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Where is Ann Coulter these days, anyway? You'd think the U.S. Administration would be hauling out its big guns in punditry at times like this.
What times, you ask?
Well, when Condi Rice is reduced to assigning words new meanings to get out from under, you probably need to take everybody back to a simpler time or the masses will start getting restless-er.
Remember then? When Ann Coulter said what so many pundits have said a million times since, couched a little finer, perhaps - "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"?
Ah, the good old days. Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the War on Terror been... what's the word Condi Rice used... embellished? No. Escalated? Not quite. Oh yeah - augmented.
Geez Louise. It almost seems these days as if there is augmentation without representation, so in retreat is the Administration on the home front while it gears up into overdrive on the war front
Democracy is such a drag. Thank Gawd there's a war on to detract from it.
But it's not just Ann Coulter who seems quieter these days, it's all of the Republican right - including Canada's Republican right. The bullying tone is gone, the "if you're not with us, you're against us", bravado is missing, the belief that the war would be quick and decisive, the vanquished welcoming US with open arms, well... you get the point. They've lost the media war thereby "de-menting" the War on Terror to a battle in Iraq.
And let's face it. A battle in Iraq just doesn't inspire the same patriotic fervour as a War on Terror. There's still the hearts and minds part - winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis - but it's hardly worth it if you lost the hearts and minds of Americans in the process.
What hasn't changed in the War on Terror is the moral certainty of its pundit supporters. That they sound decidedly misanthropic is kind of ironic, but still - the moral certainty comes through loud and clear. Still. Sure, Americans showed that support for the War on Terror had shifted to "a lot less" support for the War on Terror - but the belief by the U.S. Administration and its supporters that only a declaration of war by Christianity on Islam would expose Islam as a religion of war - holds fast. Still.
In some cases, it has augmented to an argument that saner minds deem quite racist - that not only is the War on Terror NECESSARY, but it should be escalated to include a war on birth control. Er... for Western women, at least. So we can get those Christian (Western and Christian having become somewhat interchangeable terms for the pundit supporters of the War on Terror - much like Muslims and Terrorists) baby numbers up to compete with the Muslim baby numbers.
Phew. War is hard.
What's also hard is to believe that these lunatics ever had the support of a majority of Americans. And yet they did. And now, Canada is entrenched in Afghanistan, at least until 2009 and probably for years beyond that date. I mean, the NDP, which wants an immediate withdrawal of troops, just recently sided with the New Conservative government in not supporting a Liberal motion to force the Prime Minister to agree to 2009 as the absolute withdrawal date. Not that it matters. This government will do whatever it wants regarding Afghanistan if it gets a majority. And the Liberals were being a tad disingenuous, if you ask me, by introducing the motion at all. And while there is an argument to be made that the NDP should have supported the Liberal motion, I fail to see why.
Maybe the Liberals should have proposed an immediate troop withdrawal if they really wanted an end to this madness. Otherwise, it's just grandstanding from the Party that put us there in the first place. And as an NDP supporter, I fail to see why we should be co-opted into supporting a meaningless bit of politicking. It's just one more step down the road to the Americanization of Canada.
Whatever. It's all so irrelevant now. Gosh... imposing democracy on another people. What were we thinking? But now we're there, it's so much more complicated, isn't it. Especially since leaving at any time will mean abandoning the people there to one form of corruption or another.
Corrupt son-of-a-bitch #1, Warlord #2, or Taleban #3. Take your pick, Afghani voters. (And if somebody could enlighten me as to why Taliban is now spelled Taleban, I'd appreciate it. Because at the time the Americans first started bombing Afghanistan, I could swear it was Taliban. Please don't tell me we weren't even spelling the name of the oppressor of the Afghani people correctly.)
But I guess it was inevitable that Afghanistan would become like Iraq which would become like Afghanistan in some sort of endless War on Terror cycle. I mean, the invasion of Iran hasn't even happened yet to cycle into the loop and already I'm feeling War on Iran deja vu. I'm sure at this point the U.S. Administration would like to re-declare the war a success and pull out.
But it can't.
And so, on the home front, at least, there's really nothing for it but to go back to the beginning to ensure this never happens again, and hold up to the light of today, all those grand claims by media supporters of the U.S. Administration in its first call to go to war - and juxtapose them to Condi Rice's role on the world stage now as she travels the Globe re-defining the meanings of words in order to downplay the disaster NOW that was the original call to war THEN.
Oh yes - and maybe do what Israel is doing and haul up on the carpet the perpetrators of such madness for a good old fashioned probe:
OuchBaby-NotALebaneseProbe!
It may be the only way to end the War on Terror.
Last night was my monthly book club meeting: "The Curse", as I call it because we're so "us", that our last new member joined 8 years ago and we still have to call her "the new member" because we haven't been able to keep a newer one for more'n one meeting.
Also, once you're in Book Club, you can never leave. It's not like Hotel California, either, if that's what you're thinking. It's like a book club that you can never leave because the other members will phone you and e-mail you and, in one case - come to your door - to make sure you show up for the monthly meeting.
Every month.
For the rest of your life.
Anyway, the food's good, so, I really can't complain too much and I only have to host it once/year (we take the summer off and one member is the permanent Christmas host because she lurrrrrrrrrrves Christmas so much that we make her take a regular turn, too) and it does ensure that I read at least one book per month.
This meeting we did "An Audience of Chairs" by Joan Clark, which we didn't discuss much because the main character is mentally ill and that led almost immediately to a discussion about Mayor Larry O'Brien. One of our members, who works in and around City Hall, dispelled the possibility of mental illness, though, and said flat out, "Everybody at City Hall thinks he's a psycho prick. And just very, very stupid."
That doesn't surprise me. I'd have just gone with "asshole" but she said, "No! No! No! More than just asshole. He's a stupid psycho prick."
By the way, Dear Reader, in case you don't know who Mayor Larry O'Brien is, he's a guy who probably received more in taxpayer dollars than all the Homeless in Ottawa since Homeless people were first discovered in Ottawa - even before he became Mayor and made it his first order of business to try and give himself a great big fat taxpayer dollars RAISE. He also, more or less famously, said last week on CFRA (Ottawa's Hate Radio station):
"We've got to stop feeding the pigeons (referring to homeless people) in the Byward Market," O'Brien said on Madely in the Morning.
"And we did that with real pigeons about 25 or 30 years ago and low and behold, you barely ever see a pigeon around here. You start doing that with the panhandlers -- you stop giving out those toonies -- and they'll stop hanging around here."
THEN he borrowed a page from retired Premier Ralph Klein's hymn book to claim that Perth was sending it's Homeless people to Ottawa, which led to the Mayor of Perth claiming that Perth did no such thing, before remembering to comment on the inhumaneness of Mayor O'Brien's comments.
Anyway, I wouldn't care about Mayor Larry O'Brien except he's a charlaton holding the key to the city for FOUR MORE YEARS!!! Voters? Way to go. Now, suck it up - assholes.
But back to crazy people. The main character in Ms. Clark's book has at varying times, schizophrenia, manic depression, bi-polar disorder, and post partum depression. Now, I'm no mental health expert, but I would have diagnosed her with that new mental health catch-all: a borderline personality. She had what I thought was a self involvement that didn't allow her the capacity to consider other people. At first, I really didn't like her at all, but as the book went on, I found myself rooting for her to establish at least a couple of mutual relationships. And there were parts of the book that I actually found quite gripping while I hoped for the best: Would she be able to keep it together just long enough to not alienate everybody else in the scene with her bizarre behaviour and maybe even come out of it with someone who could tolerate her enough for a little future to and fro?
But that's just it with crazy people, isn't it. We want them to normal up, to fit in, to GET IT TOGETHER AND ACT RIGHT!!!!!!!!
Or is that just me. C'mon. Admit it. You feel that way, too - don't you? Sure, it takes all kinds to make a world, but, I would feel better if everybody acted right in the head in it, too.
Anyway, it struck me that by the end of the book, I had a certain respect for Moranna - just as she was. Which was an interesting transition for me to make. Certainly she had an adventurous life lived on her own terms. As I realized, who am I to talk about living right? Until very recently I lived my life according to the rules and was what any casual observer could see but I couldn't - depressed. When I threw out the rule book, voila! - I was happy. A little less liked for a while, shunned for a bit - but eventually - it all worked out. I know that because I found myself caring again about people I had been angry at for a long time.
Also, something that struck me in the book that I've also noticed about the Homeless people around me (I live in downtown Ottawa) was that Moranna worked really hard. Physically. She walks for miles in the book and survives by her wits (which are often a double handicap) and fairly hard labour. But because she is so difficult a person to deal with, people really don't care for her. And that's understandable to me. Crazy people are hard to be around, hard to put up with, because - they won't do what we want them to do - which is to act right.
Believe me - realizing that (and it took reading "An Audience of Chairs" to do it) was a real breakthrough for me. And I mean that in the sense that it's my problem if I have trouble dealing with how other people choose to live their lives. Just like it's Mayor Larry O'Brien's problem. Except that he's being paid to look out for ALL the citizens of Ottawa. I'm not. It's my duty to care, as a decent person, about Homeless people - but it's HIS duty to do right by them.
Or is it? Because talking about the Homeless in Ottawa led to a discussion about the latest, greatest issue in all of Canada's newspapers right now - the crack problem.
Now, when I first moved into my apartment building, it turned out, unbeknownst to me, that there was a crack dealer, newly arrived, on the first floor. It wasn't a nightmare, living in a building with a crack dealer on the first floor, but it was annoying. And a bit scary. Crack addicts, although skinny and jittery and generally pretty unhealthy, so not a big threat, physically, are desperate, too. So, it was a huge relief when he moved out, more or less of his own accord, although the police were watching him so that may have been what hurried up the exit - taking all his clients with him. Because, yeah - he was a normal enough guy and no real problem to deal with - but his clients were difficult and messed up.
As always at our book club meetings, one bit of discussion led to another and a couple of my fellow book clubbers said - flat out, and in majorly moralizing tones that these two simply do not use on any other subject, and which I doubt they even knew they had before crack came along - that they wouldn't give money to Homeless people anymore because they didn't want them buying crack with it - with THEIR money. And, they felt, that's exactly what they were doing - taking THEIR money (which they would never say is hard-earned - even though in both their cases - it is - it really and truly is - because they're not "like that" at all) and buying crack. Another one of our number even saw, first hand, a guy take her $5 and buy a rock from a guy leaning against a telephone pole just a few feet away.
To say they were mad about it - about what crack had made of giving money to Homeless people, I mean - would be an understatement. (And I'm being judgmental of them right now because I'm trying to be honest about my reaction at the time - which was judgmental. Whatever that says about me because as you will soon read - I was pretty much full o' shite, mesself.)
Now, I'm not playing Devil's Advocate, even, but I just can't help feeling that if I were a crack addict, I'd want you to give me $5 so I could get a hit. But, giving me $5 and expecting me to turn my life around would probably annoy me. In fact, I think I'd be pretty pissed off. And I think I'd be justified to feel that way. Look, give me money or don't, but if you give me money - don't tell me how to spend it. Because, here's the thing (and I didn't realize it then, I only realized it when I examined my own conflicted feelings about giving money to someone I know is going to buy crack with it), my fellow book clubbers don't want to give money to Homeless people now because - THEY DON'T FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT!
If it doesn't make you feel good to give money to a Homeless person - then why give?
Which was when I realized - "Oh yeah... that's why *I* give money, too! So *I* feel good!"
Oh dear, just when you think you're holier'n your fellow book clubbers.
So, tell me (and bear in mind, I'm not talking about anything spiritual, here - I'm talking strictly feel good territory in the here and now - I've even reduced, "there but for the grace of god go I" to "there go I") - is the real test of our humanity, giving the money and, knowing the person you've just given the money to is going to buy crack with it, walking away NOT feeling good about it?
Nevermind. It is. And all those do-gooders burbling on about helping others because it makes them feel good inside is just so much more bullshit and truth denial and mixing morality up with humanity.
Letting people live their lives in spite of ourselves is where it's at, if you ask me. Which. Thankfully. No one ever does.
I had a really cool realization on the weekend when I was asked to help my daughter with a Shakespeare assignment.
Who, what, when, where and why - other than Shakespeare - has been a constant in *our* education system other than Shakespeare?
That's right, other historical fads may come and go with the politics of the times, but Shakespeare remains a constant educational touchstone.
The incredible thing, too, as I discovered, was how much fun it was to pass on all that I knew about the themes in Shakespeare. And I was amazed (as you would be, too, no doubt) by how much I could remember about who's who - especially in the tragedies.
The particular play in play was MacBeth - NOT a play I studied in any great depth, but when my daughter wondered aloud about which scene to dissect, I immediately piped up "Out damn spot!". And proceeded to argue my case quite forcefully as to why Lady MacBeth's descent into madness, consumed as she was by guilt and remorse for what she had done, is one of the most tragic scenes of the tragic scenes of Shakespeare's tragedies.
And there were... five?
The fact that I came to that realization - that it's one of the best scenes in Shakespeare - only in the moment of my retelling of her desperate attempt to wash off the phantom stain of sin, made it all the more sweet. It also reminded me of why I liked Shakespeare way back when I studied it - because women have great parts in his plays. Which I thought was pretty cool for the times until I remembered - aha! - Elizabeth I was Queen!
Which, quite naturally, caused me to opine that women on top - obviously - bring out the best in men below.
It all fits when you put it just so - doesn't it?
But oh how backward we are in these modern times, eh? I mean, contrast Shakespeare's plays to Hollywood's movies and notice the very obvious lack of good roles for women in these modern times. The best movie I've seen in a while, "Children of Men", basically had the role of women reduced right down to one woman's fertility. And I doubt the actress who played that role made anywhere NEAR the money she would have made playing a hooker with a heart of gold in something else.
In fact, I can't imagine, even though over 50% of law school students (graduates?) are women, a Hollywood movie entrusting the delivery of the modern equivalent to, oh, say... "The Quality of Mercy" - to an actress. Unless it was by an uptalking blond bombshell who graduated Harvard Law School - shocking everybody in the world with her bubblicious brains, in spite of her blond bombshellness and bouncing boobies.
It really is kind of disgusting how cutesy backward pop culture is, if you ask me. I mean, there's humour fodder there in terms of mockworth, but, well, watch Saturday Night Live, sometime. Talk about cheap laughs. If you don't follow the shallowest news of the tartiest pop culture scene in the United States - you won't get any of the jokes. Without the cultural reference points (Britney sans undies and O.C. death scenes) - they aren't funny.
Which explains why I haven't laughed at Saturday Night Live in about... oh... say... 25 years.
Still, it is heartening to know that if it were to take on Shakespeare, there would be however many generations there are alive watching who would all get the joke. That's pretty cool, when you really stop and think about it. Even the Bible - maybe especially the Bible - isn't as well known as Shakespeare by generations upon generations of students from the width and breadth of the English language education system.
King LEER, anyone?
Anyway, it was interesting, too, how the characters come alive again when one is put in mind of them. We even had a hilarious discussion of riddles and what constitutes a riddle when I gave away the surprise ending - MacDuff revealing himself to be "not of woman-born" - and killing MacBeth.
Ooh. That must've been sum freaky. Thinking you're invincible and then - - the old forehead slap as blood gushes forth: "Who'd a thunk it?! The MacDuffster's mom was a corpse!"
Of course, I probably couldn't re-read any of the plays. Shakespearean English is just too much for me to be bothered with now. Just surfing through the book looking for old quotes to wow and amaze my friends and family with for years to come gave me eyestrain.
Anybody know any good movie re-makes I could rent instead?
I came across a post on the internet the other day pointing out the New Conservative Government of Canada's sudden and passionate concern about the possibility of job losses in the future should Canada implement much in the way of environmental protections in order to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
If you really stop and think about it, that's in sharp contrast to the New Conservative Government of Canada's almost total lack of concern about the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of jobs lost in our manufacturing sector.
But there you go. Some job losses matter more than others to New Conservatives, I guess.
In any case, since life according to our governments these days is all about growth and productivity and more, more, more, I suppose it doesn't matter that blatant hypocrisy is the new way of doing politics. Afterall, growth is all about producing more and producing more is all about extracting natural resources out of the earth and extracting natural resources out of the earth is all about environmental decline.
Yay, the New World!
I mean, seriously. Since all our economic success and consequent environmental devastation is based on being consumers to the max, why isn't our government - which is supposed to represent the citizenry - encouraging us to down tools more often, stop buying stuff, learn to live small? Why is our government, instead, always talking the productivity line. Always. Think about it - when was the last time a Federal Government of Canada didn't talk the productivity line? I can't remember when. Can you remember when?
Cripes, I can even remember the Power Corp offspring telling us we were bad little Canadians because we weren't producing enough to keep up with... who? China? India? Jesus Christ on Pogey. Where in hell does the media find these nutters?
But there's a long lost truth here that I'd like to remind everybody of - government isn't business. It's supposed to be the representative of the country's citizenry. It isn't supposed to represent business - it's supposed to represent citizens. But it's all so assbackwards now, isn't it. Did you know that Corporations, for instance, are classed as individuals - in the sense that they have the rights of individuals - and yet, legally, they get to claim a sort of vague ground in the sense that, well, they AREN'T really individuals - are they.
But given that corporations are made up of individuals, who benefits from this steady erosion of citizen representation by our governments? Because it isn't so much like this in the Old World, is it. Governments in Europe tend to respond more to what citizens want, as opposed to what business wants. How did it become so lopsided over here? Or was it ever thus and we have yet to evolve to a point where way of life matters, too. That everything in life isn't about producing. That how we live isn't all a matter of how much we consume. That we have the right to representation by our government that includes not working until we drop.
And you'd think government would, at this point, on its own and quite naturally, be responding to what is obviously, clearly, a citizenry in need of representation. And we shouldn't have to fear that representation isn't full on and consistent and, well, not so blatantly hypocritical that it isn't any kind of representation at all.
What the hell is government for, afterall? Or should we just stop voting? What's the point if the government just gets elected and then doesn't represent the interests of citizens.
A "Citizens Party" anyone?
Just in case anybody has missed it, I believe in the science of Global Warming, but I do not support Kyoto or Carbon Emissions Trading.
I'm sorry, But since the people pushing Carbon Emissions Trading are the same people who have carbon footprints bigger'n Michael Moore's ass - they can eat my dust. And since those same people are all over in China and India super-sizing their carbon footprints, they can pay me for my dust after they've eaten it, too.
Thanks for the lecture, Carbon-Boy, but I ain't buyin'.
Besides, no offence to my plus-size readers, but - if Al Gore gets any bigger, he's gonna need to super-size his jet and hold his lectures in Greenland - the only place big enough for him AND his ego.
I know, I know - but why pick on Al Gore, Sooey?
Oh, why the hell not. Those carbon emission traders are pretty stupid, anyway, if you ask me. You want Kyoto passed in the United States? Point out the lucre to be made in the carbon emissions trading scam and you'll have Bush the Junior signed on in no time.
But none of the above endears the Global Warming octopii to me, either. Gawd. Are there stupider people alive anywhere in the world, do you think? Last night, for some reason or other - oh yeah, I was trying to conserve energy - my energy - by not turning off the TV as I normally would and it must have been some time after The Simpsons' or The Family Guy because Fox News was on the air.
Well, not Fox News, exactly. Fox Weather, to be more precise. And by news I mean nooze and by weather I mean whether.
O!Mi!Gawd! I had never heard of weather editorializing before, but - O!Mi!Gawd! That weatherman was like a spin guy out of Pravda-Gone-Wild. Did you know, for instance, that snow storms in the middle of April in the southern States are totally normal? Well they are. They happen all the time, in fact. Rain pouring down like bullets in New Mexico? Yup. You guessed it. Perfectly normal. That's why the cactii live there - because of the bullet rain that they can absorb until they explode with happiness. Oh - and even though you may have thought the normal temperature for more northern States is somewhere in the 60s during April, you are O!So!Wrong! because it's somewhere in the 80s. It's true. The weatherman even commented on how beautiful it is in April - just like it has always been - because of the temperatures in the 80s instead of the nasty old 60s that never were - SISTER!
Honestly. He wasn't even pretending to hide the editorializing. He looked right at the camera and pronounced the weather, the 80-degree temperatures, the bullet rains, the power-outting snow storms - as quite normal in April. So normal, in fact, that you'd be a crazy-conspiracy-minded-tin-foil-hatter to think the weather had ever been any different than really bizarre. Which wasn't bizarre at all since bullet rain is refreshing and hot temperatures are calming and snow storms mean Christmas all year 'round.
So, you know, I feel like - once again, as per usual, such is my lot in life - I'm caught in the middle of a big lie. Maybe TWO big lies. It's hard to say. I just know that anything green backed by a bunch of rich guys that excuses the countries where they're making all their money these days from any environmental accounting - is not going to do me any good. They want it because it's going to make them rich. Not me. Them. AND it's not going to do anything to save the environment from being destroyed by rich guys who make their money from Mother Earth - whether it was here, then or is there, now.
BUT, I also know that when the bees are disappearing and there are cherry trees in bloom at the wrong time of the year and Mark Steyn's blog store is closed to shoppers because of severe snow storms in April - that all is not right with the weather.
So, who's with me to do what we all know needs to be done but have been putting off for fear of massive indigestion? That's right.
Eat the rich. There's only one thing for Global Warming and that's it. We've got to eat the rich.
C'mon - who's with me? We'll just sponsor a big money-making-scheme gala somewhere in the middle of nowhere that you need a personal jet to get to and we'll be there waiting with our pots and napkins and have ourselves a big ol' rich feast.
I bet we could buy up all of China and India with their (our) carbon emissions savings.
I bought a Chatelaine recently, just to check in with it after the retirement of Rona Maynard, former editor, and there were a series of articles in it about women wanting to become mothers so badly that they would try any and all available reproductive technologies, women who went to adoption fairs in order to find a child to mother, and women who had had children, easily, and regretted it later.
It was sort of a mixed bag motherhood issue, I guess.
Now, I had so little trouble conceiving, that, although I understand how wanting children can become pretty obsessive, I feel a little guilty pronouncing on what some women are willing to put their bodies and minds through in order to conceive - when it doesn't happen naturally and in fairly short order, I might add, judgmentally. Interestingly, too, there is a case study in the issue where one of the women who does resort to quite extraordinary lengths to have a child (surrogacy) ends up conceiving naturally. So yeah, speaking of judgment calls, I really thought some of the "trying" times were a little short on patience. Only a year? I don't know. It's your choice, obviously, but it would seem that reproductive technology is pretty invasive to resort to it after just a year of "trying" to have a baby naturally.
I'm sorry, but there is a really good question simply begging to be asked here: Where the hell are the doctors in all this invasive and often harmful medicine, anyway?
The fact that we even have adoption "fairs" tells us, sadly, all we need to know about how desperate both children AND prospective mothers can be in the desire to make happy complete families. (There is one story by a woman who gives up trying to have a child, altogether, and it all just sounds so... failed, almost as if there had been a child and she died, that I found really sad. It was like her marriage was doomed to a state of mourning because of her failure to conceive, that she and her husband weren't a real family because they couldn't have a child, that it was now her lot in life to be incomplete.)
Then there was the piece by a mother (Cecily Ross, Leah McLaren's mother, as it turns out) about mothers who regretted becoming mothers after all was said and done.
Again, I wanted children and was very lucky in the children I got and have never looked back - BUT - I have never had much in the way of professional aspirations, either. AND my children have been the self-raising kind, too. People think I'm just being modest when I say that, but I'm not. Unless I forgot to do some really hard parenting task and am coasting on thin air, I'm pretty sure I just lucked out.
Besides, I don't think these women who are claiming to be honest and admit to regretting having had children actually mean they regret the children - I think, believe, know they just regret the impact they had on their lives because of the responsibility they entail. And sometimes that responsibility is just love - the burden of love most mothers feel because that's often how a mother feels about her children. It's pretty scary. I mean, children can weigh on the best of mothers because, well, they're a big, huge, awesome worry.
AND they take up the rest of your life in one way or another. I welcomed that, but I didn't really have much of a life on my own. Or with their Dad. Who didn't really have much of a life of his own, either. Or with me.
To be honest, that's probably why we had children. To give us a life. And I suspect there are millions and millions upon millions of couples just like us all over North America - where we have to have adoption fairs to find families for mothers and babies alike.
(I hope this entry isn't too loaded with judgment. As a disclaimer I'd like to just say that after I had children, I realized that there is no such thing as having your "own" children - that as soon as they're born they're separate whole beings. I just wish I could impart that "knowing" to women who think they need to have their "own" baby, instead of adopting one that's already here - a procedure so insanely difficult in this country, that, well, maybe it's just easier to go through all that invasive medical technology to have your "own".)
But back to Ms. Ross. She mentions an Ann Landers survey of some years ago in which, apparently, scads of women claimed to regret having had children, which prompted scads more women to write in and say that those women should not have been allowed to become mothers.
Women.
Personally, I doubt there are a whole lot of women d'une certaine age who had much choice in whether or not they had scads of children, so I'm not sure how relevant that is to women of my generation. Birth control changed a lot in terms of child regrets, I'm pretty sure. I mean, who the hell really wants 8 children? C'mon. Sorry if you're number 8, but... chances are your Mom wasn't thrilled with your birth. Sure, she'll tell YOU she was, but... I bet she told Ann Landers otherwise.
Anyway, I'm going to end this entry with a reference to a piece I read in the Utne Reader a while back. It concerns a black woman who had, through just a fluke of genetics and a bi-racial husband, a little boy with dusky brown skin and dark eyes and then, eight years later, a little girl with pearly white skin and light blue eyes. It was very interesting because, well, think of it. When, other than when she's a nanny, do you see a black mother with a white baby?
That's right - never.
And I guess that tells us where we're at in terms of motherhood in North America, really, if you stop and think about it.
This is a short follow-up to "How Could This Have Happened?" with just 4 points.
1) What kind of person posts on the Internet in the wake of a shooting rampage massacre like the one that just happened at Virginia Tech that the victims and survivors are a bunch of cowards and that he would have been a super hero and rushed the guy and saved everybody's life?
Answer:
John Derbyshire
Spirit of Self-Defense
As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake - one of them reportedly a .22.
At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage - your chances aren't bad.
Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes - and like most cliches. It's true - none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.
04/17 11:17 AM
2) What kind of person devotes herself to analyzing the genetic make-up of someone who buys a gun and shoots a whole bunch of people?
Answer:
DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL:
So who is the shooter? What is the shooter's nationality? What is the shooter's religion? Waiting to find out. And wondering why the police and media are referring to the shooter as "Asian" and not by specific nationality.
If I were Asian, I'd be legitimately upset with this broad generalization of the mass murderer's identity.
Why am I speculating that the "Asian" gunman is a Pakistani Muslim? Because law enforcement and the media strangely won't tell us more specifically who the gunman is. Why?
Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.
3) What kind of person believes that an armed student/teacher populace is the answer to the problem that, obviously, any crazy nut can obtain a handgun in the United States of America?
Answer:
See #1 above - John Derbyshire
4) What kind of person blames Atheists AND God for the state of the world today?
Answer:
GoddamnedAtheistsdamned
I know, I know - what kind of person posts what kind of person question and answer entries.
I haven't followed any of the coverage concerning the Virginia Tech massacre, except what's been posted about it on Sooey's, but I need to know: Has the perennial question been asked yet? You know, the one that always gets asked when things of this nature happen in the United States:
"How could this have happened?"
Don't tell me. It was a rhetorical question. My asking if, "How could this have happened?" has been asked yet, I mean. Oh - and if it has:
Guns,Ammo,Liquor R Us
Besides, the talk shows are already all over it. Rutger? You are so over you may as well be Don Imus. Make way for Virginia Tech.
It's tragic, tragic, tragic. We all see it, hear it, smell it. But what makes it all so much worse is - what to do now? I mean, I think the United States is so hopelessly lost up its own ass that this whole gun culture thing, well, it's here to stay, forever and ever, amen. There is, in my ill-informed opinion, nothing much anyone can do to prevent this very thing from happening all over again next week at another school. There doesn't even seem to be any real will to address the root of the problem - which is that guns are obviously very easy to obtain by anyone who wants one.
And who the hell wants a gun?
And yes. I know. It's happened here in Canada, too. Which makes us double-squared guilty because we've elected a gun friendly government when we absolutely didn't have to - unlike in the United States where the NRA is so unbelievably powerful, that it doesn't matter if you're a Republican or Democrat voter - you're S.O.L. if you don't believe in every nut's God given right to bear arms - as long as he hasn't already bared arms, if you know what I mean. Stephen Harper, don't forget (never, NEVER, forget), is an Alberta first guy who came out of the Reform Party and it was gun-loving Albertans who, with help from the NRA, screwed over the gun registry to the tune of millions of dollars.
Yup. The NRA is watching our gun control legislation very carefully and lookie here, isn't this a coinkidink, but - Stephen Harper, Alberta Separatist and former Reform party leader - is Prime Minister of Canada.
I know, I know - my tinfoil hat is on too tight.
Or is it? I mean, it wasn't me who went on and on and on about the gun registry cost overruns and promises to scrap it and stand behind the law-abiding gun-owners (which is all you have to be to get a gun to massacre 30 people, you know - law-abiding) instead because... well... why?
Anyway, as I noted on Sooey's (to the dismay of many, I might add) I found it highly ironic that one of the heroes of the massacre was an elderly Jewish professor who had survived the Holocaust AND an escape from Communist Romania, only to be gunned down in a hail of bullets in the good ol' U.S. of A.
That he was still teaching at 76 turned out to be a good thing for the students he helped escape the gunfire as he made his last stand, but - Geez Louise - that's some retirement policy, eh? Only in the United States - work until you're murdered.
Okay. Too early. I know. But the tragedy + time = comedy equation is, well, I mean - HOW MANY TIMES DOES THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN BEFORE AMERICANS FIGURE OUT - IT'S THE GUNS, STUPID!
At least, (with a nod to Jan Wong), unlike here, they can eliminate language laws as a suspect.
But still, Smug R Not Us. We elected Stephen Harper and the New Conservative Government of Canada, a gun friendly, tough on crime, group of wackos who have been in lock step with every Republican style policy of the United States government - including the War on Terror, meddling with the Judiciary, appointing Social Conservatives wherever possible, and speaking out for all those law-abiding gun-owners who want the right to bear arms here, just like their brethren in the good ol' U.S. of A.
I'm just doing a short entry this morning because it's on such a big topic, so please feel free to make up the length in my comments section.
An Indian company just bought Algoma Steel. An India Indian company, not a Native Canadian Indian company. Gawd forbid, say, Garden River Indian Reserve, just outside of Sault Ste. Marie should abandon its plan to showcase the Reserve as some sort of Heritage site/Tourist mecca, with real live people pretending to live in the olden days of hunting and trapping and moccasin sewing for the amazement of people who have only read about such things in history books - and get together with a bunch of other Canadian bands to buy Algoma Steel, instead, so its people can have a future to go with their past.
(I don't actually know how far this floated plan has come - the Garden River Human Zoo plan, as I think of it - I remember being home a few years ago and reading about it in the Sault Star, but I haven't followed-up on it since.)
In any case, back to the real world this morning as I was minding my own business, getting ready for work by applying lipstick and mascara (because my office skills really can't stand on their own), when my newspaper reading companion said, "An Indian company bought Algoma Steel."
To which my instant reply was, and I kid you not, this is what I said and this is what I would appreciate my commenters weighing in on: "So, an Indian company is going to own Algoma Steel, one of our polluting industries - AND we are, according to Kyoto and its (I'm sorry, everybody, but I've got to say this) cooked up carbon emissions credit trading scheme, going to have to buy credits to offset emissions of a company owned by India but operating here - in Canada BECAUSE it's owned by India but operating here - in Canada?!"
I'm sorry. But, Dear Reader, what kind of Global Village is this, again? Who is all this "Environment Saving" for, exactly? I mean, how is it that taxpayers here get stuck footing the bill for polluting - TWICE - just because we were so successful in our industrial development that now we offer all kinds of attractive industries for up and coming polluters to buy out from under us - you know, those emerging economic powerhouses like China and Indian that Western businessmen are so heavily involved in developing that, well, look around - that unbearable lightness of being? That's the absence of so many of our Western businessmen you're feeling because they're out and about doing business in emerging economic powerhouses. That's WHY they're emerging economic powerhouses - for those Western businessmen, anyway.
So, I have to ask - Did nobody stop to think that emerging economic powers like China and India would do exactly what they are doing now - buy up Western resources and companies and then get paid to pollute while we work in them, pay taxes - but they get to own everything and pocket all the profits - and then we have to pay them a polluting tax on top?
Or am I misunderstanding what is actually going to happen. Am I wrong? Does it not follow that if India owns Algoma Steel, and Canada is a polluting developed country that must buy carbon credits from some sort of World Bank (and I'm not even going to go there) - and India doesn't because it's a developing country, that well - HOW IS THAT ANYTHING OTHER THAN A DOUBLE HIT ON CANADIAN TAXPAYERS?! And by "CANADIAN TAXPAYERS", I mean the ones who keep their money here, not offshore.
So yeah - I don't mean rich Canadian taxpayers.
Look, I've long since accepted that Global Warming is real and here, but I've also long since accepted that Kyoto and Carbon Trading and all that jazz is a funny bit of business that will, once again, benefit the few - the same few - at the expense of the many. It'll be expensive, it just won't be expensive for rich people. It'll be a whopping new tax on the bulk of Canadian taxpayers - the middle-class.
Tell me, please. Am I way ahead of the curve, off the curve, did I miss the curve? Or do I have company? Does it have to be either/or in terms of accepting the scientific facts of Global Warming while rejecting the offered solution to it? Can I agree that Global Warming is a real and serious threat to the Earth without agreeing with Kyoto and Carbon Emissions Trading and the very obvious reality that together they are nothing but a mad money grab of the worst, most cynical kind by the very people who benefited last go-round from our natural resource exploitation?
Because something tells me the Global Village is a lot like the old Nation States, except with more opportunities for rich people to exploit the people who keep it all going 'round for them.
So, are apologies the new black or something? Because I've noticed lately a couple of people who, a decade or two ago would have been fired - BOOM! - just like that, are being allowed to apologize in hopes that it's enough to make up for the transgression.
Well, in the first case, Shock Jock, Don Imus, it wasn't. In the second case, Paul Wolfowitz, it might be.
That's because Don Imus ultimately got nailed by advertisers saying, "We don't accept your apology". But Paul Wolfowitz is a top gun at Bush Inc. There is no market to decide his fate. That's the beauty and the beast of party politics.
But why was Don Imus allowed to apologize, anyway? I mean, there's really just one rule in radio - "If you're a sexist racist, don't say on air what you'd normally just say to other sexist racists". It's not rocket science. It's radio. You've got listeners. If you're on MSNBC, a large number of them are probably black, too. Maybe even women. And black women buy stuff. So, when you say of a girl's (although, they've been elevated to women, now) basketball team, and you're a 67 year old white man, that they're a bunch of "nappy-headed ho's", you should probably just be fired. BOOM! There's really no way to apologize for that - NOT because it's a crime against humanity, or anything - but because you said it.
I mean, seriously. Who says stuff like that who's not an idiot? It's not funny, humorous, mildly amusing. It's not even shocking. We all (d'une certaine age) grew up with sexist racists saying all kinds of sexist racist things. They got away with it then because, well, people were stupid back in those days. And perversely proud of it. But I'm talking about 30 years ago or more in Northern Ontario where there weren't even any black women around to be saying sexist racist things about.
Not that it stopped people from saying them.
But why the hell is it on the radio in the United States in the year 2007?
For that matter, why is a 67 year old on the radio in the United States in the year 2007? I mean, c'mon. Retire already. Shock jock? Yeah. Right. 'Cause that wasn't over as soon as it began somewhere back in the '50s.
Anyway, I couldn't imagine the point to the apology. What do you really say other than, "I probably shouldn't have said 'nappy-headed ho' about a black woman's basketball team on the air, but obviously I did, so... I'll just be resigning now before I get fired."
Good Gawd covered in Gravy.
And now, Paul Wolfowitz apologizing for helping his partner, Shaha Riza, win a promotion to a high-paying job at the World Bank - OF WHICH HE IS PRESIDENT - during an anti-corruption drive - that has led to the suspension of aid to some countries. No less. And now, the board of the international lender is wasting even more money holding meetings to consider Mr Wolfowitz's future.
Dude. Resign. You got caught - so the apology comes too late and is therefore meaningless. Apologizing to save your job isn't apologizing. And who are you apologizing to, anyway? All the countries whose aid has been suspended while you ran a little personal pro-corruption drive of your own on the side?
C'mon. Apologies are only valid when followed-up with resignations. Otherwise, it's just "I'm sorry I got caught". And since we all know that, why are we pretending we don't? Of course you're sorry you got caught. You're friggin' President of the World Bank and even your own employees are pretty much calling you out. Rule Number One, Stupid - "If you basically work for Bush Inc., don't pay your girlfriend more'n the President pays HIS girlfriend."
So like, not to be cruel or anything, but shouldn't we be wondering how a guy who thinks he's not going to get caught helping his partner to the money in the till when he's running the store ever got to such a high office in the first place? Is he that stupid? Or is he that corrupt.
Because I'm sorry to say this but - it's one or the other.
And no - I'm not really sorry.
There are a couple of threads on Sooeys.com about the bus accident in Toronto (which has since had a tragic outcome) and the point was made about seatbelts not being on buses. It's something parents have questioned for years, but there were always reasons/excuses as to why this could not be done. It's hard to understand how a concern for the unlikely (kids trapped behind seatbelts in the case of an emergency) overtook something that seems like so reasonable a precaution, but there you go. It did. And seatbelts, or a lack thereof, may have done nothing to protect the kids on the bus, and I guess there's going to be an inquiry, but commonsense would tell us - they couldn't have hurt. I mean, isn't that why we have a mandatory seatbelt law for automobiles?
But speaking of commonsense, remember Mike Harris and his Commonsense Revolution? I do. That's because I knew Mike Harris to be a nothing more than a two bit thug from North Bay who'd never done much of anything that wasn't attached to the public teat. That he got elected calling himself "The Taxfighter" was pretty funny, too.
Gawd. Voters.
Anyway, if you're like everybody else in the province, you've probably noticed that there are a lot of school buses on the roads these days. I guess that's because they're cheaper than schools. Mike Harris closed a lot of schools when he was Premier. I was involved in one school closure battle here in Ottawa (we lost) and I've got to tell you - there's nothing dirtier'n school board politics.
Nothing. And maybe it's a coincidence and maybe it isn't, but just so you know - that's where Mike Harris got his start. After he was essentially fired (i.e. didn't pass his probation period at a time when you pretty much had to impregnate a student to not get hired on as a teacher - full-time) - he ran for the position of Trustee and won.
The rest, as they say, is history. Sort of like much of the Province of Ontario.
In any case, our school closure battle was so "hot" that the Trustee who won actually got more votes than the sitting Regional Councillor. Sadly, he turned out to be not the man we all wanted to think he was but knew he wasn't and when the time came to close our school so he could save his and see the fulfillment of his master plan - he did.
We (my ex and I) were mad because we'd bought our house so that our kids could walk to school, come home for lunch - the whole olden days shebang. Now the school was closed and we figured a toxic waste dump would be built in its place. (Real estate does crazy things to people. They say it's good for a community, homeownership, but I can't see how. People just get really NIMBY once they've shelled out for a house.)
Luckily, Ottawa, which pre-amalgamation had eight school boards: Ottawa Public, Catholic, French Public, French Catholic, Carleton Public, Catholic, French Public, French Catholic - still had four, post-amalgamation (there are cities for which amalgamation makes sense, cities for which is doesn't). The Ottawa boards combined with the Carleton boards and we had four boards. One of those boards, the French Public, bought the school and rebuilt it from the ground up into a much bigger school.
Some boards have money, some boards don't. Thank Gawd for the Huegenots, is all I can say.
We lived. The older two were in Middle School anyway (probably the most demented invention after that Mexican celebration where people fire their guns in the air, resulting in the accidental deaths of a few people every celebration) and the youngest took a bus for a year to a neighbouring open concept money pit that was located in an old (Conservative) money neighbourhood.
The Trustee who won lives across from his kid's school and, of course, it is still open. Sometimes $5,000/year is worth it, I guess.
But none of it really matters now. At the time it did - especially the part about having the grimy underbelly of municipal politics revealed to political neophytes - but kids grow up and once they're teenagers, a lot of life falls into perspective. Things that mattered SO MUCH when they were little, don't even register - and man, is it a relief.
So now, having perspective on the whole thing, I have to ask: Why are we pretending that life is like it was when kids could walk to school and come home for lunch except now they are all bused to school and aren't allowed off school property for lunch unless they have a note? I mean, sure, that's how I went to school. I walked and came home for lunch. But nobody came along and shut down my school, either. Even though it wasn't exactly packed to the rafters by the time I left.
Oh wait. They did close down my high school. After I left, closed it down and built a new one out in the middle of nowhere that has been slowly sinking into the mud ever since. EVERYBODY is bused to that school. Mine was in the middle of the city and no one took the bus, but it was old and it was Bill Davis' Ontario, and developers needed work then, too.
If I have any bitterness it's that we fell for the idea that you could live the way you were brought up - that it would just cost a bit more. But you can't live the way you were brought up. Times have changed. People live differently, large numbers of people live differently, and, while there's nothing wrong with that and maybe everything right, I'm not sure why we're pretending schools should be neighbourhood schools and not something more like government office buildings.
I mean, think about it. Would it not be easier on everybody to have children going to the same location, in as much as it's possible, in our cities in order to get an education? What difference does the actual building make? And since developers don't build schools along with all that tract housing that people, young families, buy - and taxpayers then have to - why not take a deep breath and admit that schools would be better located where parents go to work - downtown - instead of having all these little neighbourhood schools everywhere that school boards can just shut down on a whim anyway as the neighbourhood ages or the government decides it's not going to pay for building repairs and whatnot because its best buddy - Mr. Developer - needs work?
That's what I think we should do. Build one-stop drop-offs - just like Queen's Park or somesuch - and call them "schools" instead of "offices".
And then bite the bullet even harder and, no matter what comes out of this inquiry, put seatbelts on all the school buses driving the kids to the "School Depot".
Hey - there could even be a marketing campaign with a jingle: "Let's all go to the School Depot"...
It's funny to think now, but I grew up with nary a mention of the World Wars. Significantly, or not, my father (who was older than my mother by several years) was in the Second World War, in the army, fighting overseas for King and country.
He died when we were young - 9, 7, 4 and 1 - and although we had lots of pictures of him around the house (luckily, it was a time of picture taking, everybody took pictures in those days - and when my parents knew he was dying, they took MORE pictures), the house soon left him behind, otherwise. My mother went back to teaching, my grandmother came to live with us, the 60s played out, the 70s came on full steam. His WWII uniform hung down the basement with the winter coats, his helmet lay in the toybox, his guns stood in the corner of the playroom - also down the basement.
I know, I know. You're probably thinking now, "Guns?! Playroom?!" What can I say? We didn't wear helmets riding our bikes on the highway, either. The only kid who wore a helmet when I was growing up was a kid who'd already been knocked off his bike by a car and HAD to wear a helmet. Doctor's orders. And when you stop and think about it - what the hell kind of medicine is that? "Yeah, kid. You've got a brain injury. Wear a helmet so it doesn't get any worse."
Yeah. And your life doesn't get any better, either. BECAUSE YOU'RE WEARING A FRIGGIN' HELMET!!!!!!!
But back to the future. A few years ago, cleaning out her den closets, my mother pulled out a couple of boxes of slides, which she had shoved to the back after my father died. They were of his down time overseas, pictures of his regiment, pictures of Holland - they documented a whole life that had happened before he met my mother, married, had kids, a brief career as a lawyer, then died. We looked at the slides, then put the boxes back in the den closet. A while later, we mentioned the slides to an in-law and he suggested they should go to some sort of official body for archiving - which they probably should. My mother was more of the opinion, "Who the hell would want to look at a bunch of old war slides?" But she didn't care one way or the other, so, we gave HIM the slides. Off loading "stuff" is something my family has down to a fine art.
What I find interesting now, in the current climate, is that I grew up with a parent actually in a World War and yet the only time it was ever discussed that I can recall was during grade five or six when we covered The Holocaust in school. That was it. And World War II was left behind again. At no time, do I ever recall ANY instruction about World War I. Clearly, WWI was so over, so yesterday, it may as well have been horn-rimmed glasses.
Fast forward to now and I feel like war and world war and living up to war legacies and comparing current world leaders to long dead wartime leaders is all the rage all the time forever and ever amen. It's as if we're in a chronic military nostalgia mode. To compensate for... what?... exactly... Because it sure seems to me we're compensating for something with all this great war, grand ideals, churchillian leaders talk 24/7. Indeed, it seems to me there is more war remembrance now than there was actual war time - ever.
Why is that, do you think? Because I think it's to compensate for the obvious lack of private support for the War on Terror, to make the War on Terror feel like something noble and not something base, to lend stature to leaders who otherwise would just be temporary flings at power. When World War II was over, it was over. People didn't just move on, they hurtled themselves forward. Whereas, we seem stuck in some sort of official solemn remembrance of something that the previous generation left behind in 1945.
Oh. 1946, you say? Okay. And who was the second Vulcan on the right in that scene with Scotty and the sexy green alien?
You get my point. That's how I feel about war afficiandos. Not hostile, or anything. Just, superior.
That's how I read most commentary on the War on Terror, too - with a sense of superiority. I believe so thoroughly in the wrongness of the War on Terror, that I can't help but think little of those pundits who don't. It's a full stop with me. But I have to admit, even I, so used to despising the lesser minds who argue for something Satan himself couldn't defend anymore, felt a slight nausea at something Ezra Levant wrote in regards to the British soldiers who were held hostage in Iran until their release the other day. He, and there were many others like him saying the same thing, complained (and I hear a high nasally whine as I write this) that the hostages didn't behave enough like soldiers. I'd get the exact quote, but I don't want to give him any more publicity. Is it wrong to wish upon him and others like him - something akin to the terror I know I would have felt if I were any one of those British soldiers? Not knowing if your own government or the Americans or the kidnappers would pull the rug out and you'd end up executed on live television, the video splashed all over the Internet within seconds, your deaths political war fodder, the excuse needed to launch a nuclear strike - your family's last image of you having your throat slit?
I don't really. I'm not that mean. And what purpose would it serve? These stupid, stupid people - Ezra, Mark, David - are living in the glory days that never were and everybody else, the sane among us, know it. All the propaganda in the world can't erase actual memories of how life really is and was. But certainly people have a knack for believing their own press. Maybe Ezra et al will be seized with a heroic impulse and guns blazing take out the President of Iran and make it all right in the world again. Just like it used to be. In the good old days.
Meanwhile, catching up with today's youth, the lucky kids who scored a trip to France for the Vimy Remembrance (plus $3,000/person and NO FREE LUNCHES) seemed pretty up to speed on the War on Terror - as in: "Why are we in it?"
Good question. An especially good question to be asking now, in the here and now - even if it's just so we can celebrate/remember World Wars I and II even harder in 60 more years.
But that's it for me. I'm going forward to the past and ignoring the World Wars. Again.
Why do we have the expression "Unconditional Love"? Isn't love, by definition, unconditional? Did we have to come up with "Unconditional Love" to counter "Tough Love"? How does it happen, did it happen, that even the most basic feeling one human can have for another comes with qualifications.
Love with conditions, isn't love. It's something, I guess, but it isn't love.
So what is it?
Well, I'd call it blackmail. But there you go, I'm cynical that way. Or am I just being realistic. After all, Christians are led to believe "Jesus Loves Me" - just for being Christian. Oh wait... that's a condition, isn't it.
Parental love (note qualifier, again) is pretty close to unconditional, I suppose. It is for me with my children, anyway. But I'd have to say it isn't really unconditional with my Mother. She likes me, okay - I make her laugh - but love? More to the point, I suppose, since I'm doing the questioning here - do I love her?
I did when I was a kid, that's for sure. It's the reason I stayed home with my own kids when they were younger. My mother worked when I was growing up, and although I had a secret pride in that (none of the other mothers on our street had jobs) I preferred it when she was at home paying attention to us, instead of out in the world paying attention to it.
But do I now? Well, I care about her, but I don't know if I'd call what I feel love.
I remember watching a program with Charles Templeton as the guest (I forget who was the host - Allan Gregg, maybe?) being interviewed about his relationship with religion and Billy Graham and he was talking about humanism and love and he said, "I don't think it is possible to love everybody as the Christian faith says we should. I can care about people, but that's really all I can do."
I often think of that because we are under, if you stop and think about it, a certain unrealistic pressure to love family and friends and under even more pressure in these touchy, feely times - to say it.
Why? Who came up with this ridiculous notion that if you don't tell someone you love them, and then they die, it's going to be your biggest regret ever for the rest of your life? Because I get burdened by things like that and I'm willing to bet a lot of other people do, too.
It's a lot like that hugging thing people do now. We grew up a non-hugging family and I'm pretty sure we all liked it that way. We're thin stick people. Hugging does NOT come naturally to any of us. Non-huggers R Us. Well, wouldn't you know it, but my mother, of all people, read something, I think it was by Dr. Gifford Jones of all people - again, about how hugs were good for older people. So she started hugging us. Which was her way of telling us we'd better start hugging her back to prolong her life.
So we did. At first it was really awkward. I'd sort of brace myself, stiffen, say in my head "relax, relax, relax - it's just your mother" and let it happen.
It was a while before I even figured out the hugging back part. Meanwhile, I had little kids of my own by then so I thought, "Maybe I should teach them how to hug now so they don't turn out like me when I turn out like my mother and it's just a horrible time all over again for all of us."
Well, I can tell you - genetics are an amazing thing. As I said, I'm not a hugger. But my ex is a hugger. So it played out thusly: one child is "hugged upon" still - even after a decade or more of instruction; one hugs really well, but when she was younger I remember having to peel her off me, too; the third one hugs as a favour to his mother. I can tell. Dutiful, perfunctory, let's just get this over with so I can go.
Anyway, they're my kids so the love thing is easy - I love them and they love me - now. But I remember loving my mother when I was young, too, and I can't imagine expecting them to feel the way about me, when I'm an old lady, that they do now, which - and they're teenagers - I suspect is a little less than they did when they were younger.
So there you have it. This is what I was thinking about on my way in to work this morning - the pressure we feel, thanks to pop culture, to SAY we love each other when really, what we probably feel is just a general caring for each other, and this (to me) over-the-top Hollywood insistence that you mustn't let someone close to you die without saying "I love you" so you don't go through the rest of your life regretting that you didn't.
Except, shouldn't we be saying, "I love you - unconditionally", now? I mean, since we came up with the qualifyer. Because, otherwise, you've left the person wondering, "So... he loves me - just as long as"...
And isn't that worse than not saying anything?
I'm trying to pay more attention to who wants what changes made to our society and why these days because one can waste so much time arguing the wrong angle that it really pays in terms of blood pressure to know where the person seeking change is coming from before you bother arguing about say... healthcare.
I caught a bit of "The Agenda" last night or the night before and the debate was about healthcare and privatization and why oh why can't we have private operators making money off the public system that was put in place by the previous generation for the good of everybody on account of they'd had private healthcare and deemed it unworthy.
That's what it always comes down to for me - who's really behind what agenda and why and how are they getting away with it. Because Conservatives are always claiming they're the ones who honour the self-named "Greatest Generation Ever" while everyone else is out poking veterans with sticks when it's such bullshit because what they really want to do is privatize/dismantle/not pay for all the Post WWII social programs that the "Greatest Generation Ever" set up and paid into for 60 some odd years.
The panel on "The Agenda" was telling - two women d'une certaine age arguing on behalf of keeping all the money in a universal, publicly-funded healthcare system vs two younger men arguing for the right of private operators to compete with it - within it. Making private profit from public money, as it were.
Now, I'm not going to bother making an argument here for a universal, publicly-funded healthcare system. In my opinion, it's the most civilized of civilized principles - "free" healthcare, accessible to everyone, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. That's my stand. And I'm not going to point out that every study ever done pointing out the flaws in the system is self-interested because there is a great deal of money to be made in privatizing healthcare and it is to be made by people who do not particularly care about the public interest.
They care about making money. Period. And they are all Conservatives.
Well, anybody can see that healthcare is quite simply one of those things that tests our convictions. It's expensive, we all pay for it in one way or another, and because it's universal and accessible to all, well, we don't always agree with who gets to use it and why.
Such is life.
What's interesting to me is that Conservatives as a Party get away with this pretend respect for all things done by the previous generation and yet they don't respect them at all. It's always Conservatives who are intent on dismantling the best of our social programs, the sacred-for-a-good-reason cows more thoughtful and considerate Canadians cherish. We see it in their actions. They are the ones wanting an escalation in our mission in Afghanistan (in spite of the motto embraced by the rest of us due to the sacrifice made by Canadian soldiers in the Two Great Wars - "Never Again"), they are the ones wanting private education funding in spite of all the inclusive and progressive changes made by the previous generation to public education, they are the ones wanting to privatize healthcare now - even though the generation that built up the generous and reliable system of public healthcare for which we are famous around the world is at a stage in life when it most needs it.
Really. Conservatives, on the face of it, seem to me to be quite a cheap and ungrateful lot. Having benefitted from the largesse of the previous generation, the "Greatest Generation Ever", these younger buggers just don't want to have to pay to maintain the social infrastructure now. Heck, nevermind "social" infrastructure, these young Turks don't even want to pay to maintain the physical infrastructure of our cities and towns.
So it really is quite ass backwards this perception Conservatives have of themselves as respectful of older people when they aren't, in fact, at all. The NDP is, in fact, the party that has respect for all that has been done by previous generations, including the "Greatest Generation Ever", to make this country into the model of civilization it is and, it would seem, only the NDP believes we should all do our share - financially - in maintaining it as such.
Life is not cheap. Unless you are a Conservative.
I was thinking about the Global Village and International Capitalism and I realized that, while capital can now move around freely, people still can't. And this disturbs me because I can see how all the capital in the world could end up going to where all the labour in the world is trapped.
Like in the developing world. You know, that part of the world that is about to explode into production. Then I started thinking about the hallmarks of the developed world. And what's our number one problem right now? Yup. The effects of all that production on the environment.
Garbage, waste, pollution. So I guess while we're buying carbon emission credits to offset our success, the developing world will...
HEY - WHO IS THE DEVELOPING WORLD GOING TO BUY CARBON CREDITS FROM WHEN IT'S DEVELOPED?!
But I don't need anybody to tell me that developed countries are guilty of having polluted the world's environment. What I don't understand is why we're STILL doing it when we know that government regulations would force an end to it. And I'm not even talking about a suspect scheme of questionable benefit except to a select few international moneymen - like the buying and selling of carbon emission trading credits. I'm just talking about the garbage that is still produced and left to be our collective problem when I'm not sure we get any benefit at the other end, either.
Which makes me wonder - why do we bother having government if it doesn't act in the interests of its citizens over the long haul?
I mean, it's not as if you couldn't simply go to one of our suburbs to see the problem. Cookie cutter houses that are over-sized and open-concept that come with central vacs and air-conditioning systems and two-car garages and green uniform lawns requiring lots of water and pesticides. And it's not like you can choose a nice little bungalow with no garage and no lawn, instead. You take what you can get and that's all there is - the cookie cutter house.
Or take a cruise around a supermarket - if you've got three hours to kill. What happens to all the produce that doesn't sell? Food banks don't take fresh produce and the dumpsters are too big for the divers. Imagine, too, all the pesticides and wax used in producing those uniform apples of every variety from everywhere in the world except the local farms in the area.
We know all this, we live the wasteful lives that citizens are practically required to live if they are in any way a part of this society. So much of what we consume, many of us would rather not. For instance - wax on apples. Do you really want to be eating a waxed apple? No, of course you don't. But if you shop at one of our mega-supermarket-city-states, you really don't have much choice. Which is ironic because capitalism is supposed to offer all kinds of choice.
Yup. Every kind of waxed apple from everywhere except the farm just outside your city is on offer at the supermarket.
Now, I've read of various reasons for this and it's mostly do to the tendency to buy in bulk. Why? Who benefits from all this bulk purchasing? Because I know for a fact it's not the consumer. And it's certainly not the citizen.
So, where is our government to step in and say, "Enough. If the benefits to the citizens don't outweigh the costs, this government will not allow it."
Because don't forget, with all the bulk buying comes the waste and we all have to deal with the waste. For instance, I have lived a freezer free adult life because I grew up in a house with a freezer and I well remember my grandmother saying she had no idea what was in the freezer anymore and every once in a while a whole bunch of questionable meat would head out to the curb in a silver garbage can. Nowadays, of course, it heads out to the curb in a non-reusable, non-biodegradable green garbage bag because it was in the interests of a few to produce something that had to be disposed of so you'd have to keep buying the product.
It just wasn't in the interests of the many.
And isn't that what so much of what we call progress that we are bringing to the developing world really is? Just pointless excess that will benefit a few (and in the case of the developing world, a few CEOs who would probably rather gouge out their own eyes than actually live there) but ultimately cost the many and reduce product choice to "you have to buy this product now" or you can't live here anymore? Green garbage bags don't save time, money, effort. Nothing. But they are what we all use because somebody invented them and now, if you were to put a garbage pail, a metal garbage pail, out on the curb on garbage day it would probably sit there for all eternity and you would be asked to hit the road.
Garbage Day. Oh the irony that we who think we are so advanced a civilization actually have to have a garbage day to get rid of all our garbage THAT WE BUY!!! We buy garbage. I mean, it is to laugh that we are even discussing carbon emissions trading credits when we STILL BUY GARBAGE!!! When we are, in some cases, forced to buy garbage if we want to live as part of this society.
So why hasn't the government stepped in on that front to save us from garbage we don't want, didn't ask for, can't stop our neighbour from buying even though his garbage is also my problem in terms of water pollution, land use - you name it? How hard would it be to outlaw packaging for can openers, for instance? Would the opposition parties actually vote against a bill suggesting that producing unnecessary packaging for a new product be considered a criminal offence? Has the government even made the slightest effort to put a stop to this mad packaging craze we've been on for the past few decades? I mean, it insisted that warnings be put on cigarette packages and that meant going up against the big bad scary tobacco industry, so why can't it say to everybody else - "Enough with the packaging, waxing and just general overall unwanted garbage".
Because I don't know anybody, left, right, or center, who wants all this packaging. I don't know anybody who would prefer a waxed apple over a non-waxed apple, either. Although I know a few people who probably don't even realize they are eating waxed apples. So this isn't something that government couldn't tackle for fear of alienating voters. I'm guessing it's something government hasn't tackled because government responds to business, not citizens, because government is so alienated from what really matters NOW that it is part of the problem. For instance, what about the amount of garbage the government itself is forced to deal with. Eh? Can you imagine the landfill needs of our Federal Government?
I any event, I simply can't think of a reason for not banning waxed apples and can opener packaging. I mean, that we still have Garbage Day, like some sort of modern Sabbath, in 2007, once a week, is pretty pathetic on the part of governments everywhere, in my opinion. It's not like I WANT to be buying garbage. Honest. I've missed Garbage Day and I'm a very light consumer.
How about you? Are you deliberately buying garbage? Or do you find you really have no choice in this wonderful capitalist society of ours.
The 2006 Census, which was contracted out to Lockheed-Martin, a defence contracting firm, with ties to Homeland Security in the good old U.S. of A, by the former Liberal government of Paul Martin, seems to indicate this:
Back to the Future
Clearly, Canada is a large country with a small population in a small world with a large population. In the interests of maintaining a working population, immigration is our only option.
Now, I happen to believe that democracy is a desirable political system, that most people want to live in democracies, and that given a chance, people will want to maintain the laws and norms of a democratic country and resist the urge to vote for fascist governments like Stephen Harper's New Conservative Government of Canada (haha - just kidding - don't have a cow, white Christian rightwing man). Essentially, I really don't think you need to be born in Canada to appreciate it. In fact, I think there's a strong case to argue the opposite. Personally, I would point to the current Prime Minister and the New Conservative Government of Canada to argue that strong case, too.... yaddayadda... blahblah... okay - I'll stop now.
So, that's my position on this whole native birthrate upping/vs immigrant population boosting conundrum that seems to have so many on the political right quaking in their Guccis. I don't care about Canada being only for the people who are here now - and their descendents. I really don't. I believe our system of government, our way of life, may well be enhanced by people coming here from countries where there is less freedom because they appreciate what we have - so much more than we do. They know a different way of life and I think we can trust them to recognize "better" when they see it. Us? I'm not so sure. So many Canadians seem to me to want the worst of America the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave to come to Canada the Great White North that I wonder what sort of citizen we are breeding here anyway, us, native-born Canadians.
More to the point - do I really want their birthrates to go up? No. Not really. Thanks, but no thanks. We have enough stupid people for now, I'm sure.
Besides, the argument is moot. There is absolutely no way the native-born Canadian birthrate will be high enough to preclude the need for immigrants. I doubt, given our initial population, it ever would have been high enough, had we all had families of ten. And the fact is, the people who came here from the British Isles and Europe were hardly the upper crust of society in the Old World. They were people needing a fresh start, who wanted a hope in hell of making a life for themselves in a new world. Those are the people most of us who are third generation Canadians on down are descended from. Would we really be that much better a country if we had more of us? I mean, c'mon. Does any country benefit from scads of Irish story-tellers, Scottish penny-pinchers, English twits?
All of them drunk?
So why the search for people of a certain economic background and particular race to immigrate - or not immigrate - here, now? Well, I wonder. At a party on the weekend, we were discussing how people see themselves, politically, and someone mentioned that her father, an electrician, saw himself as a Conservative because he lived in a 4-bdrm suburban house in Toronto, owned a cottage, two cars, put a couple of kids through university, and was retired on a good pension. BUT he was also the beneficiary of a lifetime of solid employment due to the fact that he belonged to a very strong union.
He was a union man, an abolute believer in his union's duty to do right by him, voting Conservative because of his economic success in life and his standing in his community. From hand-me-downs growing up to moderate wealth in retirement. It's a good life here for the working man, it seems. Politically, it just seems to have nothing to do with reality.
Well, I think there's an analogy to be made between that electrician and Canada. It's about how Canada came to be what it is today, and how it sees itself now that it's here. And I think we are fooling ourselves about who we really are.
For instance, I saw on the news that other day a story about another plant closing here, textiles or something, and the people working there all looked to be from somewhere other than here. They sounded like it, too. Which made me wonder about the irony of those people seeking a better life here - economically - only to find out shortly thereafter that the plant they were working in was shifting its operations back to where they'd come from, like maybe India, or Thailand, or even - China.
Because China's the elephant in the global village - isn't it. Capitalism hasn't freed anybody in China - it's just made sure all the manufacturing jobs have shifted over to it. But what needs pointing out about this economic powerhouse is this:
Nobody emigrates to China. Not from here, anyway. China's a communist country. Nobody goes there to start over. Economic opportunites aren't worth it. I doubt you can emigrate there, anyway.
Meanwhile, all manner of rich businessmen from here do business with China, in China, but they don't move there. Why would they? Again - it's a communist country. So this emerging economic power isn't the sort of place anyone wants to commit to by emigrating to it, it's just the sort of place with which rich people from here want to do business. Meanwhile, I'm sure many of the people they are using to get their business done, would prefer living in a free country, a democracy, Canada.
And thanks to this backhanded economic slap at democracy, even the lucky people who do immigrate here who aren't wealthy people, can find themselves out of work soon after landing some because, irony of ironies, the plant they were working in has shifted its operations to a place where it can pay low wages and operate without the level of health and safety standards we afford working people here in this country, so that when they retire, they can vote for the kinds of federal governments that allow more of the same.
I don't know. Is anybody in charge of anything anymore that has to do with economics and the unsustainability of this Global Village - NOT - that we are living in as a large country with a small population but lots and lots of great social infrastructure to let go for the price of a cheaper Christmas?
One thing is for sure, we are not the country we once were. We do not welcome people wanting a fresh start in a new land of opportunity. In fact, we seem to be squandering like fools what previous generations bequeathed us and allowing Corporate America to tell us how it's going to be from here on in until we have to work well past retirement and into the grave to keep our heads above water.
So what should we do? Obviously, we are not going to reproduce ourselves in numbers sufficient to not require an almost open door immigration policy, and besides, we're the people squandering the legacy and pretty much ensuring a hard life for ourselves and our children down the road. Maybe the best thing for us would be a goodly number of the world's poor and desperate people from undemocratic countries to show us how it's done. Maybe we should start smuggling poor, unenfranchised Chinese laborers into Canada to work at an absolute minimum of $10.00/hour for and absolute maximum of seven hours per day with an hour off for lunch and two fifteen minute breaks and three weeks of holidays per year and all statutory holidays off with pay - instead of buying stuff here produced by those same people in China where there is no freedom - before we have no reason for even poor people to want to immigrate here.
Although, I bet most of them would want to - just for the chance to live in a democracy.
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