I am sick of living in interesting times.
I cannot make any sense of a world where good people hurt so badly that they have to take their own lives, while horrible, nasty, evil people appear to thrive.
I am really sick of waking up to another day of learning about more atrocities going on around the world, with every day lived to the sound of the drip drip drip of bad and worse news.
My stomach hurts to see that the minds of basically decent people can be twisted and warped until they no longer see vulnerable innocents as needing protection, and instead decide that no punishment is too severe to unleash upon those whose crime is to seek sanctuary from the horrors of their own countries.
It nauseates me that, for all of my reading and study, it wasn’t until Trump got into office and began to abuse his power, that I realized how incredibly easy it is for the truly evil and motivated to take apart the ‘checks and balances’ of the democratic institutions and mechanisms that we thought impervious to treachery and treason.
I am exhausted by the slow and insidious normalizing of the abnormal. Every day, we can only helplessly watch the degradation of diplomacy and democracy going on in the United States. We are powerless to stop the domestic atrocities that, in the past, America would have been the first to condemn in other nations. Not any more. Now it is America that is the despot, sending children who have never known any other country than America back to Mexico to be murdered, and imprisoning children – babies! – in cages.
I am tired of explaining to people of low or limited knowledge that their selfish entitlements will ruin the country they claim to love. It turns out that there is a whole sub-species of the chronically self-seeking that live amongst us, and they cannot understand empathy, or even long-term logic.
I am disgusted at those voters who self-righteously voted for an incredibly flawed candidate without a coherent and fully costed platform, based primarily on a campaign built around Ford’s openly stated ‘feelings’ and unproven ‘beliefs’ rather than reality. He’s onside with racial profiling, will reject safe injection sites for addicts, has thrown in with anti-choice pro lifers, has floated the idea of forcing teenagers seeking abortion to get parental permission, and is against the sex education program that might actually prevent some of those teens from needing abortions.
Back in the day, as a Toronto city councillor, he claimed a home for autistic youths had ruined the community. He repeatedly denied and covered up the truth about his sadly and fatally addicted brother, leaving Toronto citizens at peril as Rob shambled mindlessly through his days as Mayor, and drunkenly tooled around the city in his minivan at night. And just a few days before the election, his sister-in-law filed a suit against him, claiming his abuse of the position of trustee in the administering of his brother’s will.
I’m only scratching the surface of Doug Ford’s ridiculously clear lack of ability and unworthiness to claim the Ontario premiership. It’s also beyond rational belief that Ontarian voters, having watched the last 500 days of madness in the U.S., would look at the horror being inflicted on it’s people and say, “mmm! I want me some of THAT!”
And yet 20% of Ontario did. And now 100% of Ontarians will suffer the consequences.
From songstress Arlene Bishop: ” Goodbye libraries, daycare, nurses, clean water, bicycle lanes, decent minimum wage, reproductive rights, arts funding, sex ed, civility, sanity, and decency. Welcome to Ford More Years of self serving circus bullshit with you wondering why everything costs more, everyone does less, everyone’s consumed with daily scandals, government halls are filled with crooks, lawsuits are being threatened, and everyone’s got a catchy disrespectful nickname. Well done, f*ckers. Collect your beer.”
I don’t want to hear the mealy mouthed explanations for WHY you chose Ford – I heard them during the whole election period. I heard you loud and clear when you spat out your condemnation of the last 15 years of a Liberal governance, and I noted every time you refused to listen to anything but the chatter that confirmed your prejudices and the lies that were repeated against other parties.
I don’t have to hear it, because I’ve been reading apologies and explanations for the last year and a half from Americans trying to absolve themselves of the guilt they now feel for having voted for Trump.
They still can’t quite grasp that their adored commander of cheese is in the process of ruining their lives thru a death by a thousand cuts, while he takes their country apart piece by piece, and feeds it to his rich cronies.
This is not a Randian world. Ayn Rand‘s theories, long debunked as useless and self-serving, appeal to the selfish teenager, flush with his/her own youth, energy and hubris. Eventually we all get old. Eventually we all will need help.
Ayn Rand herself lived off the public purse until she died. Sure, we think we can take on the whole world when we’re young; but it’s when we mature and realize how much more important it is to come together than to live apart that we realize the strength and power of societal groupings.
From Clive Veroni, author of SPIN: How Politics Has The Power To Turn Marketing On Its Head: ” To pretend that the election of Doug Ford to the position of premier is a good thing for the province, or even the party, is to degrade the political culture.
To cheer the elevation to high office of a man who is a vulgar bully; a man who has shown himself to be deeply ignorant of provincial politics; a man whose brief tour through city hall exposed him as both lazy and disruptive; a man whose views on race are at best tone deaf; a man whose stint as a teenage drug pusher betrays a dubious moral character; a man who stands accused of being an incompetent business manager and a deceitful steward of his family’s fortune; a man of such slender intellect that he can barely string together a coherent sentence, is to degrade the political culture.
And to degrade the political culture is to degrade the culture as a whole.”
Yeah, I’m sick of it all. And try as I might, I can’t seem to find the lifelong Pollyanna in my heart that kept on believing that good had to eventually triumph, and that, no matter how bad things got, we could still count on common sense and common decency.
I can’t believe that anymore.
I can’t stop thinking about this clip, from Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher. As much as I want to believe it’s all gonna work out, I have to finally admit that I can no longer continue to think so in good faith.
“This country is in quite a pickle. Conservatives govern without shame, and Liberals shame without governing. We (Liberals) have lost the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court, Kanye…
Our symbolic victories are the only victories we get. They get to cut their own taxes, rip up the safety net, and make coal a vegetable. We get to banish actors.
In ten years the Tea Party went from nothing to controlling Congress and the White House. We made Trip Advisor stop advertising on the Laura Ingraham show.
Liberals control the culture .. yes. But right now, wouldn’t you rather control the border?
During the Obama years, Republicans converted over a thousand seats at State and Local levels. While we were putting vaginas in formerly male movies, they were putting dicks in State houses.
The Republicans put nine new Senators in office in 2017… that was their victory; we took Al Franken out. They succeed in suppressing the minority vote in 34 states; Meryl Streep got off an epic burn at the Golden Globes.
Our current and possibly permanent president can appoint Scott Baio to the next Supreme Court vacancy. He can pardon himself .. and I wouldn’t put it past him to try and cancel the next election. “
The night before our election, I was chatting with some people who, while agreeing with me on whom we’d like to see chosen to lead, were concerned that the rabid Conservatives would push their boy Ford into power. I could only reply that I would not be surprised if that happened. I would be deeply disappointed by the short-sightedness of the electorate, but not at all surprised.
I wasn’t surprised at all.
As Canada slinks towards that moveable feast, the day when cannabis becomes legal and regulated, a couple of conference groups have seen the future – and it is pot friendly.
There’ve been slim pickings at a lot of the musical fests and conferences I’ve attended over the past few years, but the Lift Conference is filled with people brimming with excitement, knowledge, and faith in the future, and that makes their companies generous. Within a few minutes of arrival I was already struggling with a big bag of freebies, of everything from pot plant fertilizer to multiple cell phone accessories, to bottled water and water bottles, magazines, rolling papers, pens, candles, hats, t-shirts, and samples of non-infused goodies.
I discovered booth after booth, filled with upbeat, positive business people (including our own Kensington Market entrepreneur, Abi Roach of Hotbox) who can see and appreciate that there is a lot of money to be made in giving the people what they want.
But the big draw will be the 29 per cent of those surveyed who have said they will be buying edible marijuana products, up from seven per cent now.
On the other hand, they know very well that there are trillions to be made from all the aspects of selling hemp and cannabis.
“The Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation, an LCBO subsidiary created to manage sales and distribution of recreational pot in the province, is expecting an $8-million loss in 2017-2018, followed by a $40-million loss in 2018-19, largely due to initial startup costs to establish the retail network.” 
People had to learn a whole new way of life. They had to wake up and be somewhere for a set time, take their meals when a work break was called, and learn to use the bathroom only when their boss thought it appropriate. Decisions on what days should be honoured, for personal or religious reasons, left their hands, and became the prerogative of the owners. All of these changes ensured that there would be work for doctors, psychologists and life coaches for years to come.
And the churches played their part as well, by making the concept of work ‘holy in god’s eyes.’ The vaunted work ethic, that became synonymous with virtue, never applied equally to the families of the wealthy, who instead lived lives of ease and indolence, catered to by those who now needed to provide a livelihood for themselves, or their families.
Workers were told that it was only by working hard that they would be proven virtuous, and achieve their just rewards. They were told that they needed to be independent, and ask for no handouts or help from those already successful, but instead that they must forge a righteous path to their own pinnacle of success. They needed to be daring and adventurous, and carve a path to the top, letting no person or soppy sentiment impede their progress.
Economic theories that favoured the already wealthy, like the ‘trickle down effect,’ or the tax scam bill recently forced upon the United States, were put into practice by governments who knew very well that the wealth would not only stay where it was, but increase the holdings of the wealthy, at the expense of the middle class.
Moving forward into the twenty-first century, those who nostalgically remembered a Golden Age where every one who wanted a job, could find a job, were increasingly threatened by a world where their backs and hands and eyes meant little to the owner class. Even worse, the service industry, once an important part of greasing the wheels of the economy, was increasingly threatened with automation.
Predictably, the internet went mad. Arguments were made for both sides of the dispute, most of whom wanted to send a strong message to the heirs and the coffee chain that they would not have government regulations manipulated to suit business. It is a tribute to our sense of justice that most Canadians found the Joyce/Horton’s highhanded demands a bridge too far.
Employees have been treated as little more than inconveniences for decades. Beginning with the corporate raiders of the eighties, who slashed and burned the employee rosters of major corporations in order to enrich stock holders and investors, followed by the well-intentioned, but ultimately cruel hobbling of staff who were asked to eschew wage raises and to double up their efforts as staff numbers diminished, employees were always asked to minimize their own needs in order to further the economic needs of those for whom they toiled.
What had begun as a need for willing workers was now becoming an awareness of a glut of workers that wanted the jobs that paid for the basic needs of food, shelter and medical care when they were ill or old.
In times like this, we have to understand that fighting for the minimum wage of some not very desirable jobs is just one very small part of a problem that can only escalate. There are few solutions to that bigger problem.
Canadians … we love our country, but that’s never stopped us from having our beefs with how it’s run. Unlike many other countries, we feel free to speak up about what angers us. For all our reputation of being a polite and respectful people, we reserve the right to disagree with those who would impose their will upon the nation.
Many were angry at the direction we took in the last decade, under the Conservative prime minister . We now have a Liberal prime minister, and likely just as many have issues with his party. In our Canadian way, we will protest against what we dislike, and in due course, vote for the direction we would like to have in the future.
The First Nations people have been here for over 13,000 years, and for many, the celebration of Canada Day amounts to ” celebrating resource extraction of our territories. The Indian Act is still in place. The government is not allowing First Nations to have a voice. So why would I ever celebrate?”” (Anishinaabe traditional storyteller and teacher Isaac Murdoch.)
Their resistance movement was developed to inspire other indigenous people to reclaim what they lost during colonization; their land, language and traditional ways.
On top of sounding the alarm over how resource extraction and pollution is hurting the environment, Murdoch said the #Resistance150 movement is also calling for the abolition of the Indian Act, which was first introduced in 1857 by the British colonial government, and reads very much like a treatise from the Southern Baptist religionists banning dancing in the 1984 film Footloose. Cruel, vindictive and petty, the Act aimed to crush the people and their culture, by any means available.
I am proud of my country, but I know that my country has to include ALL of it’s people – those who came before us, and those who will join us in the future – to be strong and united. As a country, we can do so much better. And I have faith that we will work towards being a better, stronger, fairer country in the coming years.
where democracy is shoved aside as unfriendly to business, where opinion (literally) trumped logic, and the slaughter of millions of innocents barely raises an eyebrow.
Perhaps Huxley, in Brave New World, understood our impressionability more than Orwell did in 1984 … it’s not that we are being denied books or access to information, it’s that we prefer entertainment to knowledge.
“The world’s nuclear clock sits at one second to midnight .. but first, a word from our sponsor.” 
And, in what I consider truly tragic, we still have to somehow find a sense of trust in those we elect to lead us into this uncertain future, and I don’t know if we can suspend that much disbelief any more. There comes a point at which we simply can’t deny that each successive political ‘saviour’ is just a new mask on an old face of treachery, bought and paid for by market forces.
Despite no recent Prime Minister having been elected with a clear majority or mandate, sweeping changes that will affect Canadians for generations have been put into place over the last few decades, with barely a whimper. Or, if a whimper was murmured, it was simply ignored. At best, we changed lobsters and continued the dance.
From History Today, ” If I was forced to name the worst year, it would probably be 1914. In July of that year, a European order that had brought peace, prosperity and extraordinary artistic and scientific progress, began to unravel. The vast conflict that followed led directly to the Russian Revolution, Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, the Cold War and the mess that is the modern Middle East. Only in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, did we enter a relatively stable period – the ‘End of History’ – before it came crashing down on September 11th, 2001. ”
frustratedboomers 