Lance
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
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Hey, my name is Lance. I run a number of different channels, usually under the banner of The Surf's. There's YouTube.com slash The Surf Times and at The Surf's TV on most other social media. I cover news, politics, internet slop, usually from a dumpster fire like perspective.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 180
I was going to say, this has got to be a scary time to be living in the United States as a Canadian citizen right now.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 180
Well, minority or majority government led by the conservatives, no question that that was where all the major polling was trending. And then the exact opposite on this rollercoaster election in both directions. I I think it's pretty easily explainable, especially to your American listeners who might have been wondering what was happening.
Behind the Bastards
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Essentially, the country had a combination of burnout on Justin Trudeau and the person who replaced Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney, effectively took the number one campaign. It was the actual campaign slogan of the conservatives away from him immediately after being crowned the new leader of the Liberal Party, which was axe the tax.
Behind the Bastards
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which is what, you know, fascist millhouse we call Pierre Polievre over here. That was his big campaign promise. The conservatives were going to ax the carbon tax. And that had a lot of people excited. A lot of people didn't like Justin Trudeau. And then along comes Mark Carney, and he takes both of those things away from the conservatives. He's not Justin Trudeau, and he axed the tax.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 180
And so they had to kind of completely reset. And this was before the wild card of Trump shows up. Yeah. Which, of course, now is scaring not only Canada, but the world overall. I would say, like most countries now are kind of having to completely reset how they think and want to do geopolitics into the future because of his policies.
Behind the Bastards
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Which was propping up their entire economy outside of the oil.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, for conservatives, a lot of it really became increasingly more intense with COVID. And I think internationally, there was an association with very basic safety protocols and tyranny.
Behind the Bastards
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So I guess some people, the United States and Canada, both saw the idea of wearing a mask or having to wash your hands as some form of dictatorship akin to some of the worst war crimes ever committed on any population. That made a schism happen where the sentiment kind of really started accelerating towards less of, you know, blaming Trudeau for everything, kind of like Obama.
Behind the Bastards
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There used to be a joke like, ah, Trudeau, to actual fuck Trudeau merchandise and the idea of, you know, Trudeau being an enemy of the state and a communist dictator. That was on the right side of things. On the left side of things, everyone got burned out from Trudeau because of the performative progressive politics of his entire character.
Behind the Bastards
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He was very vocal about standing up for a lot of issues that on one end he would pretend to care about, such as indigenous rights, land back, stuff like that. And then he would be suing the survivors of residential schools in federal court to try and prevent them from getting too much money from the federal government.
Behind the Bastards
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So there was a lot of Trudeau seems to performatively enjoy being perceived as someone who's enlightened and progressive and trying to steer progress. society in a good direction, where his policies are effectively exacerbating wealth inequality very rapidly, because that's effectively what you get with neoliberal centrists, right?
Behind the Bastards
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It was it was 22 or 23, but I believe it was it was around then.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, I don't want to play, you know, give the far right any kind of kudos or points, but I think from an analytical standpoint, something that people should realize is that within the last, I'd say, year and a half or so, Pierre was really, really effective at doing faux populism in a way that a lot of people were starting to get very worried about, and that he was starting to speak a lot about populism
Behind the Bastards
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the working class, you know, the housing crisis in the country and the fact that the liberals are out of touch elites who only care about enriching themselves. And, you know, obviously you'd have a lot of the right wing kind of nebulous terms like woke ideology being tied into that kind of stuff.
Behind the Bastards
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But he was for a long time kind of starting to gain a lot of ground and traction as more of a moderate style conservative who was concerned with helping the working class, which is astonishing considering the man is a lifelong politician like that. That is who he is. He was making fun of people like the leader of the Social Democrats here, Jagmeet Singh.
Behind the Bastards
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He was making fun of him for just working for a pension and not even caring about the people or the working class. The man has never marched with the union. I'm talking about Pierre. He's never marched with the union. His voting track record is decidedly anti-worker. It's decidedly exacerbating wealth inequality. He's worked his entire life to make houses more expensive.
Behind the Bastards
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But marketing and branding really work. work, especially like, you know, there's compilation clips of him saying things that are JK Rowling tier in terms of both their nonsensicalness, like talking about how electricity is crafted by harnessing the power of the lightning bolts into the wire that the electrician holds up. Very cool. Yeah, very cool. Thor-like powers. I'm on board.
Behind the Bastards
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But like, unfortunately, that's just not how we usually generate power in this country. But like it works on some people. They like to see a man who fakes owning like different kinds of wood and tools, you know, like a Tucker Carlson ask. Yeah, I've got a wood shop in my back. And it's like that. Well, no, I think this is the first time you've ever seen that lumber, sir.
Behind the Bastards
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But, you know, again, some voters, they really started his rebranding in that respect actually worked pretty successful for the last year and a half against Trudeau.
Behind the Bastards
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Those have gotten closer, but... I think it's one of the biggest reversals, or if not the biggest reversal in Canadian political history. which was the dominating lead they had from having an almost an assured majority to now perhaps losing to a liberal majority, which again is unheard of. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 180
One thing that people are also kind of missing is that he also really closely started associating himself with Elon Musk prior to Elon Musk kind of being the de facto leader of, you know, the U S or whatever you want to call him, the, the real president of the United States. But he is, At a number of rallies and on the record praising Elon Musk prior to Elon Musk.
Behind the Bastards
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This was pre-Elon Musk overt Nazi era, kind of more just like Nazi light era.
Behind the Bastards
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But around that time, Pierre was asked, like, what do you think about being endorsed and praised by Elon Musk? And, you know, he started making jokes about how... His kids want to go to Mars, so that's pretty cute. And started talking about how he wants Elon Musk to build more factories and plants in Canada.
Behind the Bastards
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Well, that's all really coming back to hurt him now because the very idea of there being a stronger Tesla presence in the country is decidedly rejected by the populace. Like, you know, the protests that are going on in the United States against Tesla's are going on here as well. Maybe not as large scale or perhaps as fire based, but a lot of them are occurring here.
Behind the Bastards
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And so like that, I think, is also really hurting them. So there's been this really funny, strange political dance that's kind of happened in the last couple of months where everyone is trying to say Trump loves you more. It's like a circular firing squad. Like at one point, the conservatives were trying to market themselves as saying Trump was making fun of Pierre in this clip.
Behind the Bastards
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So look, he hates Pierre more. Yeah. And then it was like, oh, no, no, no. Look, he's talking a lot of smack about Mark Carney. He hates Mark Carney more. So that that has actually become a very strong dynamic of the Canadian election is who exactly does Trump like more? And that's not going to be good for you if it turns out you're the one.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, I mean, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah, you're totally right. I mean, we're talking about a lifelong banker. I mean, he's even worked for Goldman Sachs. The solution going forward, especially in the face of actual manifesting fascism, is more neoliberal policies, austerity and measures.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 180
Then you might be very, very excited to perhaps get your own, like, honestly, Joe Biden style election here, where we are once again going to be choosing center to center right economic policies that are going to undoubtedly exacerbate wealth inequality more. They are not going to solve the housing crisis.
Behind the Bastards
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The housing crisis of Canada, while it is portrayed constantly as complex, really goes down to fundamentally there are a lot of houses, but there are also a lot of houses being built in luxury markets that most people can't afford. Speculation is not addressed.
Behind the Bastards
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And so speculation usually gets blamed on foreign investors, which in turn kind of brings up the whole immigration fears, which are very successful. But With Carney, I mean, I don't see anything dramatic. Not only did he ax the carbon tax when he was in power initially, and that was, again, I think strategically to remove the power the conservatives had on that policy.
Behind the Bastards
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He also is getting rid of the capital gains tax, which, again, is just going to be funneling more money towards the ultra wealthy economy. So the problem for me is that if anything, I'm happy that Pierre, it looks like he might not win. I don't know what by the time people are listening to this, what the results are. But I also recognize that this does not solve these crises.
Behind the Bastards
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We're simply putting band-aids on a pause before, you know, finally a Trump of our own gets elected. And then, yes, people after the fact start realizing, oh, my God, he's doing a lot of the horrifying things that he promised he would do. He's actually trying to enact Project 2025. All these terrible things are happening. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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Well, I mean, if this was an election where it looked like Pierre was going to win, I would say he is going to follow through on all the aggressive measures and more that he's promising right now, which include, you know, suspending the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to people that he deems should be worthy of receiving freedoms, specifically because like Donald Trump, he wants to begin silencing people for their speech in relation to protesting against Israel and their genocide of Palestinians, especially if you are an immigrant or someone on a student visa.
Behind the Bastards
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And these policies, you can see they're a disaster absolutely. After the fact, and people, I think, wake up to them like Americans are right now when they realize Trump's actually doing it. But, you know, make make no mistake.
Behind the Bastards
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It doesn't doesn't require, you know, too long of the increase in wealth inequality for people to look for an answer because they're not being listened to by the libs or the liberals here.
Behind the Bastards
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And they've gotten a lot accomplished. To be fair to Jagmeet Singh and, you know, for American listeners, the Social Democratic Party of Canada, they accomplished some great things working in a minority government setting, including a pharmacare program, including a vaccine.
Behind the Bastards
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A federal feeding program for children, a school lunch program, you know, working on paid family sick leave and extending it. So they've done a lot of good in sort of enacting progressive policies.
Behind the Bastards
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But it's the Liberals who are also equally as good at taking credit for all the things that people have come to really like, such as having dental care for the first time and having cheaper pharma care and stuff like that.