Pat Simmonds

Albertans deserve to know exactly what some of the leading voices behind separation are advocating: mandatory military service, citizenship based on birthplace, and a vision of society that belongs in the past. At a time when Calgary is attracting talent, investment, and opportunity from across Canada and around the world, the provincial referendum decision is giving oxygen to a movement that creates uncertainty, division, and risk. Our city needs more homes, more jobs, more infrastructure, and stronger ties with the rest of Canada and the world. Instead, we're being dragged into a debate that threatens investment, undermines confidence, and distracts from the real challenges facing Albertans. Calgary's future is as a growing, confident Canadian city. We must be focused on building that future, not legitimizing a movement that puts it at risk.

One thing that I didn't really touch on when I was describing the Putsch campaign was this: Lead. (and its effects on Gen X and the Boomers). Remember how I said that 50% of voters are age 50 or older? Well, when the staff were campaigning, we noticed a lot of emails from people aged 45-65, as well as in person interactions that came across as - intellectually disabled -incoherent (unable to string thoughts into a cohesive ideology) - drawing false equivalences / false pattern recognition / false associations - borderline schizophrenic behavior toward institutions These people were aggressive, and seemingly incompetent... lots of them. We were trying to understand if a large portion of our voting base were "cooked by media" as some of the zoomers put it, or if there was actually something else going on. We saw it in varying degrees from almost every Gen X / Generation Jones (late boomer). Some were atrocious: you couldn't explain simple topics to them, they couldn't follow basic reasoning, they couldn't focus on a conversation without interjecting with unrelated conspiracy nonsense (i.e. trying to explain data center zoning problems and they jump in with "it's all moloch" stuff). Explaining policy to about 1/3rd of our prospective voters seemed borderline impossible because they simply couldn't comprehend how systems function. Others weren't as bad, they were struggling to keep up with zoomers, but they were generally agreeable and open to policy ideas. And it showed up in our candidate. Our candidate seemed to display some form of impairment, which we couldn't clearly characterize, but although this impairment was offputting to Gen Z and millenials, the Gen X and Gen Jones people ATE IT UP. So, after I withdrew my support for the campaign, I regrouped with friends in Colorado and tried to understand "why". Our digging points to generational lead poisoning, on par with the third world, which also correlates to immigrants of the third world being seemingly insane (for reasons beyond busted cultures). It appears that a large portion of the voting base for the next 10-15 years will be severely intellectually deficient, with major personality disorders widespread in the voting population... people who think they are voting for "what's right" but because of lead toxicity, don't have the pathways needed to systematically approach problems- and as we replace existing Americans as part of the great replacement, we will see serious cognitive decline in younger voting bases, perpetuating the problem. You can draw this out to engineering and national advancement as well. Ever wonder why there's an advancement gap in most fields of engineering from 1995-2015? Look at the chart. Young engineers and retired boomers alike can point to a competency gap in Gen X, early millenial, and Gen Jones. This is when educational systems took their nose dive, when colleges grade-inflated to a point of absurdity, and when engineering progress slowed down. This isn't a problem with every single individual (in fact, at the micro scale, a lot gen X engineers are highly competent), it's at the macro scale, meaning that fewer individuals are *capable* of doing the work. This is applicable in current, elected politics. Looks at your party chairs and elected officials in this age range. Identify their competency. Gen Z staffers are quick to point out that these people have "brain rot" based on "closed door" performance. I also wonder if this contributed to the earlier boomers never really handing off society to Gen X. If 3.5 micrograms is damaging, we're looking at a generation with near 100% damage rate to some extent, a large portion of the population seriously damaged, and immigrants almost entirely severely damaged. This is going to be a major challenge for the United States, and we should start working on mitigation immediately. We need to adjust strategy and work to convince the damaged groups to support competency.

A bread deliveryman with bags filled with baguettes on a snowy street in Quebec in 1977. Photography by Alain le Garsmeur.

BREAKING: Nate Erskine-Smith is preparing to challenge his loss of the Ontario Liberal nomination in Scarborough Southwest — PoliCorner