After a week of schizophrenic weather (it’s hot! it’s cold! it’s raining! it’s snowing!) and even more schizophrenic babblings from the Whiner in Chief to the South of Sanity, it was an enormous relief to make the long drive out past the airport to the cozy home of friends Candice and Eli, for the New Orleans themed Fam-Damily Music Jam Fest. Within minutes of arrival I was draped in Carnival beads and being pulled on stage for some musical improv. 
It was exactly what I needed. For more than a month, most of us have been following the antics of President Evil, and it’s enough to bring on a nervous tic, if not an ulcer and heart palpitations. I can’t speak for anybody else, but for me, singing clears out all of the cobwebs and leaves me feeling cleansed and refreshed. Maybe it’s having to either remember lyrics or to make them up as you go, or maybe it’s my natural competitiveness and need to ‘play’ with other musical children.
Regardless, it sure took the edge off, in the best way. For those of you who are bored of the political antics of the Golden Wrecking Ball and his band of Merry Incompetents, you can’t possibly understand how tightly wound all these machinations have made those of us who are following this race to the Reichfest. It’s all too much, it’s never-ending, and we cannot relax at any hour of the day or night. We are guitar strings tuned too tight. Something’s gotta give, or we will snap.
I am normally a peaceable, happy person, but lately I’ve discovered just how much rage I have for the blandly evil, those who nonchalantly throw the lives of innocents into turmoil and pain for no more reason than a belief in their own superiority. How angry am I? The next person who shrugs off ANY thing to do with the Orange-Tufted Twitter Flitterer with a casual ‘fake news’ gets it right in the kisser.
And I’m not the only person discovering their inner pugilist …. there’s an entire movement, of politically active liberal men engaged in power lifting, in order to “defend themselves against attacks by far-right extremists, and to intervene in potential hate crimes.”
The #SwoleLeft was started by 26 year old New Yorker, Poncho Martinez, who says: “Trump’s election made it clear that the Democrats are incompetent—that their power machinations are useless when confronted with a different fighting style, and that regular people need to get involved with politics on an individual level and on a daily basis.”
He’s right. Anyone who thinks they can out logic the Prima Donald‘s administration is bringing a knife to a gun fight. There is NO logic in President Pants On Fire‘s team, who grow increasingly more bloated from feeding on the tears and misery of the people of America. There is only a verbal tank rolling forward and crushing everyone in it’s path.
Carefully prepared arguments, complete with annotations, 8 by 10 colour glossies, painstakingly checked and double checked, will be met with the response of ‘fake news.’ And that makes us as helpless as the sword fighter who Indy shot rather than confront.
And here’s a tip for those of you who don’t realize that you’re actually a Hair Gropenfuhrer apologist, despite continually telling your more liberal friends that you can’t stand the guy … if you’re calling an investigation into a confirmed Russian intervention in the last election ‘fake news’ … you’re in Trump’s Reeking Wrecking Crew.
The Orange-Tufted Shit Gibbon and his King of the Whoppers staff coast through all reporting on their misdeeds by repeatedly calling it all ‘fake news.’ Here’s a newsflash, Comrade Trumputin; you may not want to believe in science or facts, and you may not want to hear that people disagree with you, and you may not have noticed that the majority of the world believes you’re a compulsive liar and a malignant narcissistic, but all of those things are TRUE .. which, if it hasn’t been properly explained to you .. is the opposite of FALSE and FAKE.
“Calling something “fake news”, Mr. President, doesn’t make it so, no matter how loud the applause is amongst your acolytes. You seem to believe that the American public can’t see that you are protesting the truth getting out, while not really denying the specifics of the reporting in any convincing way.
Attacking the messenger while not being able to counter the firehose of leaks that suggest very worrisome developments, will not cause the press to blink. Quite the contrary. Reporters are instinctual, and the louder and more vehement your protests, the more we will be inclined to dig.” (Dan Rather)
However, if The Trump of Doom is correct that fake news is the enemy of the people, then he has made himself Public Enemy Number One, through his dedication to the spreading of complete fabrications and outright lies, while offering no evidence to back up his take on what he’s seen on FOX or what he’s heard from some German golfer who knows a guy who knows a guy. We are, in the words of KellyAnne “WrongWay” Conway, to take his tirades and rants, not as mere prose, like ordinary people use, but as some sort of special messages he is delivering from his heart. You know, like that other guy, the North Korean Dear Leader, that is so misunderstood outside of his own country.
No one with any integrity whatsoever will tell you with a straight face that the media is always right. There are facts, and then there is spin, and whether you blow left or right, the same reportage can put the butcher’s thumb down on your side or the other side’s scale. 
There is misinformation, and there is propaganda; there is a ‘sex sells’ slant, and ‘if it bleeds it leads.” And then there is the $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history, that was given to Mr. So-Called-President gratis during the last campaign, allowing him to outline his plans to Make America Great Again.
Tell me, Truthophobic Trump, was that ‘fake news’ as well?
What Hair Hitler and his Bushel Basket of Deplorables call ‘fake news’ is anything with which they disagree, or anything that interferes with their versions of ‘alternative facts,’ or ‘post-facts, ‘ in their post-truth bubble. They’re putting the ‘fun’ back into ‘dysfunctional’ … but only if you’re on the Trump Trolley of Doom.
Dire Abbey has his own personal vision of America, which is apparently a place of carnage, a dumpster fire of cataclysmic proportions, where the citizens flee in terror of one another and certainly from anyone of any sort of colour that is not orange. Which is odd, because it would seem that he has seen very little of the country he represents, beyond the golden toilets of his suites in Mar A Lago or New York city, or as seen through the tinted windows of his private jet. Is this ‘dumpster fire’ visible from his unfriendly skies when he can tear his eyes away from Bill O’Reilly?
His dystopic vision was nurtured on the ramblings of alt-right ‘celebrities,’ and misspelled internet memes, which does, in some horrific way, make him representative of half of the American people. And it is the internet that must bear responsibility for the care and nurturing of trolls and hackers who gleefully terrorize social media like the bullies at a Nerd Prom.
And the bad news is – it’s gonna get worse. Actual ‘fake news,’ disseminated to con consumers into giving up their money to crooks, is now propagated through Twitter bots, and the massaging of demo-and psychographics to find the most vulnerable. Just wait until AI (Artificial Intelligence) gets a hold of advertising! If you think it’s hard to find the truth about products or services now, you’re really not going to like the future.
No, you cannot just call anything you fear or disbelieve ‘fake news.’ That stupid and ignorant slam of all media is nothing but a cheap form of censorship, which full stop puts an end to discussion or questioning in the name of some holier than thou moral positioning.
I won’t have it. I won’t have it from anyone, up to and including Trumplethinskin. I am on a crusade to eradicate the term, and yes, I will defend our right to decide for ourselves, based on careful study and reflection, on what is true and what is false. We cannot and must not normalize the censorship and removal of viewpoints that conflict with specialized, personal interests.
You have been warned. Next time … POW!
” A lie is a non-fact deliberately told as fact. Lies are told in order to reassure oneself, or to fool, or scare, or manipulate others. Santa Claus is a fiction. He’s harmless. Lies are seldom completely harmless, and often very dangerous. In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible.” Ursula K. Le Guin, Northwest Portland
Now, I’m not gonna go off on a rant here, about global warming, and whether or not it’s caused by human activity. For one thing, it’s too nice a day to argue. It was 11 degrees yesterday, and it’s nearly 10 degrees today already; seriously, not wasting my time on deniers. Mama wants to gambol where flowers will soon be.
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. ”
te to Mary. The normalization calmed their fears, and made people realize that they could relate to a drastic social change.
We want to pay as little as possible for any given thing. Corporations heard us; they outsourced manual labour to countries where they could pay lower salaries. And so those jobs, which we used to do here, no longer exist.
And what role will self-driving vehicles play in a future economy? Long haul truckers, cab drivers and couriers will find themselves out of work – not tomorrow, but within the next decade. And that’s a whole lot of drivers.
When Trump said, “For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries” while depleting our own. And,: “The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world, ” he was outlining ” a world in which foreign relations are collapsed into a zero-sum game. They gain, we lose. ” (
The order was signed as many were on planes, en route to America.
Political parties that relied upon cutting taxes rather than shoring up their infrastructures and their citizens needs, just to get re-elected, are to be blamed. Every party, every country, big and small, passed that big buck along to their successors, enriching corporations and themselves in the process, while ignoring and angering their constituents, who had trusted them to explain what they needed to know and understand about their future.
And so, there were no television series like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, that allowed citizens to normalize a changing present and a very different future. Instead, there was a rise in conspiratorial, dystopic, dramas, and a rush to fairytale land, that deified cartoon superheroes, and fantasy characters. Reality shows, that weren’t really reality, appealed to the minority and the niche groups. And an entire genre of television catered to the needs of ‘preppers,‘ those that would stand alone and defend what little they had when the inevitable (to them) collapse of society occurred.
And certainly, there were good times to be had in the 60’s and 70’s, and I have tons of fond fuzzy memories of elephant pants and go-go boots, Sassoon haircuts, and Mary Quant and Twiggy makeup tips.
One of my favorite memories of my own misspent youth is of the first and only time I saw Janis Joplin perform live. The Montreal Forum, November 4, 1969. It was every thing I had hoped for – and more. I was first struck dumb by her presence and energy, and when that had passed, I rushed, like the thousands of others in the audience, to the stage front, to try and capture just a hint of that glorious essence by being closer to her.
And in that time, we who were actually young when Janis was young, who first heard these songs on our radios or our portable record players or were in the audience when she toured, bottle firmly in hand, and wailed her way into our hearts, were able once more to revisit a time when everything seemed possible.
But the gift that Kudelka gave us, by channelling Joplin’s spirit and music, was a chance to go back to our adolescence in our minds, to forget momentarily that, while we may be wiser, we are also greyer, stiffer, and a lot less supple than we once were. This Janis, then, a Janis Joplin that survived, and was celebrating a 74th birthday by once again sharing her talent .. this Janis relit the candle that aging, politics, and a general societal malaise seeks to extinguish in our hearts.
A few weeks ago, I was having lunch with friends in the Market, when Molly Johnson came bopping along. Molly may be a Canadian icon – a singer, songwriter, broadcaster and philanthropist – but that day she was a woman on a mission, distributing posters and postcards to the local shops, in aid of her latest project – the first annual Kensington Market Jazz Festival. It was the first I’d heard of it. When I asked how I could help, she asked if my friend Barbette and I would volunteer to handle door duties at some of the gigs.
Don Cullen was the Pied Piper of Possibilities, of that first break, when the world was wide open to the new. New music, new sounds … whatever could be dreamed up, this was a place where it could be showcased.
For boomers, aging is a bit like puberty; we don’t know what’s next, and we’re both eagerly anticipative and terrified of what’s to come. Often simultaneously.
So when the idea of retiring comes along, whether because we’re closing in on 60 or because other factors, like failing health, or a kick out the door from long time employment, play a part, it can be a bit of a shock. It doesn’t matter whether your retirement is because you want to, or have to .. it’s gonna be a ride.
Will I be happy and relaxed, comfortable, with plenty of time to pursue my hobbies, living the good life, traveling for pleasure, or to visit family and friends? Or will I be scrambling to make ends meet, worried I’ll outlive my money? Some will never feel secure, no matter how much money they have, while others struggle with very little in their pocketbooks, but are rich in friendship and emotional support.
As my friend Barbette Kensington says, “Aging is about how bright your light glows…. keep up the energy level; the more you do the more you can do. Watch your friends and environment; don’t let anybody or anything break your stride…“
Planning for a decent retirement from full time work goes way beyond financial, by the way. Even those retirees I know, that have salted away a good nest egg, have much more to deal with than just money. There may be downsizing involved, which in itself is horrifically conscious altering. There may be health issues, relationship issues, or, just to complicate matters, the health issues of those you’re in a relationship with.
Volunteering may never have been something you’d thought of as ‘work,’ but it is, and it can be a lot of fun, as well as a benefit to your community. Sharing your knowledge of what you’ve learned in your field can be another way to not only keep your mind ticking over, but of giving those just starting in your turf a leg up.
While I see others, who have ‘retired’ by retreating from life, and waiting for death, sinking deeper and deeper into the anaesthesia of pills and booze, ‘self-medicating’ the pain of their losses, kept housebound, fearful of their surroundings, and interested only in their own aches and pains, and needs and emotions. Addicted to quasi-medical shows that sensationalize the dangers of everyday life, and media that fattens its ratings by appealing to their fears of a world that feels increasingly more dangerous, they wrap themselves in cotton wool, unable to trust anyone, spiralling down into a paralyzing world hell bent on picking their corpses clean before they’ve even been buried.
What I’m talking about is reframing the experience of moving through time, so that as we do grow older we can step out of these age-based associations that can keep us in a cage. “
My faith, if that is what it is, lies in gratitude. I’m thankful for so much around me, most of which is unearned except by having been born the person I am, in the society I live within. There is nothing remarkable about me. Some parts of my life have been very difficult, but, at other times, life has been very good. The me that lived through all the parts of my life is always grateful, whether it is for a little or a lot, of whatever I’ve got.
Stuff doesn’t create happiness. Happiness cannot be bought. The feelings of comfort, joy, and community rise from not just an acceptance of who and what you are, but from thankfulness for the people you’ve chosen to surround yourself with, who accept you for who and what you are, wherever you are, whatever the conditions.
frustratedboomers 