COMMENTARY (BuriedTruth.com) [2019-10-22].
Fellow Canadians: if you smugly believe that level of ignorance and pathology is exclusive to the USA and Donald Trump, yesterday (2019-10-21) in our national election we narrowly and fortuitously avoided the election of a "Progressive" Conservative ignoramus Andrew Scheer [see also note Zah3ish6 in my raw file]. Scheer's Progressive Conservatives nonetheless dominated in regions of the country populated by Christian conservatives and fossil fuel-based economies [Bay of Fundy region; Prairies, extending into eastern B.C.]
"... Hit by racism and corruption scandals, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau put climate policy at the heart of his re-election campaign, pledging to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and establishing legally-binding five-year targets. He yet gave little details about how his administration would achieve the target.
He defeated Conservative challenger Andrew Scheer, who had pledged to dismantle the country's climate policies and scrap its carbon tax. ..." [Source: "Justin Trudeau's Narrow Victory Sets Canada on Net Zero Carbon Path."]
Ignorance is pervasive, permeating every aspect of society, particularly social media where destructive trolls provoke controversy at every turn. Those individuals disproportionately [see "Results" in note ooLieK0s in my raw file] create and disseminate propaganda and disinformation, inflame sentiment and emotion, and harm the free and unfettered exchange of ideas and intelligent discussion, for the sole purpose of wreaking havoc.
Cowardly in nature, trolls generally (but not always) operate anonymously or with their true identities carefully hidden and protected. Women are particularly vulnerable, with generalized and targeted misogyny driving some women from participating in online discussion [see note ieMoo2hu in my raw file].
The December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting [one of countless shootings before and following that event | see also note ha2Om0ha in my raw file] in Newtown, CT resulted in the massacre of 27 people, including 20 children aged 6 and 7.
The facts of the event are well-known and established: a deeply troubled lone perpetrator. Nonetheless -- despite overwhelming contemporary coverage of the incident -- Sandy Hook conspiracy theories polluted the internet and social media. In those disinformation campaigns, vacuous and irrational internet trolls and conspiracists viciously targeted and attacked Sandy Hook Elementary School parents, the government, and others -- accusing them (the parents, etc.) as being responsible for that massacre (when they even acknowledged that that event ever occurred)!
Of course, lobbyist trolls also had to have their say, promulgating their virulent agendae. Incredulously, only a week [2012-12-21] after the Connecticut massacre, remarks by the executive director of the National Rifle Association -- Wayne LaPierre -- delivered in Washington DC insisted that more guns would have prevented that tragedy.
While reinforcing statements elsewhere that lobbyists cripple and harm political action and hence society, those reprehensible views reinforce the idea that no intelligent and civilized society should permit the possession of firearms without tight regulation, and an outright ban on handguns, assault rifles and other weapons primarily intended to slaughter humans. Basic gun deaths statistics (e.g. ) bluntly reinforce the view the insanity of gun-related violence and the failure of constitutionally-sanctioned right-to-possess, right to self-defense, and other indefensible memes.
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