politics

I had to borrow my room-mates coffee this morning and I gotta say his 'fair trade', 'organic', 'fancy-packaged' stuff is much better then my vacuum packed old-man playing chess outside espresso.

Uh, you know which serves as a kind of introduction to the following links. Since it can be demonstrated that my room-mate is kinna a 'hipster' (though more like a hippie-ster? He plays bike polo and likes charcuteries, and believes in local agriculture and has designer dirty jeans instead of just plain dirty jeans). And I am a cheap Jew, who likes to pay less then 4 dollars for espresso.

But both of us, even if we try to deny it, are somewhere in the universe of hipster, not skinny-jean wearing but certainly downtown-living irony embracing, Flight of the Conchord watching etc...

Which is why this article on Hipster Racism hurts. I have noticed in myself a lot of the tropes that the author suggests are a mask for racism. As in "I am so funny, and so *aware* that I cannot possibly be a racist as I make this hilarious racist joke."

Doug Saunders spends a little too much time dwelling on the North in this interesting op ed piece that explores what parts of the Canadian identity myth are due for a re-evaluation. Otherwise it's a fascinating read.

The fact that I am uninterested in the north brings my vision of Canada a bit more in alignment with the historial reality. Apparently the myth that Canada is a country pre-occupied by 'northernity'? is only true insofar as we have a lot of land up there. Development-wise the whole landmass could sink into the ocean north of North Bay and not that many people would truly be the wiser. ;) I'd notice one of my besties live in Whitehorse, but compared to the amount of growth and effort that goes into supporting our version of the sunbelt. It's almost as if the North is only needed as a source of myth.

Also interesting is that fact that as a third generation (on one side) Canadian, who's ancestors arrived from Eastern Europe, my family did more to develop the nascent idea of a Canadian identity during the depression and into the 50's then the multi-culti Trudeau generation.

We are witnessing the passing of working-class masculinity by Margaret Wente

I think this article, predicated on the notion that the recent crisis in the auto- industry is dealing a death blow to working class masculine culture in Canada is well-thought out, if 20 years too late.

As far as I can tell, it's not the financial crisis that has killed working class culture and not just masculinity, it's the free market.

As Wente points out; "The defining value of working-class masculinity is the ability to stick up for yourself when someone tries to give you shit."

The ethos of sticking up for oneself, especially in a context of manual labour, is supported by strong collective agreements and a civic structure that gives workers, especially those on the line, whose relationship to management can have a significant power-imbalance, the right to agitate or "stick up for" themselves.

The erosion of masculine culture is not about job losses. For men, *and women* to feel that they can take power, they actually need to have some power in the first place.

Retrograde politics. Wait I'll say it again retrograde politics. An article from the G&M called Enough of multiculturalism – bring on the melting pot. I am sorry but who missed the memo - re: Racism is bad for politics. Maybe that weird half and half to the south is the aberration but somehow I doubt it. American's are known for making history not otherwise. I guess Canadians can now be known for trying desperately to avoid the inevitable march of cultural globalization. Lucky us.

You are appealing to an increasingly smaller demographic when you start randomly requesting that people must start behaving as if they were white just like you just to satisfy some baseless fear that difference is somehow more difficult to manage than 'sameness' imposed from above.