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#turmoil

1 post1 participant0 posts today
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Snowbird of Paradise

Unusual Patriotism

I have lived in Canada since 1975 and in all that time I have not witnessed much overt patriotism. Canadians love to win international hockey games, of course, and they express a lot of emotions on those occasions, but otherwise they are usually understated in their love of their country, even though they feel it very strongly.

Once, decades ago when my parents were visiting, my father was dismayed to see a lot of Canadian national flags outside a Petro Canada gas station. He asked what all the flags were for and I had to confess my ignorance. After he harrumphed he said, “Flags cause wars,” and I have never forgotten it. In fact, it is a story I have told many times and my eldest son reminded me of it this week.

We were having a brief text exchange about events in the United States, the US president, and protests against Tesla cars. Neither of us was up for an argument but when I was getting agitated, my son reminded me of my father’s wisdom long ago and the futility of raging at symbols. He was right, of course.

Even so, symbols matter. They matter because they trigger our emotions, and when we have no other means to express ourselves, we respond with our feelings and our symbols.

Today, quite by chance, Canadian patriotism made itself known to me twice. First, at my weekly exercise class the instructor had set his musical accompaniment to play only Canadian music. When he told us this, we applauded. It was a spontaneous heart-felt moment. We were just a small group, grunting to the oldies, but we were very glad to do it with Canadian songs to inspire us, and the significance of the choice was recognized with cheers.

Then, this afternoon I made a decision I had been contemplating for a while. Several months ago I had booked to take an Alaska cruise in 2026 with some family members from the UK, but it bothered me because the trip was with a US cruise ship company. I wanted to take the trip and spend time with my family but I didn’t want to do it with an American business. So, I wrote to the people I was to travel with and explained why I was planning to withdraw from the trip. I hoped they would understand. Sure enough, they did, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Photo by Social Soup Social Media on Pexels.com

The economic turmoil that has been created in Canada by the actions of the American president is beginning to be felt in the UK, too, and so my family members appreciated my dilemma and supported my choice. It lifted a weight from my shoulders to know this, and made it easier for me to cancel my booking.

Canadians are not often loud in their patriotism, but we are united in our opposition to the recent threats from the United States. Even though those threats are not coming from all Americans, the response is coming from the vast majority of Canadians, and that response is evident in some big national policies as well as many small individual actions.

My exercise class leader choosing Canadian music and my decision to cancel a trip to Alaska may not be big events, but they contribute to a nation-wide response that is beginning to be felt. I only hope that the person who needs to feel it the most actually, eventually, does.

Canadian Pride Sharks
#Canada#cruise#economy
Continued thread
Public
Nonilex

It is Friday, after another geopolitical week of #fear, #turmoil & #chaos driven by #Trump’s #RevengePolitics. As such, I may be guilty of endeavoring to cleanse both my heart/mind/timeline.

And because I am not involved in any primary beauty, here is another #JackieAndShadow video.

[Last year at this time I posted hourly #BabySquirrel (click) updates. Thankfully–for them–none have need rescuing yet]

#TLcleanse#Eaglets#BaldEagle
Continued thread
Public *
Chuck Darwin

The payoff from Thiel’s early gamble in Trump is a lesson that has not passed others by.

As with their other obsession, , the best time to have invested in Trump was 2016,
and the second best time is today.

We already have a word for what we’re watching now:
it’s .

And we’ve already seen how this plays out.

In Putin’s Russia, political and commercial interests are one and the same.

Thiel is betting
– again
– on the same phenomenon in America.

Betting that he will be first among a new breed of tech bro oligarchs
– a new super-class of .

In Trump’s America, there will be hard choices for everyone, including the billionaires. --
Though it may be less hard for them.

Vance has said he wants to crypto and
unshackle AI.

He’s said he’d Biden’s attempts to place safeguards around AI development.

And while he has it in for the of Google and Facebook
– the platforms that his ideological bedfellows in the “new right” see as part of the “censorship industrial complex” suffocating rightwing speech
– Silicon Valley is betting on a gloves-off, regulation-free, pro-business .

Another Peter Thiel acolyte was on stage at the Republican National Convention last week,
electrifying the crowd:
.

Hogan is less well known as one of Thiel’s longterm bets, though in some ways he’s even more instructive than Vance.

In 2007, the online magazine outed Thiel and ran a series of unflattering articles about him.

It took him years, but he ultimately got his revenge, covertly funding Hulk Hogan to the tune of $10m to sue the publication for invasion of privacy and forcing it into .

On stage at the RNC, the wrestler, a permatanned orange, ripped off his shirt for the man who increasingly looks like he’ll be America’s next president.

Or, if JD Vance, is correct, the man who will prove to be the he says America needs.

A man who he has already urged to fire the nation’s civil servants to
💥 “replace them with our people”,
to defy the courts and rule his own way.

Or, to put this in simple terms:
to foment a .

Thiel knows what every investor knows. That a crisis is an opportunity.

And that if Trump succeeds in tearing up the federal administration,
there is not only billions to be made in the ensuing market but that a new breed of oligarchs,
close to Caesar’s throne, will be the first to share the spoils.

And chief among them will be Thiel.

It’s not a stretch to see how , his data-mining company
– that under the Conservatives got its teeth into the NHS
– will profile and surveil and target Caesar’s enemies.

And Thiel’s track record in winning, in successfully betting on the longest of odds, on biding his time, is maybe the most chilling of all the factors in a fortnight that has started to feel like the start of a run on the bank.

Biden’s debate disaster,
Trump’s victorious assassination survival,
and now Silicon Valley’s ascension to the presidential ticket.

The broligarchs have made their move
– and the rest of us need to understand exactly what that means.

#tech#elite#Sandberg
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