Tod Maffin

Canadian Wants US Citizens to Become Canadians

I watch an inordinate amount of Youtube. I find video makers I like and I stick with them for years. I’m always finding new people to follow. My tastes are quite idiosyncratic. I do a few AMSR things — rug cleaning, pet grooming, and wood turning among them, I follow tons of lefty political pundits, different musicians, especially bass players (I play), fantasy book bloggers, prog bloggers, little town drive-arounds…

There’s such a wide range of stuff on YouTube to pay attention to, and good content doesn’t necessarily happen in particular categories. My YouTube habits do reflect my interests, of course, but I seem to regularly find new things to be interested in.

A recent find’s name is Tod Maffin. The page I linked to labels him a “Canadian Identity Commentator.” He’s a public personage “up there:” does – his website claims – 40 public events a year. Used to be a radio host on CBC radio. I suss out from the info around him that he’s fairly corporate, though not overbearingly so. Check out the video after the link above, you’ll get a pretty good idea of his schtick and why I like it.

Tod Maffin, probably on the street in Vancouver, but it sure looks like he’s in Brookline Village.

What he’s up to is pretty straightforward. He’s an ambassador for Canadian life. His most immediate call to action is to get US healthcare workers who are suffering in the current environment to relocate. My feelings about this are mixed, because I’m an American and I want good health care people to be here, but I can understand the allure of moving to a place that has a sensible and human-oriented system. I mean, Jeez, I’d like to move there myself!

From his point of view, it’s smart and compassionate work. For me, it’s bittersweet, because if we didn’t have the clowns we have running things, Maffin’s gambit would feel a lot less like a rescue operation. But we live in the world we live in. And with the terminal toddler nitwits we have running things, it’s reassuring that just to the north of me, there is a functioning society full of nice people. Not people without problems (anyone with no problems is in the cemetery,) not people living in a utopia (any country where someone like Pierre Poilievre is a prominent national politician is no utopia,) but people who do civility like they were born to it, and also people who recognize that part of civil life is the duty to take care of each other.

And that’s what Tod Maffin advocates for, and works to sell Canada as, to those who can help it become even better at that for its people. And though he focuses on healthcare workers, he’s pretty expansive. Here’s the video I saw that originally piqued my interest:

I’ve since watched a dozen or so other videos of his, and have enjoyed them all. He talks about various topics, but in every video I’ve seen, he centers Canadian identity.

He’s worth your time. Check him out. And maybe he can put in a good word for New England. I know a lot of us would happily switch over.

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When the Establishment Gadflies Go Gadding About, Causing Massive Cognitive Dissonance.

I’m trying not to repeat things that are being said everywhere online right now. You don’t need that from me. I don’t need that from me. Maybe I have something to say, if I say it now? Someone else will come along with a similar hot take and a larger following soon enough.

Still…

In the aftermath of the Maduro abduction (and the related murders of various Venezuelans in order to accomplish the crime) all I can do is watch the news come out, gather what information I can, and try to think about what’s happening from as many viewpoints as I can manage.

One viewpoint that I’m having real trouble with, though, is the number of people who are willing to try and justify the US’s actions in this case. That hurts my head. There are so many people out there willing to ignore every relevant fact that doesn’t fit in order to say, “The people of Venezuela are actually happy we invaded their country and kidnapped their president and his wife, and killed a bunch of people in order to accomplish it!” How stupid do they think we are?

“Now we’re going to steal all of the good things out of their ground just like a bunch of pirates, which is what we are. But if we’re pirates, we’re pirates for the good of the Venezuelan people!”

And yeah, there’s a brilliant video online already where a guy says he’s taking over his neighbor’s houses “for the good of the neighborhood.” I can’t top that. I can certainly enjoy it though. Go find it, it’s really funny.

Screenshot

But what it comes down to is that Fascism doesn’t give an inch, and it will take a mile if you give an inch. And here’s the time when we see the proof. Remember: these people are stupid – too stupid to realize that in the long term, Fascism always fails, and that the way forward for humanity and the planet is science, reason, and compassion.

We have to be adamant, and set the world on that course.

More Controversial Beliefs: I am a Libertarian Socialist

If you’re going to categorize my politics, this is the stuff I believe society should be organized around.

I am a libertarian socialist. I believe that societies should be organized at as close to ground level as they can possibly be. Centralized power is anathema to human happiness.

In fact, Capitalism never considers the need for people to be whole, healthy, and happy a priority at all. One only has to look at the current state of the world to see that this is so.

Capitalism is a good servant but a poor master. Commerce and trade offer crucial support to a community, but they must be held in check, and carefully managed with the larger context of sustainability and human happiness in mind.

Large corporations should not be allowed, and capitalists should not be allowed to earn more than 50 times the basic income rate, which should be defined in relation to how much it takes to meet basic necessities such as enough good, nutritious food, adequate housing, all other basic expenses met, and enough extra money to save against emergencies and for education and amusement.

Billionaires in general should not exist. I agree with the idea that if you somehow manage to amass a billion dollars, everything over 900 million of those dollars should be taxed at a marginal rate of 100%.

Centralized power should be avoided at all costs. Large concerns should be organized by cooperating communities and/or worker’s coöps. Large concentrations of power cause suffering in the best circumstances. Power should be balanced and distributed into as many different hands as possible. People caught abusing their power should have it taken away.

Administrative tasks should be handled on the most local and small level possible, and larger projects should be organized across boundaries between communities if necessary. Once projects of a larger size are completed, the authorities that created them should be either disbanded or minimized in size to conduct reasonable maintenance of any particular ongoing project. Such authorities should be under the aegis of all impacted communities.

Communities themselves should be organized along two axes: geography and affinity. Society should be as free as it can be made to be, but people should be able to organize based on what they need, like, and want as well as where they exist on the map. Communities should have different sizes and shapes and should have porous borders in some ways and firm ones in others. The power of the collective will always outstrip the power of any individual. By the same token, the power of the collective should only be exercised out of necessity.

There is more to say on these topics, and at some point, I may come back to this.

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Controversial Beliefs

  • Evidently, the most controversial belief I hold is that I am a woman. This one may get me killed at some point, or cause me to move to Europe. And then get me killed.
  • I think I would like to live in a small one-bedroom apartment in Bergen, Norway with Karen.
  • I think Yes’s Fly From Here – Return Trip may be one of the band’s best albums. We’ll talk more about this one at some future point.
  • I think when Donald Trump is dead and gone, all of this crap about him is going to come out and I think the world at large will be collectively mind-blown by the depravity the man has inhabited his whole life.

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