Ohhhhh, yeah this reply was super helpful, thank you! The groundwork was all there in the initial post but the modern implications of this history just weren't crossing the perspective barrier.
So let me see if I've got this right, and please feel free to poke holes in this where I'm making leaps or if I've misread you.
The connection to the English Civil War helped ground the history for me. That's something I've got at least some grounding in and it helps me understand the system Canada's minority coalitions would have been dealing with. If they had a pseudo aristocracy that a) was designed to be internally balanced, b) had recent ideological reasons to maintain that balance and not go full tyranny, c) was afraid of both external invasion and internal populist unrest, I can see why such an anti-democratic system would have so vigorously defended minority rights to secure allies. And it makes sense why that would have fallen apart so drastically with the shift towards democracy: If minority rights weren't just being preserved against the grain of common opinion, but in part to counter the then-successful populist sentiments, and the last time a minority group seized the levers of power was freaking *Puritan control of England under Cromwell*...
It is unfortunately all too easy to picture resentment towards the privileged and difficult to assail ruling class being directed towards their vulnerable allies who form their power base. Especially when there's money and land and easy victims to be had by doing so. And it's easy to see how even as minority coalitions eventually recovered enough to have political lobbying power again, individual preferential treatment of specific coalitions would remain a toxic premise for everyone. Either as "the thing we righteously struck back against in the formation of our nation" or "the circumstances which drowned us in a hateful popular backlash and killed our struggle for equality for a century".
As for the modern side of things.
I'd been viewing the coalition building endemic to Kennet and Other cooperation as progressive coalition infighting. Basically, an unfortunate negative aspect of progressive politics which simply has to be salved, no two ways about it. If you've got an underlying coalition premise of respecting difference and hearing disagreement, made up of a bunch of groups with life-or-death needs that don't necessarily overlap (or even actively conflict), intense non-mainstream ideologies, and those groups have a habit habit of fighting over scarce crumbs, well. You're just going to have to infighting and have to deal with it. It's a problem which must be overcome.
But I'd been missing this part of Canadian politics where resolving infighting between minority coalitions is like a pulling-the-sword-from-the-stone thing. The whole deal with a Sikh cabinet member really made it click. I've been following Canadian politics from a distance for a while now so I knew that was a thing, but I just put that in my US framework: 'Huh. Canadian Sikhs must have a powerful lobby.' But no it's part of a symbol. To rule without it would be like ... well, kind of like ruling without a secular version of the mandate of heaven? Is that right? They're not just a leader who doesn't have the Sikh lobby, they're a leader who can't even do the basic function of politics well enough to reach a working detente with them. i.e. No leader at all.
So when the trio coalition build, it's not just the frustrating but necessary work of progressive politics leadership. It's *the capacity to be a political leader at all*. Of any stripe! They're pulling the sword from the stone. But as you said, in a very mundane way which is much more normative in a Canadian context versus how radical it is in an American one.
And I can even see how Musser mostly cleared this bar at the beginning of his campaign with all the families he brought together, but then trespassed into the forbidden realm of playing favorites and forming special interest power bases. He's making a big show of how he's going to pull the sword from the stone, but then fails to deliver at the end. And it's alienating key coalition members (specifically Durocher, who is the ur-example of an easy to please neutral player ones just needs to not personally offend) that dooms him.
Is that all about right? I really hope I'm parsing what you're saying correctly because I *feel* like I understand parts of Pale better now.
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Re: Thanks and Questions
Date: 2024-10-05 05:15 am (UTC)So let me see if I've got this right, and please feel free to poke holes in this where I'm making leaps or if I've misread you.
The connection to the English Civil War helped ground the history for me. That's something I've got at least some grounding in and it helps me understand the system Canada's minority coalitions would have been dealing with. If they had a pseudo aristocracy that a) was designed to be internally balanced, b) had recent ideological reasons to maintain that balance and not go full tyranny, c) was afraid of both external invasion and internal populist unrest, I can see why such an anti-democratic system would have so vigorously defended minority rights to secure allies. And it makes sense why that would have fallen apart so drastically with the shift towards democracy: If minority rights weren't just being preserved against the grain of common opinion, but in part to counter the then-successful populist sentiments, and the last time a minority group seized the levers of power was freaking *Puritan control of England under Cromwell*...
It is unfortunately all too easy to picture resentment towards the privileged and difficult to assail ruling class being directed towards their vulnerable allies who form their power base. Especially when there's money and land and easy victims to be had by doing so. And it's easy to see how even as minority coalitions eventually recovered enough to have political lobbying power again, individual preferential treatment of specific coalitions would remain a toxic premise for everyone. Either as "the thing we righteously struck back against in the formation of our nation" or "the circumstances which drowned us in a hateful popular backlash and killed our struggle for equality for a century".
As for the modern side of things.
I'd been viewing the coalition building endemic to Kennet and Other cooperation as progressive coalition infighting. Basically, an unfortunate negative aspect of progressive politics which simply has to be salved, no two ways about it. If you've got an underlying coalition premise of respecting difference and hearing disagreement, made up of a bunch of groups with life-or-death needs that don't necessarily overlap (or even actively conflict), intense non-mainstream ideologies, and those groups have a habit habit of fighting over scarce crumbs, well. You're just going to have to infighting and have to deal with it. It's a problem which must be overcome.
But I'd been missing this part of Canadian politics where resolving infighting between minority coalitions is like a pulling-the-sword-from-the-stone thing. The whole deal with a Sikh cabinet member really made it click. I've been following Canadian politics from a distance for a while now so I knew that was a thing, but I just put that in my US framework: 'Huh. Canadian Sikhs must have a powerful lobby.' But no it's part of a symbol. To rule without it would be like ... well, kind of like ruling without a secular version of the mandate of heaven? Is that right? They're not just a leader who doesn't have the Sikh lobby, they're a leader who can't even do the basic function of politics well enough to reach a working detente with them. i.e. No leader at all.
So when the trio coalition build, it's not just the frustrating but necessary work of progressive politics leadership. It's *the capacity to be a political leader at all*. Of any stripe! They're pulling the sword from the stone. But as you said, in a very mundane way which is much more normative in a Canadian context versus how radical it is in an American one.
And I can even see how Musser mostly cleared this bar at the beginning of his campaign with all the families he brought together, but then trespassed into the forbidden realm of playing favorites and forming special interest power bases. He's making a big show of how he's going to pull the sword from the stone, but then fails to deliver at the end. And it's alienating key coalition members (specifically Durocher, who is the ur-example of an easy to please neutral player ones just needs to not personally offend) that dooms him.
Is that all about right? I really hope I'm parsing what you're saying correctly because I *feel* like I understand parts of Pale better now.