This is a great way to prove the point of the concept. As a moderate, I could choose to say, "No, fuck you. You're indoctrinating kids to think they have a severe mental illness and that the only cure is hormone therapy and reconstructive surgery! I won't be civil with you!"

You don't compromise with people you agree with. You compromise with people you disagree with. The minute you think compromise is out the door, that's when we might as well duke this out in the streets, because that is the only option you are leaving your opponents. I'd prefer compromise.

It's easy to believe you have nothing in common with your political rivals. Especially when all you see reported are the opinions of the worst of the worst. Fortunate, we have a lot more in common than not. All it takes is for both sides to sit down and start talking in good faith. That's how Daryl Davis, a black man, deradicalized over 200 KKK members. If you think you have less in common with the average conservative than a black man with the KKK, you're mistaken.

Stop focusing on the news and soundbites from politicians who are trying to rile up their base. Stop focusing on what angry people say online when they are anonymous. Sit down, in person, with someone who holds beliefs you disagree with, and have a genuine conversation. Don't listen to them waiting to disagree, listen to them with the goal of understanding why they believe what they believe, and humanizing them. That's how you live together in a country full of people with different opinions and beliefs. That's how you get concessions and get people to understand you in return. You talk with them, not at them.

Maybe I'm just a piece of shit, but I'm really tired of seeing so much money being spent outside of Canada, and to try to put women to work regardless of their individual preferences. I think women should be able to work, don't get me wrong. But my wife wants to be a stay at home mom. She can't afford to be. A big contributor to this reality is that the doubling of the labor force has been an enormous factor in stagnating wages. We went from mothers being able to raise their kids, and families being able to be financially stable on a single income, to the state subsidizing daycare so someone else can raise your kid while you provide labor.

Another issue I have here is the concern about tuberculosis rates. This is a huge can of worms, but the reserve system doesn't work. I understand why it exists. I think the goals are understandable. But you can't choose to live separately from Canadian society and then complain that we don't provide you with good enough homes and healthcare. We all trade cultural cohesion to be a part of Canadian society. In return, we get better access to important resources and technology.

If you want Canadian healthcare and good housing, assimilate, get a job, live in a reasonably sized population center, and you'll have those things. You don't have to live in Toronto or Vancouver, but you do need to participate in the system that creates that value in the first place. You can't just stay on your reserve, spending all your money on alcohol and drugs, and expect necessities to be provided to you based on white guilt. And yes, this is what life is like on a lot of reserves. They live in horrendous conditions. That's why TB is so prevalent.

I am empathetic to the fact that these people are born into a world that is not stacked to help them succeed. I don't think we help them by trying to enable the existence of reserves. One of my close colleagues came from one of these reserves, and she always says the best decision she ever made was to come to a city, get educated, and start a career. The rest of her family are back on the reserve, and they're all alcoholics. Whereas she lives in a small town, has a house and car, and still gets to celebrate her culture with other indigenous people who live here.

We provide the most benefit to the most people by consolidating resources, not by reinforcing the fantasy that we can live in tiny communities on the fringe of society and still get all the benefits of modern society. Live together, or suffer alone.

I'm always amazed at how rarely the "go to uni and get a good job" angle is brought up in relation to our failing foundational industries in the west. We've been incentivizing people to focus on "escaping" the working class, rather than trying to find ways to make those jobs more appealing.

I work in healthcare. Treating student practitioners badly is the norm in a ton of places in this field. 60 hour work weeks are normalized, and wanting a good work-life balance gets you ostracized.

The worst part is that I had to compete to get into this job that treats me badly. My program only takes the top 20 applicants out of hundreds per year. The schooling is brutal, with midterm or final exams 2-3 times a week. This is possible because you are blowing through courses consecutively rather than in a semesterized system. Once you get to practical placement, you are treated like the workplace bitch, and you're expected to do 2-3x the work of a paid worker for free. Actually, you're paying tuition to be there, so it's even worse.

Don't get me wrong, some of the brutality is necessary. The rapid pace of learning makes it hard to forget anything. It's a great way to pack knowledge into the brain. But I would never recommend my program to anyone. It was a horrible experience overall. My job is pretty great minus the ridiculous hours, so I'm glad I went. But if I could go back and tell my younger self to do something else, I would.

Your reaction is why I think left and right as political descriptors are extremely lacking. The above opinions are shared by many right wingers. The right to bear arms has largely been fought for by right wingers who have been called conspiracy theorists for thinking that the government may need to be overthrown some day.

Everyone should be ready and able to overthrow their leaders. The fear of the citizenry is one of the most powerful motivators to keep politicians from devolving into the corrupt sycophants we have now. They need to learn to be afraid of us again.

Did you actually do your research on that "deworming drug"? It's been used to treat a hell of a lot more than parasites. That is just its most common use.

This has always been funny to me as someone who actually works in healthcare and regularly reads scientific studies. Of all the things you could choose to hate Trump over, the example you give is one that plenty of people in the scientific community considered to be a treatment avenue worth researching.

Damn, the media propaganda machine is effective. Trump could run into a burning building to save a litter of puppies and they'd still find a way to make everyone hate the guy. It's impressive.

They probably would have just called you names instead of openly engaging with your ideas. That's the norm in my experience. I sometimes wonder why I bother posting at all.

Then again, I do get some traction, and some representation of ideas outside the common narratives is better than none. But it does seem like if you aren't in lockstep with the popular narratives, you get a cascade of downvotes just for entertaining unpopular ideas.

People don't want you to think for yourself. They just want you to parrot their beliefs back to them and give them affirmation.

Who isn't fascist/racist in the eyes of the left? You can be a moderate libertarian with a couple of populist beliefs and they'll throw those labels at you.

Thanks for all you've done, I hope this place just keeps growing!

Shit, if all conservatives had that nice an ass I wouldn't mind listening to their opinions.

We should be afraid of China. China is a superpower that doesn't believe in our way of life. That doesn't mean we should be afraid of Chinese Canadians, but we should still be wary. China is absolutely invested in swaying our political environment to their favor, and they're willing to promote their interests by using migrants.

It's an unfortunate reality that Chinese Canadians who are just going about their lives will see some collateral damage from our reactions to China's meddling. We need to minimize this collateral as much as possible, but we are under genuine threat.

One thing we need to keep in mind is that Caucasian politicians can be bought just as easily, if not more so, as installing Chinese assets in our institutions.

Ah yes, I knew Demolition Man was an accurate prediction of the future. Thanks for confirming the direction we are headed in!

I'm so glad I have a career where I'll never have to worry about crap like this. I'd love to see how the higher ups would like it if they had to be on camera the whole day with AI watching them for mistakes/phone usage.

I want politics to be less polarized too, but the train is off the tracks. The majority of people don't believe in compromise anymore. They believe they are right, and everyone else are communists/nazis who must be destroyed.

I'm a healthcare professional who believes in trans rights. I also think hormone treatments and gender affirming surgery should be illegal to give to minors. The left will say I'm transphobic. The right will say I shouldn't support these interventions at any age.

The reality is that both sides are blinded by ideology. The left has become just as intolerant and aggressive as the right used to be. They believe gender affirmation is more important than allowing a patient's body to develop in a healthy way with natural hormone levels. They believe hormone blockers or replacement therapy given to young people have no lasting side effects. They seem to be under the impression that it isn't abnormal to fast-track patients to gender affirming care rather than trying to reduce dysphoria through therapy. But if you bring this up, even as an educated professional, you're an evil bigot conspiracy theorist who hates trans people.

You can't find a middle ground with people like this. They aren't open to discussion, and they certainly don't care to understand where you're coming from. It's their way or the highway.

You really need to seek help from a professional on this. You're not doomed to keep living this way. You aren't spoiled milk.

Men tend to come into their own in their 30s. We start to hit our stride in our careers. We start to be more socially mature.

A woman's sexual value is at its peak when they are young adults. It's when they are the most fertile, and when they are most attractive to the average man. Men are attractive on a different set of metrics. Physical attractiveness matters, but maturity, financial success, and social acumen are something we are uniquely judged on. The latter three attributes we understandably are lacking in during early adulthood.

You're in the prime of your life. Hit the gym, get some nice clothes, learn how to cook a few decent meals, and hit the dating scene. The only thing standing in your way is the trauma of past failure, and your fear of future mistakes.

As much as Canadians like to believe conservatives and moderates don't exist up here, we actually do. You don't even have to be right wing to oppose the LGBT conglomerate.

I'm a bisexual, socially liberal moderate who doesn't like LGBT politics. It's got nothing to do with being religious. In fact, it's the way the LGBT ideology resembles a religion that I have the biggest problem with. They have their sacred idols, their dogma, and their blasphemies. They ignore science that disagrees with their beliefs, and they mark you as a heretic if you don't subscribe to their tenets. The only thing they're missing is a deity.

I know it's hard to believe, but you can be sex positive and still not be alright with pride parades where people march in bdsm gear. You can think drag shows are fine while still thinking they don't need to be in our schools.

And, really, that's what solidified my stance against the LGBT political lobby. They won't leave our kids alone. I'm one of the most live-and-let-live people you will ever meet. When you start trying to indoctrinate my kids because you believe your ideology is the norm (or should be), that's where my accommodation ends.

I accept you for who you are. I respect your existence just like I respect anyone else's. But your ideas are not neutral, they are not without harm, and I'm the one who gets to guide the developing values of my kids. You've been in control of the direction of our society for too long. It's time to draw some boundaries.

Playing devil's advocate only makes you look like an asshole if the person you're talking to has a closed mind. The entire purpose is to bridge the gap between two sides in an argument by acknowledging the positives of something they disagree with.

In essence, if someone has to play devil's advocate with you, you're probably the asshole. Otherwise you would be able to relate to and understand people who disagree with you without treating them like a monster.

A good example of where this can help is in politics. Political discussion is full of people talking past each other instead of trying to understand each other. If you could understand each other, it would be much easier to find compromise, which would make everyone feel heard and lead to the most reasonable outcomes when you consider the voice of all parties. But it's much easier to label your opponent an idiot or a devil than to grapple with their actual problems.

To be fair, that might indeed be what a "good man" does. It's all relative.

For a long time I really tried to believe that good men uphold rational discourse and are always against escalating to violence. But I've definitely learned how fallible normal avenues of political dissent can be towards achieving even reasonable goals. As much as I absolutely don't want it to be the norm, our history as a species has shown that, sometimes, the best changes for the most people come out of violent usurpation of the previous system of power. A man who leads that charge will be a good man from one side's perspective, and an evil man from the other.

My personal view is that a good man fights for what he believes in, provides for his family, and works together with his community to lift everyone up. The details beyond that point are subjective, and the difference between monster and saint is just whether or not the person judging you agrees with you.

This is a bit of a misconception. Wealthy people don't get that way by not working, and they tend not to stay that way if they don't continue to do so. The difference is that the work they do isn't the physically laborious kind.

Wealthy people often work 60+ hours a week. They are constantly traveling, making deals, finding new investments, researching, etc. That's how they get wealthy in the first place, and that attitude doesn't go away just because they hit a certain level of income. They are self-motivated to keep pushing.

The issue is not so much that wealthy people don't do any work as it is that the value of hard labor has been devalued, while the benefits of labor have been siphoned to the top 1% for too long. Those benefits have to be redistributed throughout the system in a way that continues to encourage necessary production, without discouraging high performance individuals from creating value through high level trade and investment. Finding a better balance while taking that all into consideration is not an easy task.

I think one of the main reasons your theory isn't commonplace is the variance in tolerance people have for vigilance. Some people have a lot less tolerance, and appear lazy. Other people have an extremely strong tolerance, and to them, everyone else appears lazy.

I have adhd. My ability to motivate myself to do necessary tasks is very limited. But external pressures can improve my productivity by giving me less choice in the matter. By comparison, too much freedom can reduce my productivity by normalizing a reduced workload, making me intolerant of a workload I was previously capable of.

Laziness does exist. It can be fostered. But that doesn't mean you can't get improved productivity from a healthier balance in your workplace. Just as pressure has a range where it goes from motivating people to crippling them with stress, so too do healthy adjustments to workflow go from rejuvenating to lethargic.

Don't worry. When people start to die off, carbon output will drop, and the system will right itself. We may go extinct, but the world will live on.