Sadly, the deity does not come off well here. Perhaps a celestial defamation lawsuit is in order? I imagine the punitive damages would be severe.
Regular readers may have noticed that I have not been posting very much in the last month or so. In addition to it having been a busy Christmas season, the other reason stems from my own outlook.
While there may be a measure of seasonal affective disorder influencing that outlook, I think the main cause is that I find it increasingly difficult to get excited, upset, outraged or flummoxed by the world's antics. For me, there is nothing new under the sun, which presents a problem for a blogger who writes about the world. One of the rules I have generally observed in my writing life, both on this platform and in my other communication endeavours, is not to write when I don't feel it. In other words, writing for the sake of writing, without even a modicum of passion, is an empty exercise with generally unsatisfying results.
Don't get me wrong - committing mu thoughts to metaphorical paper has been an integral part of my life since I was a young teenager, when I started submitting letters to the editor. Writing has always helped to focus and refine my thinking, and in these latter days of my life, I hope it helps to keep my cognitive functioning intact. I have no desire to "go gentle into that good night."
Nonetheless, and I hope my inertia will pass, I have no faith in the world anymore. Unlike when I was young, when everything seemed possible (even flying cars!), I now see only the ending of things, and the deep sense that as a species, we have passed our best before date, that we are participating in the long goodbye.
I shall close this mini-confessional with a clip by the late, great George Carlin who, in the latter part of his career, seemed to mirror my dour worldview.
And Patrick Corrigan offers this apt and incisive cartoon to help us usher in the new year.
As we move with both hope and trepidation into 2024, here are a few reflections, through a Canadian lens, on what happened this year, as recalled by my favourite editorial cartoonist, Theo Moudakis:
In the movie, Forrest Gump famously replied when asked if he was stupid, "Stupid is as stupid does."
It is advice American voters should ponder in 2024:
It is hardly a revelation to say that words have power. They can delight, inform, edify, inspire and destroy. Unfortunately, it is the the latter effect that we see all too frequently today. One only has to look at the various cesspools to be found on social media to see this in action, and the tragic results of depraved online bullying. No one is immune.
And what is true about the misuse of language by individuals is also true of countries. In her most recent column, Shree Paradkar points out how the Israel's insidious misuse seems designed to obscure its atrocities in Gaza.
Who are Palestinians in Gaza? The Israeli government and its supporters would have us believe they are anything but innocent civilians.
This is important. Denying the innocence of the thousands killed during Israel’s onslaught allows its leaders to justify civilian deaths or to proffer a rationalization that “they brought it on themselves,” while blaming everything on Hamas.
Conflating all Palestinians with the evil of Hamas allows for the dehumanization of all Gazans, essentially equating the citizens with terrorism.
Former Mossad chief Rami Igra told CNN's Anderson Cooper last month that “The ‘non-combatant population in the Gaza Strip’ is really a non-existent term. Because all of the Gazans voted for Hamas. And as we have seen on the 7th of October, most of the population on the Gaza Strip are Hamas.”
Cooper didn’t push back, but this is blatantly untrue. There have been no elections in Gaza since 2006, when Hamas won with 44 per cent of the vote, and in no district did it win a majority. Today, nearly half the population of Gaza is under 18; they were either not born when Hamas came into power or not eligible to cast a ballot then. It means only a fraction of today's Gazans ever voted for Hamas.
Such a tact means that Israel can justify all manner of war crimes.
It allowed for Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant to refer to Palestinians and Hamas militants as “human animals.” And for Israel’s ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, to double down on those comments and say the western world must stand with Israel as it fights the “bloodthirsty animals” of Hamas, who are used interchangeably with Gazans.
Accepting that premise means that we should not care what happens to Gazans, thereby justifying
attacks on targets such as hospitals and schools that are protected by humanitarian law by claiming that they are in fact “military infrastructure.” Israeli evidence of Hamas using hospitals and schools as hideouts and bases has not been independently corroborated and remains contentious. But whatever the truth, Israel and its supporters use these claims to absolve themselves of any responsibility for civilian casualties.
All who accept such premises really become complicit in the ongoing slaughter, and no clever linguistic nuances or semantics can change that fact.
George Orwell many years ago warned us about the political use of language. Sadly, it would seem that whatever lessons he tried to impart are long forgotten today.
A friend sent me the following, Stephen Fry reading a letter from musician Nick Cave about the nature of creativity and how ChatGPT essentially short-circuits that process. Quite thought-provoking.
