The Winter Up There Must Give People Brain Freeze

[Friday]

Well, my questions about Australia are basically the same as Canada, I just like to learn the local flavor of the different places.

Canada and Australia have always existed in my mind as sort of, I don't know, "America but better in most (social) ways" so that's my reason for being more interested.

I guess them being better is up for debate since they're getting worse now, but hey, so is America, so

[Caithness]

It's always been my understanding that Australia is even more insanely racist than the US.

[Mongrel]

It's always been my understanding that Australia is even more insanely racist than the US.

It's better in some ways and worse in others. I guess it's more... visceral? In that blatant, casual off-the-cuff way? But it's less institutional.

Which is not saying much, because the US is like, the reigning modern historical champion of complex, pervasive institutional racism. It's not like the distinction makes much difference to the prisoners of Manus or Nauru islands anyway. Whether you get the Kafkaesque nightmare of the American system, or the Aussie version where they just dump everyone on a hellhole, blatantly announce "don't fuckin come here yeh [slur of choice]", and leave it at that, your life is still being destroyed.

There's still a huge amount of denial about what was done to the aborigines in Oz too.

One of my friends was kicked from a wargaming board because some of the players there (mostly non-Australian, but a few, uh... unreconstructed Aussies too) wanted to do some aborigines vs settlers battles and my friend was infuriated because he grew up in aboriginal communities, and learned enough that to him that's pretty much like someone wanting to game SS extermination operations (which, I guess, some people even do that...).

Aboriginal resistance to white colonization of Australia was very sporadic and on an incredibly small scale, with almost no modern weapons. It was pretty much straight-up genocide. But even today Australians like to play it up like it was a real frontier war they won "fair". The denial runs so deep because almost every account of the era is pro-white and based entirely on primary sources from Australian settlers. There's few aboriginal records in a conventional sense, so the whites just make up figures and ignore contradictory archaeological research, like the denial level is way higher than the American denial about indigenous peoples, and that's saying something.

Anyway they just said my buddy was making a big stink and banned him, but I got to learn some very miserable history. :/

Incidentally, the Australian "wild west" era is also rather weird from a North American point of view, because it took place in roughly the 1820's-1840s, so while it shares some features with the American version - obviously including massacring indigenous peoples - it's also kind of different. No six shooters or repeating rifles, for instance, instead there was Napoleonic Wars-era tech.

[Brantly B.]

Basically think of Australia as being America, but 20 years in the past, so while it seemed super cool back in the 2000s that was because they were an echo of the 80s and now it's 1999 and everything is just existential dread and a late realization that they've been partying way too much for the past two decades.

[Mazian]

We should warn them about 2036.

[Grath]

It's better in some ways and worse in others. I guess it's more... visceral? In that blatant, casual off-the-cuff way? But it's less institutional.

That reminds me of Trevor Noah's point in his Hot Ones interview about preferring South Africa's blatant racism over America's subtle racism because that way he knew where he stood with those people.

[Mongrel]

Globe: King of the mountain: For 20 years, a Lil’wat chief keeps a lonely vigil in the B.C. woods

We were talking about loneliness in the other thread, well, the loneliness this guy is experiencing really hit me. I wish I could thank him in some way.

At least there's traces throughout the story of good folks nearby who do recognize what he's doing and who do what they can to help.

[Mongrel]

fuckin' roooofles

[Mongrel]

[Büge]

[Mongrel]

"Say no to mass immigration"? Bud, you live in Canada. You might as well have put up a sign that read "Say no to snow".

(But then maybe Maxime is a fan of King of the Hill)

(Also that's just a Photoshop, but who cares)

[François]

My mother met Bernier when she traveled to Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce for her mother's funeral last March. (I didn't go, sleep disorder and all, plus she was cruel and petty and a raging misogynist.) He shook her hand and told her something like "ah, yes, I remember visiting Mrs. F at the retirement home often, we spent a great many hours on fruitful conversation".

Yyyyeah, no, gonna have to call bullshit on that one. Nope. No way. Not with that grandma. That did not happen. I'd believe that they met, I'd even believe that he remembered her, but I'll believe he spent hours conversing with her multiple times just as soon as I'll believe he chopped up and rearranged a unicorn and a leprechaun to make two unusually lucky centaurs.

In somewhat related news, I just learned Justin Trudeau came to my hometown last week to some fluff event literally a 90 second walk from my apartment. I was asleep at the time, so that's typical. But it's just as well; had I been awake, right now one of us would be in the hospital and the other in jail and I'm not 100% sure who would have went where.

Or maybe I'd have just yelled at him and it'd have ruined the day of everyone who showed up for selfies.

[Mongrel]

What in particular are you mad at him about? The general age-old Liberal Party bullshit, his generally irritating attempts to be generically everything to everyone, or something more specific?

(I am not saying there aren't good reasons to be mad at him - I have a few myself - I'm just curious which one or ones)

[François]

Off the top of my head, abandoning his promise of electoral reform and allowing the whole pipeline bullshit are probably the tips of this particular iceberg.

[Mongrel]

Yeah, ditching electoral reform was 100% self-serving garbage.

[Büge]

The Rhinoceros Party is running a candidate named Maxime Bernier in the same riding as the Maxime Bernier who represents the PPC.

[Mongrel]

I LOVE IT

I'm also so glad that after all these years the Rhinoceros Party is somehow still a thing.

[Friday]

explain please

[Friday]

oh it's just a parody account okay

[Büge]

A parody Party.