Tasers are in the news again.  Ontario has announced rule changes for the use of the device and the RCMP will offer a second apology along with compensation to the mother of Robert Dziekanski.  Nothing can compensate the family of Mr. Dziekanski and no apology will return a son to a mother.  All we can do is learn from that tragic night at Vancouver Airport.

So what have we learned?  If the recent report to the Ontario government is any indication, not much.  The report recommends stricter limits on use against ‘vulnerable groups’ such as pregnant women and children.  How I wish Cheech and Chong were still together.  I can hear a rewrite of their famous emergency room sketch where the attendants at the desk are betting whether the old geezer will make it to reception or croak along the way.

Image if you will:

Cheech:  Oh wow!  That poncho is really ripe.  She’s gonna pop any second.  I bet I give her two zaps and that bambino will shoot right out the cruiser.

Chong:  No way man!  I bet she’ll take three zaps without even dilating.

And now a word from our sponsor:

Ed McMahon:  Women are you tired of your pregnancy?  Is that little bugger just refusing to come out?  Well President’s Choice Baby Zap is just the thing for you.  Just place the Baby Zap firmly on your stomach and crank that trigger.  Voila!  Instant motherhood.  Recommended by police wives everywhere.

Why do we pay thousands of dollars for morons to state the obvious?  Of course it is not really the obvious.  The obvious would be don’t use this on pregnant women at all.  If you feel threatened by a bloated human being who needs help to get up out of a chair perhaps policing is not your vocation and you might want to rethink your career choice.  Or perhaps it is a reflection of police intelligence that they need everything spelled out for them.  ‘Duh, I wonder what’ll happen if I zap her?’  Beyond this little gem of reasoning the bottom line is business as usual for Ontario police and tasers.  The only other big recommendation is to discuss expanding their use to all uniformed officers.

Once again police justify the deployment of tasers as less lethal alternative to guns therefore saving lives.  Twenty or more people have died from taser attacks by police across Canada.  I would be curious to see, in say the decade prior to the introduction of tasers to Canadian police agencies, how many people were fatally shot by police.  I have been searching for that information on Statistics Canada but if it’s there they aren’t making it easy to find.  I do know that there are many officers who retire without ever having fired their gun in the line of duty.  The taser has been deployed much more liberally.  I would also like to know how many people have been killed by police using pepper spray or the baton.   In the same breath as saying tasers are less lethal than guns police agencies assert that the taser was never meant as an alternative to the gun but as an alternative to these choices.  Double talk like this by those charged with our safety should make us pause.  Ask yourself this simple question.  If Rodney King had been zapped with tasers instead of beaten with batons do you really think he would have lived to tell about it?

But our politicians are right on the ball.  The Minister of Community Safety is quoted in the Globe and Mail saying:

We’re enhancing Ontario’s position with regards to its measured approach by introducing a very, very significant guideline (that’s) very very prescriptive

Oh that makes me feel so much better to know a genius like you is very, very on top of this.

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When is a lie most effective?  Answer:  when most people want to believe it to be true.  Wouldn’t it be great if the world was black and white.  We could always tell the good guys from the bad guys.  But that is not reality.  The world is a grey place.  Shadows of truth swirl in between out-right falsehoods and half-truths.  We can really only rely on our own perceptions and we know that many of them are incorrect.  My father always quoted that old saw that said never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.  It’s underlying cynicism aside it is a good rule to live by.  I tell my students virtually every day to question, question everything, never accept anything at face value.  When someone tells you something ask yourself who benefits from that understanding or approach to the situation.   If the person defining the situation is the same one who benefits be very suspicious.   

Right now Iran seems to be coming apart at the seams.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed a massive victory in the recent presidential elections which led followers of his opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi to cry foul.  Taking to the streets, opposition protesters alleged massive fraud in the vote count.  A subsequent partial recount increased Ahmadinejad’s lead rather than diminish it which served only to ratchet up emotions on both sides.  The Iranian government, that is the government of Mr. Ahmadinejad, has cracked down fiercely on the protesters.  Several people have been killed and many more injured in street clashes between protesters and riot police.

Barack Obama and the American government deny accusations coming out of Iran that they, along with their ally Great Britain, are behind the protests.  Both the president and vice-president have specifically denied the allegations coming out of Tehran.  Barack Obama went so far as to say the American administration is making a concerted effort not to impact events in Iran even in their comments.  This is a positive change from earlier American administrations who have not hesitated to interfere in the affairs of other states or movements if it benefited American interests.  Barak Obama promised change and look here we have it.  For those of you who believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale you may be interested in.  Obama and Biden dismiss the accusations with a chuckle as if what idiot would believe the United States is behind a popular uprising in a foreign country.  The insinuation is that only a few conspiracy freaks would be dumb enough to believe the accusations coming from Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr. Khamenei. 

The United States has overthrown more than 50 governments since the end of World War II, most of them democracies.  (Dictatorships are more efficient to deal with when it comes to the bidding of great powers.)  The Kennedy administration was active here in Canada in the downfall of John Diefenbaker although Dief didn’t help his own cause any.  (If they are prepared to interfere in the political affairs of their neighbour and one of their closest allies is there any limit to what they might do?)  More than 3500 people have died in terrorist attacks against the island of Cuba since the revolution came to power in 1959, all funded and logistically supported by the government of the United States.  The Bush administration lied in order to violate the United Nations Charter and pursue an aggressive war against a sovereign member of that organization.  The invasions of Nicaraugua, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Granada; the support of the Contras, the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the Mujahadeen; installation of brutal dictators like Mobutu in Congo, the Somozas in Nicaraugua, Marcos in the Phillipines, and the Shah in Iran; fomenting coups in Chile, Guatemala, and Venezuela;  that is the backdrop to the present administration’s denials of involvement in the Iranian protests.  The list goes on.  I have not even scratched the surface of covert and not so covert American interference in the affairs of others around the world.  How can any reasonable person believe that the United States is not involved in the protests given their track record and the obvious benefits to America if Mr. Ahmadinejad were to be swept from power. The question is not whether they are involved but to what degree and when did the involvement begin.  Were they behind Mousavi from the start or are they just being opportunists?  At what level is the United States active in the protests?  These are questions that may never be answered. 

We all decry the brutality of the crackdown on the protesters.  No one should have to put their life on the line to speak their mind.  So why was there not the same outrage over the treatment of protesters in Britain during the G20 talks?  After all London police murdered an innocent man who was not even part of the protests.  He was simply a news vendor trying to get home after work.  With the addition of the killing of a beautiful young Iranian women, outrage in the West escalated against Iran.  That in itself should scream to us.  Why were the earlier deaths of protesters mere statistics, a passing reference as the political questions were examined in news reporting?  I guess it only matters when beautiful people die.  They are the only ones who have a real future full of promise.  The less attractive only have disappointment to look forward to in this world of image mongering.  The young woman (Neda Agha Soltan) purportedly uttered an heroic phrase just before leaving that day according to a self-described fiance.   Something about staying home giving victory to the regime.  Real people usually don’t make grandiose statements when parting from a loved one regardless of events happening around them.  I would suspect the real conversation was be careful and avoid the protests and her response was something like I’ll be careful, don’t worry.  But that doesn’t make good copy in a newsroom.  That doesn’t sell papers.  Nor do rather ordinary looking plain people.  When the news of Neda’s death appeared I couldn’t help remembering another beautiful young women, with a voice like a song bird that could melt the hardest heart.  During the first Gulf War daddy Bush was trying to get Congress to appropriate money for his ‘liberation’of Kuwait.  The girl appeared before the Senate Armed Forces Committee to give testimony of the brutality of invading Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait City.  When she had finished telling those grizzled Senators how infants at the hospital had been thrown to the floor so that their incubators could be looted back to Baghdad, there was not a dry eye in the place.  Even old Strom Thurman had a tear glistening at the corner of his eye.  At the time I was skeptical about the popularity of incubators as loot but people just called me cynical.  Several months later the story broke that the young girl had not been in Kuwait City during the invasion and the entire episode about the incubators had been the concoction of Hill and Knowlton, the public relations firm.  In democracies wars and all political events have to be sold like soap powder. 

The question for all of us is what are we being sold today.  We know that the United States government is lying about their involvement in the protests in Iran.  We know that their accomplices in the mass media are selling us a point of view that may or may not have any or some legitimacy.  What apportion of guilt should be born by the Iranian government and what apportion belongs to our governments, that it to say us because we constantly tell the world that we govern ourselves.  All we are left with is our own capacity to reason and analyze, to never believe anything we hear and only half what we see and make our own judgements.  Our society and our leaders discourage us from independent thought and dismiss us as fools if we dare to question them.  Who benefits from that if we comply?  Think about it.  All I can say is ‘Fools of the World, Unite.  You have nothing to lose but your complacency.’  Our age is one of great uncertainty, impregnated with fear and possibility.  Complacency is not an option, nor is falling into the trap of lies which has become our political system.  Don’t let your abhorrence of the crackdown in Iran be used for partisan goals you may not support. 

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I love my wife for many reasons.  One of them is the way she can sometimes put everything into perspective in just a phrase or a sentence.  On the weekend we were discussing the latest Reverend Jeremiah Wright ‘controversy.’  In an interview he had use the word Jews in a derogatory way, saying that those Jews around Obama wouldn’t let him get near the president.  Of course this comes in the same week as the tragic shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.  My wife looked at me and said, “If Lincoln had farted at Gettysburg that would have been what the media would focus on.”  And she is right. 

Responding to a question about his access to Obama and what he would advise him if they did speak, Wright inappropriately used the term Jews.  I am certain he was really referring to White House Chief of Staff Raum Emmanuel who as part of his job does control access to the president.  It was a poor choice of words, an ignorant remark, made in anger and frustration to lash out foolishly at someone standing between himself and a young man he had felt a kinship with, but it was not necessarily a sign of deep seated anti-semitism.  Bigotry against Jews is a plague upon our society that is so ingrained that often people don’t realize they are perpetuating it.  It is appropriate to point out that the Reverend Wright was wrong to use the word as a term of derision.  But it is not a story that warranted several days of media buzz.  I doubt it would have gotten as much attention as it did had it not been for the other, real story, that should have shocked America and made society examine its darker recesses.  The rest of Wright’s remark stressing that he believed Obama should hold to the principles that led him to seek public office and not compromise to the political hacks who care only about winning elections at any price, is a more important story than the ill thought remark.  Important not just in relation to Obama and whether or not he is really following his conscience, but for politics in general.  If everyone who sought public office followed Reverend Wright’s advice how much better the world would be.  Politicians acting on principle, doing what is right instead of acting on avarice and doing what is expedient.  That would be worthy of a round table discussion. 

Also note that no other evidence of active anti-semitism was reported against Wright.  No investigative team of crack journalists scoured the Reverend’s past to see if a charge of anti-semitism was warranted against him.  Rather the media was content to seductively lay out this one instance in virtually the same breath as the story of the Holocaust Museum shootings and let the audience draw the inference.  Having never made the accusation of anti-semitism directly they maintain a comfortable deniability.  Titillate the audience with innuendo but stop an inch short of defamation.  And people wonder why I would sooner believe a story in the National Enquirer than the National Post. 

I am sure, as my wife suggested, that had Lincoln farted during his famous speech on the battlefield at Gettysburg CNN would have been first out of the gate with the story.  Video footage of screwed up noses and quick glances amongst those directly behind Lincoln would have circulated on YouTube by now.  A panel of pundits would convene to ponder the political significance of the fart.  Was Lincoln wafting a message to the retreating Southern army?  Was the stench of this particular fart such as to raise concerns about the president’s health?  Should someone with a flatulence problem be trusted with the most powerful office of the state?  Oh yes I am sure Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper would devote an entire show each to this pressing news event.  And Rick Sanchez would be calling for a dictionary to look up the word flatulence.

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Barak Obama’s health care plan, as it has thus unfolded, should be a clear and final answer to all those who believed this young man would somehow change politics and create a more inclusive, just and caring society.  The pinheads who screamed that socialism would reign and undermine the American way (greed, cynical self-interest, and lack of community) can at last rest comfortably in the certainty that President Obama is different in complexion only from his predecessors.  It is clear that his campaign document, Blueprint for Change, would have been more aptly named, Blueprint for the Appearance of Change. 

Obama still has to announce many of the details of the plan but he has rejected categorically any form of single-payer public system.  His reason:  it would be too expensive given the current state of the economy.  What a crock.  Canadian labour costs have been and remain lower than American in great part because we have a single-payer public health care system  Current closing and downsizing of Canadian automotive plants is due to political considerations not economics.  American political debate would sound like a cacophony of scorched cats if GM were to close American plants and leave all the Canadian plants open.  It would make the company far more competitive if that were the only criteria for restructuring.  So Obama’s proclamation that cost factors prevent him from creating a health care system that would truly address the current crisis in medicine is just a lie.  A stronger argument can be made that the opposite is true.  The United States cannot afford not to create a single-payer health care system given the current state of the global economy if it wishes to remain competitive. 

Surrounded by the executives of the major American health insurance corporations, Obama painted himself as a man of integrity and said he would fix health care regardless of the state of the economy.  As I have said here before, Barack Obama is a master of image.  He spoke of a consensus between the White House and the insurance companies to do what was necessary to see that all Americans would have access to affordable health coverage generously provided by that bastion of social conscience, the health insurance industry.  The question arises what if someone still cannot afford the premiums set by these socially conscious corporations?  First you will have to prove you can’t afford it and if the government decides you could by oh I don’t know living in your car instead of paying rent or whatever, then the talk is that a fine should be imposed.  Only in the United States would anyone think that insurance at gunpoint would be an appropriate solution to assure all citizens have health insurance.  Obviously this policy is not in the interests of uninsured Americans so why even think of it.  Wait a minute.  It was conceived in conjunction with the major insurance companies.  You don’t think that the president and these leaders of American finance would scratch each other’s back and come up with a solution that benefits themselves do you?  Gee, the insurance industry gets to extort millions in profits from a new source, those who can’t afford medical insurance, and the government led by Barak ‘the enforcer’ Obama sees that they cough up the dough or else.  And Barack’s pay-off, I suspect a tidy little kickback to his re-election campaign.  Might as well just call him President Barack ‘Milhous’ Obama and the corporate executives B. B. Rebozo clones.  It is interesting on this note to

Save the cost of health care premiums and rent at the same time. Suicide: the most cost effective option under the Obama Plan.

mention that a criticism of Obama’s current nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayer, is her previous assertion that all campaign contributions are in reality bribes.  She was simply stating the obvious.  A person supports a candidate because she expects him to look after her interests and in a self-serving society like the United States that means the individual’s selfish interests not her communal interest.  A bell should have gone off back in the campaign when Obama rejected public campaign financing.  Guess we know why now.  (Actually the bell did go off but the American public was so caught up in the election of the first Black president and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream they refused to listen to those voices.  I guess that they just forgot that King’s dream was a society where a man would be judged by the content of his character rather than the colour of his skin.)

I chose to pay the rent. Now I have a permanent home.

Health care is a human right.  Money was quickly found to fight an illegal war of aggression in Iraq.  Obama while downsizing that war is ratcheting up another unwinnable war in Afghanistan and in the process propping up a government rife with war criminals.  (While Obama continually tries to compare himself to Kennedy and Roosevelt, his behaviour increasingly resembles Nixon.  Nixon while taking credit for troop reductions in Vietnam failed to inform the public that they were just secretly being deployed to Cambodia which led finally to the rise of Pol Pot and the systematic murder of millions.  Now that’s the American way in action.)  There is no question of cost for these ill-conceived adventures.   They are being fought in the name of security while they have only succeeded in making Americans less secure and making the entire world more dangerous, and more in danger.  A secure state is one that minimizes the possibility that any of its citizens will die needlessly or preventably.  Health care then is a security issue.  Not just programs to deal with potential pandemics but prompt, quality medical assistance to every citizens who needs it when they need it.  Paying the rent or saving your life should not be a choice for a citizen of any civilized country.  Today in the United States it is.  Therefore the United States in NOT a civilized country.  It is a barbaric despotism where the wealthy and powerful spend their time cheating the weak and vulnerable.  And the ‘President of Change and Hope,’ Barack Obama has revealed his true self as the ‘President of No Change and No Hope.’

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I don’t like Michael Savage, the Right-Wing radio shock jock and author.   His ideas are not just stupid, they are outrageously stupid.  He and Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan and the rest of the untalented meatheads spew their hatred onto an unsuspecting public every day.  They deserve to be reviled and challenged.  But they don’t deserve to be censored.  Censorship is a failed policy.  Never in history has censorship resulted in positive change.  If someone can provide me with an example I will be glad to apologize and change my opinion.  But of course if what we are allowed to know is censored, how would we know?  

British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, included Savage (real name Michael Weiner.  Great, we Germans spend a half century trying to outlive the stereotype only to have this idiot come along.) in a list of people persona non grata in the United Kingdom.  For this Savage is threatening to sue.  He claims he has never incited violence on his talk show or in his writings.  Technically that may be true.  I have never actually heard Savage say ‘Go forth and smite down the democratic liberal wherever you find him, in expresso bar or at Gay Pride Parade.’  Does he need to say this to be inciting violence?  No.  But will shutting him up stop these attitudes? Also no.  This is hearts and mind time and censoring Savage will not change the mind of one bigot. 

Silencing his message from the public airways will only drive it underground and add to its mystique.  More, it gives the message credibility.  Why censor something unless you are afraid of it.  Believe me that will be his spin on the matter.  ‘They know I speak the truth, that is why they fear me.  They fear that I might tell you what they don’t want you to know.’  His message doesn’t need to be silenced it needs to be challenged.  Isn’t it interesting that these champions of freedom seldom allow themselves to be caught in a public debate with anyone able to expose them as the frauds and fools that they are.  Cowards naturally shrink from a fight.  When they are caught as happened when Bill O’Reilly interviewed Phil Donahue on Fox the shallowness of their position reveals itself.  When Bill began his talk-over terrorism of his guest, a style common to these types, the articulate Donahue rose to the occasion and left O’Reilly sputtering back on the ropes desperate to survive the round.  That is what is needed to counteract the menace of these self-righteous megalomaniacs. 

Those of us old enough to remember Alan Berg, a American Left Wing radio shock jock murdered outside his home by Right Wing extremists, know that challenging these sociopaths has its risks.  Glenn Beck fantasized on his radio show about killing Michael Moore saying he thought he would be able to do it himself rather than hire a hitman.  His words dripped an underlying desire to really do this not just fantasize.  Nothing worthwhile comes without risk.  If we don’t soon begin to challenge these miscreants we will condemn ourselves and our posterity.  Their view of the world is unsustainable; left unchecked apocalyptic war and environmental catastrophe are certain.  Challenging the pied-pipers of doom sounds worthwhile to me.  Donahue, Moore and others have proved it can be done.  You and I can do it too.   Don’t sit by complacently when a colleague or acquaintance parrots the latest vitriol from one of these idols of ignorance.  Fight back!  Most of us would feel uncomfortable sitting passively while someone made a pejorative remark about Blacks or women.  There is no reason why we should condone with silence similar comments and ideas about immigrants, the poor, or homosexuals or any group whose only offense is their existence.  Nor is it wise to leave unchecked ideas that will cripple our biosphere. 

Political correctness has allowed hatred to hide.  Censorship does just the same.  It makes the stupid the mysterious.  I don’t want these ideas and hatreds hidden.  I want them in the clear light of day where I can draw a good bead on them and shoot them down.  So don’t call for censorship.  Join me on the firing squad and execute ignorance with suppositories of wisdom.

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Tokens come in many forms.  They can express what words cannot and cause memories to rush back.  But tokens can also be an evil thing.  Any of us old enough to remember the civil rights movement, who are active in the feminist movement and the still struggling gay rights movements know that tokens are also a weapon of those for whom change and progress are anathema.  For a few change means direct challenges to their privileged positions as arbiters of social mores.  Change questions their divine right to be right.  Most people are followers, fearful of any turbulence that might shake their comfortable little lives.  For that mass the token is the answer.  Those who would undermine our development into a free and responsible society, who would risk the future of the planet for their own enrichment or position, once cognisant of the inability to just reject the forces of justice, use the token.  The token will appease those masses who fear disruption to their world but have a sense of guilt concerning gross injustice, by creating a semblance of justice.  Like a faux fur makes a middle class woman believe she belongs with the country club set, the token allows us to lie to ourselves. 

Business, government and social organizations rushed to find ‘suitable’ representatives of discriminated minorities (of course in the case of women it has always been a discriminated majority in North American society) to diversify their public image while avoiding any substantive reform.  Society could feel comfortable in pointing to these public images as proof that things were getting better while nothing changed.  The purpose of the token is to deflect scrutiny.  For those individuals being used it was always a moral dilemma.  For them the scam was all too apparent.  Their positions often lacked the substantial authority of their peers and were often artificial creations with little or no meaningful responsibility attached.  But their rise to even those two dimensional positions were a wedge for what dreams may come.  In the ghetto, the barrio and the kitchen their image might and did provide inspiration to countless members of their community.  To youth it signaled hope.  So even in its insipid attempt at retarding change, the token could still fulfill its higher function.  A token is good when it represents substance; it is bad when it substitutes for substance. 

Unfortunately, we see tokens substituting for substance everywhere today.  The token haute architecture and flashing electric gizmos in schools substitute for education.  Twitter and other social media substitute for real friendship for far too many people.  Corporate music, advertising, television etc. substitute for art.  Charisma and glibness substitute for political leadership.  People like Bono use activism to advance their career while enriching themselves on the suffering of the many (FYI:  U2 launders its money through a tax haven which means that the people of Ireland are poorer and Ireland has less wealth to share internationally via aid.  If you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk it is self-serving tokenism.)  President Obama rejects a single payer health care system in favour of fixing Medicare and Medicaid, the fatally flawed one-two punch of American health care.  The token allows Obama to rise to the podium and proclaim himself the messiah of health care without the political consequences of standing for what is right, the health of the American people. 

Recently my local Zehr’s store started charging 5 cents for each plastic bag used to pack a customer’s groceries.  The option was to purchase a reusable cloth bag.  My wife and I have several of these and it is a good idea.  Most tokens are good ideas.  Plastic bags don’t bio-degrade.  They are a hazard to wildlife. particularly waterfowl.  They are a landfill nightmare and should never have been introduced.  It may come as a shock to my younger readers but they did not replace paper bags until well after my marriage.  I might say here that paper would still be an environmentally friendly alternative with the use recycled paper and paper from renewable sources such as hemp.  My problem is not the charge for plastic or the idea to encourage customers to act more responsibly.  Actually I think there should be an outright ban on the use and manufacture of plastic bags.  In a way the policy the store and many others like it are pursuing is actually a token of a token.  If the store, as it should, believes that plastic bags are the scourge that they are then don’t offer the option.  Giving people the choice is just passing the ball onto the consumer instead of being assertive on saving the environment.  

But the bag replacement incentive now seizing the industry is just a marketing token.  It is a token because it does not address the serious environmental problem of our modern supermarket.  I was surprised about a year or so ago to discover that a grocery store has an exponentially larger carbon footprint than a manufacturing facility of the same size.  Looking around my Zehr’s market after my epiphany I felt incredibly stupid.  It had been staring me in the face for years and I had not seen it.  Open freezers caked on the edge with frost, ceilings 25 or 30 feet high, inefficient lighting strategies, it was all there.  My Zehr’s store is less than ten years old.  It was built after global warming had become a major political and social issue.  Environmentalism in general had become a focus of social interest and concern from species diversity to chlorofluorocarbons.  The options were there for Zehr’s and other grocery stores built at the time to act responsibly to incorporate the latest in environmental engineering.  I might not have been aware supermarkets were putrid cesspools of excessive carbon spewage but the scientists were and so corporations like Zehr’s should have.  Even so, they built another environmental catastrophe anyway.  Why?  Because they didn’t care about the environment then and they don’t now.  This current little token is a marketing ploy.  There is an industry-wide competition to out-green your competitor.  The public smiles, self-satisfied in the illusion that they are doing something for the environment while the corporations laugh and rake in the profits and the Earth weeps.

Some say ‘Well they are doing something.’  Music to the ears of the corporation who pray each day that the consumer will stand up and demand they do what is right not what is profitable.  By why would we.  We have our little token, the amorphous ‘something’ is being done.  And when our grandchildren ask why they must wear an air filtration mask to go out and why the weather patterns are so violent and erratic, we can smile self-assuredly and say ‘we did what we could we supported the tokens in the Age of Tokenism.’

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Child abuse is the most abhorrent crime I can conceive.  If ever a crime demanded a zero tolerance policy, the abuse of the most vulnerable members of our community qualifies without question.  Physical and sexual abuse speaks for itself.  But what about psychological abuse?  Twisting a child’s psyche is often the most difficult form of abuse to detect and measure.  The consequences, however, can be more far reaching than either physical or sexual abuse but the scars are often invisible. 

There are many forms of psychological abuse against our children, some idiosyncratic and some social.  The young girl driven to suicide by a thoughtless adult who first raised her hope for love through creating a fictitious suitor on a social networking site and then cruelly dashed that hope in a warped attempt to assist her own daughter to bully the victim is an example of just how serious psychological abuse can be.  Social abuse differs only in method not impact.  We rail at the image of children brainwashed to strap explosives on their tiny bodies, becoming human weapons for the political, religious, social or just plain perverse agendas of groups like the Taliban or the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Such psychological abuse of innocents undermines any possible validity their philosophies could warrant.  No justification exists for inculcating hate in the minds of young people.  Brainwashing anyone to make them believe what some other wishes is always wrong.  In the case of youth it is also always criminal. 

I doubt there is a single reader that has disagreed with me so far.  I want to go a step further though.  What about brainwashing by omission.  If we agree with the above arguments should it not be a natural step to say that intentionally withholding knowledge from children for the purpose of manipulating them into believing what some other desires them to believe or to think is also wrong and criminal.  That is a natural corollary of my arguments above.  Al Qaeda does not say to a young suicide bomber, ‘read this treatise by Osama bin Laden and this pamphlet by Thomas Paine and then go kill the infidel because bin Laden is right and Paine is wrong.‘  My suspicion is that Al Qaeda training facilities do not have well stocked and balanced libraries.  The abuse is not in presenting the children with a biased idea, all ideas are by nature biased, it is in presenting the idea as the only idea.  Omitting information from children in order to inculcate any social agenda is abuse.  And therefore anyone who would perpetrate such abuse should be sanctioned by our society accordingly.  Presenting children with all perspectives but saying that we as Canadians, or in this community or this family believe that one or the other perspective is the correct one is different.  That is not necessarily abuse.  A child’s country, community and most particularly family will likely be more persuasive than an obscure author.  The child may therefore be guided by such authoritative opinion but they still are aware that other perspectives do exist.  It might cross the line into abuse if we were to present the other perspectives with derision or ridicule.  This is not an exact science and a judgement call must be made at what point abuse occurs.  But the case I have in mind at the moment clearly crosses that line. 

Currently there is a bill before the Alberta Legislature that would allow parents to withdraw their children from class if the curriculum includes anything which goes against their religious beliefs.  The premier is even trying to defend this abomination by saying that it is only religious questions.  Translation:  Religious brainwashing good; any other brainwashing bad.  I’d bet you hot cross buns to pancakes (the Anglicans should get that one) if I were to demand the right to remove my child from class to avoid having them exposed to capitalist ideals,  the same god-bothering twits behind this bill (wonder what’s in their libraries?) would be pushing to remove her from my home to save her from this twisted old socialist.  Every evangelical from Lethbridge to Fort Macleod would be burning my effigy in their state of the art tele-pulpit.  So why the muted response to this legislation.  A polite whimper from the CBC (okay what do we expect, they’re Canadian) is all the coverage I have seen so far.  Of course the CBC missed a number of child abuse / religion stories until it was too late just ask Catholic choir boys and our Aboriginal people.  Capitalism encourages behaviours and causes practices that I am convinced harm innocent human beings and are anathema to the basic cooperative nature of humanity.  In simple terms capitalism to me is a crime against humanity which should be prosecuted as we prosecuted Naziism at Nuremburg.  So I would be remiss in my responsibilities as a parent to allow some pro-capitalist school system to expose my child to such obscenity.  Right?  If I firmly believe this, and I do, I should shelter my child from it.  Wrong.  I would be abusing my child.  Ignorance weakens a human being and my job as a parent is to strengthen my child to survive in a world of conflict and contradiction.  To disarm that child from the start is the ultimate abuse. 

For those who want to argue that the two things are not the same tell me why.  If you can’t defend your argument, you don’t have one.  Premier Ed Stelmach, if you pass this bill you are a child abuser.  You are a pariah in our society and should be sanctioned accordingly.  To the RCMP (let’s pretend they might listen to reason and are not just the goon squad for sordid politicians), if child abuse is an abhorrent crime within our society you must focus all of your resources into bringing Mr. Stelmach and every member of the legislature in support of this bill before the bar of justice and seek out those who use the money of god to manipulate and control society.  Save our children now and we won’t need a parade of religious leaders apologizing later.

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How many of us could afford to have our mortgage payment triple overnight?  I couldn’t and I doubt there are many out there that could.  Now with unemployment rising rapidly more and more families will end up watching their possessions parade out of repossessed homes toward an uncertain future.  Billions, trillions have been pumped into the banks and yet no one stopped them from ripping the life out from under the very people who had provided that money.  They are toxic assets now, not people, not families. 

In recent days a housing project a bank seized from a developer that went under was torn down in California.  Bank officials determined demolition would be cheaper than repairing the houses and completing construction.  Twenty houses, homes, were torn down at this particular development and workers on site reported they had a similar demolition order for another development not far away.  Squatters had moved in and vandals had caused damage.   Much of the vandalism, beyond the usual obscene words spray painted on the walls, was theft of fixtures and infrastructure carefully removed by tools.  Sounds to me like someone was cutting a few costs on their home renovations.  Probably some of the very same sanctimonious individuals mentioned above.  The squatters on the other hand may well have included some of the very people this same bank had ripped from the comfort and security of their own living rooms and thrust onto the street.  Now they became squatters and vandals, the mainstream media purposely or ignorantly making them one and the same in the minds of a gullible public.  Sleeping tonight made easier thanks to a propaganda industry dehumanizing them. 

People ask me what I have against a capitalist system.  Well open your eyes.  This is capitalism at work.  The capitalist market is amoral (I would argue immoral).  The bank has no responsibility to care what happens to people.  Bank executives don’t have to answer for the consequences of their acts.  If people suffer it is not their problem and government should not stick its big nose in, that would just mess things up.  Government doesn’t know what they are doing;  the financial geniuses of Wall Street do.   Yeah right!  Try selling that argument to anybody today.  That is why the capitalist system doesn’t work.  It argues that society should be run without any moral oversight.  The law of the jungle; survival of the fitest; all the rest of that crap.  How hypocritical.  Capitalists want society to be dog eat dog until something starts nibbling on their flanks.  Then it is ‘call in our buddies the local, state or federal authorities to pound these nuisances back into the muck they are.’ 

Okay so who brought the vaseline?

The squatters at that development needed a home and they found one.  That is dog eat dog.  They should have been allowed to defend it.  After all a man’s home is his castle and as soon as they laid down amongst their meagre possessions those houses became their homes.   Nothing is more beautiful than when an inert mass of wood and metal begins to breathe with the soul of a home.  Our so-called government authorities are truly agents of the monied classes.  Rather than stand aside and do what the capitalists argue they want from government, let the private sector function, they stick their big noses in, not to tell the bankers that they need to be responsible citizens, but to make sure the vulnerable can’t stand up for themselves. 

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Nothing like a little town hall meeting to mark one hundred days in office.  A nice win one for the Gipper speech before a receptive audience to make everybody feel better in bad times.  Barack Obama is perhaps the best president since Ronald Reagan when it comes to being able to speak to the hearts of an audience.  And America needs it now.  Things are not good and everybody needs some reassurance that we can get through this crisis. 

Of course the problems of the American auto industry were front and center in his words today.  Bad decisions had led to the position we are in now and President Obama could not justify more bad decisions with taxpayer dollars.  He would demand of auto executives that they table workable plans for a sustainable recovery if they wished to dip into the pockets of ordinary American citizens.  He is absolutely correct.  Bad decisions did bring us to this point.  But much as I dislike corporate executives and believe me, they must shoulder a significant portion of the blame, they can’t be tagged for it all.  Those bad decisions were made in a social culture that demanded just the decisions that they made.  It is a social culture that still exists and was reinforced in the president’s speech. 

Obama spoke of a time when the American auto industry built the cars that people wanted but lost their market to foreign competitors due to poor corporate decisions.  There certainly was a period of complacency that resulted in poor quality design and manufacture processes.   The American auto industry was producing vehicles that were plagued by breakdowns and recalls.  They lost the trust of the North American consumer who sought out imports that sold themselves on quality and fuel efficiency.  The president is absolutely correct lazy and stupid are bad decisions.  But were they not still designing vehicles that people wanted?  The answer is yes they were.  A cursory look at Japanese automobiles (still the chief competitor) since they broke onto the North American market will show you that Detroit didn’t change, Tokyo did.  How do the 6 and 8 cylinder four door luxury sedans full of computerized crap that just means more to break down compare to the Toyota Corolla and Corona with their simple functional design and fuel efficiency.  Not too well.  It is not that GM, Ford and Chrysler were force feeding us larger vehicles, we demanded them.  Look at the highways today and you see them full of over-sized quasi-trucks.  Many of those with brand names like Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Mitsubishi.  That is what the people want.  There lies the problem.  We cannot afford to give the

Photo by David Williams, Knoxville Tennesee. Retrieved from FUH2.com

people what they want.  Just like you shouldn’t let your kid go on that all sugar diet she wants, you can’t let the childish North American have his Hummer.  The Earth is mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore.  (I know that GM is currently in the process of dumping its Hummer line.  Actually it is hoping to sell off the brand.  Take my advice, sell the brand to an adult toy manufacturer and not to some idiot that will try to make another ugly-ass vehicle out of it causing carbon and visual pollution.)

But there is more.  I said that Obama was correct in saying that bad decisions led us to this point but more bad decisions are not going to bail us out.  Bailing out the current automobile industry is an error of Earth shattering proportions, pun intended.  Obama’s speech mentioned moving to fuel efficient, environmentally friendly, blah, blah, whatever cars.  Hybrids, green cars, bio-fuels are all pacifiers stuck into the mouths of whining little brats who can’t get it through their heads that the private automobile must go.  If the money used to bail out these dinosaurs of our adolescence was put toward creating a comprehensive public  transit system (which would be both faster and cheaper) and into technologies such as carbon recovery, passive housing, etc.  it would create more jobs, make the economy more sustainable and guarantee our children and their children a future. 

Oh but wait that would make sense.  Can’t do that then.  And we won’t.  We will poor good money into this bygone contraption and when the inevitable comes we can only hope their is enough money and time left to save the planet.  And hope is all we have given the short-sightedness we continually confront and the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, Eco-Catastrophe, breathing hard on our necks.  For now though we will all skip merrily over the cliff because no politician or community leader has the courage to just speak the truth.  But like the Earth I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore.  So to paraphrase Shakespeare I say ‘First let’s kill all the people who own Hummers and see where we get from there.’ 

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Well, it is time we peasants gathered together with our torches and pitchforks and marched up that hill to storm the castle.  Dr. Frankenstein is making monsters again.  Actually it is our education system and the monsters are our children. 

A study of university professors in Ontario (Canada) reported students were immature, lazy and unprepared.  They also lacked the research skills that might yet save them from going blithely forth to their, and our, doom.  The so-called most informed generation had little knowledge and what they did possess was superficial at best and outright myth at worst.  For example, Canadian troops, in one form or another, have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2002.  Yet when I ask students at beginning of semester where Afghanistan is only 1 or 2  can answer correctly.  None of them have a clear understanding of how we got there and what we are trying to accomplish.  But if I ask whether they support their troops the majority answer in the affirmative.  How can you support your troops if you don’t know where they are or why they are there? 

Something not reported was that many of them are functionally illiterate.  A functional illiterate can read and write but with severe limitations.  They could perhaps read a menu (without the pictures found in fast food joints the purpose of which is a recognition of the extent of illiteracy); they could read the headlines of a newspaper but would struggle with the content.  If they get news at all it is from television and even then they are lucky to fully comprehend the story as their vocabularies are woefully inadequate. 

Are teachers to blame?  They are certainly the easiest target.  They stand on the front lines in the classroom day after day.  Surely they are aware that what passes for education today is a hollow shell.   The problem is that people outside the education system can’t see the forest of bureaucrats hacking away gleefully on the ability of the trees to teach.  Teachers have marginally more say as to what goes on in the education system than the school janitor.  Decisions are made by bean counters and other bureaucratic nitwits shuffling papers in some climate controlled paradise.  They wouldn’t know what end of a white board marker to use let alone how to fire up the data video projector.  They love flow charts but anything with real people involved like a classroom, forget it.  Those bipedal chatterboxes in the hallways are clients or products to them not kids with a life that demands preparation.  The business mentality that has invaded our schools has created good cogs but poor humans. 

This is not the first study to raise an alarm that something horrible is happening in our society.  It will likely not be the last.  What I have yet to come to grips with is why we allow this to continue.  Maybe the reaction by students in one of my classes to the survey sheds some light.  They laughed.  They had been insulted and they thought it was funny.  They had been called immature and they accepted it. 

In a separate study this generation of high school graduates was found to be closer to their grandparents than their parents in attitudes and outlook.  Fresh-faced youths interviewed for the news report merrily expressed their optimism for the future.  The current recession/depression concerned them not at all; nor did the two foreign wars that are going badly for western powers.  They seemed oblivious in their certainty that life would unfold as it should.  But is this optimism or naiveté?  When I was their age I too was optimistic.  I believed that we could create a better, more just, and more humane society.  I believed the future could bring an end to unnecessary suffering and ease the pain of the rest.  And of course I believed that I would find love and adventure.  Optimism in youth should be a given.  I still strive for that better society.  Change is slow but it is measurable.

However, I knew the dangers presented by an illegal and unjust war in Southeast Asia.  I realized the fragility of life under the umbrella of nuclear weapons.  I watched the machinations of government destroy people’s lives without conscience and knew only herculean efforts would bring about meaningful change.  I was optimistic not that things were great but that things could change; that most people were basically good and if we banded together there was little we could not accomplish.  The key was being in as well as of my world.  My father always complained that I was an idealist but it was an idealism grounded in reality.  I am not saying that young people today should rent their clothes and wail at the fates all the time.  I don’t now and I didn’t then.  Rest and recreation, which I admit was sometimes chemically induced when I was their age, has always been important to me.  I am definitely a Type B personality.  But denying the obvious is not escapism it is just dumb.

This generation thinks everything is basically wonderful and Bill Gates will fix everything else.  That truly is a telling reminder of the 1950s.  In the Leave It To Beaver era housewives wore pearls to vacuum and were ditsy redheads whose antics would attract disapproving but loving smiles from their husbands.  The 1950s was the clean cut illusion of what life in North America was supposed to be.  Ike was in the White House and he would fix any problems that might arise.  There was a sense that the world had been settled with the defeat of Naziism.  There was a comfort and certainty about society.  But it bore little resemblance to the reality.  Many teens of the era, particularly those of interest to ‘popular’ researchers, knew nothing of the world outside their immaculate suburbs.  Blacks were smiling Rochesters singing and dancing, happy in their simple life.  Mom was always home to make a hot meal and gush over the latest kitchen marvel.  These young people had not yet learned of the horrors of life in the ghettos of the North or shantytowns of the deep South.  They had no idea that after they kissed mom goodbye in the morning she would turn to a bottle or pill to get through her day, both gleefully prescribed by a male dominated medical profession who thought the little filly was just suffering from a bout of female hysterics.  While conscientious studies chronicled the dark side of society, there was an entire industry within social science to prop up the illusion and a flickering television to inject the social sedative. 

How did we end up with a generation that knows little and worships the fatuous?  Shouldn’t we have seen this coming and done something about it?  For the past 30 or so years successive political leaders in Canada and the United States have been trying to fix the education system.  But wait a minute.  When did it break?  There is the key to the problem.  An Ontario education minister in the 1990s said everything we need to know about the problems we see with our youth today.  He brought his senior bureaucrats into a meeting and told them to create a crisis in education because he was going to fix it.  I will not hold it against this particular man that he himself did not finish high school.  After all neither did I.  I completed only grade 9 while he went on through grade 11.  The difference between us is I never stopped learning.  He did.  I quit high school for social reasons; he quit because he believed education was unnecessary.  Like many on the Right, he believed the sole purpose of education was to inculcate vocational skills to suit the current job market.  But there is more.  I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories but I do believe there can occur a confluence of interests.  As the franchise had been expanded in the 1960s and 1970s to include the previously disenfranchised groups, women and minorities but also the lower classes, life became more complicated for those who wielded the instruments of power in western society.  Democracy is a messy, chaotic, inefficient, and if you are a corporate capitalist inconvenient, method of governing a country.  More people in the mix just slows the process down further.  Knowledge is power and knowledge was increasing in groups who had been cheated by the status quo. 

You can’t just stop teaching in schools altogether so you need to make it appear as if everyone is getting an education

when they are not.  The solution arrived at was a return to the 3 Rs, Readin’, Ritin’ and ‘Rithmetic.  I have always loved this little phrase about education because it is the mantra of morons.  At least people who can’t spell because only one of the words really begins with the letter R.  (For those educated in our current system the three words are actually Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.)  The fact that it usually comes from people on the political Right gives me added joy.  But what do you expect from a political movement that considers Ann Coulter a seminal thinker?  The 3 Rs is Right-wing code for let’s gut the content of education.  History, civics, geography, anything that expanded the human in our young people was brushed aside as a waste.  Critical thinking was replaced by rote learning.  No wonder students get bored at school.  How many times can you recite the times table or set formulas?  Add to this little mix forcing teachers to become boosters for the little cretins and voilà a generation that can be lied to and manipulated to support any atrocity, any blunder and George W. Bush for two terms.  Stupidity should be a choice not a given. 

Well the Right got what they wanted, a crisis.  And what might you ask about the children of the people who did this to education.  Don’t worry.  They are in private schools that still provide education.  Nice how everything works out for the best for those in charge.

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