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Canada is great. Sorry for your lack of patriotism and your loyalty to a foreign power which is quickly becoming a dysfunctional pariah state.

Also nobody said Trudeaus deficit spending is false, it’s hilarious that you think I said that.... just shows how clueless and out of touch you are.

Also if you can’t tell the difference between the way the economy works now and how it did 40-50 years ago when interest rates were in the double digits then you’ve just shown how ignorant you are of economics

I’m sure the quality of education in Toronto is better than whatever it is you received (religious homeschooling?) and certainly its not known for being worse than the rest if Canada. But the way my education is from a private university in your beloved USA. You wouldn’t dream of bashing the USA would you?

   

Wow I missed that one of the conservative replies to this thread was actually a reply to the article and not just another unimaginative, copy-paste generic ad-hominem attack on me and/or Justin Trudeau. So kudos for that I guess that puts you at the head of the class in CKA conservative school.

To your first point in Spanish flu well I should hope we fare better what with that being considered one of the great disasters of the previous century, you’re setting the har pretty low there. Especially when you consider that back then modern medical science was in its infancy, public sanitation was virtually non-existant, the whole concept of germs and viruses had only recently been discovered and were poorly understood and of course the majority of the US population lived in poverty and squalor and even without the flu, average life expectancy was in the late 40s / early 50s.

But one difference which the article spells out in the context of 9/11 is that America survived and thrived through past challenges by coming together building the advanced social institutions our generation has taken for granted. Poor sanitation led to disease so they built public sanitation departments that served everyone, not just those who “deserved” access to it. People supported gradual social reforms that improved living standards for everyone. Meanwhile America has been on a 40-year streak of tearing down and weakening these institutions, sowing divisions and practicing increasingly toxic partisan politics, of which Trump is the latest and most extreme example. And now in a time if crisis he’s amping it up to deliver more not less of it.

Americas problems and decay have been brewing for a long time they didn’t start with Trump but I mean its why the country’s has been so divided. For god’s sake Trump’s inauguration speech was called “American Carnage “ and basically depicted America as a dysfunctional hell-hole of misery. But he’s in no way dealing with them capably. His administration is incompetent and corrupt and pouring gas on the fire. Sick America is exactly what the left and labour groups have been warning would happen for decades under right wing austerity and attacks on the working class, perpetrated by Dems and Republicans alike.

Canadians on the Right like to talk about the “laurentian consensus” ruling Canada, describing a supposed central Canadian worldview but the real ruling mindset in North America especially in the US is the “boardroom consensus” where CEOs, executives, bankers and businessmen and their political counterparts with an anti-working class, pro-austerity ideology that sowed divisions and weakened institutions and society as a whole.

   

Don't know if I'd go that far. But it has to be said out loud that our governments certainly got their shit together for COVID far better than the Americans did, or will.

I'll limit my own anti-Canada thoughts to this; while our own deep political and cultural flaws are still there they've been put on hold for the duration of the crisis, something that Americans are obviously incapable of doing. Something that should have brought them together has instead turned into just another excuse for them to hate each other even more than they already did just a month or so ago. That didn't happen here and it most likely won't either. We're just wired differently, all of us. Or most of us are, at least most of us apparently are capable of being adults during a severe crisis and doing the simple "stay calm and carry on" sort of things that will see us through to the end of the dark moment.

I still don't love Canada, and I have some damn good reasons for feeling and thinking that way. There's been too many betrayals done and deeply hurtful & cruel thing said that simply can't (and won't) be forgiven. That being said though? I'd rather be here right now that in the US, that's for damn sure.

   

What country would you rather be living in? I’m not saying it’s a utopia, it will take several successive governments to undo the damage that neoliberal austerity has wrought but I think on the whole we have better circumstances than other western nations.

   

   

I just said I'd rather be here than in the US, Beave. Or Britain either. As for Europe the only ones who appear to have had their act together from the beginning of the pandemic are the Germans.

Keep in mind too that I'm giving Trudeau the credit he deserves. He's done a good job, period, and finally earned the title of national leader. So good for him, and I've sent tweets to him saying as much. Keep in mind to though that I'm still in the part of the country that gets dumped on the worst by the others, with their mean-spirited sneering at us. That is not going to be forgotten. It might have been put on the back-burner because it isn't important during a major crisis but that doesn't mean it isn't still in the back of the minds of a lot of people out here.

   

   

"We're just another country" - Johnny Rotten

   

Not a Utopia, just the best place on Earth.
(now winter's done with )

   

We'll be back giving each other shit soon enough. Same with the inevitable return of the same old tedious region-based politics. Just because we're having one very good shining moment doesn't make the other problems go away.

   

Hear hear. Canadians may be self-absorbed and complacent in their mediocrity, but at least COVID-19 put our worse impulses on hold. Unfortunately, most Canadians (especially the drooling mouth breathers in Central Canada) are so vain to believe that these problems do not exist because it would require some deep introspection. Something they are emotionally and mentally incapable of.

   

I don’t understand what is keeping you from moving south to fulfill your destiny dude! Why continue living in such a shithole third world country like Canada when the Shining City on the Hill is there, waiting.

   

"Love it or leave it" comments are the nadir of any serious conversation.

   

Sounds awfully close to what the Trumpsters say, eh?

   

Pretty much the first thing that liberals get pissed at in the US when a conservative type says that very same thing to them.

For the record I'd never call Canada a "failed" state. The basic operating system has done it's job of keeping the necessary services function at a critical time and that's something that all of us should have expected to happen given how much of our money goes into building and sustaining that system. I'd certainly call Canada an "inherently unfair" state though. And I don't see how that can be credibly denied by anyone, except by those who live in an region that has all the political advantages available to them and because of that is simply incapable of every really understanding why anyone else would feel bitter and disenfranchised by the existing political power structure.

   

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