But Who Serves The People?

In one of his most significant works, Death of the Liberal Class, Chris Hedges argues that the traditional bulwarks against corporate power no longer fulfill that role. He asserts 

that the liberal class has failed to confront the rise of the corporate state and argues that the five parts of the liberal establishment--the press, liberal religious institutions, unions, universities, and the Democratic Party--are more concerned with status and privilege than justice and progress.

While I did not completely agree with everything he said in the book, the author did offer some pretty compelling illustrations to support his thesis. Today, Rick Salutin offers a similar view as he looks at the Democratic Party in the U.S., arguing that people like Joe Manchin are not the real reason that Joe Biden's progressive agenda is being impeded.

For 80 years, efforts to stifle even minimally “progressive” measures like universal public health care have been led not by individuals like Manchin but by the party establishment — including Biden himself for the last five decades. Come tiptoe through a few of the weeds on this with me.

•FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s genuinely moved the U.S. leftward with its social programs. By 1944, when he was preparing to run for a fourth term, the party bosses pressured him to replace his vice-president, the left-wing Henry Wallace, with a typical “party machine” Democrat, Harry Truman. Wallace ran against Truman as the Progressive Party candidate in 1948 and lost.

•In the 1960s, president Lyndon Johnson could’ve completed FDR’s New Deal agenda by finally confronting the racism issues that Roosevelt ducked. But Johnson was destroyed instead by another U.S. dilemma, its imperialist impulse, embodied in the Vietnam War. He flinched, backed the war and chose not to run for re-election. The party elites then beat back anti-war candidates for president and nominated a pro-war Democrat, Hubert Humphrey, who was defeated by Republican Richard Nixon.

•In the 1980s, Arkansas Democratic governor Bill Clinton lost a re-election bid and concluded he’d been seen as too “progressive”; he became pro-death penalty and anti-welfare. He was elected president in 1992 with the same approach. He put his wife Hillary in charge of health-care reform. They refused to even consider a universal public program. Their project died inelegantly.

•Barack Obama was seen as progressive when elected in 2008. But in his first crisis, the financial crash of that year, he bailed out banks and did nothing for people who lost their homes. He was absorbed into the party establishment.

•In 2016, independent “socialist” senator Bernie Sanders ran for nominee against Hillary Clinton, surprising even himself with how well he did. In 2020 he ran again and held a clear lead, when the Clinton-Obama forces joined to defeat him in the South Carolina primary. Sanders graciously supported Biden for president in the hope of moving the party’s agenda leftward. He succeeded. 

There were many progressives sufficiently motivated to run for the party, such as Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, resulting in the defeat of a number of conservative stalwarts and subsequently helping to form Biden's current agenda, an agenda that looks increasingly at risk.

They continue to take on a party elite that has struggled against serious social change, going back to the years just after the New Deal and the Cold War’s onset. 

Salutin, however, is not particularly optimistic that the old guard will cede their power willingly. He draws upon an example from Buffalo, where a self-described democratic socialist, 39-year-old Black nurse India Walton, won the mayoral nomination against the four-term Democratic mayor. The election is next week.

The establishment response was to try and get the former mayor on the ballot anyway, and then to have the position of mayor itself eliminated. Last week, the party chair for the state announced they won’t support her, just as they wouldn’t support David Duke — the longtime KKK leader — if he won a primary in nearby Rochester. These are people who’d rather lose an election than lose control of “their” party, and they often get their wish.

Sadly, it would seem that "serving the people" is just another example of empty rhetoric instead of words approximating reality. 

 

Imagining A New World

Having the underpinnings of our daily lives so radically altered is immensely unsettling. The things we have always taken for granted, be it a daily walk, a quick trip to the store, a handshake with a friend, a rubbing of the eye, all of these and many more now come with the whiff of lethality. The new normal is egregiously abnormal.

We are all in mourning for the routines that until now gave structure to our lives.

But I also know I am but one among many who look for the good that can ultimately emerge from this crisis. The radical, unprecedented and immensely uncomfortable shift in living we are all experiencing has given us the opportunity to reflect on our lives, our values, and our ultimate fate as a society and as a species.

What might have been important to us such a short time ago now seems far less pressing: social status, getting and spending, ideologies that impel us to snipe at our political opponents - none have the urgency they might have held but a few short weeks ago. As Ben Jonson so aptly put it,

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

Assuming we are spared the noose, what is it we want the world to look like when Covid-19 abates?

The Star's Rick Salutin offers his thoughts. Succinctly, he asks a fundamental question:

"Does the economy exist to serve people or vice versa?"

If you choose option 1, you pursue it, closing the economy till the plague passes, or settles into normal patterns, like the flu, which can be handled in normal ways (vaccine, built-up immunity) instead of people bringing out their dead as they did of old.

Another angle: Choose the economy, and — consequently — people die, they’re gone forever. Choose people, and the economy doesn’t die. It gets mothballed, put into a coma, to be revived. People die. Economies, which aren’t alive, can be put on hold, then come “roaring back.”

Because the economy isn’t a living being, you can tuck it away awhile.

In that case, the economy gets subordinated to human well-being. Rent, mortgages, debt are forgiven or delayed though money must still be found for repairs etc. Only governments can finance these dislocations. Private businesses can’t because they’re under constraints like competition.

Where will government find the money? .... Governments always find the money when there’s a war to fight.

I will return to the above question in a moment, but Salutin goes on to talk about this remarkable sight:

A remarkable thing about this debate, or nondebate since leaders have overwhelmingly opted for the people choice, is the range represented. Canadian right wing austerity buffs like Jason Kenney, François Legault and Doug Ford leapt in enthusiastically, alongside Justin Trudeau.

So much for the ideological divide. It is clear that Canadian leaders are opting for the people. But what about each of us and the innate power we have but too frequently fail to recognize? So we return to the writer's question about where government will find the money.

In the short-term, it will obviously borrow it.

Later, opportunists will no doubt try to foist austerity upon us as the price for today's spending. If we let them get away with that, we will have learned nothing from our current circumstances. No, if the world is to have a real rebirth, real, adult and difficult choices have to be made, including serious discussion around that always fraught topic, taxation.

Simply put, when this is over, many of us will have to pay more taxes. There will need to be special levees to reduce the deficit and the debt, because the old saw about growing the economy to pay for programs will not work for a long, long time, if ever again. Now, I am hardly the only one who enjoys a comfortable retirement, and the thought of paying more bothers me not in the least. As well, the corporate tax rate, when things stabilize, will have to be raised. And if there was ever a time for a financial transaction tax, it is now.

The weeks ahead will continue to be a crucible. We have already begun to reappraise our values as we recognize the things that connect us all. We cannot help but grow in appreciation of the people we rely on, be it the grocery clerk, the garbage collector, the pharmacist, the doctors, nurses, the tireless journalists bring us the best information they can. Equally, our empathy cannot help but increase for the more vulnerable among us: the precariously employed, those living from paycheck to paycheck, renters facing eviction, the homeless, those who rely on foodbanks. Platitudinous thoughts and prayers will not cut it. Programs like a basic income will. And we all must be willing to pay for them.

Fate has delivered to us an unprecedented opportunity to change the world's trajectory. But time is short. When Covid-19 abates, will we emerge healed from our petty obsessions and become participants in creating a new world? Or will vital lessons be quickly forgotten and see us return to our old modes of thinking, modes that are directly responsible for the sad state we are in today?

Now is not the time for us to be anything other than apt students.

Words, Words, And More Words

I haven't been writing much these days, in part due to a stubborn bug I've been battling, and in part because I often wonder if there really is much more to say that I haven't already said over the years. However, today I read an article that seems particularly germane to our troubled times, and hence, back into the fray for another go.

Ever since I was very young, I have had an avid interest in the English language, an interest no doubt fostered by my love of reading. That love of books led me into a career as an English teacher, and it was while teaching Grade 13 (OAC) that I think I began to truly appreciate the often insidious power of language. George Orwell's Politics and The English Language, about which I have written in the past, here, here and here, is especially instructive in that regard.

One of Orwell's key warnings revolved around the political use of euphemisms, words that often mask some unpleasant truths. We use them all the time without ill-intent (think, for example, of referring to the deceased as having 'passed away', or a beloved pet that has been 'put to sleep'). However, those in positions of power, whether they be, for example, employers or politicians, often use them to pervert or conceal truth. Consider, for example, the last time you heard that someone was fired, axed or terminated. These days, people are 'laid off' or 'furloughed'. Nice not to have to think too closely about the desperation that unemployment can bring, isn't it?

But the above illustration is still pretty innocuous. In his column today, Rick Salutin has some thoughts about the more sinister of use language:

Since this is the season for Word of the Year nominations, like quid pro quo and CBD, let me propose a late entry and long-shot (whoops, bad word choice): contractor. As in this report on the backstory to the assault by Iraqis on the grandiose, irritating U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad: “The U.S. carried out military strikes in Iraq and Syria targeting an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia blamed for a rocket attack that killed an American contractor.”

Contractor? Was this person renovating a basement suite in Fallujah or reshingling a roof in Mosul? Nope. Though details aren’t given, this is almost certainly what was earlier known as a defence contractor and before that, by the perfectly adequate word, mercenary. They’ve existed since the dawn of warfare and came into major use with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. It has taken since then to get “defence” dropped from the term but it was worth the effort.

The omission makes “contractor” a high-value obfuscator in a league with “collateral damage” for innocent victims, “enhanced interrogation” for torture, “extraordinary rendition” for kidnapping, etc. It’s a creative area.

Why this evolution (devolution?) of mercenary?

The UN has a “convention” prohibiting mercenaries that was initiated, perhaps prophetically, in 2001, at the start of the endless, U.S.-incited wars in the Mideast. (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen). UN conventions are fairly easy to create but fade after that, since they must be signed, ratified, declared etc. Only 35 nations signed this one, not including the U.S., U.K. and Israel, the big providers of mercs. Canada signed but didn’t ratify.

But there is another reason as well, one that has allowed private companies to accrue huge profits at the public's expense:

Before the post-millennium invasions, the U.S. miltary-to-merc ratio was about 50-1. It has since dropped to 10-1. They often contract through the CIA and take up about half its payrolls.

By 2006, there were about 100,000 “contractors” in Iraq, most of them ex-U. S. military, trained on the taxpayers’ dime. They were actors in horrors like Abu Ghraib and Fallujah. When you hear about the U.S. removing its last 5,000 troops there (unlikely at best since, in fact, they’re adding forces), you should know there are still 7,000 contractors who aren’t going anywhere.

And so our 'masters' continue their rampant pillaging, public accountability becoming merely an increasingly quaint notion.

So what is to be learned from this? Perhaps only one thing: the prescience and the ongoing relevance of George Orwell's insights, almost 75 years after he wrote Politics and the English Language.

Whither Goest The NDP?

In his column today, Rick Salutin offers a withering assessment of the NDP that I fear is all too accurate. In a phrase, what most ails the party is what might be termed ideological abandonment:

You start noticing what they’re not, and haven’t been for a while. At their start, in the Depression of the ’30s, as the CCF, they knew they had the answer to the questions the country was asking: How did we get into this mess and how do we get out? The answer was something like socialism or co-operation.

The allure of power has corrupted that ethos:

They’re more like: “We’re a grown-up party too and dammit, we deserve our turn.”

That was the tone of Thomas Mulcair’s 2015 campaign. When candidates in the recent leadership race were asked what distinguishes their party from the Liberals, none said: We have the answer to what the country needs — as Elizabeth May surely would have. Their responses were pathetic. “We mean what we say … We follow through … We have principles … They just want power …” Pathetic, and laughable.

Then Mulcair, who vowed not to run deficits — at which point Liberals say they knew they’d won. It was crazy. The NDP’s main appeal had been their perceived fealty to principle — whether it was true or not. Leader Tommy Douglas even bucked many of his own members to oppose military rule in 1970.

On a personal note, when I attended an NDP rally leading up to the last election, what I noticed most about Mulcair was his use of a teleprompter (I know they all use one, but it does dampen any illusion of passion and spontaneity) and the way he worked the room - a rather plastic smile/grin on his face that didn't reach his eyes as he shook people's hands without looking them in the eye.

This is not to say that the party's ideological abandonment began with Mulcair. No, it was the revered Jack Layton who led the charge on that front:

He was serious about power, helping purge “socialism” from their constitution. His first three elections achieved little though the last, due to Quebec’s unique way of deciding to vote tout ensemble, made him opposition leader.

All of which amounts to a massively-missed opportunity:

The desertion of past principle is ironic since the “left” position has surged back, especially among the young. They aren’t prey to the mythos of private property for good reasons: they won’t have much. They don’t expect to own houses, cars or even bikes — and have decided it’s fine to share. Not just socialism but a “co-operative Commonwealth” — the CC in CCF — might make sense to them.

Mulcair's replacement, Jagmeet Singh, fails to impress. His late-stage advocacy for the environment, surely of vital concern to millenials, once again smacks of political opportunism. If the young are to be a force in the next election, my guess is they will go with the party that has been most consistent and has its eyes on the long-term, not just the next political cycle: The Green Party.

I know that's where my vote is going.

Democracy's Fragility

To be sure, the elevation of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario to government redounds to everyone's shame. Led by a buffoonish thug, Doug Ford, it is a party that seems intent on debasing not only its proud history, but also all citizens of the province, whether they voted for him or not. And therein lies an object lesson: the fragility of democracy.

It is the theme of Rick Salutin's column this week, one I recommend everyone read. He observes how profound Ford's ignorance about democracy is in light of his reckless invocation of the notwithstanding clause of our Charter to get his way with the size of Toronto city council:

He doesn’t get and never will, that democracy isn’t just about votes. It includes rule of law, free press, minority and human rights — which can’t always wait four years. They take flight pretty quickly.

And those rights are being violated, if the sad spectacle of protesting seniors being handcuffed in the legislature this week is any indication:

It’s been a grim reminder not just of the Charter’s fragility but of an entire edifice we grew up assuming was entrenched. It can blow away in a stiff breeze: democracy, civility, tolerance, and Ontario’s special target: law. Why are these venerable institutions going back centuries, so vulnerable? Because none of us, the living, go back that far. Each person is a new start on Earth.

It would seem that what we don't experience personally influences our perspectives:

It doesn’t take much to “forget” something you never lived through personally. True, history can lie on us like a weight, or blessing. Custom and tradition seem formidable. But only personal experience has a living grip — like the inequality and insecurity of the last 40 years, and especially the last 10.

The young for instance, have no experience of more hopeful times. For them, what’s so great about institutions that gave rise to this situation? No matter how far back democratic institutions stretch, in theory or history, none of us were there, we only heard about them after our arrival.

But there is a path to a more visceral appreciation of our democratic institutions:

Virtual Reality pioneer Jaron Lanier, says he once had an epiphany: every time we trust a traffic light, pay a bill, or “buildings don’t all fall down and you can eat unpoisoned food that someone grew” testifies to “an ocean of goodwill and good behaviour from almost everyone, living or dead.” We are, he says, bathed in a love that shows itself above all in “constraints” because they compensate for human flaws.

Never have those flaws been more obvious in Ontario than in the present situation, and it is time we once more recognize, right-wing cant notwithstanding, that as individuals, we are singularly vulnerable to the vicissitudes life has to offer; it is only through the collective that real hope is to be found:

Institutions like law and democracy rise (and rise again if they fall) through that sense of connectedness and need to trust each other, since there’s really no alternative. We’re nothing as individuals alone, though individuals can be damn impressive. It’s the human sense of solidarity, ultimately, that will (or may) save us and make us whole.

Not A Dirty Word

In his column the other day, Rick Salutin wrote a stout defence of taxes, making it very clear that for him and many others, the word and the concept are hardly obscenities.

Public programs need to be adequately funded and expanded, the opposite of the American mentality:

Take tax reform. To U.S. Republicans, it means one thing: cuts. It’s their ultimate “reason for existing” (Financial Times). They staggered into the light this week to say (again) that Americans should keep their hard-earned money to pay their medical and university bills. Ha ha ha. There’s no way tax cuts will cover most such costs, though you might be able to repave your carport. What would help? More taxes. That could fund national “free” health care or tuition. But it would mean bigger government, levying higher taxes.

Here in Canada, the need for an expansion, not a contraction, of government intervention in people's lives is becoming increasingly obvious. Salutin cites the sad situation of dismissed Sears workers who are facing loss of severance and reduced pensions as a result of the chain's bankruptcy. This dire situation is mirrored in larger society by the growth of precarious work and the fact that company pensions are fast becoming relics of an earlier era. Echoing a sentiment recently expressed by his colleague, Thomas Walkom, he offers this:

The obvious solution is the health-care model: public programs like CPP not to supplement private pensions but to replace and amplify them — i.e., bigger government.

The mystery is why anyone ever thought private companies were the way to cover huge costs like health or pensions. It’s costly and patchwork; public programs make far more sense. They’re stabler, better funded and include some democratic oversight.

The rub in all of this is that such transformation requires something far too many have become allergic to: increased taxation.

Public programs, however, mean you need revenues to fund them. And presto, you’re back to taxes...to run national programs, taxes must be accumulated, not just endlessly cut.

It’s a simple picture and it’s amazing how Finance Minister Bill Morneau managed not to paint it with his summer tax “reform” rollout: get more tax revenues from the rich, who can afford it, to fund big programs; and give cuts to those who’ll spend to stimulate the economy, generating more revenues.

Salutin ends his piece by a personal testament to the need for properly-funded programs:

In recent weeks I’ve had (public sector) fire trucks at the house twice — for a fallen branch on power lines, then two false CO alarms in two days. They came swiftly, cheerily and competently, unlike my private gas provider, who effectively said, from wherever on the globe, that they didn’t give a flying leap.

I will close with a letter from today's Star that echoes Salutin's sentiments:

The big government era isn’t over. It may just be getting started, Salutin, Oct. 27

For the love of our aging and long-lived demographic, Rick Salutin has nailed it. We need to reframe the tax conversation. I don’t know where we’ve lost our way about this as a country or even as a society, but I remain confused when people say such things as, “but taxes will increase,” like a venomous accusation, rather than recognizing what it means to enjoy things such as clean drinking water and not having to build in a $50,000 rainy-day fund just in case we slip and break our hip (in the middle of the forest, no less, with no one to sue).

It scares me to think that if Canada had tried to socialize health care in this day and age, society is at a point where we would have said no and cried out for “lower taxes, not my money” instead.

If all we ever hear about is scandals and corruption, it’s little wonder why no one trusts government to handle the public purse anymore. I say keep at it, let’s talk about the privileges our society gets to enjoy for the value of its tax money and how much we’re going to need it in the decades to come.

Jennifer Ng, Richmond Hill

A Reflection On Canada Day

Most people who have lived in this country for any amount of time, I suspect, would agree that Canada is the best place in the world to be a citizen. While we often take much for granted, I am sure that, like me, the majority have a deep and abiding respect and love for the land that we call home. It's just that we are a quiet people, content in the knowledge of our strengths (and well-aware of our weaknesses), without a deep compulsion to brag about our good fortune.

Rick Salutin, reflecting on our country while watching people waiting for appointments or loved ones in the atrium of Toronto Western Hospital, observes a core value that makes us what we are:

What unites people there, waiting for their appointments, or for those they’ve brought to appointments? Neither health nor sickness, though most don’t look too fit. It’s something else: none is worried about how they’ll pay for it.

Absence of money anxieties is the unifying factor. Could this also be what unifies the country, as it does the atrium? Frank Graves of EKOS research found it so recently: far atop a list of sources of Canadian identity, leaving the anthem, the flag, and Mounties in the shade, was medicare.

While flag-waving and other patriotic gestures and symbols are on the decline, there is something deep and abiding that unites us as a country.

Nation states were always at their best a way for humans to embrace their common destiny: that we are social beings despite pretensions to splendid individualism (“I’m a loner, eh?”). Boiling the solution down till little but medicare remains at the bottom of the pan, reduces the concoction to a bold, unique minimum.

Which brings me back to the people hanging in the atrium at the Western, looking ethnically and multiculturally diverse but not particularly feeling the diversity because they’re all Canadians brought together by the Canadian way of dealing with the basic stuff of life and death, and forestalling the latter, as much as possible, for the former: Not through some abstraction like Canadian niceness, but by their commitment to pay their taxes, assuring that everyone else there needn’t worry about money while awaiting the good, or bad, news.

Americans are great at waving the flag and boasting that they are "the greatest country on earth." Yet they are now in the process, should the Senate bill pass, of ultimately removing over 35 million of their fellow citizens from health care coverage while the same bill also cuts a tax on investment income for people earning $200,000 or more. One could perhaps draw an inverse relationship between mindless jingoism and quality of life.

We, on the other hand, are a proud but quiet, even subdued nation. And for some very, very good reasons....

Are You A Supremacist?

Where I live, the summer has been, with just the occasional respite, unbearably hot. It has certainly interfered with one of my seasonal pleasures, sitting on the deck and reading the newspaper while watching various species of birds visit both my feeders and my bird bath. In those quiet moments, the wall that we humans far too frequently erect to separate us from nature seems to barely exist. The air, the sunlight, the perennials at the side and back of the yard are but a few of the things that I, the birds, squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits, butterflies and bees share. The illusion of Eden, however ephemeral, percolates into consciousness. All, for a few moments, is tranquil and holy.

But of course, the above is a very idealized version of reality; nature, in its more intrusive forms, elicits an entirely different response. For example, several years ago we awoke to find a bat in our bedroom. Let's just say that its presence was a source of deep consternation culminating in its capture and ultimately, its death, as it had to be tested for rabies.

While few would blame me for the actions I took, the incident does underscore another truth. We enjoy nature, we want to recognize ourselves as simply part of a vast and powerful reality, but we want it only on our terms. In a recent column, Rick Salutin reminded us of that truth:

When I got home from the cottage Monday, there were signs of struggle in the kitchen, like scratched, torn packaging on rice cakes. Mice? But why didn’t the cat disperse them as he always does? Rats? Later I heard scuffling and went back in: a squirrel!

It’s shocking how menacing they look in there, versus through the backyard window. Panicked and dangerous — the squirrel that is, but me too.

There’s such a sharp separation involved: them out there, us inside. Panic looms if it breaks down.

Salutin goes on to talk about other aspects of nature that we are increasingly contending with: the forest fires, the coastal flooding, etc., all a response to the separation that we have allowed to evolve and culminate in the early stages of climate change. That reality, he says, stands in sharp contrast to the romanticized nature that urbanites maunder on about (‘I love Nature.’). (See opening paragraph.)

And, in the way that only Rick Salutin can, he offers us this insight:

There’s a reason why indigenous peoples everywhere have led on dealing intelligently with climate change: not because they’re wiser or nobler but because they haven’t experienced a rupture with the non-human world to the same degree as most of us. They remain aware of the ways we’re part of the natural realm, and how dangerous and menacing it can be if, like any relationship, that one is left unattended or gets misshapen by a power imbalance. If you live oblivious to something you’re intimately part of, the odds don’t favour you, ultimately.

He might just as well have added that, with the power we wield, it doesn't favour nature either.

Indeed, Derrick Jensen, in a piece well-worth reading, has a name for what we do to the planet: human supremacism.

Here is human supremacism. Right now in Africa, humans are placing cyanide wastes from gold mines on salt licks and in ponds. This cyanide poisons all who come there, from elephants to lions to hyenas to the vultures who eat the dead. The humans do this in part to dump the mine wastes, but mainly so they can sell the ivory from the murdered elephants.

Right now a human is wrapping endangered ploughshares tortoises in cellophane and cramming them into roller bags to try to smuggle them out of Madagascar and into Asia for the pet trade. There are fewer than 400 of these tortoises left in the wild.

Right now in China, humans keep bears in tiny cages, iron vests around the bears’ abdomens to facilitate the extraction of bile from the bears’ gall bladders. The bears are painfully “milked” daily. The vests also serve to keep the bears from killing themselves by punching themselves in the chest.

And those are only a few dramatic examples of our ruptured relationship with the larger world. Every time we use our cars when we could have walked, every vehicle we buy that is bigger and more powerful than we need, every minute we spend idling our cars so we can stay cool or warm, every drop of water we waste when we let the tap run while brushing our teeth, all and so many more of our heedless daily decisions and actions reveal us for the human supremacists we are.

Our arrogance, our assumption of a natural superiority over nature, our insistence that we are separate from nature, continues apace. It is destroying our world and, of course, us along with it. All because of a perceived right to do what we will with the world around us.

A benighted and shameful view, but one that, despite all the indicators, sadly shows absolutely no signs of abatement.

A Reconsideration

While I have written about the importance of critical thinking many times on this blog, I have always considered it an ideal, a destination that we should strive for throughout our lives. Never is the journey complete; never are we entirely free from our cultural, political and social contexts and values, all of which act as filters through which we interpret events and ideas. It's all part of being human, and I am acutely aware of the biases through which I see things.

One of my biggest biases, of course, is political in nature. I detest the Harper regime and everything it stands for. That anything good or decent could emerge from such a fundamentally anti-democratic and contemptuous government is a notion difficult for me to entertain. And yet, after watching Rex Murphy's piece on The National last night, I realized that something I had automatically assumed to be prompted by partisan politics may have been something else entirely:


You may have deduced, after watching the clip, that the salient point for me came when he discussed Lisa Raitt's motives in escorting Elizabeth May off the stage. When it was first reported, I automatically, perhaps reflexively, assumed that her intervention was prompted, not for the reasons Murphy attributes, decency and concern for a friend, but rather to spare her boss, Stephen Harper, from any more abuse from Ms May. After watching it, I said to my wife that perhaps Murphy had a valid point (something I am not used to saying about him!), and that perhaps I should reconsider my original cynical conclusion.

In his column today, Rick Salutin seems to come to a similar conclusion:

And now ... for something completely redemptive: that parliamentary correspondents’ dinner, where Green leader Elizabeth May said some things worth saying but in a maudlin, self-pitying way. Then on came Tory cabinet minister Lisa Raitt to lovingly, maternally help her offstage. May wanted one last shot and Raitt unjudgmentally let her take it: “Omar Khadr, you’ve got more class than the entire f------ Tory cabinet.” It was complex. As a cabinet member Raitt shares that lack of class. As a human presence, she was inspirational. Isn’t there some way to bottle what happened between them and turn it into a party and voting option? Well, there should be.

I suppose that when all is said and done, we have to always keep in mind that critical thinking, as stated above, is never a fixed state nor a goal completely achieved, both a humbling and a useful insight for politically engaged people like me.

About That War Thing

I am dismayed over the general collective amnesia that has once more taken hold of political leaders and the public over the latest so-called world threat. In the solution being embraced, few seem to remember the abject failure of past incursions in the Middle East, incursions that only gravely exacerbated existing problems. It is as if hysteria has replaced critical thinking.

But my dismay is ameliorated, however slightly, by evidence that at least some have retained their faculties sufficiently to call into question the current prevailing 'wisdom' that says ISIS is a clear and present danger to all of us, and perpetual war against them and all subsequent threats is the answer. I therefore offer you some snippets of what, sadly, must now be labelled 'unconventional wisdom.'

In The Star, Haroon Siddiqui offers this assessment of Barack Obama's motivation for airstrikes against ISIS:

What if the U.S.-led war on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is designed, wholly or in part, to prop up Barack Obama’s sinking presidency and salvage the Democratic majority in the Senate in mid-term elections on Nov. 4?

Although Obama has tried to avoid wars and concentrate on things like the economy and climate change, his efforts have made him appear feckless and weak in the eyes of some.

Launching air attacks fit the bill. Overnight, he was the “war president,” without launching a full-scale war. Not only the far right but also the moderate centre and the left came on-board.

And very pertinently, Siddiqui asks,

Can Islamic State be destroyed without fixing the dysfunction in Syria and Iraq, the primary cause of the rise of these jihadists?

While one may not agree with everything he says in the piece, the important thing is that he is asking the right questions, something few others are doing.

Siddiqui's fellow Star columnist, Rick Salutin, also probes beneath the surface of this complex issues, offering The case for doing nothing about the Islamic State.

Pointing out that this is a war where we do not have to confront the casualties of bombs and drones, from our perspective, it is quite bloodless. He therefore invites us to partake in a thought experiment:

So imagine being a villager. From high overhead, others are raining Hellfires, literally, on you. You can’t see them but you know they don’t look like you or speak your language, and care only in the most abstract way. Then along come the Islamic State thugs. They look and talk like you. They’re brutal but they create some administrative order, after the chaos of invasion and civil war: 3 million to 5 million people in Iraq and 9 million in Syria displaced due mainly to U.S. military operations since 9/11. It’s an awful choice between those two forces but it may not be a hard one.

I close with two letters from Globe readers who offer some trenchant insights:

Re Harper Pitches Expanded Role In Iraq (Oct. 2):

Whether it’s a Liberal or Conservative government, the playbook seems somewhat the same. We begin with some small, relatively manageable commitment and before you can say “Bob’s your uncle who didn’t come back intact from the war,” we are knee deep in the blood of the innocent citizens of other countries who are collateral damage, and that of our own troops.

Whatever the solution is to extremism in the Mideast and beyond, I’m with NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair. Let’s practise our time-tested caution and restraint and not succumb to Stephen Harper’s rush to battle.

Bill Engleson, Denman Island, B.C.

The world’s mightiest superpower failed to bring peace and security to the people of Iraq and the entire region, despite an all-out effort over many years.

If Stephen Harper thinks sending our sons and daughters to war will make a difference, he should lead by example, slip on his flak jacket, and take his son Ben, now 18, over with him to see the war through to its conclusion. Then he might begin to understand why Jean Chrétien told George “Dubya” Bush no to his face when pressured to join the ill-advised American invasion of Iraq.

Mike Priaro, Calgary

Explaining Justin Trudeau

No matter what the Liberal leader says or does, his popularity ranks at a consistently high level. While part of the explanation for his standings in the polls surely lies in the Canadian people's weariness with the Harper regime, a regime that has shown itself, through its practices of division, neoliberal politics and fear/hate-mongering, to be unworthy of public office, there must be more to it than that.

Rick Salutin, writing in The Star, offers up an interesting perspective in a piece entitled Paradoxical public art of seeming human. His thesis is that the more a person appears like one of us, i.e., flawed and fallible, the more we will identify with him or her.

He uses as an example the televised debate between Kathleen Wynne, Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath. Young Tim pretended to be just an ordinary, folksy kind of guy:

“Look, I’m not gonna be the best actor on the stage. I’m not gonna get up here and give a great performance.” It was a rehearsed shtick, a shucks/shtick. He did it with the rictus grin that others — NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, U.S. neo-con Bill Kristol — paste on, presumably because experts tell them they look too stern.

Contrasting that studied 'ordinariness' was Kathleen Wynne, who

sounded bad and looked flustered answering questions on corruption in that debate, but flustered is human, so she also made ground, by contrast with the “human” effects well-prepped by her opponents.

Salutin then examines Trudeau, pere et fils:

Human is human. There’s no formula. Pierre Trudeau looked human by not seeming to give a crap whether anyone cared if he looked human. It was effective.

Now Justin is pulling off the same thing though not in his dad’s way, which would be fatal. He’s warm, ebullient, spontaneous. It seems real, which is as much as we’ll ever know. When he apparently improvised a new anti-abortion policy at a scrum, he looked befuddled by the questions. “Uh, that is an issue that, uh” — then he takes a really long pause as if lost in thought, remembers the press are there, tries again: “I’ve committed in my . . . ” Then cheerily gives up: “Well, it is a tough one.” Says he’ll give it more thought.

While this apparent ineptitude should be reflected in poll results, it is not. Salutin's explanation?

Faced with candidates none of whom is discernibly human, voters will look for something to judge on: sunniness, mellifluousness, square jaw. What the candidates say is never enough since it’s all obviously calculated. But faced with one candidate who’s discernibly human, they’ll tilt in that direction for, well, human reasons. It’s like spying a fellow creature in the wilderness. It may not suffice but it’s a sizable advantage.

The adorable thing about that abortion clip is it could appear in Conservative or Liberal ads: as proof the guy’s in over his head or that he’s a certifiable human.

While electoral behaviour, like all human behaviour, will likely never give up all of its mysteries, Rick Salutin has perhaps provided us with one more tool by which to analyse it.

The Ontario NDP: The Party of No Damn Principles?

That is the conclusion Rick Salutin recently came to in a column entitled Andrea Horwath's right-wing populism.

Describing her as a right-wing populist, full out, Salutin explored the framework within which this unpleasant and inconvenient truth emerges:

She’s Rob Ford, thinking always about saving taxpayers money simplistically by cutting waste and public salaries, in order to hand out $100 Hydro rebates: that’s gravy train talk, province-wide.

She’s Mitt Romney appealing to his base when she invokes concern for “the job creators and small business,” i.e. the makers not the takers.

She’s Margaret Thatcher when she opposes any meaningful revenue increase for public projects like Kathleen Wynne’s pension plan and transit expansion.

And she’s Mike Harris when she advocates “a government that makes sense” and emblazons “Makes Sense” on her campaign bus. That’s no coincidence, it’s an evocation of Mike Harris’s “Common Sense” motto. These things don’t just happen, they’re focus grouped to within a breath of survival.

With each passing day, Salutin's acerbic analysis rings increasingly true.

On Wednesday, continuing her slow tease out of 'policy,' Ms. Horwath promised to encumber the cabinet with a new ministry for 'cutting waste' at Queen's Park:

The Minister of Savings and Accountability would be charged with finding a half a per cent of savings – about $600-million – in the annual budget each year.

With little more than her usual rapid blinking that accompanies each departure from traditional NDP principles, the leader averred “There are a lot of people around the cabinet table whose business it is, whose job it is to spend the money,” but “What I want is someone there who’s going to be able to save the pennies.”

While those pennies saved be put toward progressive programs? Apparently not. Aware of the difficulty in finding $600 million in savings each year, Horwath said it could mean “hard decisions” about social programs.

So there you have it. Trimming the 'fat.' Saving the taxpayer money. Funding business to hire people. Apparently those are the new 'principles' of the Ontario NDP under Ms Horwath's 'leadership.'

Or perhaps Liberal party spokeswoman Rebecca MacKenzie put it even more tartly and accurately when she said, “It's impossible to know what Andrea Horwath stands for any more. She has gone from calling herself a socialist to mimicking Rob Ford and Tim Hudak.”

Shoulder Shrug

Like many of the commentators and bloggers whom I read, I regularly feel a deep frustration over the passivity of people. No matter what the problem, be it political, social, environmental or a host of others, too many have a 'can't-do' reaction that debases so many in a myriad of ways. Indeed, it appears to be one of our species' defining characteristics, one at which Canadians seem to particularly excel, if our current political landscape is any indication.

Perhaps we need a national shoulder-shrug symbol as an expression of the what-can-you-do paralysis that cripples so many, a condition that undoubtedly facilitates the dark manipulation our political 'masters' so gleefully engage in.

My reflections are partly prompted by a column in this morning's Toronto Star by Rick Salutin entitled David Cameron and Jim Flaherty prove fatalism is back. Using the picture of British Prime Minister David Cameron in boots wading through flood-ravaged south-west England, Salutin sums up the photo-op in these terms:

It’s the shots of British Prime Minister David Cameron slogging through the floods there in wellies that convinced me: fatalism is back. He may have looked as if he was trying to do something, but it had nothing to do with addressing the causes of flooding. He was all accommodation: like Noah building an ark after hearing from the Lord that the skies were going to burst.

That image parallels the reactions people had in Toronto and beyond after the ice storm that left so many without power for so long; rather than to start a real discussion about climate change, people instead carped about how long it took to restore power. An 'action plan' in the form of an independent panel convened by Toronto Hydro to address that concern was our way of avoiding acknowledging and confronting the real issue.

Similarly, during the flooding that hit the Toronto area last July, concern seemed to be limited to how long it took to rescue stranded Go Train passengers. Indeed, at the time Environment Canada's senior climatologist urged a stoic acceptance:

"No infrastructure could handle this...you just have to accept the fact that you're going to be flooded."

Salutin offers this observation:

... ours is the first era ever possessing strong evidence that human action has shaped the climate. It’s simply a case of trying to undo what we’ve (with high probability) done. If you had substantial evidence that food or water was killing your kids, you wouldn’t futz around about “the science” being inconclusive. You’d act.

And here he gets to the meat of his thesis:

I’m not talking about the tendency of governments, corporations and ideologues to lie and manipulate. I mean the propensity of populations to meekly accept brutal realities because that’s just how it is.

The columnist then trains his lens on the federal budget brought down the other day by Jim Flaherty, who apparently had more pressing concerns than people's lives in the days leading up to the budget:

The economy’s another example. How dared Jim Flaherty present that budget? Where did he get the balls? He ignored the state of jobs and debt in people’s lives, the way Cameron ignored climate change while wading in the water.

And so things go merrily along, collective amnesia and widespread denial being a comfortable refuge until the next 'unforseeable' crisis.

The War Continues

The Harper cabal's contempt for the environment, science, transparency, and knowledge in general has become the stuff of dark legend, provoking outrage both at home and beyond our borders. That a putative democracy can be behaving in such a totalitarian manner strains credulity. And the latest salvo against science, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' closing of seven of eleven regional libraries housing a priceless accumulation of aquatic research, is being regarded as a tremendous loss by both scientists and the general public:

Peter Wells, an adjunct professor and senior research fellow at the International Ocean Institute at Dalhousie University in Halifax, has this to say:

“I see this situation as a national tragedy, done under the pretext of cost savings, which, when examined closely, will prove to be a false motive”... “A modern democratic society should value its information resources, not reduce, or worse, trash them.”

Even members of the defunct Progressive Conservative Party are speaking out. Tom Siddon, the former federal fisheries minister in Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government, had this to say:

"I call it [closing libraries] Orwellian, because some might suspect that it's driven by a notion to exterminate all unpopular scientific findings that interfere with the government's economic objectives".

Others are reportedly too afraid to speak out.

Another person piercing this veil of darkness and intimidation is The Star's Rick Salutin, whose column today addresses some of the wider implications of Harper's war against enlightenment and progress.

First he presents a poignant picture of scientists' reactions to seeing invaluable knowledge being either carted off to dumpsters or scavenged:

Scientists were practically or actually crying as they watched their beloved atlases etc. hauled away or dispatched to the shredder. The feds say it’s all been digitized but that’s evidently untrue. Postmedia unearthed a document marked secret that had no mention of digitization.

But scientists are not the only ones affected by these depredations:

For Canadians, it’s like the loss of irreplaceable family photos. This country was built on its coasts and waterways via the fishing grounds and fur trade. We are as we are — nature heavy and underpopulated — due to those patterns.

Yet, as Salutin points out, the loss is much larger:

It goes deeper though. It has to do with being human. What humans do is solve problems with intelligence, when they can, and when they fail, try to learn from that and pass it on for the next round. This gives humans their edge. ...There’s something willfully perverse in turning your back on accumulated knowledge in the name of “value for taxpayers.”

And perhaps the greatest casualty is democracy itself, something the Harper reprobates have shown such ongoing contempt for:

Democracy isn’t about everybody casting one vote. That way all you get is a sloppy aggregation of individual opinions. The whole is the sum of its parts, period. Democracy means people consult together, listen, discuss — so that some voices will weigh more than others, and everyone gets a chance to decide which those are. But that can’t happen if the most informed voices from the past and present are stifled or dropped into dumpsters.

So whether we realize it or not, the Harper war against knowledge is part of a larger battle against all of us. If that's not worth fighting, I don't know what is.

Although I featured this picture in a post yesterday, it seems appropriate to run it again:



For further reading on the Harper war against science, check out John Dupuis' piece here.

For Those Who Don't Mind Gov't Surveillance Because They Have Nothing To Hide

You might want to take a moment to read Rick Salutin's thoughts on the implications of living in a country where environmentalists and others who oppose the government's corporate agenda are regarded as terrorists.

As well, this Canadian Dimension piece might also give you pause.

Heroes and Villains

There is little doubt in my mind that the economic chaos defining the lives of millions of people is intentional, not just so their labour can be exploited as cheaply as possible, but also because desperate citizens make for compliant and disciplined drones. Historically, it has usually been thus, with the elites calling the shots while the rest scramble for meager existences, through no fault of their own other than their place in the embryo lottery.

When you are in a position of economic security, it is much easier to follow the corporate/political intrigue that continues to debase our democracy and degrade our humanity. Unfortunately, that position of security is constituted by an increasingly small segment of the non-elite population.

So if your life isn't consumed by trying to simply keep body and soul together, you might find some articles on Edward Snowden of real interest, especially given the questions that they raise about what limits should exist in a democracy, and whether people living in a putative democracy have the right to know whether they are being spied upon en masse:

Why Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, is more hero than traitor by Tony Burman.

Edward Snowden is messenger, not message by Heather Mallick.

In praise of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden by Rick Salutin.

And from the man who brought Snowden's revelations to the world, On Prism, partisanship and propaganda by Glenn Greenwald.

Rick Salutin on Civic Embarassment

We are in Edmonton right now, and when people ask us where we are from, I mention our community as being about 70 kilometers from Toronto; I then hasten to add that we have nothing to do with Rob Ford, one whose escapades every westerner we meet seems to be well aware of. Never have I felt a greater urge to distance myself from Ontario's capital, with obvious good reason.

I therefore found especially interesting Rick Salutin's thoughts on civic embarrassment and its effects on the people. You can read it here.

Off to Banff tomorrow. I wonder if the Rockies will resound with derisive laughter as well.

An Embarrassment To All of Us

Like the dotty uncle no one wants to invite to family dinners anymore because of his wildly inappropriate comments, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver is fast becoming an international persona non grata.

With the passion of a senescent zealot, Oliver has drawn unfavorable attention to Canada in recent weeks over his attacks on those who disagree with his unbridled enthusiasm for Alberta's dirty oil. There was, for example, his visit last month to Washington in which he lambasted a leading climate scientist, James Hansen, denouncing him for “exaggerated rhetoric,” that “doesn’t do the (environmentalists’) cause any good.” For good measure, he dismissed the much-respected Hansen for spouting "nonsense' in his warnings about the Alberta tarsands, adding that he “should be ashamed.” His followup interview with Evan Solomon could only be described as 'cringe-worthy.'

His next target was Al Gore who, in a recent visit to Toronto, offered a withering assessment of the tarsands similar to Hansen's. Again, our 'Uncle' Joe denounced him vigorously. Once more drawing upon his limited repertoire, he accused Gore of making "wildly inaccurate and exaggerated claims" about the Harper record on climate change.

But wait, there's more:

On Wednesday in Brussels, Mr. Oliver said Canada would consider filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization, the global referee for trade disputes, if the EU proceeds with its so called fuel-quality directive which singles out crude from Canada’s oil sands as the most harmful to the planet’s climate.

Yesterday, in an apparent rare moment of lucidity, Oliver backed down on the threat, saying that the issue is separate from the European trade deal much desired by the Harper regime.

The antics of our antic Natural Resources Minister have not escaped notice. Yesterday, a group of 12 prominent Canadian scientists wrote a letter to Oliver, essentially asking that he and his government show some maturity on the climate change issue. The letter also offers to help Minister Oliver to understand the data on climate change. No word of a response, withering or otherwise, from the cabinet minister.

Finally, in today's edition, The Star's Rick Salutin has an interesting take on the whole issue, saying that our version of classics like Death of a Salesman, Glengarry Glen Ross, or the current British series Mr. Selfridge would be Mr. Bitumen, the story of a salesman peddling a blatantly faulty, unneeded product.

One of the marks of the enlightened mind is the ability to process new information that can alter one's perspective. Joe Oliver shows no such capacity. Guess that's why he's a member of the Harper Conservative government.

The Synchronous Decline of Peter Mansbridge and The CBC

I admit that I stopped being a regular viewer of the CBC years ago; I think the catalyst for my disaffection was its transparent policy of appeasement (under the pretext of balanced reporting) of the Harper regime which, of course, holds its funding strings. Especially evident in its flagship news program, The National, hosted by that one-time icon of journalistic integrity, Peter Mansbridge, the Corporation has become a parody of itself. And as I have written in past posts, Mansbridge himself has to take the bulk of the blame for its sad decline.

On February 8, The Star's Rick Salutin wrote a piece entitled CBC’s Peter Mansbridge coulda bin a contender. Somewhat dirgelike in tone, Salutin asserts that Mansbridge just seems to have given up on doing any substantive journalism, contrasting him with the redoubtable Walter Cronkite, who he describes as ... ready to stand up against the state and the flow and was solid as the bronze statue of the American revolutionary minuteman who stood “by the rude bridge that spanned the flood/ His flag to April’s breeze unfurled.”

Mansbridge, on the other hand, has happily gone with the flow — and the pressure. CBC has become numero uno for crime stories, weather coverage (today’s snow), product launches, celebrities and awards gossip. None of this is new, or news, and CBC itself doesn’t contest the point.

In this morning's Star, the majority of readers appear to agree with Salutin's assessment. I am taking the liberty of reproducing some of them below:

Leave Mansbridge alone. After his last interview with Stephen Harper, it seems obvious he’s angling for a Senate appointment a la Mike Duffy. Calling attention to his soft-shoe journalism will only make his task that much harder.

Mike Sampat, Toronto

I watch CBC’s The National mostly for entertainment. For real news I watch Aljazeera English and BBC World.

Entertainment, news.

Raja Khouri, Toronto

.... How can one explain that in every half-hour broadcast the “weather person” comes on three times. I suppose it is easier to kill time having the weather person on than to go out an find some news. If we want to dwell on weather there is always the Weather Channel. We can surely do better.

Bob Joakim, Oakville

.... Yes, he is rather apolitical and borderline fawning at times, such as his interview with Stephen Harper before the last federal election, but I can forgive him for that. At least he hasn’t pulled a Mike Duffy and obtained a sinecure in the seniors club we call the Senate. He could have gone to New York a few years ago, but decided to stay, to his and our benefit.

Sigmund Roseth, Mississauga

Expect nothing to change in the near future.

''Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.'

The title of my post today, taken from Act Five of Shakespeare's Hamlet, occurs in a graveyard. Hamlet begins musing on what may become of one's earthly remains, as even those of the most exalted in life, once their remains have fully decayed, may wind up as little more than a beer barrel stopper.

Horatio seems to feel that such speculation is a tad morbid and unhealthy.

Perhaps the same may be said about trying to dissect the mind of a politician, for fear of what we may discover.

In his column yesterday, The Star's Rick Salutin goes down that dark path in trying to understand the mind of outgoing Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, and while I realize that Ontario politics may be of little interest to people in other parts of the country, Salutin's observations seem pan-Canadian in application:

For the first time in his political career, McGuinty has become humanly interesting because he’s indecipherable. In the past he was politically interesting — for standing almost alone against the neo-con tide of his times, but personally uncomplicated. Now he’s taken all he stood for and could feel pride in: strong public schools, a positive role for government, political support he built — among teachers especially — and trashed it for no evident reason. Then he resigned, losing any chance he had to salvage the mess he made.

While he finds this more than passing strange, Salutin wonders whether the Premier is relying on a U.S. political consultant urging a hard-right mentality that ultimately sacrifices logic on the altar of demagoguery:

So Dalton tells the teachers: Sorry but you’re going to have to accept a two-year wage freeze. The teachers’ unions answer: OK, we accept a two-year wage freeze. Dalton stays on script and replies: Sorry, that’s unacceptable, you have to take a two-year wage freeze.

Indeed, the above scenario is eerily echoed in a piece in today's Star, excerpted from an interview to be broadcast today on Focus Ontario. In it, McGuinty reminds teachers of how good they have had it under his rule:

“There are some teachers who are saying: ‘We don’t accept that [wage restraint]. You must negotiate with us.’ We’re saying: ‘Listen, we’re prepared to negotiate, but we can’t negotiate a pay hike,’ ” the premier said. (Here of course, the Premiere is conveniently ignoring the fact that they did accept the wage freeze demanded.) “Some teachers have said we’ve taken away their rights, we took away their right to strike. Well, they’re striking now so obviously that is not true.” (Here the Premier conveniently ignores the fact that the anti-strike provisions of Bill 115 don't come into effect until the new year, when its provisions will likely be imposed.)

Perhaps attempts to understand the quirky minds of politicians is ultimately a waste of time, since those minds are obviously deeply influenced by the ethos of the organization that they serve, their political party. When they deviate from the formulae that bring them power, maybe the best we can do is accept something that Salutin reminds us of in his piece:

We’re deceived by the lucid, rational façade, by the facts we wear clothes and eat with cutlery, into thinking we’re not essentially primitive creatures whose conscious calculations are generally a fraction of what motivates us.

As Horatio says, in attempting to understand beyond that, ''Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.'