allabootmatt
Senior Member
I have a feeling something's fishy here.
Nobody is less informed than Rob Ford himself. One just needs to listen to him speak on any subject to see how stunningly dumb he is on the subject he is speaking about. Being uninformed is the hallmark of Rob Ford, so why would a Ford supporter be any different?
So please point that finger somewhere else when blaming someone for the lack of informed debate.
How this city can continue to support him is not only incredibly frustrating but one of the saddest realizations I've had as a Torontonian: the city I love is populated by people either too naïve or too self centred to allow it to grow into the great city I've always hoped and believed it would become. If Ford is re-elected, I'll wish Toronto no harm, but I won't be a part of this. The world is a big place.
I don't want Canada to become like the US.
Speaking of the Taxpayer Coalition to jerry-rig the system, I suppose that if it actually went through (as Ford has proven that anything is possible), it could be defeated by a counter petition arguing aganst it.
Agreed, but so what? Most Canadians are uninformed. Most Canadians care more about Honey Boo Boo or the hockey score than the relative merits of LRT vs subway. Even your average well-intentioned, hard working/tax paying, educated Joe-hoser is likely only skimming the media surface for political insight. These are the times we live in, and they favour Rob Ford's brand of empty sloganeering, which is proving unbelievably effective. In this sense bashing Ford supporters only widens the chasm between the uninformed (yet politically powerful) masses and the informed minority, strengthening Rob Ford's position... and isn't this exactly what we've been witnessing with Rob Ford's popularity growing in the face of the Toronto Star's dogged onslaught against him?
It may be to late already, Harper is a Republican, in fact, most of the Conservative party are republicans.
I wonder how much money the Fords threw at them to become an entity, and coincidentally in 2010.
So apparently Massoudi is accompanying robbie on his family vacation? That seems normal.
This and every other poorly defined government (see amalgamation), I'm afraid.
Thing is, progressive people in Toronto and the GTA were wilfully blind to the damage that advocating for tolerance of everything and everyone would do to this town.
When I first moved here I was shocked at the amount of religious and pseudo-religious (see conservative policies) nonsense thrown around - especially by ethnic suburbanites and uneducated white folk. But what shocked me the most was that progressive people were thoroughly accepting of their behaviour!
There have been decades of tolerance to absurd illogical worldviews here, and now that those people have got hold of power you are going to have a very hard time convincing them that some opinions are more valuable than others because they are better informed.
Personally I would rather move to the developing world than be stuck in a place like Brampton/Markham/most of Etobicoke where I have to put up with the barbaric views of a bunch of people I am not allowed to criticise.
A huge part of the problem is how complacent the media is in this town (with the exception of the newspapers [not the Sun]). The TV and radio news networks will report practically anything Ford says as an unchallenged fact. An example is how the media loves to play soundbites of Ford raving about how he's saved Toronto billions of dollars. After they play the soundbite, do they challenge the mayor at all and point out how that couldn't be further from the truth? Of course they don't. They move on to the next story. Now to the average Joe, who just came home from a long day of work and is watching the news, Ford saving Toronto billions of dollars is an undeniable fact. And I can't blame an average guy for coming to that conclusion. We can't expect everyone to go online to search the details of the municipal budget to see that Ford is completely lying when he says he's saved us billions of dollars. That's the responsibility of the news media, and it's something that they've completely failed at.
Yes, but they're at least not as extreme as the Tea Party. At least Harper is willing to compromise on some issues. Ford and his style of politics is all about pettiness and bunkering down, even when faced with the facts- to them, everyone else is wrong. Moreso, we're already seeing the pendulum beginning to swing back as people are increasingly tired of the Conservative's mismanagement. I doubt that we'll see another Conservative majority in the next election.
The man is like a god. I've seen people faces turn red with anger if you dare to say anything unflattering about Ford. It's bizarre.
A huge part of the problem is how complacent the media is in this town (with the exception of the newspapers [not the Sun]). The TV and radio news networks will report practically anything Ford says as an unchallenged fact. An example is how the media loves to play soundbites of Ford raving about how he's saved Toronto billions of dollars. After they play the soundbite, do they challenge the mayor at all and point out how that couldn't be further from the truth? Of course they don't. They move on to the next story. Now to the average Joe, who just came home from a long day of work and is watching the news, Ford saving Toronto billions of dollars is an undeniable fact. And I can't blame an average guy for coming to that conclusion. We can't expect everyone to go online to search the details of the municipal budget to see that Ford is completely lying when he says he's saved us billions of dollars. That's the responsibility of the news media, and it's something that they've completely failed at.
Literally at this point, anything that Ford says has been printed out in mainstream media loud and clear, with the truth quietly stated in the actual article. It's literally that people see what Ford says first, and the truth afterwards. And we know that this doesn't work, as CowboyLogic pointed out that people don't have the time/are mostly too lazy to go over the news. To change people's minds these days, you will literally need to state the truth right beside Ford's statements, simply and loudly (KISS). And the main area to battle him on is in finance and budgets, not Pride or bike lanes- you need to think like Ford's voters in order to change their minds. Defeating Ford is going to be a hard task if people don't step up to the plate, or simply give up and go elsewhere.