Dammit Ms. Young, you are just so good at what you do, so spot on.
I too would like to thank Shannon Phillips for her commitment to her constituents and the province.
I would also like to say “shame” to the Lethbridge police officers and higher ups who facilitated and/or condoned and/or turned a blind eye; may your actions have real consequences.
Is "polarizing" the right term when so much of this crap stems not from ideological disagreements but from people existing in completely different information spaces/realities?
Thank you for helping us to rethink or at least explore ‘polarization.’ I find it really hard to be constructive when I think of it in those terms. Even if we temporarily call it something else, something useful may emerge.
We need to think seriously about creating a system where death threat/violence threat goons can be traced, warned and then deplatformed. What good is an internet that operates as a mafia threatening our elected officials....and what are police for, if not to prevent that kind of lawlessness???
I think we've become far too complacent....and spineless. Beating up student protestors of a genocide on campus, but powerless to keep male chauvenist pigs from convincing our qualified women not to run for office?????
Sharp and disturbing analysis of women in politics, thank you.
It's always been rare and challenging to be a woman politician in Canada, but this new harassment from social media represents a whole new level of hardship and discouragement.
In the mid-80s, I was a Legislative Intern in the AB Leg. I wrote a research paper about the 12 women (out of 75) MLAs, including Ministers. They graciously participated in interviews and described in detail their paths to nomination, election, and experiences as women politicians and mothers, spouses, etc. (Lisa, you can find my study in the AB Leg Library).
Back then, yes, we were all so hopeful that women were finally breaking through into elected politics in a way that existed only in other places.
Women have been elected and successful in many nations, including as leaders, but Canada trails far behind.
We are witnessing a small but loud backlash to the rise of women -- in education, in the workplace, in politics, in leadership.
We need to strengthen our processes and institutions to better support women who take on public leadership.
I was sad to see Ms. Phillips was leaving politics, sad but not surprised. That seems to be the way of the world these days; police intimidate a woman politician, threaten democracy, and the woman is the one who pays the price. Gonna go out on a limb here but when the pro forma kudos from the UCP get spewed up in the Leg, no one will mention the lack of consequences for police misconduct.
It seems to be getting even nastier out there. Toddler, bully behaviour is becoming the latest standard with so much of this very behaviour on constant display by the Federal Leader of the opposition 'normalizing' it. Strangely it's also women bashing women as part of this dirty politics. The level of mis/disinformation is also startling. People click onto some nonsense and just continue spreading. No desire to ponder for a moment or check actual situations. Mainstream media is also playing this game.
We have a Premier and government living and governoring in a different reality. Tired isn't the right word. Discouraged or disgusting are more appropriate and writing a column about the SOS every week is exhausting. Heck I get exhausted just reading about the Bee Sss, the retraction, the reduction of freedom. The intrusion into our lives with unwelcome legislation almost daily, and especially the threat to our democracy by dissolving independent boards to have the Premiersoffice of non civil service non elected Making the decisions. The dishonesty of accepting a coal mine refused already application illegally and having to go to court to get info thru freedom of info act is corruption at the Premier level. TIRED, time for a change
First, as to “polarization”, they are right. It is not the right word.
The basic problem is we are living in an oligarchy. Only a fool thinks Canada is a democracy or ever has been. In an oligarchy, factions of an elite fight for power and control. They try to build followings among the population. They direct these followings using propaganda networks creating false realities. They come to believe their own false realities.
In an oligarchy, there are always campaigns to take out key people in the opposing camp, or people who are just not going along with them. I have noticed a strong tendency for these types of creeps to use the target’s opposite sex against them. Women will have sexual harassment directed against them, as referred to in this article. You know what men get falsely accused of, or trapped into.
Our present oligarchy is breaking down. We are in economic decline. The only thing actually “growing” in our economy is debt. We are headed for a fascist type dictatorship. Such entities always prove incapable of governing, but they create an incredible mess for some years.
The only solution is a transition government which can abolish the oligarchy and lay down the conditions in which a democracy would be possible. You can call this a ‘trusteeship”, dictatorship”, or whatever. Nothing else is finally going to get us out of the present dilemma. Those who find this unacceptable will not want to be told they are in their own false reality.
The attack and disinformation machines of the oligarchic factions must be broken up. The whole society must be brought back to sanity. That means, there is one truth and one reality, for everyone, always. There are no ‘poles’.
Your solution to polarization/oligarchy or whatever you want to call it.......sounds a bit fascistic to me. How certain can you be that this 'trusteeship/dictatorship would have all the solutions to problems that have been growing over the years...........as neoliberal capitalism rolled over the lot of us???
I'm always depressed by 'the only solution' way of thinking......especially considering that we still live on a liveable planet because the natural world doesn't go in for either two answers, one of them wrong.............or 'the only solution' to anything.
Perhaps a greater tolerance for diversity, difference and multiplicity might be a better road forward. We're all a part of the puzzle, but I rather doubt any one of us...rich or poor, male or female, white or black..........as the master blueprint.
This is the near universal response of inadequate people when told that the truth is what it is. They want "multiple solutions" meaning, the happy answer that suits them. Not the true answer which is usually not convenient.
Thanks for the dismissal Tim. How could you know that I'm anything but 'inadequate' when it comes to understanding the science of global warming....or the history of extractivist capitalism?
My suggestion that we beware of single solutions to everything is based on what I know about both climate change..........and the current collapse of neoliberal single ideas for universal application.
Climate change is called a 'wicked problem' because it has so many unforeseen positive feedback loops....turbulence on planes that kill people being one currently in the news.........but largely unanticipated until it started happening.
Reality doesn't reduce to one political solution. Imagining it might is the fallacy of most dictatorships. My response was simply trying to suggest that the old western values idea that there's only one right answer to just about everything...IS THE PROBLEM.
Telling me I'm 'inadequate" because I prefer 'both...and' ideas to either-or dustups, just dates you. Diversity is a strength...saving democracy with a dictatorship is the fantasy.
I, as a male, simply have no first hand knowledge of what women go through in politics. Certainly, some will say that politics is a rough game and if the can't take the heat ..... and all that stuff. Certainly politics is a rough game - really, what sane person WOULD enjoy that stuff? - but, as near as I can tell, there is much more vitriol and just plain nastiness when one is a woman. That is, as near as I can tell, but I will allow you and other women to comment more fully and intelligently that I ever could.
Now, something else. I am a Calgarian and I fully accept that perhaps Jyoti Gondek is getting a rough right. Well, she doggoned well deserves a rough ride! I absolutely understand that women have issues that may be different than mere males and that in many cases the criticism is unfair and just, too, too, too much.
BUT, when a woman - or a man - fouls up as badly as Gondek has fouled up then they should be lit up forever and a day.
So, I request that both you and readers do not defend Gondek because she is a woman; if you do wish to defend her do it because you believe that she did a good job. I absolutely do not believe that she has done a good job; I think that her performance has been an abomination, and that is not an evaluation based on gender but on performance. Having said that, I fully recognize thatI am simply one person and you may have a completely different evaluation of her - but please do not make that evaluation because of her gender.
I'd take your criticism of Gondac more seriously if you cited a few specifics as to where she has messed up....I know where the recall petition messed up......many of the signatures apparently couldn't be traced to real people.....but I never did figure out what she'd done to have folks so upset.
Do tell what your beef is with her. I voted for her, and apart from the arena issue, which she had one vote in council on.......I'm not unhappy. Perhaps I've missed something of significance, but until I know what, I'll continue to suspect her sex and ethnicity is part of the hate some people have on for her.
Inga, I will offer two items, one from the very beginning of her mayoral term and one very recently which I think illustrate her lack of judgement.
Pretty well the first thing that she did was to promote and get passed a declaration of a "climate emergency" and the a kinda, perhaps, hoped for, silly, estimate of a mere (as I recall) 87 billion dollars associated with that. As I recall, the climate is not an issue that is normally within the purview of Alberta municipalities. Oh, one can decry this, that and the other but the job of city council is to attend to matters that are the statutory responsibility of the city. Further, she may have mentioned the climate (generally) in her campaign but in a very soft voice so no one really took notice of the "emergency" until she and her clique (claque, perhaps? two very different words meaning different but unlikable things) brought forward the "emergency."
That was the opening act. More recently, she stabbed the Jewish community in the back with her refusal to attend the Menorah candle lighting. She stupidly tried to compare the candle lighting to the war in the middle east when there was no such comparison.
And, also, she and her claque (yup, I have decided that is, indeed, the way to think of her parrots) have been virtue signaling and ignoring such civic duties as road maintenance and "normal" responsibilities in favor of more trendy things.
From your commentary I do not expect you to see matters as do I but you did ask.
What seems to be missing from your explanation Ken.........is any acknowledgement that in point of fact..........the planet is facing a climate emergency. You may not believe that is an issue that will affect Calgary....but arguing that it isn't part of what a 21st C big city mayor should be addressing, makes you in many circles a climate denier.
As to the Menorah lighting........remaining at the very least, neutral about the dreadful genocide continuing in Palestine.....makes good political sense. Deciding not to attend a religious ceremony of one part of her constituency does not equate, at least in my books....TO STABBING THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN THE BACK...
That is just the inflated language of the right wing fringe. I wonder sometimes, how you maintain such positions...with such intensity. Because neither act that you cite has hurt a single person........and both decisions reflect on a current reality.
THERE IS A CLIMATE EMERGENCY....and we're all feeling it, as well as seeing it play out in real time. THERE IS A GENOCIDE GOING ON IN PALESTINE...and even the appearance of condoning that would be dumb politics. Leaders have to represent all their constituents..........not just those of the rabid right. LOL.
Thanks for clarifying things for me.......and yes, we do not agree. That's okay in a democracy. But consider Ken, whether calling people you disagree with a claque or a click or a cabal........is accusatory language. It suggests that anyone who agrees with the mayor is engaging in something undemocratic....
We can only agree to disagree if we do our best to speak civilly. That seems to be lacking with opponents of the mayor. I listened to one on 10th St. last summer trying to tell me 'she wasn't elected, she was selected'.
That's the kind of language that makes me suspect many anti Gondac petitioners either aren't playing with a full deck....or have a few cards up their sleeve before the discussion begins. Sometimes, your side loses. It's not the fix of a cabal when you do.....its democracy.
Dammit Ms. Young, you are just so good at what you do, so spot on.
I too would like to thank Shannon Phillips for her commitment to her constituents and the province.
I would also like to say “shame” to the Lethbridge police officers and higher ups who facilitated and/or condoned and/or turned a blind eye; may your actions have real consequences.
And the Crown Prosecutors? Words fail me…
Is "polarizing" the right term when so much of this crap stems not from ideological disagreements but from people existing in completely different information spaces/realities?
Thank you for helping us to rethink or at least explore ‘polarization.’ I find it really hard to be constructive when I think of it in those terms. Even if we temporarily call it something else, something useful may emerge.
We need to think seriously about creating a system where death threat/violence threat goons can be traced, warned and then deplatformed. What good is an internet that operates as a mafia threatening our elected officials....and what are police for, if not to prevent that kind of lawlessness???
I think we've become far too complacent....and spineless. Beating up student protestors of a genocide on campus, but powerless to keep male chauvenist pigs from convincing our qualified women not to run for office?????
A serious reboot is in order.
Sharp and disturbing analysis of women in politics, thank you.
It's always been rare and challenging to be a woman politician in Canada, but this new harassment from social media represents a whole new level of hardship and discouragement.
In the mid-80s, I was a Legislative Intern in the AB Leg. I wrote a research paper about the 12 women (out of 75) MLAs, including Ministers. They graciously participated in interviews and described in detail their paths to nomination, election, and experiences as women politicians and mothers, spouses, etc. (Lisa, you can find my study in the AB Leg Library).
Back then, yes, we were all so hopeful that women were finally breaking through into elected politics in a way that existed only in other places.
Women have been elected and successful in many nations, including as leaders, but Canada trails far behind.
We are witnessing a small but loud backlash to the rise of women -- in education, in the workplace, in politics, in leadership.
We need to strengthen our processes and institutions to better support women who take on public leadership.
This is all very sad. Here's what is happening in my neighbourhood, not that you really need to collect more examples: https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/pam-damoff-wont-seek-re-election-citing-fears-for-her-safety-and-disgust-with-toxicity/article_7de9e596-07ba-11ef-977d-57a581fd24d5.html
I was sad to see Ms. Phillips was leaving politics, sad but not surprised. That seems to be the way of the world these days; police intimidate a woman politician, threaten democracy, and the woman is the one who pays the price. Gonna go out on a limb here but when the pro forma kudos from the UCP get spewed up in the Leg, no one will mention the lack of consequences for police misconduct.
It seems to be getting even nastier out there. Toddler, bully behaviour is becoming the latest standard with so much of this very behaviour on constant display by the Federal Leader of the opposition 'normalizing' it. Strangely it's also women bashing women as part of this dirty politics. The level of mis/disinformation is also startling. People click onto some nonsense and just continue spreading. No desire to ponder for a moment or check actual situations. Mainstream media is also playing this game.
We have a Premier and government living and governoring in a different reality. Tired isn't the right word. Discouraged or disgusting are more appropriate and writing a column about the SOS every week is exhausting. Heck I get exhausted just reading about the Bee Sss, the retraction, the reduction of freedom. The intrusion into our lives with unwelcome legislation almost daily, and especially the threat to our democracy by dissolving independent boards to have the Premiersoffice of non civil service non elected Making the decisions. The dishonesty of accepting a coal mine refused already application illegally and having to go to court to get info thru freedom of info act is corruption at the Premier level. TIRED, time for a change
Hello, Lisa;
First, as to “polarization”, they are right. It is not the right word.
The basic problem is we are living in an oligarchy. Only a fool thinks Canada is a democracy or ever has been. In an oligarchy, factions of an elite fight for power and control. They try to build followings among the population. They direct these followings using propaganda networks creating false realities. They come to believe their own false realities.
In an oligarchy, there are always campaigns to take out key people in the opposing camp, or people who are just not going along with them. I have noticed a strong tendency for these types of creeps to use the target’s opposite sex against them. Women will have sexual harassment directed against them, as referred to in this article. You know what men get falsely accused of, or trapped into.
Our present oligarchy is breaking down. We are in economic decline. The only thing actually “growing” in our economy is debt. We are headed for a fascist type dictatorship. Such entities always prove incapable of governing, but they create an incredible mess for some years.
The only solution is a transition government which can abolish the oligarchy and lay down the conditions in which a democracy would be possible. You can call this a ‘trusteeship”, dictatorship”, or whatever. Nothing else is finally going to get us out of the present dilemma. Those who find this unacceptable will not want to be told they are in their own false reality.
The attack and disinformation machines of the oligarchic factions must be broken up. The whole society must be brought back to sanity. That means, there is one truth and one reality, for everyone, always. There are no ‘poles’.
Your solution to polarization/oligarchy or whatever you want to call it.......sounds a bit fascistic to me. How certain can you be that this 'trusteeship/dictatorship would have all the solutions to problems that have been growing over the years...........as neoliberal capitalism rolled over the lot of us???
I'm always depressed by 'the only solution' way of thinking......especially considering that we still live on a liveable planet because the natural world doesn't go in for either two answers, one of them wrong.............or 'the only solution' to anything.
Perhaps a greater tolerance for diversity, difference and multiplicity might be a better road forward. We're all a part of the puzzle, but I rather doubt any one of us...rich or poor, male or female, white or black..........as the master blueprint.
This is the near universal response of inadequate people when told that the truth is what it is. They want "multiple solutions" meaning, the happy answer that suits them. Not the true answer which is usually not convenient.
Thanks for the dismissal Tim. How could you know that I'm anything but 'inadequate' when it comes to understanding the science of global warming....or the history of extractivist capitalism?
My suggestion that we beware of single solutions to everything is based on what I know about both climate change..........and the current collapse of neoliberal single ideas for universal application.
Climate change is called a 'wicked problem' because it has so many unforeseen positive feedback loops....turbulence on planes that kill people being one currently in the news.........but largely unanticipated until it started happening.
Reality doesn't reduce to one political solution. Imagining it might is the fallacy of most dictatorships. My response was simply trying to suggest that the old western values idea that there's only one right answer to just about everything...IS THE PROBLEM.
Telling me I'm 'inadequate" because I prefer 'both...and' ideas to either-or dustups, just dates you. Diversity is a strength...saving democracy with a dictatorship is the fantasy.
I, as a male, simply have no first hand knowledge of what women go through in politics. Certainly, some will say that politics is a rough game and if the can't take the heat ..... and all that stuff. Certainly politics is a rough game - really, what sane person WOULD enjoy that stuff? - but, as near as I can tell, there is much more vitriol and just plain nastiness when one is a woman. That is, as near as I can tell, but I will allow you and other women to comment more fully and intelligently that I ever could.
Now, something else. I am a Calgarian and I fully accept that perhaps Jyoti Gondek is getting a rough right. Well, she doggoned well deserves a rough ride! I absolutely understand that women have issues that may be different than mere males and that in many cases the criticism is unfair and just, too, too, too much.
BUT, when a woman - or a man - fouls up as badly as Gondek has fouled up then they should be lit up forever and a day.
So, I request that both you and readers do not defend Gondek because she is a woman; if you do wish to defend her do it because you believe that she did a good job. I absolutely do not believe that she has done a good job; I think that her performance has been an abomination, and that is not an evaluation based on gender but on performance. Having said that, I fully recognize thatI am simply one person and you may have a completely different evaluation of her - but please do not make that evaluation because of her gender.
I'd take your criticism of Gondac more seriously if you cited a few specifics as to where she has messed up....I know where the recall petition messed up......many of the signatures apparently couldn't be traced to real people.....but I never did figure out what she'd done to have folks so upset.
Do tell what your beef is with her. I voted for her, and apart from the arena issue, which she had one vote in council on.......I'm not unhappy. Perhaps I've missed something of significance, but until I know what, I'll continue to suspect her sex and ethnicity is part of the hate some people have on for her.
Inga, I will offer two items, one from the very beginning of her mayoral term and one very recently which I think illustrate her lack of judgement.
Pretty well the first thing that she did was to promote and get passed a declaration of a "climate emergency" and the a kinda, perhaps, hoped for, silly, estimate of a mere (as I recall) 87 billion dollars associated with that. As I recall, the climate is not an issue that is normally within the purview of Alberta municipalities. Oh, one can decry this, that and the other but the job of city council is to attend to matters that are the statutory responsibility of the city. Further, she may have mentioned the climate (generally) in her campaign but in a very soft voice so no one really took notice of the "emergency" until she and her clique (claque, perhaps? two very different words meaning different but unlikable things) brought forward the "emergency."
That was the opening act. More recently, she stabbed the Jewish community in the back with her refusal to attend the Menorah candle lighting. She stupidly tried to compare the candle lighting to the war in the middle east when there was no such comparison.
And, also, she and her claque (yup, I have decided that is, indeed, the way to think of her parrots) have been virtue signaling and ignoring such civic duties as road maintenance and "normal" responsibilities in favor of more trendy things.
From your commentary I do not expect you to see matters as do I but you did ask.
What seems to be missing from your explanation Ken.........is any acknowledgement that in point of fact..........the planet is facing a climate emergency. You may not believe that is an issue that will affect Calgary....but arguing that it isn't part of what a 21st C big city mayor should be addressing, makes you in many circles a climate denier.
As to the Menorah lighting........remaining at the very least, neutral about the dreadful genocide continuing in Palestine.....makes good political sense. Deciding not to attend a religious ceremony of one part of her constituency does not equate, at least in my books....TO STABBING THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN THE BACK...
That is just the inflated language of the right wing fringe. I wonder sometimes, how you maintain such positions...with such intensity. Because neither act that you cite has hurt a single person........and both decisions reflect on a current reality.
THERE IS A CLIMATE EMERGENCY....and we're all feeling it, as well as seeing it play out in real time. THERE IS A GENOCIDE GOING ON IN PALESTINE...and even the appearance of condoning that would be dumb politics. Leaders have to represent all their constituents..........not just those of the rabid right. LOL.
Thanks for clarifying things for me.......and yes, we do not agree. That's okay in a democracy. But consider Ken, whether calling people you disagree with a claque or a click or a cabal........is accusatory language. It suggests that anyone who agrees with the mayor is engaging in something undemocratic....
We can only agree to disagree if we do our best to speak civilly. That seems to be lacking with opponents of the mayor. I listened to one on 10th St. last summer trying to tell me 'she wasn't elected, she was selected'.
That's the kind of language that makes me suspect many anti Gondac petitioners either aren't playing with a full deck....or have a few cards up their sleeve before the discussion begins. Sometimes, your side loses. It's not the fix of a cabal when you do.....its democracy.
I will simply keep this civil and say that we agree to disagree.
Still permitted in our Canadian democracy, thank goodness. Have a nice day.