... Your Young Men Will See Visions, Your Old Men Will Dream Dreams.

Although far from a biblical scholar, I find the above line, taken from the Book of Acts, to be an apt title. Even though I am taking it out of context, it encapsulates for me a capacity that the world in general, and Canada in particular, has lost: the capacity to dream of and envisage a better reality than what we have settled for.

Under the relentless barrage of neoconservative propaganda, we have succumbed to the kind of existence epitomized in the video I posted the other day, a world of mindless consumerism, relentless environmental despoliation, and spiritual barrenness. if they are good at anything, those of the reactionary right are very good at limiting, even destroying hope.

Consider the insidious narratives they spin - government as an impediment, government as a thief in your tax pocket, government as the obstruction without which all would be well. Like all effective narratives, each chapter of theirs may contain an element of truth, but only a small part of the truth.

Forgotten is the role that government plays for the collective good, without which all of us would be lost. Imagine no libraries, no public roads, no health care, no pensions, no labour laws, no public police or fire services - all the logical conclusions to the extreme right-wing dream, a dream that would be a nightmare for the vast majority of us, especially those without the means or the wherewithal to escape consignment to the trash heap - economic Darwinianism run amok.

But from those vying for our electoral support, where are the visions, where are the dreams? From Stephen Harper, of course we get the above vision. Justin Trudeau offers more money for families, and a 'new way of doing politics,' whatever that means, and a bit of tinkering around the edges. Thomas Mulcair promises a national daycare program and more money for municipalities, important bread and butter issues, to be sure, but singularly uninspiring and pedestrian, and, to be quite blunt, safe.

Bold initiatives that require more from us via taxes have become verboten, thanks to the narrative the media brings us. So neither Thomas Mulcair nor Justin Trudeau will suggest, for example, a national pharmacare system that would ultimately save everyone, including government and private health plans, huge sums of money (upwards of $12 billion annually) through pooled purchases and far less hospitalizations owing to people either not getting their prescriptions filled or not taking the required dosages in order to stretch out their costly medicationss.

I could go on, but I think you get my point. I have made no reference to the truly critical issues confronting us for an obvious reason. If our leadership is too timid to address matters that are well within reach, such as pharmacare, what likelihood beyond a bit of rhetorical toe-dipping is there of bold measures to remediate child poverty, homelessness and our greatest threat, climate change?

Zero to nil, would be my guess.

About Those Soulless Animals

I dunno. They sure seem to be having a lot of fun. How much do we really know about the interior life of animals?


H/t The Pet Collective

Do you think they might have something to teach us?

A Response From The Mound Of Sound

The Mound of Sound, who knows a great deal about the topic, offered the following response to my post on our hubris and our folly.

Thanks for posting that video, Lorne. Any species that cannot live in harmony with its environment, that even comes to dominate and overwhelm its environment is inherently parasitic and self-extinguishing. We've done this before on a smaller scale time and again. The Mayans, the Easter Islanders, the Mesopotamians - civilizations that come off the land, organize and rise to a peak before suddenly collapsing.

The seeds of our collapse are found in our inability to get beyond 18th century economics, 19th century industrialism and 20th century geopolitics. We're more afraid of abandoning our slavish pursuit of perpetual, exponential growth than the far worse outcome that's inevitable in our success. Where this ends is a matter of mathematical certainty. We're consuming Earth's resources at more than 1.5 times the planet's carrying capacity and our voraciousness is accelerating. It's a dependency more powerful than heroin or crystal meth and far more lethal. Like a chronic junkie we're prepared to live in our ever worsening filth. Rivers that no longer flow to the sea, freshwater no longer fit for human consumption, oceanic dead zones, fish stock collapses, a fouled atmosphere even to the polar regions where black soot darkens the ice caps, aquifers running on empty but, as this video shows, it doesn't matter when your reality is refreshed daily on some electronic screen.

We've been conditioned, Lorne, powerfully conditioned to be fearful and complacent and, especially, to recoil at the notion of change. We've become the vivisectionist's dog, lovingly licking the master's hand while the other hand holds the scalpel plunged into us.

Our Hubris And Our Folly

This is far too true and almost too sad for words:

Cuba And Private Enterprise

Since we first visited the island in 2010, my wife and I have developed a deep respect and affection for Cuba and its people. As I have indicated in previous posts, those feelings were formed not just in the vacations spots we have enjoyed, but also by getting to know the 'real' Cuba through friends that we made off of the resorts.

On our last visit there, the people I talked to looked forward, guardedly, to the gradual normalization with Cuba's historical nemesis, the United States. While some North Americans have suggested that the nation will become little more than a colony of the U.S. once again, as you will see in this report from Democracy Now, new opportunities may well arise out of this meeting of socialism and capitalism.

I couldn't help but wonder, as you may too, whether the emerging Cuba might have a thing or two to teach inveterate capitalists, especially with regard to the benefits of treating one's employees well. A restaurateur who is featured in the video seems particularly possessed of a common sense that is sadly disappearing in North America:

A Sanctimonious Dick

People sometimes wonder why I am so hard on right-wing evangelicals. Perhaps the sanctimonious dick in the following video will clarify why:

FOX Carolina 21

On The Sinister Implications of Bill C-51

One of the biggest threats posed by Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism legislation so loved of the Harper cabal, is that it could be used to criminalize dissent.

Jesse Brown, over at CanadaLand, offers an anonymously uploaded YouTube video, shot during Saturday's "Stop C-51" Rally on Parliament Hill, that would seem to confirm our biggest fears: