by the number of people they'll get advocating for a position on social media (usually yelling and screaming), and that will panic them into caving to the mob. The problem is they're looking at the numerator without thinking about the denominator: having 10, 100, or 1000 people pile onto you with nasty messages is a crushing experience for most people. However, that's 1000 people out of *a couple of billion* people who have access to the internet. People just can't fathom numbers that big, but they're often being swayed by a social media pile-on that represents about 1 in a million people. Further, as you pointed out, this kind of internet activism is incredibly cheap. It takes almost no time or effort to retweet somebody else's outrage. You don't even have to buy a stamp and mail a letter like the cranks who used to spew bile to newspaper columnists.
My suspicion is that we'll eventually adapt to the new social media and internet paradigm, but it's going to take time to unlearn the old understanding of how mass media functions. People will become more skeptical of what they see online, particularly as AI makes fakery so much easier and widespread. Thinking back to the '90s, GenX was pretty damned skeptical regarding advertising and corporate communications, vs. Boomers and their parents who were the first exposed to mass broadcast media like radio and TV. Maybe it takes a generation or two for society to adapt to a new technology?
The balance between tech being useful / accessible and not yet being detrimental to society and human interaction was likely sometime in the late 2000's just prior to the ubiquitous introduction of smart phones.
You could access most of the information we have now, but you had to go out of your way to get it. Knowing things in your own head was still obviously useful. People weren't plugged in all the time, and social media was still just a fun way to share photos and stupid comments with your IRL friends. The online world was still a bit of a wild west and everything wasn't about monetizing attention and/or turning people into brainwashed hyper-partisan idiots for various nefarious purposes.
Just finished listening for a second time and lots to think about as usual. Well done on 5 years. I can't wait to see how The Line grows in the next 5 years.
I don't think we're out of the woke world yet, but I think it's starting to be called out on its contradictions. Not sure if the center is gone, Matt. I'm a center right voter typically. I wish there was a center right to vote for. There isn't, for me at least. The world has been reprogrammed in a very short time. You know what I want? I want a leader and a political party that peddles hope. If we can't do that, then all I can do is plan for the worst.
Was out to Dollarama this morning. A good number of drivers were texting and driving. Yeah, we're screwed, I think. Addiction to smart phones. Addiction to outrage. Tech millionaires milking outrage via algorithms. Might be time to go full Grizzly Adams and head to the bush with my dogs. I see nothing but darkness in the near future.
Too bad we don't have a centre-right party that supports unrestricted abortion, gay rights, women's rights, equality for all, gun control, public health care, bilingualism, multiculturalism, a reasonably strong social safety net, pot legalization, reasonable incarceration rates, and globally very high immigration.
Oh wait, the present Conservative Party of Canada supports all of those things and is about as centrist as they come if compared to anything other than our other parties who have drifted extreme far left.
It's just the Canadian media ecosystem that constantly tells you "PP" is a far right Trump acolyte but can really only point to vibes and cherry picked statements (some of which he said once) to support that. And they do that because he doesn't want to pay media outlets public funds to serve us news - the same position centrists and lefties had until literally 2018.
"If your support for the Palesinian cause, cannot survive watching what Hamas did on October 7, than your support is thin." is an amazing quote.
The two "sides" in this conflict have come to mirror each other, and Pro-Israel folks also deny, or refuse to look at the suffering of Palestinians, in the same way Pro-Pals treat any acknowledgement of suffering of Israelis like it's a trick or betrayal of the cause.
Many of the grass-roots peace orgs in the Levant - Standing Together, Parent's Circle, Ex-Combatants for Peace - all start with listening to the other side's suffering, learning to accept, and empathize with it. These groups are growing in size and power in Israel-Palestine. I'm really disheartened that so few Westerners are showing solidarity with these types of groups, where it actually could make a difference.
*Unopposed* Peak Woke is certainly over, but I’m not convinced Peak Woke has received the memo yet.
Well, yeah - the true believers are just that: true believers. They didn't look at the internet one day and say "Well, kids: we gave this whole woke thing a good shot, but it's not working out, so we're all going to be Lockeian liberals again." Right now, the true believers are feeling bewildered, betrayed, and disillusioned that their political tide is rushing out. Those political impulses are going to last a long time, just like the old '70s left wingers who will still work themselves up into a fury talking about Reagan or Thatcher. If they stick around long enough, in 40-50 years they may even have a brief resurgence of relevance like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders: everything old becomes new again to a new generation, and the old fossils who couldn't change their minds suddenly start looking "authentic" rather than pathetic.
I don’t understand the reticence to admit that Institutions have been captured.
When institutions engage in obvious bad behaviour and you’re unable to reform it, it only means one thing - the institution has been captured.
I look forward to the day when our intrepid Line editors finally admit to themselves that every not-explicitly-right-wing media outlet in Canada has been thoroughly captured by the Liberal Party.
Lately most behave as press-release, PR spin, bad-story-burying and consent-manufacturing organs for that party and its ideology at least as much as they perform really any other function. Just because it's not every single journalist at every single moment intentionally doing this, does not mean it hasn't happened in aggregate. Their livelihood and prestige are totally connected to one party remaining in power forever - what do you expect is going to happen?
February to April 2025 could not have happened in a media environment that wasn't this clusterfuckingly captured.
The day people admit institutions have been captured and the Line editors stop treating Bad PR as innocent mistakes arising from bad communications strategy, is the day when Canada will start to get on the mend.
Until then, this country’s demise is guaranteed.
If you want the Palestinian perspective read the G&M or La Presse. Every day since October 7, they have given a "nuanced" interpretation of what was happening. TIFF has no need to seek sympathy for the Palestinians.
President Trump is unreliable but what is the alternative for American Jews and Israel? The Democrats? The future major of New York? Canada? France? Britain?
The idea that journalists are immune to a conflict of interest is what all professions believe about themselves. If the federal government is paying the piper, they call the tune. Overt bias, unlikely. Subtle support, absolutely.
Woke is not dead, it has just gone to ground. Better to refer to it as the omni-cause. The CMA is suing the GoA for refusing to fund puberty-blocking drugs, TIFF and a film, the Polari Prize. The list is endless, the academy is infested. Right wing authoritarianism is a threat, but like any fight, finish off the first adversary, then the next one.
Congratulations on your sixth year.
Agree on the Globe and Mail.
Congrats on the 5-year milestone and continued success! To the extent that you continue to have a sizeable and growing audience it truly portends well for the future of the Country.
That being said, if I may offer a critical observation, I think your continuing concern that *in Canada* the woke pendulum has swung too far in the other direction is premature. I think your instinct that the pendulum could swing too far is absolutely a good instinct – I share it. However, it sounds to me like your instinct is being activated by *events occurring in the USA* where the pendulum has indeed swung crazily too far. I acknowledge that I may be biased here and will revise my take if presented with some evidence but that’s my point – where is the evidence of actual right-wing authoritarianism in Canada? All I ever see *in this Country* are examples of left-wing authoritarianism and it seems like you never have to search too far to find a good recent example. Step right up Andrea Horwath!
I agree that we are past peak woke. I also agree that there is even some actual retreat – see funding issues arising for Pride events, Doug Ford (finally!!) trying to reign in crack-pot schoolboards etc. But if peak woke is at 1 o’clock on the pendulum and total right-wing authoritarianism is at 11 o’clock on the pendulum, I don’t see how we are past 3 o’clock at the moment. There is definitely a segment of the population for whom right wing authoritarianism has appeal (hence the good reason to always be alert to the pendulum over-swinging) but where in this Country, be it in government, academia, media or corporate towers, are there people with actual power behaving in that way?
Elsewhere, I do totally agree with you that (with very few and maybe even no exceptions) Canadian journalists are not churning out progressive clap-trap as a result of government funding. Chomsky nailed it years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nBx-37c3c8
Gordo - you nailed it with your take on the pendulum in Canada. I couldn’t agree more. In fact I’d say we’re in a bit of a sweet spot up here even at the moment (if still suffering from a Trudeau hangover a bit). Canada has not tracked evenly with the USA here.
I agree that TIFF's handling of the Oct 7 film has been terrible. But I am uneasy with Jen's double-bill hypothetical solution, or at least conditionally so.
I'd be fine with it if TIFF had a general practice of showing pairs of controversial films taking different perspectives on the same topic. Not even for every controversial film, because there aren't always multiple high quality, timely films on the same topic, but at least where possible. But if, as I think is the case, TIFF has for decades shown controversial films with strong views on important topics, and has never before seen a need to offer a feature-length reply, it's a problem to single out a pro-Israel viewpoint as the one and only perspective that cannot be reflected in art without rebuttal.
It reminds me of politicians who wholeheartedly and unambiguously criticize anti-black racism, discrimination against Indigenous people, or anti-LGBT attacks, but then when somebody shoots at a Jewish day school, feel the need to decry antisemitismandIslamophobia.
I agree with your last paragraph, completely.
I'll echo many comments here - if you think the woke pendulum has swung too far the other way then you're too mired in politics and not enough in people's real lives.
There has certainly been a shift in discourse with the 2nd Trump term, Elon buying Twitter, etc.
But this is mostly superficial. If you work at any institution large enough to have a bureaucracy, or have friends who do, not much has changed. There is less public obeisance, but the reality on the ground is not that different from a few years ago. Maybe they call it something other than DEI now, but again its purely a superficial change.
The institutional capture is still in exactly the same place. And its not just TIFF - it's at very conservative institutions. You know anyone high up at banks? Its wild. Never mind universities or professional institutions. And people are still afraid to talk.
All the groups and power centers who were pushing "woke" haven't disappeared. They haven't been fired. You just see them less as a journalist.
Both leftists and rightists succumb to outrage pr0n, they both are reactive and take oppositionally defiant bandwagon positions in response to it. The centrist version of this is to refuse to ever take a side or make a strong claim, mortally afraid of being associated with either side - oppositional defiant both-sidesism disorder.
I still contest your claim about a 'pendulum swing' because I can't look back to any point in the last several decades and see where Canada existed in a state of right wing moral tyranny equivalent to the woke era. Seems to me since at least the 60's it's been a steady ratcheting up of progressivism. You say the swing will be worse, but I can't see how we'll get to a state where *rightists* will be shaming, persecuting, and hounding classical libruls like you two out of the newsroom
The segment of the right that has fallen sway to a superficial authoritarianism, that is now more dangerous than the people who were sickened by the sight of the Canadian flag in 2022 - who and where are they? Are we talking about trump? Max Bernier?
I agree the pendulum is swinging but I’ve yet to see the opposite-of-woke equivalent to, say, Wendy Mesley being blasted off the earth for uttering the ‘’n word’”.
When it was exactly the word in the title of the book. Her firing was a disgrace.
Happy 5th birthday!
In industry, when you have something go sideways, there is always a post mortem. Politically, you sweep it under the rug. Only the UCP from my recollection did a post mortem on Covid and they got ridiculed for the discussion of Ivermectin. Meanwhile we have ArriveCan, the Phoenix pay system, EV subsidy, immigration, etc. that have all failed under previous governments.
My sympathies about having to raise a family under Covid. As a senior, the problems were much smaller. This possibly explains the reason why women over 55 forgave the Liberals more quickly.
I did not forgive them and I am 75, now.
Over 55 here. Hardly forgiving.
Well, the Sydney Sweeney bust-up may seem trivial, but at least you're keeping abreast of current events.
Congratulations to 5 years of The Line.
In your celebratory mood I think you might have been a tad generous in your discussion that Woke was basically on its way out in 2020/2021.
"The segment of the right that has fallen sway to a superficial authoritarianism, that is now more dangerous than the people who were sickened by the sight of the Canadian flag in 2022."
Also suggesting the above, that Conservatives are more authoritarian than the Liberals, after not being power for over a decade, or that the banking restrictions were put on 'only a few dozen' Canadians during the trucking convoy, so therefore no Biggy, are over compensations on the path to social cohesion.
Segment 1
I believe the real reason(s) TIFF cancelled the Israeli movie was/were 1) pro-Hamas protestors would attend and disrupt the screening or 2) TIFF would receive a massive social media storm by pro-Hamas correspondents. Their concern was reputational damage to their progressive self-image, which is probably staunchly held by many TIFF employees. As a forecast of such protests, last winter York’s pro-Hamas groups tore down posters showing stills from Hamas videos of Oct. 7 rapes and murders.
Re reality bites for the TMU Law School students who signed an open pro-Hamas letter, several Bay St. law firms announced shortly after its release that they would blacklist all names on the letter. No articling jobs, no lawyer hires. Your 10 year retrospective question may be how many were able to pass their bar exams and practice?
Segment 2
The US State Dept report identifying declining press freedom in Canada. Matt & Jenn decried that lack of nuance, plus the currently outrageous source being the Trump government. No disagreement. What will give the report legs among Canadian media is our reflective, insecure reaction to everything the US media says about us: “Hey, they noticed us!”
My observation about the debanking of Freedom Convoy participants is it was pure revenge by Trudeau that this “fringe minority” raised more donations in a week than the Liberal Party could do in a year.
Segment 3A
You claim that Canada achieved peak woke in 2021. I challenge that perception by referencing Toronto bike lanes, Alberta trans laws, pro-Hamas on campus after Oct. 7, safer supply and professional colleges censoring Jordan Peterson and Amy Hamm. All these have occurred since 2021 due to the existing and ongoing absorption of woke principles by governments, courts, schools and professional bodies. What woke features have been so absorbed? That there is one truth and disbelievers are heretics, who must be silenced and banned. Matt said “demolishing the guardrails of society”. That is the actual if unspoken goal of woke. Woke is not interested in consensus; they know they are right and others are wrong. Free speech must be controlled because so much of it is wrong. Jenn’s comment that there is no Canadian centre to capture the pendulum swing to the right I believe is too reflective of US culture. We don’t have Maple MAGA groups of any significance that will overturn government-mandated DEI rules.
3B
COVID. Canada needs a White Paper on COVID. Social cohesion and public trust are severely damaged. We need an official naming of names and pointing of fingers. We need official mea culpas. The public health “experts” who live and die on the preventive principle (zero risk) must acknowledge their error and expansive pronouncements based on limited knowledge. Our lack of preparation (physically and culturally) for COVID 2.0 is rooted in our belief that our governments and profession collectively failed Canada during COVID 1.0. A note of the NS walking ban. The 2010 fine for setting a wildfire in NS was $237.50. The objection to the ban is not the ban per se. It’s the outrageously large fine attached to a harmless activity.
Wrap
You two are my A Team. I look forward to your weekly doses of clarity, humour and hope for us all. I anticipate with pleasure your efforts to rebuild social cohesion and trust among Canadians.
Social media and the internet have enabled both the "woke" era and right wing populism/authoritarianism. We're in this weird zone where a new technology has had an immensely democratizing effect of opening up channels of communication, but people still assume we're operating under the old paradigm.
Print and broadcast were scarce commodities and expensive to access. That empowered gatekeepers, who largely were responsible about the accuracy of what they published or broadcast. They also tended to hew pretty close to mainstream public thought, not necessarily because of their own views, but because of the imperatives of appealing to a wide audience. When people won access to those channels, it marked them as significant and gave them credibility.
With the internet, just about anybody can publish or broadcast their ideas. Social media platforms help people find others who share their viewpoints and amplify them. You might've been the only person in your town with a particular hobby or interest 50 years ago; now you're going to find tens, hundreds, or thousands of others around the world. The problem is that we're still conditioned by the old media paradigm to grant these published/broadcasted voices credibility *because* they've managed to publish or broadcast. However, they haven't gone through any gatekeeping. Nobody's checked their facts or claims. The result is people treating content as though it's the product of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal when it actually went through less scrutiny than the old tabloid "Weekly World News" (Asked whether they checked out the veracity of their sources, one editor said "Now why would you spoil a good story by asking 'And what mental hospital are you calling from?'")
On top of this, people and institutions are shocked by the number of people they'll get advocating for a position on social media (usually yelling and screaming), and that will panic them into caving to the mob. The problem is they're looking at the numerator without thinking about the denominator: having 10, 100, or 1000 people pile onto you with nasty messages is a crushing experience for most people. However, that's 1000 people out of *a couple of billion* people who have access to the internet. People just can't fathom numbers that big, but they're often being swayed by a social media pile-on that represents about 1 in a million people. Further, as you pointed out, this kind of internet activism is incredibly cheap. It takes almost no time or effort to retweet somebody else's outrage. You don't even have to buy a stamp and mail a letter like the cranks who used to spew bile to newspaper columnists.
My suspicion is that we'll eventually adapt to the new social media and internet paradigm, but it's going to take time to unlearn the old understanding of how mass media functions. People will become more skeptical of what they see online, particularly as AI makes fakery so much easier and widespread. Thinking back to the '90s, GenX was pretty damned skeptical regarding advertising and corporate communications, vs. Boomers and their parents who were the first exposed to mass broadcast media like radio and TV. Maybe it takes a generation or two for society to adapt to a new technology?
I'm hoping for solar flare that sends us back to the 1860s. The world needs a reboot.
Well, at least to the 80's where communication required a wire or piece of paper.
The balance between tech being useful / accessible and not yet being detrimental to society and human interaction was likely sometime in the late 2000's just prior to the ubiquitous introduction of smart phones.
You could access most of the information we have now, but you had to go out of your way to get it. Knowing things in your own head was still obviously useful. People weren't plugged in all the time, and social media was still just a fun way to share photos and stupid comments with your IRL friends. The online world was still a bit of a wild west and everything wasn't about monetizing attention and/or turning people into brainwashed hyper-partisan idiots for various nefarious purposes.
Good discussion. Thanks!
Still can't believe that people and institutions remain convinced that "free expression" only applies to their stories?!🧐
Just finished listening for a second time and lots to think about as usual. Well done on 5 years. I can't wait to see how The Line grows in the next 5 years.
I don't think we're out of the woke world yet, but I think it's starting to be called out on its contradictions. Not sure if the center is gone, Matt. I'm a center right voter typically. I wish there was a center right to vote for. There isn't, for me at least. The world has been reprogrammed in a very short time. You know what I want? I want a leader and a political party that peddles hope. If we can't do that, then all I can do is plan for the worst.
Was out to Dollarama this morning. A good number of drivers were texting and driving. Yeah, we're screwed, I think. Addiction to smart phones. Addiction to outrage. Tech millionaires milking outrage via algorithms. Might be time to go full Grizzly Adams and head to the bush with my dogs. I see nothing but darkness in the near future.
Too bad we don't have a centre-right party that supports unrestricted abortion, gay rights, women's rights, equality for all, gun control, public health care, bilingualism, multiculturalism, a reasonably strong social safety net, pot legalization, reasonable incarceration rates, and globally very high immigration.
Oh wait, the present Conservative Party of Canada supports all of those things and is about as centrist as they come if compared to anything other than our other parties who have drifted extreme far left.
It's just the Canadian media ecosystem that constantly tells you "PP" is a far right Trump acolyte but can really only point to vibes and cherry picked statements (some of which he said once) to support that. And they do that because he doesn't want to pay media outlets public funds to serve us news - the same position centrists and lefties had until literally 2018.
"If your support for the Palesinian cause, cannot survive watching what Hamas did on October 7, than your support is thin." is an amazing quote.
The two "sides" in this conflict have come to mirror each other, and Pro-Israel folks also deny, or refuse to look at the suffering of Palestinians, in the same way Pro-Pals treat any acknowledgement of suffering of Israelis like it's a trick or betrayal of the cause.
Many of the grass-roots peace orgs in the Levant - Standing Together, Parent's Circle, Ex-Combatants for Peace - all start with listening to the other side's suffering, learning to accept, and empathize with it. These groups are growing in size and power in Israel-Palestine. I'm really disheartened that so few Westerners are showing solidarity with these types of groups, where it actually could make a difference.