politicians – frustratedboomers

The Age of Bullies : Part One

by Roxanne Tellier

As a child, my sister was often the target of bullies. Bullies sniff out the weak, the vulnerable, those who have already experienced the wrath of others. I spent a lot of my own childhood trying to protect Jodi from those who had nothing better to do with their time than to torment a shy, fragile, little girl.

While I didn’t have much truck with bullies in school, once I was out in the work world, I quickly learned the Golden Rule; he that has the gold, makes the rules. Which meant that those who had better jobs, or more power in their position, could choose to use or abuse their underlings. I found it very hard to kowtow to people who were often not nearly as clever or capable as I was. Being a woman in the workplace last century was often an onerous, frustrating position. I’m sure for many women that it still is, in this century.

Eventually I chose to be an entrepreneur, to work for myself, rather than to work for others. It was just easier, being the boss.

Generally, decent people are always trying to make situations work for everyone in a group. But whether you’re in the established business world, academia, the trades, or the arts, at some point, most of us will encounter grown up bullies who seem to thrive on making life miserable for others. Put a group of people together, and, sooner or later, someone decides they deserve a better, more special treatment than the rest of the gang.

Some kids are just more aggressive by nature, but usually, bullies are made, not born. The behavior is usually learned very young, from an adult role model – a parent, a teacher, or a coach, for example – that is unable to handle anger well. A bully may have older siblings, who were bullied themselves, and so will bully a younger sibling to make themselves feel empowered. As a rule, a child learns to be a bully because he/she is not getting enough good parental attention, leading the bully to lash out at others for attention they need.

Grown up social bullies have poor self-esteem, although they’ll usually come across as narcissists with God complexes. They see the weak as contemptuous, and crave power and attention. They are unable to understand how their behavior makes other people feel, and simply don’t care about the feelings of others. They’ll dominate, play the victim, blame others, and never accept the consequences of their actions.

And that, in a nutshell, describes the political bullies that pull the world’s strings.

I first became interested in the stories behind the political news during the Stephen Harper Decade – he who was so convinced of his own infallibility and right to lead Canada that he literally rebranded the federal government the “Harper Government.” An excessively partisan break with tradition, and a slap in the face to the other parties that have helped shape Canada, taxpayers spent more than $85,000 in the first year alone of helping the Cons solidify their Golden Calf’s place in shredder history.

During Harper’s prime ministerial career, his bullying style attracted a lot of notice. The nature of his political discourse was belittling, contemptuous of the value of other political groups and ideas. By devaluing other parties, and brooking no collaboration with leaders with other input, he oppressed democracy in Canada, but so subtly that his enablers could paint Harper’s derision as simply ‘fighting back’ against his detractors.

Devaluing others is a product of insecurity, at best, and often grossly oppressive to the ‘out-group’ that is the target of the bully. When a country broadly paints another country as an ‘enemy,’ because of a warring history, or a current conflict, citizens pull together against a common enemy. But when that same contempt is expressed towards political equals, it becomes a form of bigotry, a marginalization of our own peers by denying or devaluing their abilities, and even their right to citizenship within their own country.

Harper regularly used bullying and open contempt in the attack ads used against opponents, from his slurs against Stephane Dion, then-Liberal leader in 2007, who dared to run against him, using ‘gotcha!’ video, and baritone voice-overs derisively asserting that “Stephane Dion is not a leader,” to his diatribes in 2008 against the sovereigntist Bloc Quebecois, whom he demonized as ‘the separatists.’

And then, of course, there were the attack ads that branded Justin Trudeau as ‘just not ready,’ and a contrived ‘expose’ on young Trudeau’s participation in brownface makeup in an Arabian Nights themed event at the private school where he was a teacher in 2001.

I’m still hearing about that one from the Trudeau haters. There’s a fascinating 2019 article and investigation into that ‘scandal’ that was put together by Free the Press Canada. All signs seem to point to a high-level manipulation of information put together by powerful Conservative operatives.

When Harper was ousted from power in 2015, it felt like Canadians could finally take a deep breath of fresh, non-Harper air. But on June 7, 2018, one bully was exchanged for another when Doug Ford was sworn in as Ontario’s premier.

Brother of bumbling Rob, Doug blew into Queen’s Park with a chip on his shoulder the size of the CN Tower, and a determination to make the city of Toronto pay for what he considered unfair treatment to brother Rob during his mayoralty. First off, and within what seemed like minutes of taking office, he was the first premier in Ontario’s history to use the Notwithstanding Clause to cut the number of Toronto’s city council – then in the middle of an election – in half, an act of bullying so extreme that the City of Toronto appealed the law, arguing that it interfered with the rights to free expression and free and fair elections. (Follow up – the Supreme Court, in a split 5/4 decision, disagreed, on the grounds that the Charter Right applied only to federal and provincial legislatures, not to municipalities.)

Ford proceeded to throw his considerable weight around at Queen’s Park, ensuring that deep cuts to programs for Ontario youth, education, and health were passed, while ensuring that his long-time cronies found a friend in Ontario’s deep pockets and green spaces.

History will paint an interesting picture of Ford’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ford’s bumbling reign came on the heels of Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency, and people often noted their similar natures. Born to privilege, and convinced of their own special ability to lead, Ford’s bullying nature paled, however, in comparison to the vigor of Trump’s.

And if Trump, a master bullier and wannabe dictator, soared to loftier heights of mock victimhood and ‘fake news,’ his gilded First Lady left the world speechless when she announced her “Be Best” anti-bullying campaign, based on her belief that she was ‘the most bullied person in the world.”

Next week: World Class Bullies and where they live

The Run Down and the Wrap Up

by Roxanne Tellier

Ah, dang it. Like death and taxes, unwanted summer electoral politics are inescapable. Rumour has it that our PM Justin Trudeau is determined to call a snap election, reportedly to be held on September 20^th. Why? Because he believes that doing so at this time will ensure his party can win a majority government, allowing him to avoid what he has been calling “opposition obstruction.”

Trudeau had a majority in the House of Commons when he first came to power in 2015, but there’s been an erosion of confidence in the years since, leading to his party being reduced to a minority in 2019. I find it hilarious, how easily those that lean right can be manipulated. “Here’s a 20-year-old photo of a young man in black face!” “I KNEW IT! Hang him high!”

There have been rumblings for months that the Liberals would spring an election on Canada, two years ahead of schedule, in response to an unfavourable slate of choices available from the NDP or the Conservatives.

In a summer fraught with tension over where the COVID virus could pop up next, and in what variant, the Libs are walking a financial tightrope. They’ve racked up record debt levels in an effort to help both the people and the businesses of Canada, but they have plans to inject another huge chunk into the economy – between 3-4% of GDP, or about $100 billion dollars. To do so, they’re going to need more than a minority government. And they would prefer not to have to count on the help of the NDG and the Greens to push thru legislation.

A Conservative attack ad that hit YouTube on Friday night has even their own party members disgusted, calling the ad dumb, tasteless, and embarrassing. It’s a 37 second video that has a cut out of Trudeau’s face pasted over the face of spoiled brat Veruca Salt, in a clip from a scene from the film “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” where the brat throws a tantrum in a song called “I Want it Now.”

With any luck, it’s already been taken down. Posting link for the strong-stomached.

Meanwhile, polls have shown that most Canadians have climate change on their mind, and are focused on a transition away from the fossil fuel industry. And the reports of summer’s horrific high temperatures and fires, here and around the globe, along with the UN’s newest report that global warming is “dangerously close to spinning out of control” would agree on that course.

“ Humans are “unequivocally” to blame, the report from the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said. Rapid action to cut greenhouse gas emissions could limit some impacts, but others are now locked in.
The deadly heat waves, gargantuan hurricanes and other weather extremes that are already happening will only become more severe. “

On the plus side, August 13 came and went without trump being reinstated, as promised by the pillow guy, so that’s a win.

The rising tide of COVID in Florida, on the other hand, is most definitely a loss. There were over 151,000 cases in Florida, and 1,071 deaths in just the last week.

It’s so bad that doctors are warning patients seeking emergency help for their children that there’s simply no more staff, equipment, or rooms available, and parents will literally have to wait for some other sick child to die before their child can even be admitted to the ICU.

The Brookings Institute made an interesting observation on the Fourth Wave battering red states. They noted that

“It is rare that a politician acts against his own self-interest—but then again, Donald Trump is a rare breed of politician. No politician has made it a habit of acting against his own electoral interest like Donald Trump…
A total of 17 of the 18 states that voted for Trump in the 2020 election have the lowest vaccination rates. The exception was Georgia which went for Biden by a very small margin…
Historically, rational political calculus has been a bipartisan quality, but not in the Trumpified GOP. If Trump wants to preserve the lives of his best voters, he would turn his rallies into mass vaccination sites. There is still time, but it is running out for thousands of Americans.”
Brookings.edu, July 2021

Meanwhile, in Ontario, we have 111 people in ICUs around the province. 110 of them are either unvaccinated, or have only had one dose.

This week, hospital teams of doctors and nurses have literally been trolling the Danforth and Gerrard Avenue, trying to bring vaccines directly to people who might have used inaccessibility as an excuse to avoid the jab.

What is it going to take to shake these dreamers out of their reveries? Ah.. right … the carrots are not working, so here come the sticks.

“The new travel vaccination policy will apply to passengers and workers in the federally regulated air, rail and cruise ship sectors. It will be enacted “as soon as possible in the fall and no later than the end of October,” the Canadian Treasury Board said on Friday.”

We need our kids back in school, our economy back in gear, and our hearts, minds and butts in restos, bars, nightclubs, theatres, and arenas. Come to the Light Side, you of the Great UnVaxxed.

Times have been hard for everyone, in the last year and a half. So much that has happened, that has upended our reality, our ‘normal,’ has been beyond our control, and due to its very novelty, often really frightening. We have been spoiled in the last 80 years; there’s been no war waged on North American land.

That’s made us quite spoiled, and sometimes very silly. Without an actual opponent, so many decided they’d make one up, turn mild adversity into a fear of escalating hardships. They created paper tigers of the innocent, blowing up the annoyances of inconvenience into firm red lines that must not be crossed. They salivated over fantastical and imaginary creatures, spent incalculable hours planning how they’d survive a zombie apocalypse, built bunkers and hoarded supplies against Armageddon.

But when a real catastrophe – a pandemic! – came along, few broke out those emergency supplies. Wouldn’t this have been the perfect time to extol one’s own prescience in prepping? How could it be that so many quite simply did not recognize a crisis when it actually came along and took a bite out of their lives?

We lived with loneliness. We lived with fear, anxiety, depression, and grief. We monitored our health, and the health of our loved ones, and when someone we loved died, we were told how and when to mourn, and how many of us would be allowed to share in that moment of remembrance. I often think about those we’ve lost, the ones we were told that we would have an opportunity to memorialize, ‘when this is over.’ That’s not how grief works. Grief cannot be put on a shelf until a convenient time arrives.

I often think about how we were encouraged, all this time, to simply ignore the sickness and death the pandemic brought. While I would have expected the media to spend hours of video on covering a world-wide disaster, there far more often seemed to be some sort of weighing of coverage, almost as though the media, usually quite open about ‘if it bleeds, it leads,’ was suddenly taking a stance more akin to trump’s pandering ‘good people on both sides.’

Perhaps it was that sloughing off of brutal truth and reality that allowed a segment of people to cease to care about their places in society, prioritizing their own opinions and wants over the rest of societies truth and needs.

That attitude spills over into all aspects of our lives. I find it heartbreaking that the people of Afghanistan are mere puzzle pieces in America’s ongoing war games. I expected the callousness of trump’s decision to leave Afghanistan; I am dumbstruck that Biden would be in agreement. When Biden first said that he’d follow trump’s lead, I assumed his reasoning was that if he didn’t, the GOP base would tear him to pieces.

But now I hear that this is simply part and parcel of a numb and hard-hearted populace who just don’t care about what is to come for the innocents of Afghan.

“…. There is, quite obviously, a calculation behind all this, which is that, after all this time and with more than enough blame to go around in both parties, Biden will not suffer politically from leaving behind an unwinnable war. Put bluntly, there is a strongly held belief in Washington that Americans simply do not care what happens in Afghanistan. Poll numbers back it up. “
“The Pentagon has warned every one of the last four Presidents that an abrupt U.S. withdrawal would lead to some version of the Afghan military debacle we are seeing this week.”
The New Yorker, August 12, 2021

Yep, we’ve been suffering through some very ‘interesting times.’ Sometimes, all you can do is keep looking for those odd bright spots that bring joy to your day and life.

During the pandemic, we’ve had a few cool things happen here at the old homestead, where ‘there’s always something happening, and it’s usually quite loud.”

This particular cool thing involves a video that the heymacs made five years ago. As one of the Mackettes who donned their fur coats, wigs, and high heels on that blustery morning, I certainly never dreamed that there’d come a day when we’d be ‘nearly famous’ in far away places with strange sounding names!

From Macky’s notes:

“So, several years ago, the heymacs started stumbling into their first music videos, and one of us said “Let’s put them on the internet. All the kids are doing it” .
Someone else said “How’s anybody gonna know about them? There’s no cash to do promotion for our flicks”. Also brought up was the fact that the situation probably wouldn’t change, as we weren’t playing live to spread the word and, maybe, flog some T-shirts to aid with the cash shortage.
What’s more, there’s no friggin’ way any record company was going to sign a bunch of Rock’n Roll relics, and what band management company would waste their time on some guys whose main pass-time was hanging out in the alley behind the warehouse where they got together to plan what tunage to work on next.
But, couldn’t hurt to give it a whirl, so we picked one we liked and stuck it out there. At first, nothing much happened . . yeah, it got a few more views on the yootooby every month, but the going was slow.
Then, suddenly a couple months ago, our cover of Ray Charles’ little beauty “Hit The Road, Jack” took off like a rocket! Ten thousand – – twenty – – then 50,0000 and 125,000 – – and, soon, a quarter-of-a-million – – and, at this moment 498,730
Well, it’s looking like it’s gonna cruise past 500,000 tonight, so the heymacs want to thank anyone who gave us a peek and supported the effort! Cheers, dudes & dudettes . . we like your taste in tunes !!“
Macky, of the heymacs

The heymacs cover of “Hit the Road Jack” hit the ½ million mark, and then just kept on climbing. 550,000 clicks as of this morning. And where it stops, nobody knows …

And that’s it, folks, that’s your wrap up and run down.

Happy Summer Folks!

Ding Dong Is That Witch Dead Yet?

On Wednesday, I began my column by saying “It’s nighttime in America.”

Today, I’m happy to report that at 11:30 am, on Saturday November 7^th, the media called the 2020 US presidential election, and named as winners former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and his running mate– the first woman elected to the vice presidency– California Senator Kamala Harris.

And suddenly – it’s a new day in America.

(Paging Bill Barr… Mr. William Barr … has anybody seen the Attorney General? It’s been days!)

Ah, forget about him. Barr and the rest of trump’s cast of sycophantic minions are about to be returned to the reeking garbage scows from which they were so serendipitously plucked before being delicately mixed in with Washington’s miasma of swamp creatures. Today, I can finally say that I believe a day will come – very soon! – when we will be able to say, with true confusion … “Ivanka Who?”

And to think, it all started with one broke man with a crazy dream, riding a golden escalator.

But for now, my friends, it is time to dance in the streets. Rejoice, righteously, for those who fearlessly stood up for democracy. It wasn’t easy. It truly has been America’s long national nightmare, four years that felt more like four decades, and it ain’t the COVID that has left most of us looking ten years older, and feeling twenty years older, than when it first began.

He told us who and what he was, but many didn’t believe him. Five years after that escalator ride, trump had showed the entire planet exactly who and what he was, and still, many don’t believe what they see with their own eyes. A dictator wannabe, lacking in character, incompetent, vengeful, sadistic. Also, a proven coward, apathetic and weak.

And yet, he nearly succeeded in ending democracy in America.

The next person hellbent on that kind of mission may not be so incompetent. He or she may have learned how not to telegraph every treasonous move. He or she may succeed.

Which is why – it’s not over. It’s never over.

Politics is hard, and unending, when done right. So many of us like to slag off politics and politicians, branding them all useless and corrupt. And certainly, many are. We have stunning evidence of that, in history, and in current politics. But politics is not just those men and women who chose to enter the field – democratic politics, our preferred norm, actually DEMANDS that we all take an active part in a successful society. In other words, like it or lump it, you too … are in politics.

Surprise! Being a good citizen doesn’t end with casting a vote. It means actually knowing the issues on the table, being honest, trustworthy, and law abiding. It means being a good neighbour, of being respectful of the rights and property of others, and being a good global citizen, respecting nature. It means taking responsibility for your actions.

All of those attributes may seem quaint, but without the majority of us following those rules, our society falls apart. We’re stronger when we’re all together, working together, not against each other.

It hurts to think that over 71 million Americans watched the evil trump and his administration perpetrated, and voted for more, and worse to come. 71 million voters were okay with kids being torn from their parents; with the DACA kids being cast adrift; with Russia offering bounties to Afghanis for American military scalps; with a lawless administration; with the only thing preventing a depression being bailouts to those nearly bankrupted by bad trade deals …. And by the reality of more than 230,000 Americans already in their graves, dead from COVID-19.

We already knew that, coming up, the least of the evils about to be visited on America, under a re-elected trump, would be the firing of Dr Fauci. On the agenda, under his packed and stacked Supreme Court were the final killing blow to the Affordable Care Act’s protection of those with pre-existing conditions. And he’d tentatively moved forward to dismantling Medicare and Social Security. No plans for stemming the tide of COVID deaths. Things were looking pretty bleak.

How bad was it? Enough to make a grown man cry.

But 71 million voters were okay with all of that, because they had a few more bucks in their pocket under trump’s reign.

As marketer Seth Godin said, “If your guiding principle is to do whatever benefits you right now, you don’t have principles of much value.”

It would appear that there are two diametrically opposed political ideologies in today’s America, and that it comes down to generations of right-wing media creating a fictional world that gives them comfort, clashing with those who are living in a reality-based community. Both sides believe they are right, but only one has the receipts.

So, there’s still much to worry about. There’s a long, hard, road ahead of us. Biden’s win is just the first step on that journey.

I’m pretty sure that trump won’t be leaving behind a handy list of “All the Bad Stuff I Did.’ Instead, the new administration will have to figure out which Jenga pegs he pulled from which vital institutions, and try to plug those holes as quickly as they can, to prevent the tower from toppling.

Remember, there were people who died on battlefields, and in concentration camps, and yes, in cotton fields in the Deep South, after peace and freedom was declared. There are many who are suffering right now, who may not live long enough to see the end of this administration.

And though thousands of Americans are dying daily, needlessly, from COVID-19, which did not miraculously disappear on November 4^th, as promised by trump, trump actually outperformed Biden in states like Texas, Florida, Iowa, Montana and both Dakotas, all of which had the highest numbers of new cases per capita in recent weeks. His followers seem unperturbed, which I can only compare to the mental gymnastics of groupies who are fine with the long-term effects of various venereal diseases, if they can proudly claim to have caught them from their teen cult idol.

Biden’s got a plan to beat the virus into submission, and it’s going into place this coming week. But it won’t be enough to save everyone from the months of neglect on disease containment.

Trump can, and will, do a lot of damage on his way out. That’s a given. He’s a man that can hold a grudge for decades, waiting for the moment when he finally gets to lower a (nuclear) boom. Look to history – dictators are not benevolent in defeat. Germany was bombed to smouldering rubble as Hitler ranted in his bunker.

Some in the Republican party have been pleading that the new administration go easy on poor old Donnie. They suggest we turn down the heat, and that Dems respect that this is all so very hard for a young and naive 74-year-old to deal with all at once.

Which brings us to the next conundrum: what happens next to the boy who never wanted to grow up? Does he get pardoned? Plead insanity? It’s going to be pretty hard to pull off an insanity defense. In the case of COVID-19 alone, there are many hours of taped conversation between trump and Bob Woodward, in which trump bragged about lying about the virus to the American people. He knew, all along, exactly how virulent and deadly the infection would be, and did not act. It was a lack of leadership, and criminal negligence, that sentenced a quarter of a million Americans to death, not a ‘Kung Flu.’ Trump is a murderous sociopath, and it will only be by making an example of his sedition that another, more capable, traitor is prevented.

But Ding Dong, the Witch is Nearly Dead – the Empire has been saved – and it is right and just that those who worked to stop the fascistic arc, that those who voted to stop trump – rejoice!

The long nightmare did not belong to America alone. This glorious moment, this breath of fresh air, belongs to us all.

Congratulations to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and his running mate– the first woman elected to the vice presidency– California Senator Kamala Harris.

**“Rosa sat, so Ruby could walk, and Kamala could run. “**

Meep Meep! and other Augusty Thoughts

No matter how you may feel about Senator John McCain‘s political past, with his recent demise, you cannot help but remember that he was a war hero, and a stand up guy. His passing leaves us short of what might have been the last real gentleman standing in the Senate. As his life becomes a memory, those who knew him well remind us of those moments that defined a Giant of the Senate and of a politician who frequently eschewed partisanship for a wholehearted defence of democracy.

Even in death, McCain holds firm to his principles. As I read this morning, “John McCain told friends months ago that he didn’t want Donald Trump at his funeral. Instead he wanted former President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush to attend his funeral and deliver the eulogy. McCain famously lost to Bush in the 2000 Republican primary race for President, and then lost to Obama in the 2008 general election for President. Yet McCain chose these two men — one Republican and one Democrat — to eulogize him.

McCain thus ensured that his funeral would be bipartisan and inclusive, making it all the more glaring that current “President” of the United States wasn’t invited.”

Imagine what a horrific human being you have to be, to be barred from both McCain’s funeral, and the funeral of Barbara Bush. And this is the guy who thinks he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. He couldn’t negotiate peace between the two types of candy in an M&M bag.

November can’t come soon enough ….

In a week that hints of a possible end to the Trump administration’s reign of terror, it is a real comfort to know that the rule of law must ultimately prevail, even over an administration as venal and corrupt as this one.

And yet, there are still those that hold a grudging admiration for the Grifter in Chief, and his army of wily surrogates and spokespeople who seek to stop his feeling any sort of retribution for his heinous , malicious whims and vindictive executive orders.

They will assure you that they would never .. NEVER … vote for the Orange Manatee. But they just can’t help themselves from grinning – just a little – when he wriggles out of yet another moral or ethical dilemma.

It’s like Trump is the RoadRunner, constantly outwitting the smarter, but nonetheless ultimately hapless, Wile E. Coyote.

For many who feel vaguely discontented with their lot, there’s a real anger towards ‘smart people,’ those who ‘caught the breaks,’ and are often considered part of a group that seems to be determined to keep the regular Joe down. There’s a resentment for those who have more success, and a belief that somehow, those guys had more, and unfair, advantages.

Because of the tales and tropes we’ve grown up believing, there can be a real bitterness in some. It is as though they believe that intelligence is a negative characteristic, that should be hidden from others, or at least, played down with great modesty.

They believe that “Real Men” don’t have to study, let alone ‘think’ … Real Men just DO! They naturally have all the information they need to solve any problem, even if it’s not in their field, or their realm of expertise. They are simply born with that ability. It’s just something that ‘real men’ know in their always righteous guts.

So when a confident, if completely incapable, con man comes along – especially one that ticks so many of our culture’s other boxes .. he’s tall, he’s imposing, he takes no shit, he is in charge, he’s got a lot of women in his life, whether through matrimony or a lifetime of libertinism … those same people can feel like they’re looking at a man of action. If not a hero, then at the very least, an anti-hero, whom they can admire.

They look at this man who will literally shove aside other men to be fully spotlighted and in charge … and something inside them admires that brutality.

Mistaking recklessness for bravery, lasciviousness for virility, and self-preservation for selflessness, they are happy to carry the 72 Year Old Toddler‘s water.

The OranguTAN likes to come off as a sort of lovable rogue, always ready with a quip, even when it is completely inappropriate or critically cruel of others. It’s all about the luck, the wit, the simple act of being The Donald, rather than any sort of actual information, data or reality. He is completely averse to any pretension of knowledge, or the acquiring of same, disdaining his crucial daily briefs and demanding that they instead be solely bullet points and pictographs. Because a man of his stature, you see, must always be on the run, on the go, being a manly man, playing golf, grabbing pussies. Busy busy!

Eventually, of course, there will be retribution. But up until that fateful day, there will be many who will throw their careers and bodies in front of Mad King Donald, as he stumbles toward a possible impeachment and a probable indictment, believing that their loyalty will be rewarded, if not in the White House halls, than in the publishing offices where they will flog their memoirs for big bucks, in hopes of bringing joy to the slathering, puerile readers who will never come within a thousand miles of such proximity to ‘greatness.’

Until the day that the roadrunner catches Mr Wile E.

……………………………………………………..

In the flurry of convictions, plea bargains, and requests for immunity this week, one long time comrade of the Gibbering Gibbon found his string of publications in the spotlight – and most definitely not in a good way.

David Pecker, notorious tabloid king, owns nearly every supermarket tabloid and gossip sheet in the United States, including the flagship publication National Enquirer. In an effort to get ahead of the rush of those seeking immunity deals, he’s admitted to having withheld stories detrimental to the Trump campaign, by using ‘catch and kill;‘ the practice of buying up a story and then burying it. This would very likely constitute an unlawful contribution to the Trump campaign of 2016.

He’s even admitted to having an office safe dedicated solely to stories and photos of Trump in flagrante delicto. This ain’t no Geraldo hoping for an Al Capone bonanza – this is the real deal.

But while we wait, and silently shudder at what might lie within the safe’s depths, I think it has to be noted that Pecker did not just hide Trump’s offences, he maintained a constant assault on Hillary Clinton throughout the course of the campaign, on his tabloid’s covers.

Despite all this Democratic insistence of ‘going high when they go low,‘ this abuse of the public’s trust, in the lies and smearing of one presidential candidate in favour of the other, cannot be ignored. While the tabloids may be considered ‘entertainment,’ there are many parts of the United States when their words are considered ‘gospel,’ based mainly on how many lesser educated people were raised – to believe that words in print must be true, simply because they have been printed.

We already know a big chunk of Americans – the ones Hillary so rightly called ‘the deplorables‘ – did and do believe these accusations and lies. They continue to buy into Pecker’s steady drip of venom against Democrats, anti-gun activists, and civil rights advocates .. every damn Saturday when they pick up their groceries at the local Wegmans or Albertsons, and then trot down to the VA for a rousing chorus of “lock her up.’

If Hillary can’t bring herself to sue the bejeezus off this turd, a civil suit should be brought against his publications. His stories constitute a willful assault upon the attention spans of the ignorant and the poorly educated.

Lies, propaganda, and a relentless, overt attack on one candidate to assure the political success of another is not free speech – it is collusion between Trump and Pecker, and campaign meddling, and it needs to be acknowledged as such.

All The President’s Men

With two of Trump’s main cohorts, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, now actual convicted felons, it certainly looks like we’re nearing the end of a long and rocky road in American politics. Trump’s misdeeds are beginning to emerge thru the swampy miasma, and while he may continue to scream, “no collusion!” it’s becoming very clear that the ‘best people’ with whom he has surrounded himself, are not being ‘best’ at all. They are felons, and he himself is now the ‘unindicted co-conspirator‘ in the room.

The midterms will – if fair and unrigged – leave Trump in the same place Obama found himself after his first midterms … bound and gagged until his term peters out.

I wonder how these trump junkies are going to survive without their daily doses of vitriol and madness, from the twitler machine. His rage against .. well, everyone who is not him and who DARES to try and stop his putsch … is especially appealing to those who believe they’ve been ‘done the dirty’ by others. “How is it that everyone does not see my shining worthiness, and give me the respect I believe I’m due? ” these egotists wonder, these, the true “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” of whom Steinbeck wrote.

History and reality have no toehold here; the delusions run so deep that they are truly convinced that a loss of over 3 million votes still somehow guaranteed a mandate for their boy, and that ‘half the country’ wanted him .. instead of the barely 1/4th of the country that bothered to vote. Over 60 million people cast their ballots for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, while 59.8 million voted for Trump.

In truth, a total of less than 120 million our of the 250 million Americans eligible to vote in 2016, actually did, and out of that, he still lost. He has never had a majority .. no popular vote .. and certainly no mandate to reshape America in his gilded image.

They tell themselves that it was the ‘real American’ that wanted Trump .. the downtrodden, the grass roots, those left behind by the economy. But again, they are swallowing whole the lies fed to them by accomplished liars.

By income, Clinton led among voters with a 2015 family income of under $50,000 — a group that included 36% of the voters in the exit polls. In reality, Trump’s supporters were 70% white, and male, who earned, on average, between $80 and $90K a year.

Their votes were never about the economy, or the ‘good old days’ when America was ‘great’ .. it was about racism, and making sure that they kept themselves well fed, and that others had no place at the table.

It was about the Religious Right screaming about their own victimization, and their need to force their religious beliefs upon all Americans, like it or not.

It was about terrorizing a historically gullible nation, partial to conspiracy theories, by painting ‘the others’ – be they immigrants, refugees, Muslims or Mexicans – as a demonizing force, set on consuming America’s goodies like so many frenzied zombies.

They still insist that what they want is a better economy .. when they were already sitting on a terrific economy that is now being torn apart by foolish trade wars and a destabilizing of faith in America.

It was about painting ‘regular American’s’ as being taken advantage of by other nations, through globalization. The trade wars were put into place willy nilly, without foresight or forethought, or knowledge .. lead by Peter Navarro, a fool that Jared found on Amazon while he browsed for info on China, and whose theories have been soundly derided by any real economists.

But it made Americans feel good, because Trump told them they were victims .. and for some reason, being a victim that has evil done to THEM, rather than their being the one doing evil, is a historic change that makes a lot of Americans very happy.

They still insist that it is only the natives of other countries that ‘bought into’ the Obama story, regardless of the millions who march against their orange haired boy. They refuse to look at the millions of words written by economists, ecologists, and others far more educated and intelligent than themselves, to see that their boy lives in a fantasy world of his own making. (And it’s one that does not include them – never did, never will.)

As much as Trump’s ‘devil’s advocates‘ …. and has their ever been a truer name for those who twist and turn the law into something more favourable for their vile and demented client … attempt to ‘explain’ why every law, regulation, ethical consideration, or moral tenet he’s driven over actually ALLOWS him to have his way – the time is coming when, barring gerrymandering, vote rigging, and Russian interference … the evil spirit in the White House will be exorcised.

When that happens .. and it will … all of us who have been – willingly or unwillingly – jacked into politics, 24/7, are going to have to deal with a withdrawal from this poison. At first, it will seem like we want that intoxication back. Don’t kid yourself .. it’s gonna be a serious withdrawal.

But hopefully, little by little and day by day, we will eventually get back to a place where our days and minds are not continually hijacked by the worst president and horrific events that most of us have ever had to live though.

Hang in there … as with all addictions, it’s gonna be hard to get straight. But we can do it. The world needs us to do it.

You Get What You Give

Really drastic times always have both positive and negative aspects. History is filled with major events that altered the path humans were on, and brought about new developments. The Black Plague. The Renaissance. Evolution itself, for that matter. We’re all happy homo sapiens now, but I’ll bet the Neanderthals weren’t too joyful when that branch of the family tree was sawed off.

We often bring on the catastrophes all by ourselves. I believe we’re bringing on some pretty serious alterations to our planet through climate change, and knowing that we did all of that environmental damage just by refusing to clean up after ourselves doesn’t make it any easier.

Sometimes the big bang that changes things illuminates how emotionally fragile humans really are, and how little they enjoy change of any kind. Oh, they say they want change, but actually dealing with alterations to the status quo gives them the heebie jeebies. They’ll second guess themselves into oblivion.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of hearing about how scared and confused American voters were, when they chose to elect a known – nay .. renowned! TV certified! … con man to run their country. How freakin’ delicate do you have to be to believe that someone, who has spent his entire life gleefully and repeatedly fleecing the rubes, really does have the answer to America’s problems? How emotionally unstable do you have to be to believe that a guy, who has nothing in the way of ideas or a proper platform, or experience in any form of politics, who has nothing but disdain for previous administration, will know how to deal with complex diplomacy? How incredibly naive are you to take the word of someone who promises to ‘repeal and replace’ the only health care insurance some have ever known, who claims that he, and he alone can ‘fix’ a broken America with a wave of his magic wand …. You wanted to be fooled, and you were.

What happened to that vaunted American Exceptionalism? When did it become more fashionable to play the victim than the victor?

Gimme that ol’ time religion ….

Don’t get me wrong, I am well aware that it’s not just Americans who are that naive. There’s more than a few of these strongmen and wannabe or actual dictators scattered around the planet. Ontario may well be the next launching pad for another contemptible bozo who wears his racism, sexism and xenophobia proudly on his sleeve. Listen – I get it. You’re angry at Wynne, whom you feel has screwed up her time at the helm. So angry that you’ll throw away any progressive growth in the province in favour of a man who is the walking, talking embodiment of NIMBY?

You’ll get what you deserve, as the people always do. It’s not about electing the least offensive option, it’s about caring enough about your city, or province, or country to nurture safe, sane growth, while keeping those in charge accountable. You can’t wake up forty years down the road to ruin and ask, “wha’ happened?” We built this city and this country by turning a blind eye to suspect deals, cronyism and corruption, with each successive governance going further down the wrong path, and piling on more debt for our kids and grandkids. How many shady politicians have walked away from positions of power with full pockets and zero accountability for screwing over the electorate?

What you get instead of good candidates are guys like Trump and Ford, who are basically those asshat Big Men On Campus that you had to endure in senior high school or college. The big bullies who swagger down the corridors with their buddies, all of whom are both a little afraid and a little in awe of Biff’s cruelty, but who are far more afraid of getting on his bad side and having him lash out at them.

So they laugh when he shoves that kids with the glasses into a locker, or trips that nerd with a full tray in the cafeteria. They’ll guffaw when he spikes the punch, and talks smack about the cheerleaders, and leaves one or two of the girls pregnant. Because he’s got the power, they’ll go along for the ride, and reap what benefits they may from the scraps he leaves behind.

Of course, this kind of governance leaves behind damage far beyond Biff’s years on the football team, or Trump’s time in office. We’re still trying to get the science teacher’s Volkswagen down from the roof of the gym, and we may never get all that coal detritus out of America’s rivers.

And that’s assuming Biff leaves the building willingly …

We all must take responsibility for allowing the Biffs of the world to come to political power. We have to root out and trash the idea that the bullying, entitled, ‘big swinging dicks’ of the world have anything to offer the rest of us. They sneer at us, and view us with contempt. We are just the sheep they seek to fleece and lead to slaughter. They are the spoiled, the entitled, the corrupt, and they seek to profit from our naiveté. The tools that elect fools and criminals to office are our insecurities, fears, and prejudices, along with our willingness to let anyone else who’ll volunteer, to do the heavy lifting of keeping an eye on those who are supposedly running countries for the good of the people, and to make sure that they are not simply working for their own gain. These faults are what elect terrible people to the White House, or Parliament. Bad politicians are the reflections of our worst flaws.

If we want better, we need to deserve better. And deserving better means actually caring about who is running your government. It means doing the research, understanding basic civics, having an opinion, and demanding that our elected officials listen to all of the electorate, not just the part that greases their palms. Elected officials need to be scrutinized as severely as any other public servant, because they ARE your servants, and they are well paid to do the will of the people. If we, as citizens, can’t be bothered to learn what it takes to run our cities or country, if we find it all too boring, and unimportant … then we’ll continue to be asked to choose between two or more terrible choices to lead.

Social media teems with trolls, rants, memes, and the lashing out of frustrated, angry people. It feeds the divisiveness and lack of empathy that will tear our worlds apart. Everyone has an opinion, but opinions are not facts. We now have solid proof that neither your drunk uncle nor your favourite armchair politician are actually the smartest, or the best qualified, to make the intellectual, diplomatic, decisions that enable countries to run smoothly.

We are not enabling our ‘better angels’ when we choose those who will control our governments by Facebook polls. If citizens truly want to have a say in how they are governed, they have to put in the work to be better citizens.

As George Carlin told us so very long ago, ” If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant leaders. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. “

Inaction and Consequences

There are risks and costs to action…But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction. John F. Kennedy – 1917-1963, 35th U.S. President

Somewhere along the line – was it in the disco 70s? The ‘Me” decade of the 80’s? The Naughty 90’s? The despair of the Noughties?

Somewhere in there, we lost our way.

In the 1950s, we were all shook up, and in the sixties, we tuned in, turned on, and changed the world. We believed in ourselves and that our actions had global impact. And we were right.

But all that action was exhausting. We couldn’t keep it up, and we were busy patting ourselves on the back for being so hip and cool and groovy. We had used our flower power to launch a civil rights movement, and to stop an unjust war! The U.S. landed a man on the moon! Now we dance!

Retribution for the changes we had wrought came swiftly. Those who hate change targeted those who encouraged change. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, Bobby Kennedy – all assassinated for daring to dream of a better world.

Racism and ignorance tore the bright and shiny dreams of peace and equality of the sixties into shreds, and now, it threatens to do so again. The way forward is not paved with bullets and brutality. The raised voice and fist of dictatorship enslaves; it does not elevate a people or a culture, it tramples them into the ground.

Our years of ‘comfortable inaction’ have birthed some of the worst, most self-indulgent, and reprehensible political representatives of all time. Around the world, and at every level of government, the choices are dismal, with little to discern one corrupt, manipulative and greedy candidate from another.

Before you point the finger – know that you did this to yourselves. Know that wanting our own well-being at any cost, opting for indulgences as we decimated the middle class, slotting anyone who didn’t look or act like us into the reject pile of life … all of these ‘inactions,’ in the name of comfort, created the monsters we now see before us.

The years of focusing on what made us happy; on choosing the cheap over the well-made (and in that group, I include the ‘heroes’ we pedestaled;) the crude and ugly brutality of racism and bigotry whipped up by leaders who chose fear of others as their platforms; the laziness of passionate if largely uninformed opinion over fact and reason; the years of “too long: didn’t read” – all of those combined – have given us the governments we deserve.

We lost belief in ourselves, and demanded less of our leaders. We lost sight of the fact that every action we take has global impact. We refused responsibility. We chose comfort for ourselves over the welfare of the planet.

The actions we could have, and should have, taken in controlling our voracious greed for wealth and power, never happened.

And now we are reaping the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

Confronting the Higher Moral Ground

I’m taking a stand – against those who claim ethically superior principles based solely on their religious beliefs. I’m sick of the mealy mouthed and the self-righteous who feel free to condemn everyone around them for not toeing some invisible moral line. Enough with placating the unplacatable; no one alive completely exemplifies what it is to be good in the eyes of all. Only the dead attain that status, and even then, usually only through memories conveniently fortified with whitewash, amnesia, and mawkish sentimentality.

Social media and the ever slavering commercial media have been enjoying an all-you-can-eat outrage buffet this year, dining royally on the shock and awe of people actually daring to express and live their vaunted ‘freedoms.’ The last time I checked, neither Canada nor the U.S. were run by Sharia law, but there are days when you’d be hard-pressed to define what does make North America tick, from the hysteria of the religious and sanctimonious morality squad.

Time and again the most publicly virtuous are exposed as privately lascivious, to our delight. What’s more fun than pointing out the hypocrisy of others, while we clutch our pearls in pretended disgust, and tsk tsk in clucking disapproval?

“Something tells me it’s all happening at the zoo. I do believe it, I do believe it’s true…”

We’re apparently still talking about the transgender bathroom controversy (and by controversy, I mean it’s been proven unconstitutional and condemned by the country, but a small group of people are still clinging to their mistaken and unproven belief that anyone with a different sexuality is evil and must be burned at the stake.)

The main proponents are self-styled experts with outsized holier-than-thou platforms, who have clearly neither understood nor even looked up the definition of transgender, which is; “denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender.”

Rather, these morons prefer to double down on their ignorance, terrified and terrorized by the bad cross-dressers who live in the imaginary closets of their minds, not even realizing that for transvestites, it’s the dressing up that’s the fetish – sorry, bud, you they don’t find attractive at all.

This very human propensity for characterizing and demonizing others isn’t new, but social media has added new fuel to the fire, since we can now share our disapproval lickety-split quick, and globally, to other people who haven’t time to ‘look into’ the individual offense, but will gladly scan the headline, kneejerk an opinion, add their own stamp of disapproval, and send it out to all those who have the misfortune of knowing them. Ah, brave new world!

It makes me tired. Countering resentment, bitterness, self-righteousness, and the envy of those who would act in the same way, given the same scenario and ability, if they could get away with it, is wearing me out. We publicly condemn the exposed, corrupt, billionaires, crying, “hang ‘em high!” while privately thinking that conning the poor and unfortunate was a pretty clever business plan – until they got caught.

We have become the equivalent of the crawl at the bottom of the TV screen, constantly commentating on what we shoulda woulda coulda done, had that bad thing happened to us.

These analysts cling to their opinions like their thoughts are official flotation devices, when in reality, they’re out of their depths in the shallowest of wading pools.

The only way to rationalize our instincts to do what feels good and makes us happy, despite societal restrictions, is to frame our requests in ways that dance around Bible Belt mentality. Legalize cannabis, because it has health benefits, we say. How can you deny the cries of the ill and injured? Only a monster would withhold medication from those in need! Meanwhile, we downplay that pot can sometimes just be fun to ingest. Because fun … no no no! Give me a reason why you need pot, you filthy drug addict! Force me to reluctantly concede to make legal an herb that has been unfairly and falsely maligned for a century! (And then, once it’s as legal as alcohol and tobacco, we’ll all get together and indulge ourselves to our hearts content … no hard feelings, eh?)

No, this kind of soft policing by gossip, innuendo, and lack of evidence has got to stop. We have access to more information via our cell phones than any other civilization in history has ever had, and yet so many are backpedalling at top speed into wilful ignorance and pretended stunned condemnation of other people’s actions.

On the one hand, we recognize that a shocking number of North American women – 1 in 4 –are sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, but when a beloved media icon is accused of assault, our immediate response is to reject the allegation, and find culpability in the actions of the victim, all the while spreading the word in hushed, salacious, tones. For some twisted reason, we find it difficult to separate the creation and creators of art from the actions of abusers, even though history has shown us that celebrity does not guarantee innocence.

Here – I’ll prove it to you. These men have all been accused of, and either admitted publicly or in a court of law, that they were guilty, of abuse. I’ll bet at least one of these names will jump out at you, and propel you into a fit of injured defence: Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Sean Penn, Eminem, Chris Brown, Mike Tyson, Anthony Kiedis, Tupac Shakur, R Kelly, Jimmy Page, Michael Fassbender, Roman Polanski, Sean Connery, Tommy Lee, Johnny Depp, Mystikal, PeeWee Herman, Jeffrey Jones, David O. Russell, Jared Fogle, Jerry Sandusky, Charles Dickens, J.D. Salinger, Pablo Picasso.

And that’s before we even get to the more onerous, highly contemptible, disgraced politicians, like Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, who pleaded guilty to illegally structuring bank transactions of $3.5 million to quash allegations of decades of sexual misconduct with students. Or the complete and utter hypocrisy of Bristol Palin, daughter of Sarah Palin, the Alaskan Bible Spice, popping out two illegitimate children while pocketing $1 million for promoting abstinence to American high school students.

That old reprobate, Newt Gingrich, illustrated beautifully the convoluted logic of these right wing politicians, caught in a web of discovered ethical misconduct, which nimbly deflects personal criticisms of wrong doing by taking a moral swipe at the dreaded liberal bogeyman

“If we look at history from the mid-1960s, we’ve gone from a request for toleration to an imposition of intolerance. We’ve gone from a request to understand others to a determination to close down those who hold traditional values. I think that we need to be very aggressive and very direct. The degree to which the left is prepared to impose intolerance and to drive out of existence traditional religion is a mortal threat to our civilization and deserves to be taken head-on and described as what it is, which is the use of government to repress the American people against their own values.”

Separation of church and state be damned! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, or the flag he’s wrapped around himself.

Don’t even get me started on how many children’s’ lives have been ruined by the actions of those in religious authority. The insistence of those who claim to uphold ‘family values,’ while simultaneously playing the divine, ‘get out of jail free card’ to excuse their own depravities, past and present, is beneath contempt.

Point being, there’s not just one or two bad actors out there, assaulting the defenceless – there’s an army of abusers who take whatever modicum of fame and power – no matter how insignificant the power – they possess, and misuse their authority. We have to acknowledge that sex is only serendipitously the reason that there are 7 billion people on the planet – sexuality is a driving force that ensures the continuation of human life. But it’s also the dynamic that compels some warped individuals to take violent sexual gratification from anyone or anything in their path. Rather than receiving the message that sex can be fun and fulfilling for the parties involved, as well as essential to procreation, they’ve had their own sexuality condemned as immoral and beyond control, leading those poor souls to act out in ways that are truly immoral.

But we cannot address the sickness without addressing the root causes. The insanity of enforcing puritanical principles in a twenty-first century technology based world has to be laid bare, even at the cost of some offended sensibilities.

Is it too much to ask that humans, living in an unprecedented time of accessible information, education and enlightenment, live up to their potentials? The modern world, so contemptuous of the presumed backwardness of Third World nations, needs to tell the mealy mouthed, fundamentalist critics to back off. There’s no moving forward for humanity as long as society has to pander to anti-intellectualism, hostility to science, formless fears, grievances, and the perpetually self-victimized walking wounded in the chronically under informed brigade.

Peter Cottontail Has Left the Building

This week, leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday, has always been considered the Holiest of Holy weeks to Catholics. As a child, I looked forward to new shoes and a showy hat (women still had to wear them in church, back then) and a basketful of goodies – maybe even a chocolate bunny!

But that was then, and this is now, and it’s been a long time since anyone’s hunted for coloured eggs at my house. Peter Cottontail has left the building, and this week was a horror show all around, with bombings in Brussels, the ramping up of panic in America over both terrorism and Trump’s continued putsch to glory, interspersed with freezing rain, a dismal outcome (for many) to the Jian Ghomeshi trial, a Liberal budget that projects a $30 billion deficit, and a surprisingly negative response to the new Batman vs Superman movie. Oh, and the beer and liquor stores were closed for two days.

And you can add to that the shock accompanying hearing of the death of comedian Gary Shandling. At 66, he was far too young, and we were not ready for his genius to leave us.

You will forgive me if this has been a week I’d prefer to forget.

The loss of another celebrity, former Mayor Rob Ford, also captured attention. I’ve written about him before, and my feelings about his tenure remain unchanged. So do the feelings of those who admired him. However, Torontonians who dared to pen anything more than a non-committal noting of his passing were soundly excoriated by their fellow citizens for not prostrating at his bier with enough respect.

The world press had no such strictures.

Some people will try to convince you that their way to mourn is the only and correct way. I disagree. There is no ‘right way” to mourn, and demanding fealty at the point of a disapproving moral gun does not change the past. You would think that the unprecedented two day period of lying in state at City Hall (at the request of the family) would appease the bereaved, but apparently, that is not enough. Those who revered his blustering, bumbling ways would have us re-write history, in an effort to whitewash his misdeeds, and beatify him as Toronto’s savior.

It’s all so very reminiscent of the post-death canonization of Margaret Thatcher. Reviled during her tenure for her hawkish policies, key role in bringing about the first Gulf War, and advocating for the 2003 attack on Iraq, along with her ushering in of a period where the rich got richer at the expense of the poor, her influence negatively affected millions around the world. And yet, her canonization began just nanoseconds after word of her death hit the airwaves; she was lionized worldwide in the press, her state funeral cost Britain £3.1 million pounds, and Iron Lady statues made of actual iron were erected in places as diverse as the Falkland Islands , despite Argentina’s fury.

Meanwhile, the song “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” raced to the top of the British charts.

There’s a price to be paid for assuming a position of power – the admission includes having your life and history scrutinized and deemed worthy or unworthy, both by those who liked you and by those who didn’t, who still had to live with the impact of political actions. It is ‘misapplied death etiquette,’ as journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote, to be expected to apply the same moral high ground we do to the deaths of private individuals as we do when considering the entirety of the life of an influential public figure.

“There’s something distinctively creepy – in a Roman sort of way – about this mandated ritual that our political leaders must be heralded and consecrated as saints upon death. This is accomplished by this baseless moral precept that it is gauche or worse to balance the gushing praise for them upon death with valid criticisms. There is absolutely nothing wrong with loathing Margaret Thatcher or any other person with political influence and power based upon perceived bad acts, and that doesn’t change simply because they die. If anything, it becomes more compelling to commemorate those bad acts upon death as the only antidote against a society erecting a false and jingoistically self-serving history.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-death-etiquette

Ah, but the self-anointed social media judges and lawyers would disagree.

A video capturing an incident involving a young woman, confronted with parking in a handicapped space, went viral this week. Shot here in Toronto, in front of a Tim Hortons, the video showed her reaction to being caught – privileged outrage, threats, and the throwing of two cups of coffee at the videographer.

Surprisingly, many were more incensed by the videographer’s capture and sharing of the incident, than at the belligerent aggression of the scofflaw. Despite assaulting the photographer, and driving off in a huff, aiming her vehicle at the cameraman before swerving away, these commentators believed she should not have been confronted, but rather, that the photographer should have ‘minded his own business.’

As the video went viral, international viewers were stunned to see her rudeness … aren’t all Canadians pretty much nice and polite people, they asked? No, some, with possibly the best of intentions, are bullies.

Bullying in an attempt to force your morality, or personal and world views, onto others, is still bullying. I have one ex-Facebook friend who blocked my posts because her nephews follow her page, and she censors what they can see. Another Facebooker resented my questioning the morality of the actions of Israel towards Palestine, despite my information having come from a Jewish peace activist living in Israel.

And the culmination of the trial of Jian Ghomeshi unleashed some of the vilest comments I’ve ever seen directed at alleged victims of assault. The women were ‘liars,’ ‘manipulative,’ ‘shameful fame seekers,’ ‘femitards,’ ‘toxic bitches,’ and worse. Despite the fact that a total of 21 women had originally come forward to complain, with identical accusations, about Ghomeshi’s weird ideas on sex play, only three were brave enough to appear in court, and all three were pummeled with relentless demands to answer questions about, not just the attack, but trivial events of a decade past – what lawyers like to call ‘whacking’ – while Ghomeshi sat silent. (ghomeshi cosby.jpg)

The judge’s decision acquitted Ghomeshi, but also noted that his verdict did not mean these events ‘never happened.’ The judge simply didn’t believe the women’s testimony, flawed as it was by misremembered events, private messages between two of the accusers, and contact with the accused after the fact.

For women of every political stripe, the decision was flawed, and the system biased. At City Hall, one naked protester was unnecessarily and roughly tackled to the ground, her nipples scraping the pavement as she was dragged away by the police. Despite nudity being legal in Canada, the uptight citizens must not be discomfited by the sight of a woman’s breasts.

From a story released by the CBC: “While former CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi’s acquittal has sparked protests, many within the legal community are praising the decision, agreeing with the judge that the complainants’ credibility issues raised reasonable doubt in the case.”

By implication, stating that “many within the legal community” support the decision, dismisses by extension those who found the decision as to be ill-informed. In actual fact, many of those who have criticized the decision are academic and legal scholars.

Am I biased? Perhaps. Or is the system itself flawed? At the beginning of the month, a report filed by the Criminal Lawyer’s Association found that women were leaving the field of criminal law in dramatically high numbers, due to systemic discrimination.

“It found low pay, lack of financial support for maternity leave and being treated differently than male peers by judges and court staff as some of the reasons so many women are leaving private practice of criminal law,” reported Maureen Brosnahan for the CBC. “Many women also reported a lack of respect and being treated differently than male lawyers by court officers, police, crown attorneys and judges. One reported being called “little lady” repeatedly. Others said they were chastised for asking judges for time to pick up children from school whereas their male counterparts who made similar requests were not rebuked.”

Whether or not it is possible to change how sensitive cases are handled in an atmosphere where women are routinely marginalized, it’s still time for an honest reappraisal of how sexual assault cases are conducted in Canada, especially in the face of the numbers.

“In Canada, the low rates of conviction for sexual assault are an indictment of the system itself. As a 2014 Toronto Star article revealed using Statscan data from 2004 and 2006, 460,000 women self-reported sexual assault: 15,200 reported to the police, 5,544 charges were laid, with 2,824 prosecutions and 1,519 convictions. Again, that’s almost a half million self-reported assaults, and 1,519 convictions. Something is deeply wrong.”

Understandably – and not because we are stupid or legally naive, but because 1 in 4 women has experienced a sexual assault in her lifetime, and has a strong personal stake in how this case concluded – many women were incensed at the Ghomeshi decision.

Enter ‘mansplaining.’

Either unable or unwilling to see how angry and hurt many women are by the Ghomeshi decision, mansplainers flocked to the posts women made about their feelings on the ruling. “Read the decision,” they intoned, as though we were either too stupid to understand, or blind to the many gloatings of those who’d ‘called it’ from the beginning, and who were dancing in joy at both the decision and having been proved right.

Hey! Your side won! Now could you take your foot off my neck so that I can sympathize and empathize with women who feel as I do, stunned at the inevitability of once again, being re-victimized post-assault?

Are you so utterly deaf to the agony of people in pain that your only recourse is to repeat incessantly that ‘justice has been done?’

Or as one woman keened in her blog, “How can you be so blind? How can you insert yourself into a woman pouring her grief out, to tell her that legally, she has no case? That what happened to her, didn’t factually happen. To throw a smothering blanket on the fire igniting in her. She has no reality. The law is the reality. It is the neutral, the official record. It is gas lighting on a massive scale.

So I know perhaps the evidence wasn’t there, or that the burden of proof wasn’t met. And I don’t fucking care. This isn’t about this one case. This case was inevitable, like watching a lemming marching to its doom.

It’s every fucking time. Every time. The mundanity of the oppression, the predictability of the reaction, the backlash that follows. “ (https://afateofpossibilities.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/this-isnt-about-the-ghomeshi-case/)

It is indeed gaslighting. It’s telling people that their emotions are invalid, that what they see and feel has no weight. It’s a way to keep those who disagree with you off balance, wondering if perhaps what they perceive isn’t real, casting doubt on their mental stability, pointing to others that agree with YOUR beliefs as proof that THEY are in the wrong. It is psychological abuse. And it’s an ugly way to treat anyone.

The overwhelming miasma of this week – at least for me – has been one of outraged, self-righteous, phony, morality gone mad, and overwhelmingly imposed upon all in its path. Think as I think, believe as I believe, abandon your own truths and take on mine.

Whether it be Trump calling the beleaguered city of Brussels ‘a hellhole,’ or Cruz demanding strict policing of American Muslims in their own neighbourhoods; police manhandling protestors, or judges calling women deceitful and self-serving, it’s not been a good week to have a high Emotional I.Q., and a low tolerance for sanctimonious public principles forced upon the social order by the court of public opinion.

(first published March 27/16 (bobsegarini.wordpress.com/2016/03/27/roxanne-tellier-peter-cottontail-has-left-the-building)

Interesting Times

“May you live in interesting times.” Not a blessing, some say, but a curse, as though only times of peace and contentment are to be appreciated and enjoyed.

Perhaps we mean it ironically, as all times, across all eras, have had interesting aspects. Specific conditions change, but people still bend or break in reaction. Those who lived through the Great Depression, World Wars, Kennedy’s assassination, the Age of Aquarius, and the onset of the Computer Age, came out the other end either subtly or grossly altered. And those who look back fondly at rosy tinted times are prisoners of nostalgia, blinded by imaginings that neatly snip out the bits that disturb the dream.

So many dread and fear changes to their lives, and yet, there can be great beauty in chaos. Certainly, coping with new information can be problematic, but without profound change, we are static and boring. We even bore ourselves when life becomes nothing more than a forced march through our days, stuck deep in a rut of habit and preconceptions. Creativity demands a spur. You cannot rage against that with which you have not grappled.

We can try to hide away when change threatens our equilibrium. Or we can rush toward change, willing to embrace whatever life throws at us. Either way, change will come. The only difference will be in how you accept the inevitable. Will you accommodate the newness, incorporating what is different, and weaving its strands into your existence? Or will you rail impotently at what is to come, in a foolish attempt to cling to the past, to slow down what cannot be stopped? The present doesn’t care. The present continually dances to each new reality, with or without your approval.

The refusal to embrace change has reached its zenith in American politics. Long groomed by the Religious Right and a lockstep Republican party‘s fanatical refusal and repudiation of science and actual facts, a good part of the nation now stumbles along behind the Godzilla of Gaslighting, a man so devoid of empathy for his fellow man (or woman) that he feels free to tar whole segments of humanity with his own prejudices and biases. A textbook narcissist, willing to say or do anything to stay in the spotlight, and keep a constant stream of attention upon his silly self, he manipulates his followers through their nostalgic yearning for happier times … Make America Great Again, he cries, as though only he has Willie Wonka’s golden ticket to the future. The future he’s selling, though, seems to have to first detour through the past.

He wants to return America to the “good old days,” when life was simple. Well, simple for a certain segment of society, before civil rights and equal rights. Not so good, and a giant step backwards, for women, people of colour, or immigrants, be they legal or illegal.

His followers yearn for an America that never existed except on film. They are led not so much by what he says, but what they fear – reality itself. They want to stop the world, just for a while, “just until we figure out what’s going on.” He’s going to make life all better, more understandable, and “you’re gonna love it. There will be so much winning, you’ll get sick of winning.”

Like a slimy, used car salesman , the Sultan of Slurs seduces with words of no more than three syllables, absolutely devoid of facts or actual plans, and replete with self-aggrandizement. “I will tell you this, and I can say it with certainty: I will be the greatest jobs producing President that God ever created. I love the subject, I love doing it, and I love helping people.”

Despite zero political experience, and a chequered, peppered with bankruptcy, past, he has nonetheless captured the lazy and the selfish, those who have yet to grasp that they are being sold a bill of goods. It seems almost preordained – behold your next President, brought to you by a media that prizes sound bites over content, the election reduced to a simple transaction between a seller and a buyer. And bought by those too foolish to grasp the precept, “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

Meanwhile, politicians with actual platforms run smack into that same unwillingness to grasp change, or hope for the future. After declaring in Ohio that her coal plan would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” Hillary Clinton, with almost terminal foot in mouth disease, was soundly booed and condemned by coal country lawmakers. Meanwhile, the $30 billion alternative being offered for investment in the clean-energy economy was completely dismissed. Because, yes, there will be more jobs in clean energy, but for those who’ve spent a lifetime in coal mining, it’s a leap too far, particularly for people with little confidence in current government And especially since, as former Representative Barney Frank put it, “the likelihood that 58-year-old coal miners are going to become the solar engineers of the future is nil.”

That guy is more likely to be thinking, “if Black Lung and lung cancer were good enough for my dad … they’re good enough for me.”

Despair. Fear. Anger. So much anger. Anger that simmers just below the surface, until released in the form of the fist of a 78-year old man, sucker punching a young, black dissenter. A mindless, impotent, unending anger against politicians, Wall Street, terrorists, immigrants snatching the few remaining jobs, governments kinder to corporations than its voting citizens. Anger against a dream denied, a life that might have been, a life ‘as seen on TV.’ An anger that is fear disguised as action and reaction.

“This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. It’s also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.” Rebecca Solnit

The stories that are told to us, and the stories we tell ourselves, about our pasts, our presents, and our possible futures, reflect only one aspect at a time. If the narrator chooses to emphasize the negative over the positive, our emotions can be twisted, causing us to accept or reject the narrative. It’s often very much in how you look at things that determines how the experience ends.

This same society, this same world, which can be perceived as cold and unforgiving, can also be a place of wonder and delight. Each step forward, plagued as it can be by those who resent change, represents shifts in ideas and perspectives. Social change is happening. The very framework of how we view sexuality is shifting. There are progressive advances in the sciences that we would never have anticipated, even months ago. All of these marvels are going on in real time, minute by minute. But if your expectations are shaped by those who desperately cling to the past, you’ll be stuck back there with them. If all you are focused on is what is temporarily amusing, or that which jibes with your own, delicate, beliefs, you’ll blink and miss glimpses of your future.

We have little control over the times in which we live. Indeed, no one has total control of anything, or anyone, other than themselves, and even that doesn’t always run smooth. So you may as well surrender to uncertainty. When we are willing to step into the unknown, free from all preconceptions, those ‘interesting times’ become the opening notes to a symphony of possibilities.

(first pubished March 20/16: bobsegarini.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/roxanne-tellier-interesting-times/)