Heroes and the Homeless
Coincidentally to a story in today's Toronto Star about three Canadian soldiers kicking a homeless man to death in a public park, I'd been thinking about the erosion of our civil liberties over the past few years, as well as the anti-social encroachment of private property into public space at a time of increasingly aggressive government attempts to criminalize homelessness, the end of the poverty rainbow.
But the article threw me enough off course that I ended up thinking about how vociferous our governments have been in insisting we hail Canadian soldiers as heroes, whether it's renaming highways, wearing red on Fridays, or driving around with yellow ribbons tied to SUV antennae, in what has been an orchestrated top down attack on dissenters against the war.
Government bullying, in other words.
Well, I guess it should come as no surprise when the two converge, the soldiers' belief in the government's p.r. campaign that they are heroes, and those same thugs' belief in the government's p.r. campaign that people forced to occupy public space, because they have no private property, have no human rights. Sure, alcohol was a factor in the murder, but so, too, was the belief that they had a right, as Canadian soldiers, to claim public space as their own by virtue of the fact that they had a home in the army and the guy they kicked to death, didn't.
In fact, he had nowhere to go to get away from his killers, did he - another factor in the murder.
Because, no offence to anybody in particular, but I remember as a kid steering pretty clear of cadets (we lived near the Armoury). It was considered a wise thing to do, to put some distance between yourself and boys who wanted to join the army - because their reasons for doing so had everything to do with one day being able to shoot people and not a whole lot else.
So, being smarter in those days about who you had to keep your eye on, no matter what your government might tell you, if you were a little girl, out and about, alone, enjoying public space, and you saw a cadet or a group of cadets headed your way, you didn't stick around to find out if they wanted to play. You assumed they were trouble and you gave up the public space to them for the safety of home.
Anyway, I'm not making that up. I remember being a kid and I remember who wanted to be what when he grew up and I doubt a lot of that has changed, quite frankly. Some boys are trouble and, sure, the army's a good place for them - as long as they aren't going around thinking they're heroes for being in it, which, thanks to our governments, many of them now do.
