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blueheronteanookTitle: Statism, Canadian Political Culture, and Pale
Rating: Everyone
Major Warnings: None (Minor references to racism)
Genre: Meta post
Summary: Pale is in dialogue with Canadian political culture, which is, as in all countries, unique. This post goes into a few tendencies in Canadian society regarding how the state is viewed and how Pale approaches these topics.
Before I make this case, I think it's best to clarify how I came to believe the things I'm going to say about Canada's political culture. I am a historian specializing in the history of 19th century Ontario. Most of what I am going to say about the nature and origins of Canada's political culture are my own thoughts, but have been influenced by reading a large variety of works on the history of that time period. I doubt I remember everything that has inspired me, but the following works were on my desk when I wrote what would eventually become this post:
------
One of the common criticisms I saw people make of Pale towards the end was that the trio was "selling out". That is to say, the trio shifted from being almost purely confrontational towards establishment practitioners to being willing to make some concessions, provided they were essentially willing to participate in joint rule of Ontario via the alliance network, the Sword Moot, etc.
Anyways, this gives me a good excuse to talk about something near and dear to me, the authoritarian or more accurately statist tradition in Canadian culture! For those not in the know, Canada is not America. The fact that most of us speak the same language, dress the same and eat similar foods makes it difficult for people to grok this, but Canada's political history has been wildly different than America, and as a result we've developed different prevailing cultural sentiments surrounding politics. Pale is a very political work, and Wildbow is a very Canadian boar. This makes it worth exploring the ways in which Canada's political tradition is distinct, because the authors intentions and the audiences reaction to various things will not always line up.
Canada is, I would argue, a very conservative state. This is confusing to many people, because "conservative" and "right wing" are different things in polisci. English speaking Canada's population was largely created by a process of immigrants self-sorting based on their politics. Essentially, if someone was a big fan of radical, revolutionary politics (in the 1800s, that's what American democracy was) and they'd moved to Canada, they usually moved south. If someone in the States was disgruntled with laze-faire capitalism, political instability or a degree of partistanship America is only just now rediscovering (Americans often overstate how divisive their politics are today compared to what they were in the 1800s, when y'all killed each other over them alarming frequently) they typically moved from America to Canada. This shaped both cultures, but for the sake of this thread, the important thing was that Canadians became biased towards statism - the tendency to downplay problems the state creates while viewing state action as the ideal solution for a wide variety of social problems.
An important cultural division between Anglo-Canadians and Americans is how they conceive rights and liberties. Americans typically view these things as just existing, as if by natural law, and the primary threat to these coming from politicians or state institutions. Canadians though tend to view it the other way around. Canadians tend to view rights and liberties as being created by their governing institutions, and often imagine the threat to their rights and liberties as coming from other members of the public. This is reflected in the structures Canada has erected to protect Canadians rights. In modern Canada, we have these very powerful human rights tribunals who can intervene if your rights are infringed by a member of the public. But we have very poor defenses against the government infringing your rights. Our equivalent of the American bill of rights (the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) contains two ways to let the government off the hook if it violates your rights. The first is a legal test to see if the violation should be exempted, and a good part of that test is subjective, so it depends on the judge. The other mechanism is called the Notwithstanding Clause and it lets the government just violate the Charter if they say they want to. You might point out that these tools give the government immense power to stop Canadians from denying other Canadians their rights while giving Canadians few ways to protect themselves from government infringement of said rights - and I agree, that's a big problem. Despite how we may feel about it though, these structures were created by Canadians and accepted by the Canadian public and are a product of longstanding attitudes.
There are historical reasons for how we got here. The Canadian state is not the product of a successful liberal revolution. Canadian society was consciously designed by an unaccountable elite (often not even physically present in the country) and imposed through leveraging fears of absorption into the United States. Canada did not abolish slavery; the British-appointed elite abolished slavery regardless of the wishes of Canadians (it's a dirty secret that our pseudo-democratic institutions of the time voted to keep it). In the early history of the Canadian system, marginalized peoples primary fear was that Canada would become a democracy. This is because they accurately gauged that the average Canadian was just as much of a quasi-genocidal white supremacist as the average American was in the 1800s, and given the chance would vote accordingly. For much of Canada's early history, the route through which people could ensure their rights were protected was through political patronage.
This is to say, protestors storming legislatures did not give Canadians rights. The way Canadians acquired and kept their rights in the early 1800s was through establishing a relationship with a powerful government elite, and having said elite use their control of governing institutions in their favor. The use of these fundamentally authoritarian networks of privilege was how racialized Canadians or religious minorities protected themselves from a hostile public, and Canada's democratization and slow decolonization in the late 1800s/early 1900s actually proved disastrous for Canada's minorities. The more power was taken out of the hands of the British and their local elite supporters, the more power was wielded by the Canadian public - the majority of which were pretty darn intolerant and unafraid to use their majority against their neighbours. Over the course of the 1800s, First Nations and Black Canadians went from being vital participants in securing the state (with all the political connections to the ruling class that came with it) to increasingly victims of, rather than drivers of, national politics. This vindicates these communities great efforts to keep American-style democracy from taking root in the province in the conflicts of 1812 and 1837 - precisely what they feared about democracy came to pass.
So, how does this relate to Pale? The trio joining or creating what passes for government in Pale is not, in the context of Canadian political culture, a way to show they're losing touch with marginalized people and joining the club of tyrants. Instead, it's probably intended to be understood as the replacement of bad elites with good elites.
The threat to Others, women, children, or any other vulnerable group in Pale does not come from 'above' - although the threat that the Bad Men might become the governing institution is frequently raised. Instead it comes from what is often presented as the dominant grouping of the public. The "practitioner establishment" is, in terms of how many named characters we got and the way the plot handles them, depicted as the majority in Pale's magical community. They could be interpreted (and I think should be) as the populist threat against minority populations, the solution to which is the empowerment of Good Elites (the trio) through governing institutions (the Sword Moot and Kennet's sphere of influence). The problem is practitioner bigotry, but also their freedom to act as they see fit; the solution is an alliance of right-thinking council based governments, the establishment of a Sword Moot to serve as regional legislature, and replacement of unacceptable elites such as the Alabaster with hand-picked, morally acceptable replacements. Peace, order and good government follow.
The tl;dr is I don't think the trio adopting the trappings of government means they are intended to be portrayed as less progressive or less good for their society. Pale is participating in a long Canadian political tradition; it is proposing that the solution to our social problems is more enlightened and more active government. A better conversation to have might be, are the trio and their successors (because inevitably, different people will be picking up the reins of these institutions in the future) adequately constrained in their action? What is there to stop a future practitioner leader from using these structures against the vulnerable? Canadians, as they come to reckon with the realities of what unaccountable government action has done to the marginalized, are increasingly asking these questions about our society.
This post was largely compiled from discussions had on the Tea Nook's Discord; if anyone would like to discuss these things will me in real time, you can find me there.
Rating: Everyone
Major Warnings: None (Minor references to racism)
Genre: Meta post
Summary: Pale is in dialogue with Canadian political culture, which is, as in all countries, unique. This post goes into a few tendencies in Canadian society regarding how the state is viewed and how Pale approaches these topics.
Before I make this case, I think it's best to clarify how I came to believe the things I'm going to say about Canada's political culture. I am a historian specializing in the history of 19th century Ontario. Most of what I am going to say about the nature and origins of Canada's political culture are my own thoughts, but have been influenced by reading a large variety of works on the history of that time period. I doubt I remember everything that has inspired me, but the following works were on my desk when I wrote what would eventually become this post:
- The Civil War of 1812 by Alan Taylor
- Dixie and the Dominion by Adam Mayers
- The Journey from Tollgate to Parkway by Adrienne Shadd
- The Life and Times of WM. Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion of 1837-38 by Charles Lindsey
- A Mohawk Memoir from the War of 1812 by John Norton (Teyoninhokarawen)
- Rebellion: The Rising in French Canada 1837 by Joseph Schull
- Revolutions Across Borders: Jacksonian America and the Canadian Rebellion by Maxime Dagenais and Julien Mauduit
------
One of the common criticisms I saw people make of Pale towards the end was that the trio was "selling out". That is to say, the trio shifted from being almost purely confrontational towards establishment practitioners to being willing to make some concessions, provided they were essentially willing to participate in joint rule of Ontario via the alliance network, the Sword Moot, etc.
Anyways, this gives me a good excuse to talk about something near and dear to me, the authoritarian or more accurately statist tradition in Canadian culture! For those not in the know, Canada is not America. The fact that most of us speak the same language, dress the same and eat similar foods makes it difficult for people to grok this, but Canada's political history has been wildly different than America, and as a result we've developed different prevailing cultural sentiments surrounding politics. Pale is a very political work, and Wildbow is a very Canadian boar. This makes it worth exploring the ways in which Canada's political tradition is distinct, because the authors intentions and the audiences reaction to various things will not always line up.
Canada is, I would argue, a very conservative state. This is confusing to many people, because "conservative" and "right wing" are different things in polisci. English speaking Canada's population was largely created by a process of immigrants self-sorting based on their politics. Essentially, if someone was a big fan of radical, revolutionary politics (in the 1800s, that's what American democracy was) and they'd moved to Canada, they usually moved south. If someone in the States was disgruntled with laze-faire capitalism, political instability or a degree of partistanship America is only just now rediscovering (Americans often overstate how divisive their politics are today compared to what they were in the 1800s, when y'all killed each other over them alarming frequently) they typically moved from America to Canada. This shaped both cultures, but for the sake of this thread, the important thing was that Canadians became biased towards statism - the tendency to downplay problems the state creates while viewing state action as the ideal solution for a wide variety of social problems.
An important cultural division between Anglo-Canadians and Americans is how they conceive rights and liberties. Americans typically view these things as just existing, as if by natural law, and the primary threat to these coming from politicians or state institutions. Canadians though tend to view it the other way around. Canadians tend to view rights and liberties as being created by their governing institutions, and often imagine the threat to their rights and liberties as coming from other members of the public. This is reflected in the structures Canada has erected to protect Canadians rights. In modern Canada, we have these very powerful human rights tribunals who can intervene if your rights are infringed by a member of the public. But we have very poor defenses against the government infringing your rights. Our equivalent of the American bill of rights (the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) contains two ways to let the government off the hook if it violates your rights. The first is a legal test to see if the violation should be exempted, and a good part of that test is subjective, so it depends on the judge. The other mechanism is called the Notwithstanding Clause and it lets the government just violate the Charter if they say they want to. You might point out that these tools give the government immense power to stop Canadians from denying other Canadians their rights while giving Canadians few ways to protect themselves from government infringement of said rights - and I agree, that's a big problem. Despite how we may feel about it though, these structures were created by Canadians and accepted by the Canadian public and are a product of longstanding attitudes.
There are historical reasons for how we got here. The Canadian state is not the product of a successful liberal revolution. Canadian society was consciously designed by an unaccountable elite (often not even physically present in the country) and imposed through leveraging fears of absorption into the United States. Canada did not abolish slavery; the British-appointed elite abolished slavery regardless of the wishes of Canadians (it's a dirty secret that our pseudo-democratic institutions of the time voted to keep it). In the early history of the Canadian system, marginalized peoples primary fear was that Canada would become a democracy. This is because they accurately gauged that the average Canadian was just as much of a quasi-genocidal white supremacist as the average American was in the 1800s, and given the chance would vote accordingly. For much of Canada's early history, the route through which people could ensure their rights were protected was through political patronage.
This is to say, protestors storming legislatures did not give Canadians rights. The way Canadians acquired and kept their rights in the early 1800s was through establishing a relationship with a powerful government elite, and having said elite use their control of governing institutions in their favor. The use of these fundamentally authoritarian networks of privilege was how racialized Canadians or religious minorities protected themselves from a hostile public, and Canada's democratization and slow decolonization in the late 1800s/early 1900s actually proved disastrous for Canada's minorities. The more power was taken out of the hands of the British and their local elite supporters, the more power was wielded by the Canadian public - the majority of which were pretty darn intolerant and unafraid to use their majority against their neighbours. Over the course of the 1800s, First Nations and Black Canadians went from being vital participants in securing the state (with all the political connections to the ruling class that came with it) to increasingly victims of, rather than drivers of, national politics. This vindicates these communities great efforts to keep American-style democracy from taking root in the province in the conflicts of 1812 and 1837 - precisely what they feared about democracy came to pass.
So, how does this relate to Pale? The trio joining or creating what passes for government in Pale is not, in the context of Canadian political culture, a way to show they're losing touch with marginalized people and joining the club of tyrants. Instead, it's probably intended to be understood as the replacement of bad elites with good elites.
The threat to Others, women, children, or any other vulnerable group in Pale does not come from 'above' - although the threat that the Bad Men might become the governing institution is frequently raised. Instead it comes from what is often presented as the dominant grouping of the public. The "practitioner establishment" is, in terms of how many named characters we got and the way the plot handles them, depicted as the majority in Pale's magical community. They could be interpreted (and I think should be) as the populist threat against minority populations, the solution to which is the empowerment of Good Elites (the trio) through governing institutions (the Sword Moot and Kennet's sphere of influence). The problem is practitioner bigotry, but also their freedom to act as they see fit; the solution is an alliance of right-thinking council based governments, the establishment of a Sword Moot to serve as regional legislature, and replacement of unacceptable elites such as the Alabaster with hand-picked, morally acceptable replacements. Peace, order and good government follow.
The tl;dr is I don't think the trio adopting the trappings of government means they are intended to be portrayed as less progressive or less good for their society. Pale is participating in a long Canadian political tradition; it is proposing that the solution to our social problems is more enlightened and more active government. A better conversation to have might be, are the trio and their successors (because inevitably, different people will be picking up the reins of these institutions in the future) adequately constrained in their action? What is there to stop a future practitioner leader from using these structures against the vulnerable? Canadians, as they come to reckon with the realities of what unaccountable government action has done to the marginalized, are increasingly asking these questions about our society.
This post was largely compiled from discussions had on the Tea Nook's Discord; if anyone would like to discuss these things will me in real time, you can find me there.
Thanks and Questions
Date: 2024-10-04 10:31 pm (UTC)This actually inspired some questions I was hoping you could answer, or point me in the right direction for learning more? (I'm ravenously curious about this stuff.) There is one thing which doesn't feel quite right to me though, but like ... I know I'm missing context, so I'd love to get your feedback on it because you clearly know a lot about this topic.
Questions first! You mentioned that Canadian minorities tended to secure rights via patronage with Canadian elites in the government whereas US minorities, when they did secure rights, did so with populist action in opposition to the government. However, neither government has ever been without government elites willing to make political deals. Do you have any thoughts on what therefore caused the absence of similar protective patronage in the US? Was the government comparatively weak/decentalized or more democratic from the get-go and therefore unable to provide it? Where US government officials simply more bigoted? Or was it that minority groups in the US were less organized and therefore less able to offer coherent behavior in exchange for patronage? (With enslaved Africans in particular, surely they would have had a difficult time unifying enough to offer something to political patrons?)
The thing I don't get:
More relevantly to Pale specifically, you call the trio (and associated Kennet Below warlords and influential council members as well I assume) political elites. That seems about right to be for their governance style, Kennet at the end of Pale is could really only be called a democracy in the aspirational sense.
But the Canadian government elites in the time period you're discussing presumably had external power bases and structures of support outside of their minority group political clients. This was a political elite whose authority and support were supplemented by minority political clients. They presumably *could* neglect minority needs and still remain in power (and did once they needed to cultivate popular support).
In the context of the Canadian government I can easily see the notional difference between "good elites" and "bad elites". The survival of a minority coalition in that environment has more to do with individual elite personality and private incentives of elites (which the minority coalitioncan influence) than structural incentives.
But Kennet isn't exactly advocating for the elevation of "good elites" within the broader Practioner community, its movement is rooted in secession and the installation of elites whose power is more closely tied to Others' as a population. There is no other population Kennet's elites could fall back on for a base of power and they are at least (for now) dependent on their approval to hold power.
From my American perspective, what I read this as was popular organizing. This was the minority group unifying under sometimes politically contentious compromise candidates for the sake of being able to punch the political system until it stopped trying to take their rights away (for now). I read this is very oppositional to the government, that rights come from organizing against the government rather than flowing from it.
But you've obviously got a rather different perspective on it, where the framing of Kennet's revolution is more about changing the character of the ruling elites to be more friendly to the minority groups. And I can see how that makes sense because they very much still are a system of political elites holding power and it's never been that much of a stretch for political elites to produce self reinforcing power structures which reduce their dependence on public approval.
So if I'm understanding this framework right, the fact that Kennet's elites depend on Other approval at all would be a function of them being "good" elites who aren't too power hungry. Charles obviously rooted his power base in similar secession and demographic concentration with radically different outcomes, which in this framework is because he was a "bad" elite. It's about elevating the right people from whom the protection of interests will flow.
And I realize I'm kind of rambling at this point, but my question is: Where do you see the breakdown between these perspectives? Why do you favor the perspective of Pale as being about the installation of good elites to a rights-giving government more than the popular organization of a demographic to make government endorsement of rights non-optional?
Because clearly there is a whole perspective on this I'm not familiar with. It simply hadn't occurred to me to see this as political patronage relationship with minority allied elites rather than an oppositional popular organizing movement, and there's obviously quite a bit of political history grounding the patronage perspective.
(Terribly sorry for the mess, I feel like I'm back in college and showing up a professor's office hours with the terrible sense that I'm not getting *something* in their lectures but don't even know how to phrase a proper question about it.)
Re: Thanks and Questions
From:Re: Thanks and Questions
From:Re: Thanks and Questions
From:Re: Thanks and Questions
From:Martial Law?
Date: 2024-10-29 04:28 pm (UTC)