Politics
Opinion | Have We Reshaped Middle East Politics or Started to Mimic It? – The New York Times
One day, 1,000 years from now, when they dig up this era, archaeologists will surely ask how was it that a great power called America set out to make the Middle East more like itself — embracing pluralism and the rule of law — and ended up instead becoming more like the Middle East — mimicking its worst tribal mores and introducing a whole new level of lawlessness into its national politics?
Middle Easterners may call their big tribes “Shiites” and “Sunnis” and Americans may call theirs “Democrats” and “Republicans,” but they each seem to operate increasingly with a conformist, us-vs.-them mind-set, albeit at different intensity levels. Extreme Republican tribalism vastly accelerated as the G.O.P. tribe became dominated by a base of largely white Christians, who feared that their long-held primacy in America’s power structure was being eroded by rapidly changing social norms, expanded immigration and globalization, leaving them feeling no longer “at home” in their own country.
To signal that, they latched on to Donald Trump, who enthusiastically gave voice to their darkest fears and raw tribal muscle that escalated the right’s pursuit of minority rule. That is, not just pushing the usual gerrymandering but also propagating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, passing ever-harsher voter suppression laws and replacing neutral state voting regulators with tribal hacks ready to break the rules. And because this Trump faction came to dominate the base, even once-principled Republicans mostly went along for the ride, embracing the core philosophy that dominates tribal politics in Afghanistan and the Arab world: The “other” is the enemy, not a fellow citizen, and the only two choices are “rule or die.” Either we rule or we delegitimize the results.
Mind you, the archaeologists will also note that Democrats exhibited their own kind of tribal mania, such as the strident groupthink of progressives at 21st-century American universities. In particular, there was evidence of professors, administrators and students being “canceled” — either silenced or thrown off campus for expressing even mildly nonconformist or conservative views on politics, race, gender or sexual identity. An epidemic of tribal political correctness from the left served only to energize the tribal solidarity on the right.
But what triggered the turn from traditional pluralism to ferocious tribalism in the U.S. and many other democracies? My short answer: It’s become a lot harder to maintain democracy today, with social networks constantly polarizing people, and with globalization, climate change, a war on terrorism, widening income gaps and rapid job-shifting technology innovations constantly stressing them. And then a pandemic.
More than a few democratically elected leaders around the world now find it much easier to build support with tribal appeals focused on identity than do the hard work of coalition-building and compromise in pluralistic societies at a complex time.
When that happens, everything gets turned into a tribal identity marker — mask-wearing in the pandemic, Covid-19 vaccinations, gender pronouns, climate change. Your position on each point doubles as a challenge to others: Are you in my tribe or not? So there is less focus on the common good, and ultimately no common ground to pivot off to do big hard things. We once put a man on the moon together. Today, we can barely agree on fixing broken bridges.
Ironically, there is no institution in American life that has worked harder to inoculate America from this virus of tribalism, while enriching and exemplifying an ethic of pluralism, than the military — the very people who were most intimately exposed to the Middle East variant for over 20 years. It’s not that some service members didn’t commit their own excesses in that war or were not traumatized by the excesses of their enemies. Both happened. But they did not let it change their core identity and the kind of military they wanted to be.
I saw this time and again on trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. The level of diversity in any American military unit you came across just jumped out at you.
On a 2005 trip to Iraq, I wrote a column about spending a night on the U.S.S. Chosin, which commanded the U.S. Navy task force off the coast of Iraq. There I interviewed Mustapha Ahansal, a Moroccan American sailor who acted as the Chosin’s Arabic translator when it stopped ships suspected of carrying pirates or other hostile actors.
“The first time I boarded a boat,” he told me, “we had six or seven people — one Hispanic, one Black person, a white person, maybe a woman in our unit. Their sailors said to me, ‘I thought all Americans were white.’ Then one of them asked me, ‘Are you in the military?’ It shocks them actually.” Ahansal told me that an Iraqi Coast Guard officer once expressed astonishment to him that people from so many different religions and races could produce such a strong navy, while “here we are fighting north and south, and we are all cousins and brothers.”
Leadership matters: The American population has diversity similar to the U.S. military’s, but the ethic of pluralism and teamwork shown by many of our men and women in uniform reduces the tribal divisions within the armed forces. It’s not perfect but it is real. Ethical leadership based on principled pluralism matters. That is why our military is our last great carrier of pluralism at a time when more and more civilian politicians are opting for cheap tribalism.
What is most frightening to me is how much this virus of tribalism is now infecting some of the most vibrant multisectarian democracies in the world — like India and Israel, as well as Brazil, Hungary and Poland.
India is a particularly sad story for me because, after 9/11, I offered up Indian pluralism as the most important example of why Islam per se was not responsible for motivating terrorists from Al Qaeda. Everything depended, I argued, on the political, social and cultural context within which Islam, or any other faith, was embedded, and where Islam is embedded in a pluralistic, democratic society, it thrives like any other religion. Although India had a large Hindu majority, it had had Muslim presidents and a Muslim woman on its Supreme Court. Muslims, including women, had been governors of many Indian states, and Muslims were among the country’s most successful entrepreneurs.
Unfortunately, today, Indian nationalism based on pluralism is being weakened by Hindu supremacists in the ruling B.J.P. party, who seem hellbent on converting a secular India into a “Hindu Pakistan,” as the eminent Indian historian Ramachandra Guha once put it.
That democracies all over the world are being infected by this tribalism virus could not be happening at a worse time — a time when every community, company and country is going to have to adapt to the accelerations in technological change, globalization and climate change. And that can only be done effectively within and between countries by higher degrees of collaboration among business, labor, educators, social entrepreneurs and governments — not rule or die, not my way or the highway.
We need to find the antidote to this tribalism fast — otherwise the future is grim for democracies everywhere.
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In the fall of 2021, the editors of the Canadian Tax Journal devoted several dozen pages to the “hotly debated” topic of capital gains.
On balance, the editors wrote, their selected contributors were in favour of raising the inclusion rate for capital gains — the share of an individual’s capital gains that are subject to income tax rates. But they acknowledged that putting such a change into practice would not be easy.
“Opposition to capital gains tax increases among affected taxpayers is apt to be vociferous,” Michael Smart and Sobia Hasan Jafry wrote in one of the featured papers, “precisely because such a reform would act like a lump sum tax that would be difficult or impossible for taxpayers to avoid in the long run by changing their behaviour.”
Whatever its exact causes or motivations, “vociferous” opposition to tax hikes may be as old as taxation itself. But the Liberals already have firsthand experience of how loud that opposition can get, having watched one set of reforms struggle to survive an onslaught of confusion and controversy in the summer of 2017.
Now they’re taking another swing at it — and one big question is whether they’re better prepared for the blowback this time.
The federal government unveiled billions in spending in its 2024 budget, and to help pay for it all, it’s proposing changes to how capital gains are taxed. CBC’s Nisha Patel breaks down how it works and who will be affected.
If the Liberals are hoping to look reasonable and measured, they can at least point to the fact that they haven’t gone nearly as far as some wanted them to go.
In their 2001 paper, Smart and Hasan Jafry proposed increasing the inclusion rate from 50 per cent to 80 per cent for all capital gains. In her third budget, tabled last week, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland proposed an inclusion rate of 67 per cent for capital gains of $250,000 or more.
In their 2021 analysis, Smart and Hasan Jafry pointed out that the wealthiest families benefited disproportionately from the preferential tax treatment afforded to capital gains (though there is some debate over exactly how disproportionately the benefits are distributed). That’s now a key aspect of the government’s argument.
“The government is asking the wealthiest Canadians to pay their fair share,” last week’s budget document said, adding that only about 0.13 per cent of Canadians would be affected by the change.
As Freeland noted, her changes also aren’t unprecedented. From 1990 to 2000, the inclusion rate was 75 per cent for all capital gains. Freeland is also promising a special carve-out aimed at entrepreneurs.
“There are a lot of reasons why the inclusion rate should go up for capital gains,” Smart said in an interview this week.
For one thing, Smart argues, “it’s fairer for all Canadians if taxpayers with capital gains pay the same rates of tax as the rest of us do right now.” Also, he says, “it’s better for the economy if every investor is paying the same tax rate on everything she or he invests in,” pointing to differences in the way dividends and capital gains are taxed.
The fight over what these changes will mean
While condemning the budget, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have been noticeably quiet on the issue of capital gains. That might be because they sense — correctly — that the Liberals would be happy to accuse them of supporting tax breaks for the rich.
For the time being, other voices are filling the void — including doctors, who came forward with their own concerns this week. The technology sector has been the loudest in its objections. The Council of Canadian Investors has sponsored an open letter that has now been signed by hundreds of tech executives.
Canadian Medical Association president Dr. Kathleen Ross tells Power & Politics that she fears changes to the capital gains tax will make recruitment and retention of physicians more difficult at ‘a time where the health force is beleaguered, mothballed and really struggling to deliver on services to Canadians.’
In an op-ed for the National Post, the council’s president, Benjamin Bergen, warned that the changes would hurt Canada’s economic “vibes.” Specifically, he argued that a higher inclusion rate would discourage business investment.
“Capital gains are taxed at a different rate because they are taxes on investment,” he wrote. “Every investment comes with risk … [t]he tax code takes this into account.”
But other figures in the investment community have come forward to say the backlash is confused and unwarranted.
There does not seem to be a clear consensus on the economic impact of changes to the capital gains tax. In a paper published last year, the economist Jonathan Rhys Kesselman wrote that “the overall impact of existing and increased capital gains taxes on the economy’s efficiency and growth are mixed and not easily quantified.”
“When the gains inclusion rate was raised to 75 per cent in 1990 for nearly a decade, adverse economic impacts were not observed, though this is at best weak evidence,” Kesselman wrote. “Contrary to common claims about higher taxes on gains, some impacts would be economically favourable, and others that might be adverse could be mitigated through appropriate concomitant reforms.”
All in a Day13:14Three tech entrepreneurs break down impact of federal budget on their sector
Ottawa tech pros want the federal government to reconsider capital gains changes that, they say, can scare investors and jeopardise business.
It might be fair to assume the change will have some downside. But every policy choice involves a trade-off.
In an email this week, University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe — who argues it makes sense to hike taxes on capital gains — wrote that while it would not be controversial to suggest the capital gains changes will have some kind of negative effect, “all policy choices come with costs and benefits, so we also have to then compare the costs to the benefits of the government’s spending choices.”
What the Liberals might have learned from 2017
Compared to the tax fight of 2017 — when the Liberals sought to change the rules on private incorporation — the government has been far more explicit and purposeful this time about connecting the tax changes to new spending proposals, particularly those related to ensuring that younger Canadians can find affordable places to live.
“I understand for some people this might cost more if they sell a cottage or a secondary residence, but young people can’t buy their primary residences yet,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday.
In total, the changes are projected to produce $19.4 billion in additional revenue for the federal government over five years. In her budget speech, Freeland connected asking wealthy Canadians to pay more with federal programs to provide dental care, school lunches and free contraception.
The goal of reducing income inequality might be worthy in and of itself, but it’s more abstract than the tangible things the Liberals are pointing to now.
An internal review conducted by the Finance Department after the tax storm of 2017 concluded that the government had been slow to respond to concerns and criticism and that there was a “need to more rapidly adjust communications strategies and messaging to effectively address misconceptions.” Scott Clark, a former senior finance official, observed at the time that there were no “winners” — people who would benefit from the changes — to whom the federal government could point.
The early returns might suggest the government learned some things from the 2017 experience. For one thing, Freeland openly acknowledged from the outset that some people were likely going to be upset.
But if 2017 is any guide, the opposition is unlikely to pass quickly or quietly.
When Shannon Waters first joined the press gallery at the B.C. legislature, the decision on whether or not to continue the Site C dam project was looming large. Shannon was there as a reporter for BC Today, a daily political newsletter, and she remembers being blown away by long-time Narwhal reporter Sarah Cox’s work.
“Her ability to look at these huge complex reports, which, at the time, I mostly just felt like I was drowning in, and cut through that to tell stories about what was really going on was impressive,” Shannon says. “That was my initial intro and I have been following The Narwhal ever since!”
Fast forward more than six years later, Shannon joins The Narwhal as our first-ever B.C. politics and environment reporter. And get this, Sarah will be her editor in the new gig.
“After years of admiring their work, I’m excited to work with Sarah and the whole Narwhal team,” Shannon says.
I sat down with Shannon to get to know her better and hear more about what brought her The Narwhal’s growing pod.
What’s your favourite animal?
That’s easy, it’s an octopus. I have one tattooed on my arm. I just think it’s really neat that we have a creature on this planet as intelligent as an octopus. It’s the closest thing to alien life that we’ve ever come across but it’s right here on the planet with us. And I think that’s very cool.
What is the thing about journalism that gets you excited to start your work day?
I get excited about working as a journalist because every day is a bit different. I like having the opportunity to learn new things on a regular basis, partly because I get bored really easily.
My favorite thing about being a reporter is you never really know exactly how your day is gonna go and you’re always getting to talk to interesting people. As a bonus, I also really like to write, and I always have.
Your first job was at a radio station in Prince George, B.C. How did this early experience shape you?
I think it really honed my sense of journalism being part of the community and a community service. We covered all kinds of things. I was on the school board beat when I first got there and then I was covering city hall a little later on. I did a weekend shift. I covered crime stories.
Sometimes you’d start out the day covering one story and then by the end of the day, you’d be doing something else. I was also in Prince George in 2017, for the wildfires, and the city became a hub for people who were displaced from all across B.C. That was a really intense, eye-opening experience about what communities can do for people when they are put to the test. So again, learning things, and that variety and getting to write about them for a living.
You’re a self-described political nerd. Where does that come from?
I’m fascinated by politics because it touches every aspect of our lives, and there’s not really any way to get away from it. I consider myself a bit cynical about our political systems but even if you don’t like them, or don’t believe in them, or don’t want anything to do with them, you can’t really get away from politics. I find it fascinating to look at what is going on in the political sphere, what kind of policies are popular at the moment? Which ones are being rejected? How is that conversation going? How did it get started? Where might it go? And politics is also about people.
I like being someone who can hopefully try and help people understand why politics matters, what they can do to try and affect the change that they might want to see and how the politics in their area or the policies being enacted by politicians affects them and the people around them. It’s not something that everybody finds fascinating. A lot of people’s eyes glaze over when you tell them you’re a political or a legislative reporter. But I really enjoy the work. And it’s one of those things that feels like, well, somebody should be doing it. And so for now, at least, that somebody can be me.
It’s an election year in B.C. What are you most excited about?
I’m looking forward to seeing what happens. We’re really in a very interesting space in B.C. right now. If you were talking to me a year ago about the election, I would probably have sounded a bit more bored, because it seemed like much more of a foregone conclusion — you know, the NDP were going to likely win a majority and we’d have sort of more of the same. But now you have this really interesting churn in the political landscape with the emergence of the B.C. Conservatives as a real contender of a party according to the polling that we’ve been seeing. Meanwhile B.C. United, which is the very well-established B.C. Liberal party renamed, has sort of had the wheels come off.
So, I’m really interested to see what happens on the campaign trail as you have these parties trying to court voters, what sort of ideas they’re going to put forward. I’m also really curious what it means for the Green Party. B.C. hasn’t had a lot of elections where we’ve had so many parties competing for seats in the legislature and I think that’s going to make for a very interesting and probably quite dramatic campaign.
What kind of stories do you hope to tell more of?
I am excited about getting more in depth. I’ve been doing daily news for about seven years now, including covering elections. I have really enjoyed doing that and I feel like when you’re a daily news reporter you also have all these thoughts about potential stories that need a closer look or more time to percolate. So I’m really looking forward to looking at the news landscape and seeing what’s missing. With the election, I’m also excited to look back and think: what was the government saying about this particular policy in the last election? What have they done on it during the interim? And what are they saying now?
I think one of the biggest things I learned as BC Today’s reporter and later Politics Today’s editor-in-chief is finding the stories in the minutia and the nuts and bolts of what goes on in the legislature. There’s a list that has been building in my head for a long time of all of these stories that I’ve wanted to take a closer look at over the years and I’m excited to get started.
What are three things people might not know about you?
I could eat peanut butter toast and drink coffee every day of my life and die happy. Growing up I wanted to be a marine biologist and study either sharks or cephalopods. I am the biggest word nerd, which can be a good thing for someone who writes for a living, but is sometimes a struggle. I am still striving to use the word “absquatulate” in a story someday!
Politics
Trudeau questions Poilievre's judgment, says the Conservative Leader 'will do anything to win' – The Globe and Mail
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is flanked by Minister of Housing Sean Fraser, right, and Treasury Board President Anita Anand, left, during a press conference in Oakville, Ont., on April 24.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau criticized Pierre Poilievre over his judgment, a day after the Conservative Leader visited a protest against carbon pricing that featured a “Make Canada Great Again” slogan and a symbol that appeared to be tied to a far-right, anti-government group.
Mr. Trudeau accused Mr. Poilievre of exacerbating divisions and welcoming the “support of conspiracy theorists and extremists.”
“Every politician has to make choices about what kind of leader they want to be,” the Prime Minister said at a press conference Wednesday in Oakville, Ont.
“He will do anything to win, anything to torque up negativity and fear and it only emphasizes that he has nothing to say to actually solve the problems that he’s busy amplifying.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Poilievre stopped at a protest against carbon pricing near the New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border while on his way from PEI to Nova Scotia. Video of the protest shows an expletive-laden flag directed at Mr. Trudeau that was a symbol of the anti-vaccine-mandate protests that gripped Ottawa two years ago, as well as an anti-carbon-tax sign and a van with the slogan “Make Canada Great Again” written on it.
“We saw you so I told the team to pull over and say ‘hello,’” Mr. Poilievre said to the protesters in one of the videos posted online. He thanked them for “all you’re doing.”
“We’re going to axe the tax and its going to be in part because you guys fought back,” Mr. Poilievre said in the videos. “Everyone hates the tax because everyone’s been screwed over. People believed his lies. Everything he said was bullshit, from top to bottom.”
When asked to take a picture in front of the flag with the expletive, Mr. Poilievre responded: “Let’s do it in front of something else.”
One of the vans at the protests has what appeared to be a symbol of the anti-government, far-right group called Diagolon. Mr. Trudeau tried on Wednesday to tie that to Mr. Poilievre. The Conservative Leader has previously disavowed the group.
In a statement Wednesday through his lawyer, the group’s leader, Jeremy MacKenzie, said he was Mr. Poilievre’s biggest detractor in Canada. He also criticized Mr. Trudeau, saying “both of these weak men are completely out of touch with reality and incapable of telling the truth.”
Mr. Poilievre’s office defended the Conservative Leader’s visit to the protest in a statement on Wednesday.
“As a vocal opponent of Justin Trudeau’s punishing carbon tax which has driven up the cost of groceries, gas and heating, he made a brief, impromptu stop,” spokesperson Sebastian Skamski said.
“If Justin Trudeau is concerned about extremism, he should look at parades on Canadian streets openly celebrating Hamas’ slaughter of Jews on October 7th.”
During his press conference, Mr. Trudeau also pointed out that Mr. Poilievre has done nothing to reject the endorsement of right-wing commentator Alex Jones earlier this month. Mr. Jones, on X, called Mr. Poilievre “the real deal” and said “Canada desperately needs a lot more leaders like him and so does the rest of the world.”
Mr. Jones was ordered to pay nearly $1-billion in damages to the families of the victims of the deadly 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, which he portrayed as a hoax.
“This is the kind of man who’s saying Pierre Poilievre has the right ideas to bring the country toward the right, towards conspiracy theories, towards extremism, towards polarization,” Mr. Trudeau said.
In response to the Prime Minister’s remarks, Mr. Skamski said “we do not follow” Mr. Jones “or listen to what he has to say.”
“Common-sense Conservatives are listening to the priorities of the millions of Canadians that want to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime,” he added.
“It is the endorsement of hard-working, everyday Canadians that Conservatives are working to earn. Unlike Justin Trudeau, we’re not paying attention to what some American is saying.”
With a report from The Canadian Press.
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