Don't Eat American!

This has been on my mind just after Donald Trump has retaken the office of President, and he and Elon Musk have been gutting consumer, worker, and safety programs right and left.  The U.S. has gone from close ally and our best trading partner to a corporate raider, threatening us with 25% tariffs on imports!

Tomorrow, February 28th, is Buy Nothing American day and I fully intend to participate in that, as anyone who cares anything about Canada and Canadians should.  However, I intend to restrict my diet to nothing American produced permanently, but of course, I cannot do it all at once.  That will require some research on my part.  I have nothing against Americans personally (I have a dear friend who is American, and she just passed her Canadian citizenship test.  Kudos!), but it is basically for the same reason that the standard advice on vacationing in Mexico is "don't drink the water."

This video by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow explains why, quite clearly.  

 Trump is replacing the Cavalry with The Four Horsemen.

The Triumph of Apathy

I want to believe in people, that the human race is capable to taking care of itself and cleaning up after our own messes. I want to believe in democracy, or at least a responsible, representative government. It just seems now that the prevailing sentiment is "every man for himself". It's all about the individual, everyone looking out for No. 1. There seems to be this cynical, anti-government, arch-reactionary movement that seems to have taken over the conservative mindset, which would be tolerable if they hadn't elected someone like Donald Trump to the highest political office in the world.

Yes, the American Revolution is generally considered to be a conservative revolution, but their Founding Fathers had some ingenious ideas about how to keep government from becoming too powerful (keeping government branches separate and independent of each other being just two examples). Of course, there were times that different levels of government knowingly violated the Constitution, denied doing so, and tried to cover it up, but for over 200 years, law, order, and justice did prevail overall. The Republic is still standing; the biggest question now is:  for how much longer?

How did it come to this? How was it possible for a man like this to be elected president? The common thread that I can see is sheer stupidity. How did so many middle and working-class Americans become so stupid, so politically illiterate, and in effect, voting against their own interests, not even counting the interests of people abroad? (Please note:  there is plenty of stupidity to go around in the Western world, here in Canada, and England [cough: Brexit]) We have SO many people and things to blame for this (in no particular order).

• Television (particularly so-called "reality TV")
• neo-conservatives/neo-liberals
• liberals
• the Internet
  

When I first saw the Robert Redford directed film "Quiz Show" about the TV game show fixes of the 1950s, John Tutorro's character Herb Stempel said something near the end about how television was "going to get us", I had no idea how that was possible. Yes, I know that that particular medium has made people stupider over time, and I even think I watched that movie just as "Survivor" became a thing (I only watched the second season in the Australian Outback just out of curiosity) and was somewhat aware that that and so-called "reality TV" in general is mostly fakery and as scripted as professional wrestling, but who could have foreseen that it would make everyone so much stupider and easier to deceive and mislead? This is what government and corporate interests have tried to do for so long, and it would appear that they have ultimately succeeded. And of course, the fact that just about everyone who has been around since the late 1980s and has had access to a TV knows who Donald Trump is.


The 9/11 terrorist attacks seemed to unleash a volcanic eruption of anger that had been building up for years among the American people. The conservative movement seemed to have had tempered their collective rage until then, and when George W. Bush and Tony Blair decided to invade Iraq, the conservative movement became hyper-defensive; they were finally raging back at all the America-bashing that had been going on throughout the world for decades, among allied countries as well as communist countries. This time though, the ruling American conservatives seemed so completely full of themselves like I had never seen before, and I had lived through the Reagan years. Their stated goals were to basically establish free-market liberal democracies all over the world starting in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the American way was the best way (not a direct quote, but that in a nutshell was the ethos they were operating under). Basically, it was 'freedom and capitalism for all races, religions and creeds, and if you disagree with us, you hate freedom and are guilty of the soft bigotry of lower expectations' (again, I'm paraphrasing). 

After the Iraq invasion, things did not go as the allies had hoped. Even though the U.S. and England overthrew a brutal dictator, the situation in Iraq did not improve overall in spite of some apparent turns of good fortune earlier on. Some have even said that the current situation is worse than it ever was under Saddam Hussein. The American Right has seemed to react in a sort of indignation towards helping anyone anymore. These days, they stress individualism and national sovereignty, and have a deep-seated loathing for government and all things political, taking to heart an extreme and new-fangled form of libertarianism where anyone who works for any level of government is automatically tainted with corruption. But people who run their own businesses, particularly if they're successful, are not nearly as bad; and some conservatives would rather be governed by them than actual politicians. In fact, one of the surest ways for anyone wanting to get elected to public office these days is if they express sheer contempt for not just the current administration, but for politics in general. It's like people want to vote people into office who will basically shut down the government altogether. The best thing to be for someone these days, who wants to run for President, is someone who had never run for public office before and is a "successful" businessman. Someone who is completely untainted by politics, and is a living testament to everything we can hope for in a capitalist society. The conservative movement, even those who profess to be religious, seem to have lowered their standards for people who run for office, just as long as they do not fit the current political mode, and willfully overlook his blatant rudeness, thin-skin, and generally sleazy ways.

Liberals themselves have little to be proud of. All they could offer against Trump was Hilary Clinton. Putting aside for a moment that she seems to embody everything wrong with politics, I like to think that if the Democrats had chosen anyone else who did not have all the baggage that Mrs. Clinton had, the world would be a much safer, saner place today. Liberals also need to heighten their standards as well. The fact that her husband Bill definitely had sexual relations with "that woman" while he was in office was not the worst part of that sordid affair, but the fact that he had lied to Congress about it under oath, and to the American people in a televised address as well. That was a major contributor to the cynicism we are seeing today for politics and politicians. Nobody's word is good for anything anymore. We expect people to swear to things up and down and know that they're lying. Also, there is the issue of "political correctness". It was a good idea at the time, but like any good idea, it was taken too far, and people were tainted with accusations of racism if they disagreed with liberals on certain points.Remember that old fable about the Boy Who Cried Wolf? It seems that these days, the wolves have come out of hiding and have taken control of the entire farm.

On a side note, you know liberal California? There seems to be some serious talk about them seceding from the Union, but how soon have we forgotten? They had elected their own non-politician as governor. You know, that guy who was a movie star (ok, it had worked before), who was foreign-born, but had married into the Kennedy family, and was an "alleged" serial groper? You had voted him in TWICE.

Then there is this:  the thing where you are most likely reading this post from. The Internet. Where people get most of their 'information' these days. You can pretty much look up anything that corresponds with your point of view, and find "proof" that it is true. First we had "alternative science", particularly when it comes to medicine, now we have "alternative facts". It's all there online, and you can find "proof" of just about anything you can imagine. If the official word is that thing you believe in is false, then it's some kind of conspiracy, either by government, Big Pharma, or George Soros. There are so many different interpretations of facts and outright disinformation out there, it seems impossible to know where to start. People these days seem to have given up on independent verification of facts, or even if anything is true. So we may as well elect that guy who was on TV because we are familiar with his face (particularly the hair).

As I said in the beginning, I want to believe that people en masse are able to take care of themselves; and I want to add that people do not need to be ruled by any kind of dictatorship or have everything we do regulated and monitored, and have all of our important decisions made for us by an unaccountable or possibly hidden body. For over 200 years, the United States of America has come as close as any nation ever has to achieving what I thought until recently were relatively modest goals. But when enough people have become so ill-educated and easily fooled, have given up on the search for truth and watch people tell blatant lies with total impunity, think that "no one's word is good for nothin'", and lose the ability to care about anything outside their own country, city, or even outside themselves:  life will turn into a survivalist Hobbesian free-for-all ruled by the stupid and ignorant. It seems to be happening throughout the Western world, civilization is crumbling at an accelerated pace. Is it too late for people to smarten up? It would be wonderful if there were actually a "cure for stupid".

Buddy, Can You Spare Me A Cabinet Post?

Did all of you catch "The National" yesterday? If you didn't, you missed a fascinating piece on Gurmant Grewal, some of the dealings that he's had in the past, and what those who were close to him think of him now. Couldn't find any links about that story, but I remember a couple of Sikhs in the Vancouver area say that Grewal is finished in the Sikh community.

In my last post I asked how the tape was edited. What I should have asked was "is there an original copy? And if so, was it tampered with?" The answers should have been "yes" and "no" respectively, but as a result of last night's telecast, I am ready to believe the worst in Grewal, that he did have his hand out, and only turned over the tapes after he did not get the deal he wanted. Assuming though, that he did approach Murphy and Donsanjh first, it does not in any way alleviate their guilt, and they should either resign from their jobs, their party, and/or be brought up on corruption related charges. And also, Grewal should resign from the Conservative caucus, but I doubt that any resignations are soon forthcoming. But right now, I'm going to read "Buckets of Grewal" (in the BANPC, it started recently, but his posts are long and detailed).

See here now

A couple of links on MSNBC concerning the soon-to-be-released "Good Night, and Good Luck" (couldn't have Clooney thought of a better title?) The first is about the typical Hollywood glossover you've come to expect, and the other is a little more positive. I was just relieved that McCarthy has no apologists in MSM worth talking about.

So What's So Hard About It?

Guess what, I've gone GREEN! I'm now an official member of the Green Party of Canada, basically because I don't much care for the other parties. The Liberals with their long-term institutionalized rot, the Conservatives under Harper (making promises it seems, even accusing the Libs of being soft on Americans! Really, what do you think would happen once the neo-Tories are elected?) And the NDP? Frankly, I think that they need more of an image makeover than Stephen Harper does (even some liberals think that they're too out there).

I think of the Green Party as a bit of a moderating influence, with a different vision, but not necessarily all-environmental. As I may have mentioned before, they are a long shot, but I've seen encouraging signs from quite a few people on the blogosphere (like Jim Elve and James Bow who have also become members). And I think that their fortunes can only get better, even though one of the next steps is to get someone a seat in Parliament. Yes, I'm thinking long-term, but I believe that the Green Party is going to leave its mark somehow.

The Robertson Question

What can be done about that guy? Should we just let him get away with condoning political assasination of heads of state? Well, I have the solution, one that should not get me into any kind of trouble (none worth talking about anyway). Let him talk! When people use their media clout to spout seemingly abhorrent opinions or ideas, the question I have to ask is "Why are we still listening about them and talking about them anyway?" I have this (likely naive) belief that if you ignore bad pundits, they will eventually go away, or at the very least become relegated to some (dare I say it) lunatic fringe. If enough people turn their back on people like the "Reverend" Pat Robertson, he will still talk, but no one will listen, or care. I hope that this means that he has "Jumped the Shark" (explained here). There are some other people I wonder why we are still talking about, but sadly we still are, like Pat Buchanan (anti-Semetic), Ann Coulter (she lost me forever after praising the communist witch-hunts), Bill O'Reilly (many reasons, take your pick), and Ward Churchill (thought I was just going after right-wingers, didn't you?). The thing is, there are not many people I feel this strongly about, these are special cases, ones that don't admit when they are wrong, much less apologize, even then, it's too late.


Memo to Washington
 
This is probably a huge leap of faith (which I don't really have anyway), that George W. Bush, the Republican party, and all the houses of government that they control will declare Robertson persona non grata, at least as long as this administration is holding office. That is the very least they should do, but I'm sure I'm expecting too much from them.

Keep It Simple, or Make It So

I finished "Does Canada Matter?" and it had quite a rousing conclusion. It nailed very well what I believe to be the main fault of our materialistic culture, in which he quotes Rick Salutin, "Individuals 'don't make ethical or political choices' but 'shopping choices,' where "life comes down to acquiring money and going shopping with the proceeds'" (Bolt, p.188, Salutin, "A Plea For Canada" Maclean's, 1 July, 1995)

Speaking about my own life, I came from a good Catholic family. We weren't poor, none of us ever recall having to skip any meals, but we started out with little, and my parents worked terribly hard raising me, my brother, and my sister. Dad, in short, never attained any executive position, and basically "worked for a living", but earned tremendous respect at work and some seniority. My parents, as the saying goes, "scrimped and saved" and almost never spent too much at once (in spite of Mom's love for shopping), and today have a deservedly comfortable retirement in what I believe to be a middle-middle class condominium, considering the standard of living here in Canada (in most parts of the world, they would probably be considered living like millionaires). But there are times that I get overwhelmed by how much "stuff" my parents have, even though their condo has room for it all.

I can still remember a time when our lives seemed so much simpler, but maybe it is just my child's eye view of the time. It was during the 1970s and 1980s which I believe to have been a socially less tense time than the 1960s. It was before the Information Revolution and the mass overload of "stuff" from all over the world that we have to choose from now because of globalization, which results in the loss of uniqueness of our individual selves and regions, not taking into account political boundaries at the moment, but just the distinctive flavours of the places we call home. As hard as our parents' lives were, did they have to deal with so many decisions and so much confusion? Also, does our national affluence mean that everyone here is having their basic needs met? And what's more, where do you think that most of the stuff we use comes from, our cars, computers, cell phones, satellite television and such? Most of the raw materials come from abroad, from regimes who are friendly to transnationals and enslave their own people. One way or another, it just can't go on for too much longer, and I dare anyone to tell me that it can. What irks me about the neo-con revolution and George W. Bush in particular is that they basically condone shopping as the answer to threats to their "way of life". You have to ask yourself how much longer we can keep up with the latest things, particularly since none of us are getting any younger.


I feel a bit hypocritical saying all that, considering that I have most of those things I was talking about (except a car, I don't know if I'll ever own one) but still, I'm trying to simplify my life as much as possible, shopping for little more than I consider necessary, and fighting my own small battles with Big Business (for example, I try to avoid shopping at Wal-Mart). Back to the book though, it should be interesting to note that this book was published in 1999, so naturally the political climate here and abroad today is radically different. If Mr. Bolt were writing the conclusion today, he would probably say that Canada would be in a unique position as a fairly wealthy Western nation to buck the trend of total free-market liberalism, and start trying to live simpler lives more centered around home and family, without so much choice and other baggage that many of us carry around at the present time. Of course, we have no hope of doing that under the present Liberal administration, and probably less under Harper's Tories. Even the NDP came out in support of bank mergers today, and people wonder why I don't support them. With certain conditions, but one can only conclude that they are willing participants in globalization as anyone. I think it's disappointing.

Lastly though, I believe it's a good idea that we can somehow free up more time to do the things that we should be doing, to think less about what we are going to get that we really don't need, to think more about how to improve our relationships with the people who matter most to us (and with other people in general), why we were put in this life, how we can prepare for the future, and how we are going to clean up the mess we have made of the planet. This prescription for our sick world does seem to be quite radical since it calls for a change of our collective lifestyle, but for our emotional and spiritual well-being, I can't see any other way. We need to revisit some values that most of us seem quaint and old-fashioned, a sort of return to collective innocence.

Wanted: Free Market Purists

I would like to address those people who believe that free-market liberalism is the ideal system. You seem to have a champion in, among others, Rick Santorum. If you also believe in God, you should feel right at home with him, since he believes that free enterprise is doing God's work. There are certainly some other examples, particularly among neo-conservatives, who believe that any government meddling in private industry is nothing short of blasphemy.

Instead of going off in an expected pro-environment, anti-business rant, I would like to refer you to this gentleman, who seems to have gone to the heart of the issue of what is wrong with Western Culture, and what has been wrong with it from the beginning, and how it simply cannot be sustained if the human race is to survive. The book, in case you haven't clicked on the link in this paragraph yet, is called "Does Canada Matter? Liberalism and the Illusion of Sovereignty". You would think from the cover that is about Canadian sovereignty, but it appears that our problems are much larger than that, and that it's a conservative polemic, it is, but not in the way you're thinking.

He states that right from Confederation, Canada was sort of the culmination of the liberal free-market dream of both Great Britain and the United States, and goes into the almost predatory practices that happened from coast to coast to make Canada the country it is today, particularly in the Victoria-Saanich region where the writer is from, and delves deeply into the anti-community, anti-democratic, and ultimately, anti-human aspects of growth, development, and community planning. It does not make you proud, if anything, it's all quite humbling. He really makes you question what we call progress, and wonder where we are going with it.

I haven't quite finished the book yet, but most of what I've read so far seems so true to life. I believe we are placing way to much emphasis on science, technology, and "progress", and losing our soul in the process. He expresses a need for the return of moderation, sustainability and, dare I say it, traditional values. So if you are like Mr. Santorum, a believer in neo-liberal, free-market, small government ideals, this book may be a cure for what ails you.

Throwing Good Money To Bad People

I did not pay much attention to the Live 8 shows on the weekend. From what I've heard, I missed out on quite a bit. But I'm more than skeptical, I'm cynical as to how much these shows and forgiving African debt really helps the most needy people in the world. I followed some reports in newspapers after the original Live Aid show in '85, and it seemed even then that African governments were making it as difficult as possible for aid to be distributed to the starving masses. In fact, there are some convincing arguments that too much charity does not help, but hurt the people who need it most. Some of these arguments are cited in this article on MSN Slate, but it does offer some solutions that the author hope will be adopted. The moral here is basically that Western governments should be able to decide how aid is distributed, and if they are not allowed, which has often been the case, the poorest of the poor will starve anyway, but the parasitic scum running these poor nations, be they local governments or transnationals, won't be pocketing any more of our hard-earned tax dollars and stealing the future of their nations and their people.

Seven Questions You Can't Ask In Canada

Last week when I came home I happened to tune in to "Countdown" with Mike Duffy on CTV Newsnet, and they were having a panel discussion of the title of this post. I didn't know where it came from, but thanks to BBB, I was able to find the source. So now, I would like to write down Ms. Wente's questions, and fill in my own answers.

1. Margaret Atwood writes some really awful books.

I recently finished "Surfacing", which in this light I could say that it was a meandering, boring book, but mercifully short. I've read only a few of her books but considering the volume of her work, even if she has written some all-time classics, she has probably written some stinkers as well. Even the best have their off-days, although I'm not qualified to say if she is or not.

2. Recycling is a waste of time and money.

Well, I keep hearing new things all the time, the latest being that you should just throw out the tops of cans, when for years I put them inside the cans after I washed them, because workers kept getting cut by the jagged edges, and also, the recycling triangle you see on most plastics, if the number is higher than two, they don't bother recycling it. I think of it as a work in progress, and I like to think that it is helping the problem with finding landfill space, unless someone would like to correct me. Also, seagulls don't hang around dumps anymore, it's a change, but is a sign of good change?

3. Only private enterprise can save health care.

Well, to a point, we already have some privatized health care, and I can definitely say that public health care simply can't go on the way it has been. Too much delay in service.

4. David Suzuki is bad for the environment.

It only goes to show, if a person or organization turns out to be wrong enough times, or wrong more times than he's right, then people will stop listening to this person, and in my opinion, people would be right to tune out. It's like those stories about Chicken Little, or more accurately, the Boy Who Cried Wolf. If Suzuki has been right a few times, it would not make up for all those times that his predictions turned out to be fallacious, and like that Boy, if he is right, no one will believe him. What I think the Green movement needs is more people like Julian Simon, someone who can inject a little healthy skepticism, so we could get to the ultimate truth as to what is wrong with the environment.

5. The Group of Seven are overexposed genre painters.

I have to admit here that I do not have strong, educated opinions about painted works. I do get prints from famous artists and photographers now and then (my favorites are from surrealists like Dali), and one year, I bought a Group of Seven calender. I can only say that very little stood out for me.

6. A national daycare program won't do anything to help poor kids.
I have to excuse myself from responding to this, because I really haven't a clue about this one way or the other.

7. The United States is the greatest force for good that the world has ever known.
I'll definitely agree that the US is the greatest force the world has ever known. I may even go out on a limb to say that the neocons and their world agenda have only the best of intentions. BUT... the questions that I would have is, do they really know what they're doing? Do they really have one iota of a clue about how foreign policy works? I would answer both of my questions with an emphatic NO! I believe that the Bush administration suffers from a form of what I consider to be a form of neo-hippie idealism, that if you offer someone freedom, they will gladly accept it and be eternally grateful to you. Part of the problem of this mindset is that "changing" or "saving" the world is a mostly narcissistic motivation, no matter who is doing it or why. It's one thing to try to make the world a better place, it is another to try to "save" everyone. And if their intentions are less than pure...