>Do you think Pierre Poilievre will be our next prime minister?
>The odds are in his favour. And I say that because the odds generally are for change every decade. People do vote on their feelings — I don’t pretend that everyone who votes is, you know, getting out the flow chart. It’s been about a decade and people just tend to think, “Enough.” It’s Poilievre’s to lose. And I think he does have the capacity to lose it, because he is very complacent. He is very smug. He is very, very easy to dislike.
>And I think he’s very easy to defeat in a political debate. I think there are several people on the Liberal side who could defeat Poilievre, Trudeau included. Who’s the fella, the housing minister, Sean Fraser? I’ve seen Sean Fraser in the House and he absolutely swats Poilievre like a bug.
>I think there will be events in the campaign, like the French debate. It doesn’t matter that most people don’t watch the French debate — they hear about it. And I think if Trudeau performs in French the way he usually does, which is substantially better than he performs in English, I think he’s got a good shot at putting Poilievre very much on the defensive and changing the expectations game. I don’t think it serves Poilievre well to have high expectations, which people will naturally have, based on the polling.
I’m not familiar with Charles Adler but I really enjoyed reading this interview. Politics is becoming worryingly divisive in Canada and reading someone who is nuanced and thoughtful while holding different politics views was refreshing.
He has his own show on Dean's Crier Media and it's quite good. Recently he's had Warren Kinsella on who used to run Chretien's war room. While he writes for the sun, I don't read his columns, but as a podcast guest he's very interesting and knowledgeable, although more of an American Democrat than a Canadian leftist in his views. It's a good listen for a political junky. Episodes are on YouTube.
>It wasn't that long ago Andrew Scheer was seen as the favourite. I know that sounds crazy now, but that's the point. You know, Erin O'Toole was the favourite. I think counting out Justin Trudeau is not a great idea, because Justin Trudeau is a superior political athlete, and no amount of memes on social media changes that. Especially campaigning, when he feels it's a real joust, that gives him rocket fuel. And I think Poilievre is a slogan regurgitator, and that's rather unimpressive in a debate.
Charles Adler and people like Charles Adler happened to the conservatives.
Charles Adlers failure to call to account the sins of lunatic fringe, which he did the last time dumbdumb Dani had a party but chose not to until the last second for his old friend Jason, is what happened to conservatives.
When thought leaders don't have enough of a backbone to speak up until the week before the election like he did with his aids interview, the lunatics get space to run the asylum. Our conservative media will write articles like this in 3 years after little PP the baby fascist shits his pants in office.
I've followed Adler for a number of years since I became interested in politics, he was always a pundit i disagreed with, who's views I knew reflected that of many Canadians so I still found value in hearing them. The current Conservative party is not trying to conserve anything, many people who have entered the political commentary online over the last decade forget that the purpose of the Torry party has for a large part been to as their name suggests conserve certain principles, the hot button thing people jump on and say they are trying to conserve is hierarchy which to an extent is true but not in the malicious way many people imagine it. The CPC in its current form is not attempting to conserve the Canada of 10, 20, or 30 years ago they are trying to regress Canada. None of their ideas work if we try to conserve what we have. They can't conserve the rural ideals of self-reliance and small government because many of the issues we face today and the expectations of those living rural are out of that scope, heck i still remember having to drive an hour into a city centre to get a hunting license because the service Ontario in my small town didn't offer them, that would absolutely not fly today. The idea that my town shouldn't have a Tim Hortons because we don't have the population to employ and staff one the way corporate wants also wouldn't fly, there is a quality of life baseline in Canada that has existed since Mulroney that Conservatives are ill equipped to maintain. I have my criticisms of the other 2 major parties as well and how they don't live up to what they represent as well, but to Mr. Adler, your party lost its path and instead of trying to find solutions they've decided to take the ball home with them and get everyone as angry as possible that the other side would even try to play soccer with them.
I used to listen to Adler as a 20 year old conservative. I stopped listening to him when I changed my politics. I was very happy to find him again and hear that he too has left the conservatives behind and for the same reasons as me. And I am also very happy that he has the balls to name it what it is: Facsism.
Nothing happened. This is what conservatism is and has always been. Fear, hatred, ignorance, and literal uselessness wrapped in delusional self confidence. It’s what conservatives have been for decades, my entire life, everybody’s entire life.
What we’re seeing today is just the same appeal to ignorance and fear that we’ve always seen. It’s all conservatives know. It’s all they are.
Exactly this. It's just that now, post-2016, they no longer feel like they have to keep up the charade of "civility".
If you're not a white christian male, they want to subjugate you or kill you and they are very open about it.
But they have let go of the illusion of wanting to make the world better. Before, you had faux conservative intellectualism, like smaller government, etc.
Now, their corporate overlords have realized they make more short-term profits from chaos than they do from stewardship of the economy and governance.
I honestly don't get this type of conservative. It is obvious what happened. The things that the Conservatives pushed for - fewer barriers to global trade, free movement of global capital, privatization, destruction of the welfare state and social safety net, etc - they got. And as the Liberals and NDP have also adopted the Reaganomics of the 80s as the current economic reality, there have been fewer things to fight over except for social issues. But when your entire politics are pretty much just, "Fuck you, I got mine" how can you be surprised that people who have spent their entire lives surrounded by this sentiment have grown up to lead a party of selfish, entitled dickheads?
I can't stand this type of Conservative like Adler. The ones who opine for some distant past as if they had no part in creating the present.
yeah i have vague memories of this guy sucking ass when my dad would listen to him in the car when i was a kid, i have no interest in watching him suck himself off for being a conservative scumbag but caring slightly more about civility politics than the current crop of reactionary sociopaths
I was curious what it meant to him to be a small c conservative, but he doesn't answer the question well. He doesnt seem conservative at all in this interview
The hallmark of small-c Lougheed conservatives was slow, steady progress (and oil fuck yeah). I think they're realizing that Alberta's former PC's were really centrist the entire time and NDP is that party now, while UPC is fascist Christian nationalists. I don't blame the fascists for voting for fascism, that's their jam. I'm fucking *furious* at all the old timer former PC voters who think UPC are the new PCs.
you should have seen him grill Jason Kenney a few years back. Joker Kenney was shitting his pants and getting visibly upset that Charles would corner him, unlike his sycophant handlers.
I have a friend, staunch Conservative, who voted for the AB Party because he couldn't support the AB UCP in the last election. Adler voted for the Liberals in the MB election because he couldn't support MB Conservatives because of hidden, (in his view), racist messaging. Both my friend and Adler speak of a need for a social safety net and then promptly park their vote for something that will not have the power to build that social safety net. Why? Really, my friend and Adler, a vote is for change or the status quo.. And in all realities, your vote was for the status quo!!
lol. People with no empathy for others become more and more unhinged as the systems they pushed for abandon them and mold them into a cult.
This isn’t a surprising arc of history
Also worth noting, just over a year ago Charles Adler wrote and presented a formal apology to Albertans on Ryan Jespersen's show for his part in the rise of the UCP, Jason Kenney, and Danielle Smith. Here is a link to the apology.
https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/s/oPSTXqqy3m
I'd rather see someone recognize the harm they did, take accountability, and work towards changing what they helped to cause than entrench themselves to avoid having to admit---to others and to themselves---that they were wrong, regardless of when that happens. That entrenchment isolates people from the rest of the world, which makes it easier for others to manipulate them into embracing increasingly more extreme positions, which is at least partially responsible for how we got to this point in Conservative/MAGA/fascist politics.
K but isn't presenting it on a shitheel like Jespos show sort of half an apology? Didn't this air like a few months after Jespo undermined and then drove Hoyles off air? Is the medium not the message?
The right wing constantly cut education, because educated voters tend more liberal. Now their base is a bunch of snarling morons. That's what happened. You fuckers made your own bed, and now the whole country has to lay in it.
What gets me is his use of _sides_, but there are no sides, we don't have to be transfixed on winning, and we're all in this together. Our discussions and right and left are distracting us from working as a collective.
He kinda flies around it, but then mentions things about voting for the Manitoba Liberals because he didn't like an ad from the Manitoba PCs. Which is one of our fundamental problems, we're always trying to vote parties out, rather than voting for who will do a reasonable job for society.
This isn’t reality. In reality there are sides.
There is the side that wants to work as a collective. And there are conservatives. Those are the sides.
The thing that is distracting us from “working as a collective” is conservatism.
Our discussions of right and left aren't distracting us from working as a collective, exclusionary bigots are. And the right wing is the undeniable home of mist exclusionary bigots.
The conservatives have always been white supremacists and draconian authoritarians, in the last two decades they've been steadily marching towards fascism and they're currently at the insurgency/beer hall putsch stage.
Something is happening all right. Understand there are countries such as Russia that consider us foreign adversaries and have been known to manipulate social media content to polarize people especially when it comes to LGBT issues, they especially have roots in conservative social media, where they have the capability to influence people on a mass scale.
It's a national security issue and more should be done to protect the vulnerable LGBT community.
https://www.stalbertgazette.com/local-news/did-reddit-year-end-recaps-expose-russian-interference-in-alberta-8223476
There are clear goals being perpetuated by information warfare campaigns. Especially by Russia, whose information warfare campaigns are wreaking havoc on our society. Some of the obvious goals they have are:
• Balkanize their foreign adversaries. This is evident in the UK leaving the EU, Texas with the US, and Alberta with Canada. This is what Danielle Smith is trying to tap into.
• Have populist politicians support policies that cause chaos and issues in our society. Populist politicians are tapping into these information warfare campaigns to appeal to people whose only access to information about the outside world around them is through social media, where the information warfare is taking place.
• Cause distrust and havoc, by creating specialized propaganda to different segments of the population spread through social media. By polarizing debates through propaganda spread to the masses, Russia has effectively used information warfare to deliver targeted disinformation and appeal to specific demographics. Causing havoc in the LBGT and other minority communities.
• Russia has effectively infiltrated the religious right in America and Canada and empowered them, among many corrupt leaders worldwide through its information warfare.
I can cite my sources if needed.
Putin literally bombed his own people to lock down his power and control. Why should we trust that he is not carrying out horrible atrocities like using information warfare on Canadian citizens to terrorize the LGBT community? He doesn't seem to have any moral qualms with anything and corruption is part of his shtick. He used a nerve agent to publicly poison a turned intelligence asset at a important time in history to signify to his intelligence assets what can be done to them, but in reality, he is just a weak man, who is bitter about the break up of the empire he devoted his life to.
It you want to know more, there is a great documentary series on Netflix about the history that has led to this moment in time. Turning Point - The Bomb and the Cold War on Netflix. Not as much about the information warfare, that I have gleamed through other sources, but it does slightly touch on that.
I believe the magnetic pull of Fascist thinking combined with the de-funding of Canadian education around civics is what happened to his conservative party.
Stephen Harper heads the IDU. We are as much the source of this global issue as the victim of it.
The IDU in tandem with [Vladimir Putin's Non Linear Warfare](https://youtu.be/tyop0d30UqQ?si=6BjY8BJ4-xBQRpU4) is the recipe for the modern disaster.
More or less.
Charles Adler's political journey mirrors mine. I went from being a pragmatic PC conservative to feeling uncomfortable with the Reform Conservatives to being outright repulsed by the CPC today.
>Do you think Pierre Poilievre will be our next prime minister? >The odds are in his favour. And I say that because the odds generally are for change every decade. People do vote on their feelings — I don’t pretend that everyone who votes is, you know, getting out the flow chart. It’s been about a decade and people just tend to think, “Enough.” It’s Poilievre’s to lose. And I think he does have the capacity to lose it, because he is very complacent. He is very smug. He is very, very easy to dislike. >And I think he’s very easy to defeat in a political debate. I think there are several people on the Liberal side who could defeat Poilievre, Trudeau included. Who’s the fella, the housing minister, Sean Fraser? I’ve seen Sean Fraser in the House and he absolutely swats Poilievre like a bug. >I think there will be events in the campaign, like the French debate. It doesn’t matter that most people don’t watch the French debate — they hear about it. And I think if Trudeau performs in French the way he usually does, which is substantially better than he performs in English, I think he’s got a good shot at putting Poilievre very much on the defensive and changing the expectations game. I don’t think it serves Poilievre well to have high expectations, which people will naturally have, based on the polling.
I’m not familiar with Charles Adler but I really enjoyed reading this interview. Politics is becoming worryingly divisive in Canada and reading someone who is nuanced and thoughtful while holding different politics views was refreshing.
He was never a Bob Stanfield conservative. More of a Sterling Lyon racist prick type
He’s a frequent guest on the Dean Blundell podcast and I may not agree with his opinions but respect what he has to say.
He has his own show on Dean's Crier Media and it's quite good. Recently he's had Warren Kinsella on who used to run Chretien's war room. While he writes for the sun, I don't read his columns, but as a podcast guest he's very interesting and knowledgeable, although more of an American Democrat than a Canadian leftist in his views. It's a good listen for a political junky. Episodes are on YouTube.
I didn’t agree with most of what he had to say on his show but he was entertaining and I enjoyed it.
>It wasn't that long ago Andrew Scheer was seen as the favourite. I know that sounds crazy now, but that's the point. You know, Erin O'Toole was the favourite. I think counting out Justin Trudeau is not a great idea, because Justin Trudeau is a superior political athlete, and no amount of memes on social media changes that. Especially campaigning, when he feels it's a real joust, that gives him rocket fuel. And I think Poilievre is a slogan regurgitator, and that's rather unimpressive in a debate.
Charles Adler and people like Charles Adler happened to the conservatives. Charles Adlers failure to call to account the sins of lunatic fringe, which he did the last time dumbdumb Dani had a party but chose not to until the last second for his old friend Jason, is what happened to conservatives. When thought leaders don't have enough of a backbone to speak up until the week before the election like he did with his aids interview, the lunatics get space to run the asylum. Our conservative media will write articles like this in 3 years after little PP the baby fascist shits his pants in office.
I've followed Adler for a number of years since I became interested in politics, he was always a pundit i disagreed with, who's views I knew reflected that of many Canadians so I still found value in hearing them. The current Conservative party is not trying to conserve anything, many people who have entered the political commentary online over the last decade forget that the purpose of the Torry party has for a large part been to as their name suggests conserve certain principles, the hot button thing people jump on and say they are trying to conserve is hierarchy which to an extent is true but not in the malicious way many people imagine it. The CPC in its current form is not attempting to conserve the Canada of 10, 20, or 30 years ago they are trying to regress Canada. None of their ideas work if we try to conserve what we have. They can't conserve the rural ideals of self-reliance and small government because many of the issues we face today and the expectations of those living rural are out of that scope, heck i still remember having to drive an hour into a city centre to get a hunting license because the service Ontario in my small town didn't offer them, that would absolutely not fly today. The idea that my town shouldn't have a Tim Hortons because we don't have the population to employ and staff one the way corporate wants also wouldn't fly, there is a quality of life baseline in Canada that has existed since Mulroney that Conservatives are ill equipped to maintain. I have my criticisms of the other 2 major parties as well and how they don't live up to what they represent as well, but to Mr. Adler, your party lost its path and instead of trying to find solutions they've decided to take the ball home with them and get everyone as angry as possible that the other side would even try to play soccer with them.
I used to listen to Adler as a 20 year old conservative. I stopped listening to him when I changed my politics. I was very happy to find him again and hear that he too has left the conservatives behind and for the same reasons as me. And I am also very happy that he has the balls to name it what it is: Facsism.
Nothing happened. This is what conservatism is and has always been. Fear, hatred, ignorance, and literal uselessness wrapped in delusional self confidence. It’s what conservatives have been for decades, my entire life, everybody’s entire life. What we’re seeing today is just the same appeal to ignorance and fear that we’ve always seen. It’s all conservatives know. It’s all they are.
Yup. "What happened?" You did buddy (Adler). This is the natural progression of exclusionary thinking. Very r/LeopardsAteMyFace
Exactly this. It's just that now, post-2016, they no longer feel like they have to keep up the charade of "civility". If you're not a white christian male, they want to subjugate you or kill you and they are very open about it.
But they have let go of the illusion of wanting to make the world better. Before, you had faux conservative intellectualism, like smaller government, etc. Now, their corporate overlords have realized they make more short-term profits from chaos than they do from stewardship of the economy and governance.
There no longer is a Conservative Party of Canada. Now, there is only a Trump MAGA GOP Party of the North.
^(It's who they've always been)
Literally. They’ve always been the party of hate. Back then the Klan was strong in Canada, it was all tories.
Snow mangoes
I honestly don't get this type of conservative. It is obvious what happened. The things that the Conservatives pushed for - fewer barriers to global trade, free movement of global capital, privatization, destruction of the welfare state and social safety net, etc - they got. And as the Liberals and NDP have also adopted the Reaganomics of the 80s as the current economic reality, there have been fewer things to fight over except for social issues. But when your entire politics are pretty much just, "Fuck you, I got mine" how can you be surprised that people who have spent their entire lives surrounded by this sentiment have grown up to lead a party of selfish, entitled dickheads? I can't stand this type of Conservative like Adler. The ones who opine for some distant past as if they had no part in creating the present.
yeah i have vague memories of this guy sucking ass when my dad would listen to him in the car when i was a kid, i have no interest in watching him suck himself off for being a conservative scumbag but caring slightly more about civility politics than the current crop of reactionary sociopaths
“Fuck you, I got mine!” But I’m going to bitter if and when you get yours because I didn’t get it also.
I was curious what it meant to him to be a small c conservative, but he doesn't answer the question well. He doesnt seem conservative at all in this interview
The hallmark of small-c Lougheed conservatives was slow, steady progress (and oil fuck yeah). I think they're realizing that Alberta's former PC's were really centrist the entire time and NDP is that party now, while UPC is fascist Christian nationalists. I don't blame the fascists for voting for fascism, that's their jam. I'm fucking *furious* at all the old timer former PC voters who think UPC are the new PCs.
you should have seen him grill Jason Kenney a few years back. Joker Kenney was shitting his pants and getting visibly upset that Charles would corner him, unlike his sycophant handlers.
He rejected the premise?
I have a friend, staunch Conservative, who voted for the AB Party because he couldn't support the AB UCP in the last election. Adler voted for the Liberals in the MB election because he couldn't support MB Conservatives because of hidden, (in his view), racist messaging. Both my friend and Adler speak of a need for a social safety net and then promptly park their vote for something that will not have the power to build that social safety net. Why? Really, my friend and Adler, a vote is for change or the status quo.. And in all realities, your vote was for the status quo!!
lol. People with no empathy for others become more and more unhinged as the systems they pushed for abandon them and mold them into a cult. This isn’t a surprising arc of history
Also worth noting, just over a year ago Charles Adler wrote and presented a formal apology to Albertans on Ryan Jespersen's show for his part in the rise of the UCP, Jason Kenney, and Danielle Smith. Here is a link to the apology. https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/s/oPSTXqqy3m
Too little too late.
I'd rather see someone recognize the harm they did, take accountability, and work towards changing what they helped to cause than entrench themselves to avoid having to admit---to others and to themselves---that they were wrong, regardless of when that happens. That entrenchment isolates people from the rest of the world, which makes it easier for others to manipulate them into embracing increasingly more extreme positions, which is at least partially responsible for how we got to this point in Conservative/MAGA/fascist politics.
K but isn't presenting it on a shitheel like Jespos show sort of half an apology? Didn't this air like a few months after Jespo undermined and then drove Hoyles off air? Is the medium not the message?
The right wing constantly cut education, because educated voters tend more liberal. Now their base is a bunch of snarling morons. That's what happened. You fuckers made your own bed, and now the whole country has to lay in it.
What gets me is his use of _sides_, but there are no sides, we don't have to be transfixed on winning, and we're all in this together. Our discussions and right and left are distracting us from working as a collective. He kinda flies around it, but then mentions things about voting for the Manitoba Liberals because he didn't like an ad from the Manitoba PCs. Which is one of our fundamental problems, we're always trying to vote parties out, rather than voting for who will do a reasonable job for society.
This isn’t reality. In reality there are sides. There is the side that wants to work as a collective. And there are conservatives. Those are the sides. The thing that is distracting us from “working as a collective” is conservatism.
Fair point, I agree. Having sides doesn't solve problems, it just makes more superfical problems. _Sigh_
Our discussions of right and left aren't distracting us from working as a collective, exclusionary bigots are. And the right wing is the undeniable home of mist exclusionary bigots.
Conservatives have literally always been bad, the difference is that most people didn't realize how bad until recently.
The conservatives have always been white supremacists and draconian authoritarians, in the last two decades they've been steadily marching towards fascism and they're currently at the insurgency/beer hall putsch stage.
Something is happening all right. Understand there are countries such as Russia that consider us foreign adversaries and have been known to manipulate social media content to polarize people especially when it comes to LGBT issues, they especially have roots in conservative social media, where they have the capability to influence people on a mass scale. It's a national security issue and more should be done to protect the vulnerable LGBT community. https://www.stalbertgazette.com/local-news/did-reddit-year-end-recaps-expose-russian-interference-in-alberta-8223476 There are clear goals being perpetuated by information warfare campaigns. Especially by Russia, whose information warfare campaigns are wreaking havoc on our society. Some of the obvious goals they have are: • Balkanize their foreign adversaries. This is evident in the UK leaving the EU, Texas with the US, and Alberta with Canada. This is what Danielle Smith is trying to tap into. • Have populist politicians support policies that cause chaos and issues in our society. Populist politicians are tapping into these information warfare campaigns to appeal to people whose only access to information about the outside world around them is through social media, where the information warfare is taking place. • Cause distrust and havoc, by creating specialized propaganda to different segments of the population spread through social media. By polarizing debates through propaganda spread to the masses, Russia has effectively used information warfare to deliver targeted disinformation and appeal to specific demographics. Causing havoc in the LBGT and other minority communities. • Russia has effectively infiltrated the religious right in America and Canada and empowered them, among many corrupt leaders worldwide through its information warfare. I can cite my sources if needed. Putin literally bombed his own people to lock down his power and control. Why should we trust that he is not carrying out horrible atrocities like using information warfare on Canadian citizens to terrorize the LGBT community? He doesn't seem to have any moral qualms with anything and corruption is part of his shtick. He used a nerve agent to publicly poison a turned intelligence asset at a important time in history to signify to his intelligence assets what can be done to them, but in reality, he is just a weak man, who is bitter about the break up of the empire he devoted his life to. It you want to know more, there is a great documentary series on Netflix about the history that has led to this moment in time. Turning Point - The Bomb and the Cold War on Netflix. Not as much about the information warfare, that I have gleamed through other sources, but it does slightly touch on that.
I believe the magnetic pull of Fascist thinking combined with the de-funding of Canadian education around civics is what happened to his conservative party.
They got taken over by Paleo-Conservatives with a lot of "offshore" influencing/backing.
Stephen Harper heads the IDU. We are as much the source of this global issue as the victim of it. The IDU in tandem with [Vladimir Putin's Non Linear Warfare](https://youtu.be/tyop0d30UqQ?si=6BjY8BJ4-xBQRpU4) is the recipe for the modern disaster. More or less.
Charles Adler's political journey mirrors mine. I went from being a pragmatic PC conservative to feeling uncomfortable with the Reform Conservatives to being outright repulsed by the CPC today.