Alberta adopted this model and saw an increase in public health wait times and a sharp increase in the required government spending required to run the public system.

Creating a two tiered system means that it bleeds doctors, nurses and admin into the private sector which is fundamentally at odds with the philosophy that everyone deserves the right to life sustaining care. If the rich want to dodge the cue then they can quite frankly afford the plane ticket. If the system is being undermined by politicians - oust the politicians. Let them know that that system is of the highest priority and should be first to see reinvestment.

But we should all be aware that Canada is one of the most challenging landscapes for delivery of any kind of health care. We are diffuse over a large landmass and the commitment to the system means that if you live in a remote place 2 hours away from the nearest surgery then the government is on the hook to spend an outsized amount of budget to uphold the commitment of care for you. The temptation to cut corners is always there and each Provincial trust is its own battleground. That we have the level of service we do is a credit to the efficacy of public health systems… Which means upping the costs to create competitive private sector development hurts us all.

It may be a step up for Americans to have any system at all as a right to health safety net but it’s a sharp step down for anywhere running a full public system.

On the next episode of “historical figures who were gay as fuck”… Leonardo Da Vinci.

That is actually one of the major issues at play. One of the kind of predatory things about right wing politics is it plays into a fallacy that the truth is simple, easily recognizable and can be rendered down into axioms a child can understand. Anything that doesn’t fall under these parameters cannot be the truth.

But science moved away from big axiomatic stuff like 50 years ago. It became the study of variation and nuance.

The left attempts to have a aspects of this simple explanation stuff in sections by adopting almost slogan-like things - take “Trans women are women” as an example. That easily digestible slogan sits on top of a whole bunch of consequentialist based philosophy, psychological research with a focus on harm reduction, a history of uphill public advocacy to just put trans issues on the radar and being trans itself isn’t easy to explain. It is simple and quippy - but not axiomatic. So a lot of people on the right tear into it as a target because the optics of defending a short quippy but nuance laden argument in slogan form while keeping it short and easily digestible is basically impossible.

This issue is throughout progressive political thought. Any short form word we use to describe practically anything has a whole swack of addendums, hidden complications, edge cases and multiple historical definitions. If you use very technical language you can be more specific but then you can easily talk over the heads of your audience.

Well… Short answer talking about “the left” and “the right” is effectively doing something called “constructing a public”. These are are not just political constructs, they are political constructs that do certain things. Neither of these constructs have hard boundaries and throughout time they shift.

But there is a distinct difference. When you look at the right, while the presentation changes they have a fairly straightforward citable group of guiding philosophy traceable through a small handful of writing. If you read Thomas Malthus and Edmond Burke they will sound like slightly more archaic versions of modern pundits on the right. When you listen to the modern pundits you will notice that they are very repetitive and what differentiates one from another is more or less just presentation style. That repetition of talking points changes it’s arguements but never it’s foundation. Since it’s mostly in service of protecting a status quo where hereditary privilege is upheld it doesn’t have to get complicated. It just has to justify the world as it has been and that humans are sneaky, fundamentally flawed and morally defunct but that by structuring society as a winnowing process where playing the game the rightful and just few will rise to the top.

But when you look at “the left” it’s not an easy gradient, it’s a loose scattering of little clusters of very different ideologies and guiding philosophies. Since it largely works of a guiding concept of dissolution of established aggregated personal fortunes and radical anti-supremacist framework of various forms it’s not uniform. There’s anti-colonialism, anti-racism, anti-monopolist, anti-capitalist, anti-discriminatory, pro-neurodiversity, expanded personal rights, pro public service, pro democratic and anti democratic groups, pro freedom of movement, anarchists, and acedemic political theorists each with individual theories about how to bring about a state of all these things when none of this has in living memory existed. It’s not generally trying to defend a status quo but trying to feild test different ways of doing things… So basically everybody and their dog has a slightly different opinion of what is a good idea.

It’s kind of hard to see " bad faith actors" as it were because any two leftists might have almost no ideological overlap as far as praxis. They might not see each other as being part of the same tribe even if outsiders looking in would classify them as “left” and they might all claim to be “left” themselves… It’s not that it’s contradictory, it’s that the branching paths of divergent evolving philosophies have rambled off in a whole bunch of different directions and effectively become whole other creatures entirely.

So next time you’re at the tabernacle or trying to be being a priest you’ll know how to behave, sure.

God signs of on mortal codes of governance multiple times in the text. Obedience to “Laws of the land” are a thing in other texts. The order seems to be “be orderly and in accordance to whatever the power structure where you are agrees is fair” it is pretty all over the place, Romans, Deuteronomy, Paul, Hebrews Numbers… God wields a pretty big ole rubber stamp.

What is being silenced is Bigotry. What happens when you allow bigots to openly be bigots into a lot of spaces you make the place hostile to the targets of those bigots. It’s one philosophy of space moderation to create areas where bigots and bigotry does not immediately become the entire focus of a places ecosystem so those targeted communities have places they can participate where they are accepted as normal. Because if nobody chooses that option you as a target always have to approach socializing on the internet as a risk and comfort is always denied you.

It doesn’t have to be and usually isn’t every space. Within the left there is advocacy for “holding spaces” where people are allowed to be horrible so that they can be approached and taught, debated and if they show desires to be better, not treated hostility in the moment. But it is accepted that those spaces are not comfortable places for the targets of bigotry to dwell. It’s a dangerzone.

So please stop this “silencing” nonsense. Yes, moderation teams pick their intended level of anti-bigotry safety vs holding space mentality. Other places where bigots accrue unchanged exist. If you want to do outreach you can pick your venue from a wide selection.

This is just a bunch of gestures. The reality is that AES states are truly guided by Marxism, and are true attempts at Communism, but haven’t made it to the Communist stage of development.

Why are you including things which have not yet made it to the Communist stage of development as examples of success of Marxist theory? That isn’t a proof that Communism is great yet. It’s calling the experiment before actually seeing if it works.

And I am not quick to call the USSR or Cuba particularly Dictatorships of the Proletariat. They became actual Dictatorships that carried forward the heirachy of the paramilitary organizations that spawned them never ceeding them to the workers councils like they were supposed to do instead creating new dynasties of career politicians…Career politicians of a one party state are not “working class”.

It really is a hype based philosophy. I look at Marx as a bit of a stochastic terrorist of his time. His ideas aren’t dangerous particularly taken with a grain of salt but because they are written to lead one to become angrier and angrier without being given an outlet to work towards things on a constructive way Communist communities start hopeful and sour over time.

He always dances around how that limiting of other classes authority and individual inequities is going to be handled because the answer… Is violence. A generous read is that he is naive to believe everyone will see he’s right and kumbaya the whole thing into existence but more likely because of the language he uses other places he’s flat out for the nessisary purge required to achieve his aims.

Issue being is anarchic mobs are generally fairly weak… So to make a successful change you basically need paramilitary leaderships and military like heirachy to achieve that purge… And then so far in history that paramilitary heirachy never has effectively dissolved after the fact because if everybody is doing communism correctly creating competeting heirachy is antithetical… You are just supposed to ignore that the paramilitary heirachy that becomes the state isn’t strictly playing by Marx’s rules either but by then a population isn’t in a position to argue.

It depends on what ideas you deem to be “correct”. He was very good at elucidation of the nature of how European models of property rights were impacting large swaths of the population at large… But its difficult to say if he had everything figured out because his “dictatorship of the proletariat” doesn’t seem to ever actualize in a lasting fashion. It usually ends up as an authoritarian state arguably because the system is vulnerable to the first group that decides to break faith with the covenant. A lot of Communist hopefuls tend to either take the examples of this happening as “not true Communism” or try to minimize the bad aspects of regimes that adopted the principles… It does seem once power is too laterally spread it becomes weak to any hierarchy that as long as they can talk a good game and use Marxist language.

In either case a lot of us would not call those outcomes “proven correct”. I would say he had some very lasting ideas which are useful tools… But the fact that none of the places where attempted enactment have particularly lived up to his hype means that like a lot of philosophy of his time that the answers are a lot more complex and nuanced than he could have forseen.

Actually I find that it allows more range of Socialism strains to be discussed. A lot of Marxists tend to look rather poorly at any mixed Socialism blends as either heretical or as liminal states with Communism as a complete end goal instead of being legitimate in their own right.

Where ever Marxism tends to particularly flourish erasure of a lot of other Socialist philosophy tends to be the norm. Socialism is a big range of different veiws of how publicly held and private property domains intermix with a lot of foundational philosophy some of which pre-dates or were contemporaries of Marx. Marx may have coined the term but it’s important to remember that when he was writing his work there were specific peers in his feild that some of it was directed at who he was sort of in agreement with and sort of not. Many wholeheartedly adopted his term for the broad stroke of their own philosophy even though they would later be at loggerheads about details. Later in life Marx really did not get along with other prominent Socialists of his era. Those who subscribe very heavily to his text tend to follow his tradition of being very dismissive of other Socialist strains and rather combative because the text is very fiery and segments well into calls for violence

If one wants to go talk Marxism the other instances are always there and are generally better venues. It’s valuable to have spaces that have differences so that other schools of political thought have air. As far as Marxists here go, since having a group that usually denies others the very words they use to self identify by, demanding they be called illegitimate, sucks all the air from the room they are generally not particularly welcome in the space unless they demonstrate they can play nice with others.

Well it is “the Rules of the Tribe of Levi” canonically speaking they are laws made not by God but by a bunch of priests. It is important for biblical historical context reasons but technically speaking these are ancient society laws. It’s why instructional portions detailing animal sacrifice are included in that section when modern Christians tend to look at animal sacrifice as a satanic cult kind of thing.

Provided you are Christian ( before the atheists start in, I’m not - I just study the religion as a part of gaining historical background info) Using Leviticus to justify one’s opinions on anything strikes me as showing that one read the text absent the scholarly context. A lot of Christians do this because book annotations wouldn’t be a thing before 1000 AD and it really benefited a lot of powerful people to never mention context of the compiling process of the book because once the supposed less than divine fingerprints on the processed material are brought to light it weakens it’s power as a tool of authority.

Oh it happens. We as a community aren’t all angels. Some of us get very VERY warped by religious or cultural trauma where because the base assumption is that we are monsters already by virtue of being something shameful there is a lowered boundary to other shamed behaviours…

But what stops that shame spiral is normalizing queer identities and creating good community with good praxis. Consent is king in so many queer spaces where I am because we’ve all basically had to imbibe the lessons of therapy to rescue people out of the dark. We discuss gold standards of sexual health and behaviour and conduct with frankness and lack of shame because generations of us were abandoned to places where we were vulnerable to exploitation. To become a pdf file is to lose your community as nothing is so disgusting to people in queer spaces as someone who would cause that kind of damage as it is expected that you know exactly what the knock on effects of that act are.

There is a fair amount of speculation that being bi is actually way more common than is generally thought but because current cultural rules of compulsory heterosexuallity codes being bi as being something you must act on to actually be considered that identity a lot of people believe that they are straight simply because they never acted on the attraction.

For guys the comp-het mindset also tends to discount basically any situation where they feel dominant because “straight” and “masculine” to them basically means that as long as they are the petetrative element in a place of absolute control via power dynamics or violence then it doesn’t count as “gay”. Essentially since as long as it holds no emotional attachment to them it doesn’t count. As long as they can’t code their behaviour as “feminine” it doesn’t count.

Which to the rest of us is fucking bonkers…

Bit rich coming from the guy who refuses to learn English isn’t it? Leaves that adjective just dangling there unsupported at the cliff edge of the sentence.

Or maybe it’s a mad lib? " They are teaching transgender… Dance crazes. Gardening. Lions. Barbecue techniques."

If he leaves the spot empty we can put whatever we want there when we quote him right?

Love the idea… But let’s be real, Conservative rhetoric has depended on attacking peoples trust in acedemia, administrative government positions and anyone who is an expert who doesn’t reinforce the vibe of being a “dissenting voice”. Fact checks make those of us who understand sourcing feel like we’re owning the idiots, but for the Conservative audience iit very rarely shifts people out of their steadfast adherence and instead tends to make them distrust the medium the debate is held in.

Conservative rhetoric has been a poisoned well for a long time. To play by their game one has to look more at a vibes based playbook. Their voting block generally have a misplaced overconfidence in their own ability to read body language and tone. It’s literally not the words and definitely not the facts, it’s the affect they are delivered in.

It’s part of why they dunno how to think about Harris and have conspiracy theories about her earrings piping her answers. She is outperforming Trump on affect of delivery based on their playbook and they don’t know how to interpret that.

I would say less than on reddit but still a thing. Being cisgender still is treated as a norm and the sort of folks who openly display misogynistic tendencies are fewer and farther between… But any innocuous mention to being trans will very get you a couple of dedicated downvoters or people who use gender essentialist arguements, silencing tactics (oh you’re just being devisive) or transphobic rhetoric.

Not to say that it is bad comparatively. This is one of the most trans neutral places on the internet. It’s not “trans friendly” mind you, I would categorize that as places where concensus about trans people being a normal thing to be has been reached and attention has shifted away from our basic rights as being up for debate… But trans neutral spaces are important too. We need holding spaces away from places where trans people talk openly where people can get to know us where the majority of support shuts down open hostility towards us prompting more nuanced interaction.

A lot of trans hostile spaces exist out there where being openly trans or advocacy for our needs invites a lot of death threats, calls for suicide, doxxing attacks and so on. If you see a comment section on youtube on a queer creator for instance that’s overwhelmingly trans positive that generally means there’s heavy moderation at play because they are trying to create spaces safe for their queer audience to interact with each other. What you as a casual visitor generally don’t see is the mental cost being taken on by that moderation team to artificially create the illusion of that positive space. Here on this instance that level of moderation is unnecessary because generally speaking the volume is manageable.

He didn’t mention anything about the Log cabin Republicans or purifying his own party so I am guessing that’s gunna be a future suggestion once he’s in power. Right now he still needs their support.

I mean…Antlers are shed naturally every year so I guess if someone decided to sacrifice some rando on a bed of my family’s collective families nail clippings I would be pretty perturbed too.

Then congratulations, this meme isn’t about you so maybe you don’t need to feel attacked yeh?

As someone who is 15 years into the situation OP described - yes it’s somewhat of an oversimplication of how it all works… but broadstokewise it’s on the money with the right partner and mindset. Whether your marriage works this way or not comes down to how fungible you both believe your partner to ultimately be and how much you dedicate to being each other’s joy.

Thinking being pessimistic in the face of romance is just “reality” means your chances of experiencing that kind of romance become mighty slim. Optimism and trust are nessisary components to making it happen but are sadly also attractive to abusers. End of the day I wish OP the very best of luck because coming home to your partner excited to see them every day for years on end really is worth the attempt.