Dead Wild Roses

“We All See You”: A Meme Autopsy and a Field Guide for Comment Sections

February 10, 2026 in Culture, Debate, Education | Tags: How to Have Conversations, Meme Warfare, The Method | by The Arbourist | Leave a comment

A meme slid past my feed this week that’s basically a whole comment section compressed into one sentence:

“If you’re real quiet about Renée Good and Alex Pretti, but were really loud about Charlie Kirk—I see you. We all see you.”

You can feel what it’s trying to do. It’s not asking a question. It’s issuing a verdict — and inviting the crowd to clap. 👀

Before we get moral about it (or defensive about it), it helps to name what’s happening. This kind of meme is a conversational device. It’s a way of sorting people into “clean” and “suspect” without having to do the slow work of inquiry.

This post isn’t about denying hypocrisy exists. Selective empathy is real. It’s ugly. It’s also common — across every tribe that’s ever existed. The point here is narrower:

When we treat silence as proof of motive, we stop talking about what’s true and start talking about who’s safe.

And once the conversation becomes “who’s safe,” facts arrive late and leave early.

What the meme is actually doing

That one sentence performs four moves:

An observable claim: “Some people were loud about X and quiet about Y.”
A measurement dodge: “Loud” and “quiet” are undefined (posts? news coverage? your feed? my feed?).
A motive leap: The difference is taken as evidence of moral defect.
A social threat: “I see you. We all see you.” = reputational enforcement.

In other words: it skips the checkable part (#1) and jumps straight to the morally satisfying part (#3), backed by a crowd (#4).

If you want conversation instead of sorting, you reverse the order: connect → define → test → then (carefully) infer.

The best one-sentence reply is not a rebuttal

Before you ask any questions, you lower the temperature:

“All political violence and unjust killing is wrong. If selective empathy is happening, I agree it’s worth confronting.”

That sentence does two things: it refuses the tribal frame, and it makes your questions sound like inquiry rather than evasion.

Make the meme’s claim testable

Here are the three questions that turn heat into light:

“When you say loud vs quiet, what counts as loud/quiet?”
“Do you mean the same individuals, or the general vibe of your feed?”
“On a 0–10, how sure are you it’s the same people — and what gets you to that number?”

If the conversation can’t answer those, it isn’t actually about truth. It’s about loyalty.

“Real conversations” in action (composites)

What follows are composites — not quotes — written to sound like the kinds of exchanges that reliably show up under posts like this. The point is not to win. The point is to keep two minds in the same room long enough to examine certainty.

Conversation A: The public comment (low bandwidth, high heat)

Them: “If you were loud about Kirk but quiet now, you’re telling on yourself.”
You: “I hear the frustration. Selective empathy is real, and it’s corrosive.”
Them: “Exactly. People only care about their team.”
You: “Can I ask one clarifying question — when you say ‘quiet’ and ‘loud,’ do you mean the same individuals, or the general vibe of your feed?”
Them: “Same individuals.”
You: “On a 0–10, how sure are you it’s the same individuals?”
Them: “Nine.”
You: “What gets you to 9?”
Them: “I saw them post about Kirk immediately.”
You: “Okay. What would move you to an 8? Would it matter if some of them simply never saw the other story, or didn’t know enough yet to comment?”
Them: “Maybe, but come on.”
You: “Fair. I’m not denying hypocrisy exists. I’m trying to separate ‘didn’t see / didn’t know’ from ‘doesn’t care.’ If we’re going to accuse motives, I want it to land on something we can actually verify.”

Notice the move: you don’t “defend the quiet.” You ask whether the accusation is evidence-based or feed-based.

Conversation B: The DM (relationship context)

Friend: “I’m sick of fake empathy.”
You: “I get that. Can I ask what you want to happen with a post like this — reflection, apology, pressure, unfriending?”
Friend: “I want people to admit they’re biased.”
You: “Okay. On a 0–10, how sure are you it’s bias rather than attention/algorithm/people being afraid to say the wrong thing?”
Friend: “Nine.”
You: “What’s the strongest thing that puts it at 9?”
Friend: “They posted about Kirk instantly.”
You: “That’s a real data point. Would you be willing to test one person you mean? If they genuinely didn’t see the other story, would you want to know that before concluding motive?”
Friend: “…Yeah.”
You: “That’s all I’m guarding: one small door for ‘maybe there’s another explanation’ before we turn silence into a moral indictment.”

This is the “impossible conversations” pivot: from verdict to conditions for revising certainty.

Conversation C: The trap (“You were loud about Kirk”)

Them: “Funny you’re talking now. You were loud about Kirk.”
You: “Fair question. What are you inferring from that?”
Them: “That your empathy is tribal.”
You: “I don’t want that to be true. My honest answer is: the Kirk story saturated my feed, so I reacted fast. I saw the other story later.”
Them: “Convenient.”
You: “Maybe. So let’s test it. If you saw me condemn violence consistently across cases, would that move your certainty down even one point?”
Them: “Possibly.”
You: “Then we’re not stuck. And I’ll take the lesson too: I should be slower to mind-read others, because I don’t want it done to me.”

You decline the moral cage match and offer a falsifiable check: consistency over time.

The hidden leap: silence equals motive

The meme’s real power comes from a hidden assumption: silence proves character.

Sometimes silence is cowardice. Sometimes it’s indifference. Sometimes it’s ignorance. Sometimes it’s grief in private. Sometimes it’s uncertainty. Sometimes it’s algorithmic — people genuinely did not see what you saw.

If you want to accuse motives, you can. But if you want to persuade people who don’t already agree with you, you need to do the hard part first: define what you’re measuring, and test whether your inference survives alternative explanations.

A few clarifications before the comments do what comments do

“So you’re saying hypocrisy isn’t real?” No. I’m saying hypocrisy accusations land harder when they’re grounded rather than assumed.
“So you’re saying violence isn’t political?” No. I’m saying political interpretation isn’t a substitute for checking claims.
“So you’re tone-policing?” No. I’m trying to keep inquiry alive when the conversation is about to be sealed shut.
“So this is manipulation?” Only if you use it to stall forever. The point is mutual standards and one testable claim. If we can’t do that, we exit.

Connection Before Correction: Talking Across Moral Certainty Without Feeding the Culture War

February 9, 2026 in Debate, Education, Internet | Tags: Conversations, Debate, Impossible Conversations, Moral Certainity | by The Arbourist | 2 comments

I’ve watched conversations snap shut the moment a label lands. “Authoritarian.” “Racist.” “Groomer.” “Commie.” “Fascist.” Sometimes it’s shouted; sometimes it’s delivered with a calm that’s worse. Either way, the label does the same job: it turns dialogue into sorting.

If you care about persuasion—or even just about staying human with people you disagree with—this is the moment that matters. Because once someone is convinced you are morally radioactive, your facts don’t enter the room. And once you decide they’re unreachable, you stop trying to reach them. The relationship becomes a trench. 🕳️

I’m writing about a specific conversational pattern—fast moral labeling that turns disagreement into contamination, and makes inquiry feel like betrayal. This post is about how to keep a relationship intact long enough to examine the certainty behind that label.

It draws heavily on the “impossible conversations” approach: connection first, then a mutual audit of certainty, then one claim we can actually test. Not a conversion campaign. Not a dunk. Not more fuel.

My claim is simple:

If you want a real conversation with someone who reaches for moral labels quickly, start by making a real connection—then invite a shared audit of certainty, not a duel of conclusions.

Lens A: From inside the moral-alarm posture

From the inside, this posture often doesn’t feel like ideology. It feels like moral eyesight. You can see harms other people don’t see—or don’t want to see—and the world keeps asking you to speak softly about it, to “debate,” to “be civil,” to wait your turn while people get hurt.

In that frame, neutrality isn’t neutral. A demand for “open inquiry” can sound like a demand to treat someone’s dignity as a hypothesis. So when I hear a policy proposal, a joke, a statistic, even a question—my mind scans for the pattern: Who gets harmed? Who gets protected? Who gets erased?

That’s why labels arrive quickly. Often, “fascist” isn’t meant as a careful historical claim. It’s shorthand for: this is authoritarian; it threatens vulnerable people; it belongs in the moral quarantine. The label is a gate. It keeps the moral community safe.

And to be fair: sometimes the alarm is justified. There are real authoritarian impulses in politics and institutions. The question isn’t whether harm exists. The question is whether a particular claim about harm is being held in a way that stays connected to evidence—and stays connected to other people.

So what keeps me in the conversation?

You don’t start by correcting my language. You start by understanding what harm I think I’m preventing.
You don’t perform neutrality. You show you have values too—especially values I recognize: dignity, fairness, reducing cruelty.
You lower the temperature by reducing threat: to my identity, my group, my moral standing.

What makes me leave immediately?

“You’re brainwashed.”
“You’re evil.”
“You’re hysterical.”
Any vibe of: I need you to be stupid for me to be confident.

If you need me to feel small so you can feel right, I’m gone.

Lens B: Where I am now, and what I’m trying to do

I’m wary of ideological capture. I care about fairness and free inquiry, and I’m suspicious of moral language used as a weapon to shut down reasoning. I also know this: you don’t talk someone out of certainty by attacking it head-on. You often strengthen it. Certainty is frequently doing work: protecting identity, status, belonging, safety.

So my aim isn’t “defeat your conclusion.” It’s two-fold:

Make enough connection that you feel safe staying in the room.
Shift the conversation from “What do you believe?” to “How sure are you, and why?”

Beliefs can be tribal. But certainty is often a crack where curiosity can enter. 🌱

The approach: connection → certainty → one claim we can actually test

1) Connection before correction

Connection isn’t flattery. It isn’t surrender. It’s reducing the sense that this conversation is a status fight or a moral trial.

Concrete moves:

Name a shared value.
“I think we both want fewer people harmed.”
“I’m with you on dignity; I’m unsure about the mechanism.”
Name your intent.
“I’m not trying to score points. I want to understand how you’re seeing this.”
Steelman one piece before touching the claim.
“If those outcomes are real, I can see why you’re alarmed.”

None of this concedes the label. It makes it possible to talk about what the label is trying to protect.

2) The certainty questions

Once connection is real—not perfect, just real—you invite a mutual audit. This is where the conversation becomes “impossible” in the good way: you’re not arguing conclusions; you’re exploring how the conclusion is held.

The simplest sequence I know:

“On a scale from 0–10, how certain are you that [assertion]?”
“What gets you to that number?”
“What would move you down one point?”
“What evidence would you expect to see if you were wrong?”

That last question is the tell. If nothing could change it, you’re not in a disagreement—you’re in a boundary ritual.

Guardrail: this isn’t meant to be an endless epistemology loop. If you’re auditing certainty forever and never testing a claim, you may be stalling—or being stalled.

3) Only then: test one claim together

Most fights fail because we try to litigate an entire worldview. Don’t. Pick one claim. Keep it local. Make it about outcomes and standards, not about moral status.

Rules that help:

One topic. One example.
Ask what counts as good evidence for both sides.
Keep it falsifiable-ish. If it can’t be wrong, don’t wrestle it.

A short dialogue when “fascist” shows up

Here’s the kind of exchange I mean. It’s deliberately plain.

Them: “That’s basically fascist.”
Me: “When you say ‘fascist’ here, do you mean historically fascist, or more like authoritarian and harmful?”
Them: “Authoritarian. It targets marginalized people.”
Me: “Okay. On a 0–10 scale, how certain are you it leads to that harm?”
Them: “A 9.”
Me: “What gets you to 9?”
Them: “The pattern. It always goes this way.”
Me: “If we found out the outcomes didn’t increase harm to that group—say they were neutral or improved—would your certainty drop at all?”
Them: “Maybe.”
Me: “What evidence would you need to see for that ‘maybe’ to feel real?”

Notice what happened. I didn’t accept the label. I didn’t attack it either. I moved from label → claim → certainty → conditions for revision. That’s the move.

And I try to hold myself to the same standard. If I ask what would change your mind, I should be able to answer what would change mine. Symmetry is disarming. ⚖️

The “three doors” rule

When things get hot, offer choices so the other person doesn’t feel trapped:

“Do you want to do one of these?”

Clarify terms (what do we mean?)
Check certainty (how sure, and why?)
Test one claim (what evidence would move us?)

If they refuse all three, I stop—not in anger, but in conservation mode:

“It sounds like we’re not in a place for a real exchange right now. I’m here if you want to try again later.”

When not to use this approach

Connection is not a duty in every context. If the exchange is coercive, humiliating, or unsafe—or if someone demands you accept a moral confession just to keep talking—leave. If concrete harm is immediate, address the harm first. Certainty-audits are not a substitute for accountability.

What success looks like

Success is not conversion. It’s not winning. It’s smaller—and because it’s smaller, it’s more real:

“I still disagree, but I understand why you think that.”
“Here’s what might change my mind.”
“I don’t need to call you evil to keep my beliefs intact.”

If we can’t talk about certainty—ours or theirs—we will keep outsourcing moral judgment to labels. Labels are efficient. They are also corrosive. They turn disagreement into contamination. ☣️

The culture war runs on that corrosion. It doesn’t need more fuel.

If you want to reach someone deep in moral certainty, connection is the price of admission. Once you’re in, don’t aim for the headline. Aim for the one honest question that makes certainty visible—then sit there together long enough for reality to have a chance.

A few clarifications before the comments do what comments do

“So you’re saying fascism isn’t real?” No. I’m saying labels are often used as conversation-stoppers, and I’m interested in testing the underlying claim together rather than trading moral verdicts.
“So you’re saying just be nice to bigots?” No. Boundaries still matter. This is about how to talk when you choose to talk, and how to exit cleanly when you shouldn’t.
“So you’re tone-policing people who are alarmed?” No. I’m describing a pattern where moral alarm hardens into moral certainty—and how to make certainty discussable without contempt.
“So this is manipulation?” Only if you use it to stall forever. The point is mutual standards and one testable claim—if we can’t do that, the conversation ends.

The DWR Sunday Religious Disservice – The Law That Makes Childhood Negotiable

February 8, 2026 in Religion | Tags: Child Marriage, Iran, The DWR Sunday Religious Disservice | by The Arbourist | 1 comment

In Iran, child marriage isn’t merely a whispered rural custom; it’s a practice that can breathe because the law gives it room. A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report tells the story of “Leila,” married at ten to a fifteen-year-old boy—an arrangement delivered to her in the night, a ring placed on her finger like a stamp. She describes the aftermath not as romance or “tradition,” but as fear, pain, and a body treated as if it were already spoken for.

The scandal here is not that bad people exist; it’s that systems can normalize the bad. The report states that marriage is legal for girls at 13 with parental consent, and that younger girls can be married with a judge’s permission (and that the legal age cited for boys is 15). It also cites 37,000 underage marriages registered in the last Iranian year ending in March (as of 2016), while noting that unregistered unions mean the true number is likely higher.

A society’s moral temperature shows up in what it excuses, and what it calls “inevitable.” The piece reports that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urged Iran to raise the marriage age and expressed concern that the legal framework permits sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine lunar years, alongside gaps in criminalization of other sexual abuse against very young children. This isn’t “culture” in the harmless sense; it’s power arranged into a rite, with a child paying the cost.

Bibliography 📚

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Radio Farda), “Childhood’s End: Forced Into Marriage At Age 10 In Iran” (Nov. 17, 2016).

Repressive Tolerance, But Make It a Meme

February 7, 2026 in Culture, Debate, Politics | Tags: Culture War, Peaceful Protest, Repressive Tolerance, Rule Enforcement | by The Arbourist | 2 comments

The X post is doing something familiar: it takes two ugly sentences, assigns one to “conservatives” and one to “leftists,” and then says, See? The rules are different. It’s a compressed morality play about “two-tier” reality—speech treated as violence on one side, actual violence laundered as “peaceful protest” on the other. The point isn’t subtle. The point is that subtlety is for suckers.

And yes: there is a real intellectual touchstone for the logic the meme is gesturing at—Herbert Marcuse and his essay Repressive Tolerance. Marcuse’s argument, in brief, is not “be nice to everyone equally.” It’s that “tolerance” inside an unjust system can function as a stabilizer for the powerful. If the social order is already rigged, then neutral tolerance becomes complicity. So “tolerance” may need to become selective: intolerance toward movements judged oppressive; preferential latitude toward movements judged emancipatory.

That is a mechanism you can recognize in our current atmosphere even if you reject Marcuse’s conclusions. Once you accept that framework—“neutral rules are a mask for power”—you quickly get to the idea that the formal categories we inherited (free speech, due process, viewpoint neutrality, equal enforcement) are not the point. The point is the moral direction of history. If you think the stakes are existential, then anything that slows “liberation” looks like violence, and anything that advances it starts to look excusable.

That’s the lure. It feels like moral seriousness.

It also tends to produce the exact thing the meme is ridiculing: asymmetric permission structures. On paper: “We oppose violence.” In practice: “We oppose violence when it serves the other tribe.” On paper: “Words have consequences.” In practice: “Words are violence when spoken by the wrong person, and merely ‘context’ when spoken by the right one.” If you want to defend selective enforcement as justice, Marcuse gives you a vocabulary. If you want to mock selective enforcement as hypocrisy, this meme gives you an image.

But the meme cheats in two ways.

First, it packages maximal caricatures as if they are the daily policy of real institutions: “people deserve to be shot,” “running over agents is peaceful,” “terrorizing churches is civil rights.” Those aren’t arguments; they’re adrenaline. They’re useful precisely because they let the reader skip the hard work: which specific cases, which authorities, which jurisdictions, which outcomes, which standards? A meme that can’t name a case doesn’t want to inform you. It wants to recruit you.

Second, it collapses three distinct questions into one hot blob:

What is the law?
How is it being enforced?
Should the law be changed?

You can have a serious conversation about two-tier policing and still be allergic to meme logic. Two-tier policing isn’t a vibe; it’s an empirical claim: similar conduct, different outcomes, explained by ideology rather than facts. That’s testable, at least in principle. Pick comparable cases. Compare charging decisions, bail, sentencing, media framing, institutional statements, internal policies, and (crucially) what evidence was available at the time. If the pattern holds, you’ve found something corrosive.

Neutrality is never clean. Discretion and bias are baked into enforcement. That’s why consistency and transparency aren’t niceties; they’re the only way discretion doesn’t become patronage.

And if the pattern doesn’t hold? Then the meme is just a mood board for resentment.

Here’s the deeper issue: equal application of the law is not a decorative liberal slogan. It’s the only thing that keeps politics from becoming a permanent emergency. The moment your faction decides that formal neutrality is merely “repressive tolerance,” you have granted yourself a standing exemption. The moment the other faction learns that lesson, you get escalation, then retaliation, then institutional rot. The system stops being a referee and becomes a weapon. Everyone notices. Nobody trusts verdicts. Everything becomes a street fight conducted through courts, bureaucracies, and HR policies.

Which is, ironically, a recipe for more repression—just not evenly distributed. 🙂

If you want to critique selective enforcement without becoming a partisan mirror image, try this simple discipline:

Name the standard (what rule should apply?).
Name the comparator (what similar case was treated differently?).
Name the decision point (who chose not to enforce, or enforced aggressively?).
Say what you’d accept if the tribes were swapped.

Sometimes the double standard is real. The remedy is not revenge; it’s comparison—same conduct, same rule, same consequence, even when it’s your side.

That last one is the lie detector. Most people fail it quickly. That’s not because they’re stupid; it’s because the incentive structure is poisonous. If you’re convinced the other side is not merely wrong but illegitimate, “neutral rules” start to feel like self-harm.

Marcuse understood that temptation and tried to turn it into theory. The meme understands the temptation and turns it into a dunk.

My view is more boring and therefore more useful: a society can survive deep disagreement; it cannot survive the public belief that enforcement is a tribal privilege. If you think we have two-tier policing or two-tier moral accounting, don’t answer with a meme that trains your readers to crave revenge. Answer with receipts, standards, comparators, and the willingness to be constrained by the rule you want applied to your enemies.

Otherwise, you’re not defending fairness. You’re just changing who gets to do the repressing.

CRT is the Acid that is Dissolving Western Societies – Just Say “No”.

February 6, 2026 in Culture, Education, History, Social Science | Tags: Bullshit, Critical Theory in Action, CRT, White Guilt | by The Arbourist | Leave a comment

This “8 White Identities” chart (attributed to Barnor Hesse) looks like education, but it functions like a moral sorting machine. It offers eight labels that appear descriptive while quietly guiding you to one approved destination: “traitor/abolitionist,” meaning active participation in dismantling institutions so “whiteness” cannot “reassert itself.” That isn’t neutral analysis; it’s a disciplinary ladder. The key tell is the structure: most categories are not stable identities but staged accusations: if you don’t end at abolition, you’re still “benefiting,” “confessing,” “complicit,” or “voyeur.” It’s less “here are ways people relate to race” and more “here is your moral rank, move upward.”

Where does this method come from? In plain terms, it’s downstream of critical theory which is a family of approaches associated with the Frankfurt School, including Max Horkheimer, which treats social life as saturated with power and aims not merely to interpret society but to critique and transform it. Suspicion becomes the starting posture: norms, institutions, and “common sense” are read as mechanisms that reproduce domination. That posture can be illuminating when it identifies genuine structural incentives or hidden rules. The problem is what happens when the posture hardens into a closed moral cosmology: every institution is presumed guilty, every norm is presumed cover, and disagreement is presumed self-interest.

This particular pop-form is best described as CRT-style reasoning (even when it’s outside law schools): “whiteness” treated as an institutionalized advantage; disparities treated as presumptive evidence of systemic bias; “neutrality” treated as camouflage; and moral legitimacy tied to “anti-racist” alignment rather than truth-tracking. The flaw isn’t “not caring about racism.” The flaw is an a-historical compression: it collapses different eras, actors, and institutions into one continuous regime (“whiteness”) and treats complex tradeoffs as one moral story with one villain. You stop seeing plural motives, competing goods, and reformable failures; you see only complicity versus resistance.

The chart also relies on social coercion, not argument. It invites “accountability,” but what it means in practice is public performance under threat of moral demotion. Ask for evidence and you’re “centering yourself.” Disagree and you’re “invested.” Stay quiet and you’re “benefiting.” Even agreement becomes suspect if it’s the “wrong” kind (confessional, validation-seeking). That’s the unfalsifiable core: the framework is built so that any response can be converted into proof of guilt or complicity. A theory that cannot lose contact with counterevidence doesn’t guide understanding; it guides conformity.

If you actually want a model that helps rather than coerces, start with falsifiable claims and reformable mechanisms: identify specific policies, incentives, or gatekeeping practices; compare outcomes across institutions; test interventions; keep individual dignity intact; and treat moral status as something earned by conduct, not assigned by category. You can still talk about bias and history without turning identity into original sin. The danger of charts like this isn’t that they “teach empathy.” It’s that they train people to swap evidence for ritual, and dialogue for denunciation—and that trade makes every institution worse, not better.

The DWR Friday Baroque Interlude – Bach Violin Concerto No.2 in E Major BWV 1042

February 6, 2026 in Music | Tags: The DWR Friday Baroque Interlude - Bach Violin Concerto No.2 in E Major BWV 1042 | by The Arbourist | Leave a comment

Bach’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042 (composed around 1717–1723), is a quintessential Baroque work showcasing the violin soloist against a string orchestra with continuo. It follows the standard three-movement structure:Allegro: Opens with a lively ritornello theme in E major, featuring energetic rhythms and interplay between solo violin and ensemble. The soloist explores virtuosic passages, modulations, and echoes of the main theme.
Adagio: A lyrical, introspective movement in C-sharp minor, built on a ground bass (ostinato) pattern. The violin weaves expressive, ornamented melodies over the repeating bass, creating a poignant, song-like atmosphere.
Allegro assai: A spirited finale in 3/8 time, resembling a dance with fugal elements. The ritornello returns with rapid scalar runs and joyful exchanges, culminating in a triumphant close.

This concerto highlights Bach’s mastery of counterpoint, thematic development, and violin technique, often performed for its balance of brilliance and emotional depth.

Governance by Bandage

February 5, 2026 in Canada, Politics | Tags: Economy, Liberal Government of Canada, Over Programmed, Politics | by The Arbourist | Leave a comment

If a government’s job is to steward the conditions for ordinary people to build, trade, invest, and plan a life, then our federal leadership has been doing that job badly.

Not because Canadians are lazy. Not because the world is easy. But because the governing reflex is wrong: when something breaks, Ottawa reaches for a new program, a new credit, a new rebate, a new subsidy, a new “strategy.” It treats the economy like a patient that can be stabilized indefinitely with IV drips.

That approach can buy headlines. It cannot buy prosperity.

The best indicator is per-person performance. We can argue about which yardstick matters most, but the story is consistent: Canadians are producing less per person than we should be, relative to peers and especially relative to the United States. When per-capita output stagnates, everything gets harder at once: housing feels unaffordable, healthcare feels strained, wages feel thin, and every problem becomes a fight over slices instead of a discussion about baking more bread.

The policy style matters because it shapes incentives. When governments patch symptoms with cash transfers while leaving the cost structure and the approval structure untouched, they teach the country the wrong lesson: don’t fix the machine; keep bribing the machine not to squeal.

The mechanism: why “more programs” keeps failing

Here’s the basic mechanism, stripped of moral drama:

High costs and slow approvals choke supply.
Housing, energy, infrastructure, major projects, even small-business expansions: Canada is a country that says “no” and “later” far more often than it says “yes” and “go.” Every delay is a tax. Every duplicated review is a tax. Every veto point is a tax.
Government then tries to “help” people pay the tax it created.
Rebates, credits, subsidies, targeted relief. It’s a strange kind of compassion that insists on first inflating the cost of living and then offering a coupon to survive it.
Those programs don’t increase productivity.
They redistribute purchasing power. Sometimes that’s justified in emergencies. But as a governing model it becomes a treadmill: you need ever-larger transfers to offset the same underlying frictions.
Meanwhile investment goes elsewhere.
Capital avoids uncertainty, delays, and politicized approvals. If the return on effort is higher across the border, it doesn’t matter how many committees we convene about “competitiveness.” The money leaves. So do the high-productivity jobs.

That’s the loop.

Steelman: “But the government is trying to protect people”

Yes. There are real hardships and real shocks: pandemic aftershocks, energy volatility, inflation waves. A modern state can’t pretend none of that exists.

But a serious government distinguishes relief from policy habit.

Relief is temporary and humble. It treats symptoms while it removes the causes.

Policy habit is permanent and proud. It treats symptoms and declares victory.

Canada’s problem is not that government ever helps. It’s that government too often helps in a way that replaces fixing the constraints. Then it wonders why the constraints keep biting.

The verdict

If your economic model is “make life expensive, then subsidize the expense,” you don’t get abundance. You get dependency, resentment, and a widening gap with jurisdictions that still know how to build.

You also get a politics where every election becomes a bidding war over who will mail the bigger cheque, because structural reform has been quietly taken off the table.

That’s not leadership. It’s managed decline with better graphics.

Three solutions that trust Canadians

These aren’t “one weird trick” fixes. They’re principles that put choice back in the hands of households and entrepreneurs rather than bureaucracies.

1) Let people keep more of what they earn, especially on essentials

If Ottawa wants to help with affordability, it should stop pretending price pressures are solved by “targeted” programs. The cleanest help is broad, simple tax relief that lets people choose.

Cut taxes that hit basics hardest (and stop layering cost-pushers into the production chain).
Prefer lower rates and fewer carve-outs over boutique credits that require a rulebook and a caseworker to access.
If a policy goal requires a price signal, keep it simple and transparent, not buried across permits, compliance, and pass-through.

This trusts Canadians because it doesn’t tell them what to buy. It stops taking their money and then re-selling it back to them with a government logo.

2) Slash approval times and regulatory duplication so builders can build

Canada does not have a “housing feelings” problem. It has a permission structure problem.

Set hard timelines for approvals and treat missed deadlines as automatic escalation or approval, not “we’ll get back to you.”
Collapse overlapping reviews and require agencies to coordinate rather than serially veto.
Align incentives so provinces and municipalities that approve homes and infrastructure fast aren’t punished for growth.

This trusts Canadians because it assumes the default answer to a lawful project is “yes,” and it lets builders, trades, and communities respond to demand without waiting years for permission.

3) Open the country internally: real competition, real mobility, real choice

A country shouldn’t feel like 10 small markets with paperwork toll booths between them.

Remove internal trade barriers so goods, services, and workers can move freely across provinces.
Make credential recognition faster for skilled trades and professionals so talent isn’t trapped behind provincial gatekeeping.
Reduce the habit of picking “future sectors” by subsidy and instead create conditions where any sector can win if it serves customers.

This trusts Canadians because it relies on competition and mobility, not bureaucratic selection. It lets consumers choose, lets workers move, and lets businesses scale without needing a lobbyist.

If Ottawa keeps governing by bandage, the next few years will look like the last: higher spending, louder announcements, thinner per-person results, and a country that feels like it’s working harder for less. The gap won’t close by intention. It will close only when we stop confusing “more government activity” with “more national competence.”

	The Arbourist on Connection Before Correction:…
	Paul S. Graham on Connection Before Correction:…
	tildeb on The DWR Sunday Religious Disse…
	The Arbourist on Repressive Tolerance, But Make…
	tildeb on Repressive Tolerance, But Make…

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Dead Wild Roses

What the meme is actually doing

The best one-sentence reply is not a rebuttal

Make the meme’s claim testable

“Real conversations” in action (composites)

Conversation A: The public comment (low bandwidth, high heat)

Conversation B: The DM (relationship context)

Conversation C: The trap (“You were loud about Kirk”)

The hidden leap: silence equals motive

A few clarifications before the comments do what comments do

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Lens A: From inside the moral-alarm posture

Lens B: Where I am now, and what I’m trying to do

The approach: connection → certainty → one claim we can actually test

1) Connection before correction

2) The certainty questions

3) Only then: test one claim together

A short dialogue when “fascist” shows up

The “three doors” rule

When not to use this approach

What success looks like

A few clarifications before the comments do what comments do

Suggested reading

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Bibliography 📚

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The mechanism: why “more programs” keeps failing

Steelman: “But the government is trying to protect people”

The verdict

Three solutions that trust Canadians

1) Let people keep more of what they earn, especially on essentials

2) Slash approval times and regulatory duplication so builders can build

3) Open the country internally: real competition, real mobility, real choice

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