We live in perilous times, just like always.
It's been a couple of weeks since bad things happened in the U.S. and if you don't think it was bad then you should stop reading this now and go do something happy. I think it was bad and I haven't written anything because I was too busy reading all of these news articles written by others who also thought it was bad and getting overwhelmed by all of their incisive comments and insightful opinions and historical perpectives and global repercussion possibilities. It has been exhausting.
The exhaustion comes from my struggle to put all of those articles into a piece of my own composition. I've read a lot, but so what; it just tired me out and now I'm hard pressed to coordinate all of the material into a personal report. I could give you wonderful lines from Andrew Nikiforuk or Albert Camus or others, but aside from name-dropping so you'll think I'm well read it will accomplish little for either of us.
All this reading has given me the impression that I've been thinking or have something thoughtful to say when really all I've been doing is reading. The lines I could reprint might be nice encapsulations of political theory or human psychology, but they aren't my thoughts and I am neither historian nor psychologist. Where am I going with this?
See. Even I'm not sure what it all means – the excessive reading, the accumulation of others' thoughts, the great quotations, or, most important, the implications of the actual event that triggered all of the newsfeed readings. Let me try to do some thinking on my own, knowing that as a human being sharing a planet with eight billion others like me it will be unlikely that any thinking will be entirely "my own". It might just be an exercise of undressing in public, but that could be exciting and if it gets too ugly you can always call the cops.
Rhetoric is not reason; it just sounds good. I said that some time back and I came to that realization after reading a very well-worded essay in a publication from the Frontier Society (based somewhere in the Canadian prairies) to the effect that Residential Schools for indigenous children were not a tragedy and did much good as they taught necessary trade skills and academic competencies so that graduates would be able to achieve independent lifestyles in a western nation. It really was a well-worded essay, and that is one area in which I have the competence to judge. It just wasn't right. There were errors of omission. There was an absence of contrary evidence to be refuted. There was bias in the selection of examples. But it was well constructed, sentence by sentence. Being "well-worded" wasn't a qualification for truth. The rhetoric did not make for reason, and you can quote me on that. To the news.
I don't think that the triumph of the Party-of-Trump, and I still retain sufficient respect for many members of the U.S. Republican Party and Canadian Conservatives to say it was a victory for adherents to the values of those groups; I do not think that such a triumph will be good for the United States nor for its allies - and that's us. The stated policies of the winning clique are to be authoritarian with words such as "military, detention, deportation, criminal" being used in many of the speeches of its elite. To me that means that the military industry in the United States will be given a lot of power.
The military establishments in both America and Canada, and for that matter of much of the industrialized world, are getting rich by manufacturing and sending weapons to Israel and to powers operating in other conflict zones. The United Nations asks that it not happen when the weapons are used against a civilian population or when aid to the affected civilian population is not also given. We in Canada and in other "first world" countries however, keep exporting those weapons. We may claim that we are only sending "components" for weapons or that the product isn't classified as only a weapon. This allows us to export bomb-sight and military ordnance parts and to ship chemical phosphorous which some armies may use as part of a smoke-screen application as well as an anti-personnel charge in bombs (meaning it burns the flesh of anyone it touches).
It looks like I've veered off course. First I'm concerned about determining a personal reflection after much reading and now I'm back on my anti-radical Zionist soapbox. The connection is in the philosophy of "might makes right," or it seems to in the minds of many voters. And "might" is a slippery adversary.
Do we want to feel safe? Of course. Do we want to be able to work at a financially supportive if not satisfying job and to look after our loved ones? Certainly. Now - and this is a man speaking - safety and work and job and looking after, all bring forth images of physical strength and assertive power. I know, because I'm a member of the group, that a sense of strength is suggested by posturally muscling up and using strong language and not complaining about pain and inconveniences. Now where does that leave you when I square my shoulders and say, "We gotta kick that fuckin' garbage the hell out of our country. They're stealin' our jobs and eatin' our dogs and cats"?
I find myself veering sharply between anxieity about the future for my children and their kids in a world of climate chaos and fascist governments and nasty drugs, and an admittedly milder concern about immigrant safety and food chain security and family happiness.
There has to be a way to navigate a life, a life in a community, through all of the competing voices. And that may be the metaphor (forgive an old English teacher) for getting on with living - to "navigate" with all of the intellectual and emotional resources that are required to do so, a life in a community.
The steps between the extremes are as delicate as an Arthur Murray dance layout.
Too many immigrants all at once really will stretch our capacity to bring them into full paticipatory citizenship. But, remember what Stats Can says that immigrants may require help getting established but within three years they are contributing to the economy and their taxable incomes offset any financial support they received upon arrival.
Homeless people camped on our streets aren't nice to look at and business owners complain that the druggies among them leave needles on the street and poop on the sidewalk. But even the government number crunchers say that providing safe housing and safe drug supply costs half as much as the police work involved in overseeing the homeless environments.
Weather doesn't care about your beliefs about it. Some oldtimer said that "The rain falleth on the just and the unjust" and today that rain comes as an "atmospheric river" that can dump a year's worth of rain on a city in a few hours - ask the residents of Valencia in Spain. The solutions for the mitigation of climate change catastrophes (and in our lifetimes it will be mitigation not elimination) will be expensive and inconvenient, but the alternative will be deadly. Who pays? What "truths" should guide legislation and international accords? The dispassionate academic advice is available if it can make itself heard.
And personally, how do any of us navigate our lives so that we feel connected and valuable? I've heard it and read it and believe it. Take whatever baby steps are right in front of you and then take the next. Forgive the cranky old bugger next door (it might be me) and smile at the cashier and thank the city worker making your environment look nicer. I used to be embarrassed when Beverly would stop and tell gardeners in Beacon Hill Park how much she appreciated their work, but I realize that her words could never be received with anything but gratitude. It didn't increase their paycheques but it certainly added to their feeling that their work was worthwhile.
The one quotation I have to give you is from Albert Camus. I read him in translation and now I'm struggling with the original French, but this is powerful in either language. He said, "Live to the point of tears". Once I remember I came close.
I was caught offguard on my last day of teaching when a kid asked me what great words I had to offer on this occasion. I apologized. I didn't apologize for having nothing to say - you know me better than that. No, I found myself apologizing as a teacher - and I say "found myself" because I hadn't rehearsed a speech; it was just what came out. I apologized as a person and as a member of the group they all remembered as "that teacher" who had embarrassed them, belittled them, underestimated them, abused them in some way, and I didn't like standing in front of a group of kids still choking it back to keep some semblance of poise while I told them that I had done those things and I was deeply sorry and then I stopped for a bit.
It came to me that I had had teachers like that but I had also had a lot of good ones and I finished by saying that if they could forgive me as a representative of all those jerks, then it would cost them a lot. They would have to quit blaming someone for how their lives were turning out and get the fuck off it and go be the magnificent people they had started out being. It was a baby step maybe, but it took some weight off a lot of little shoulders. And mine.
What the hell. Call the cops. And be nice to them; they have a tough job.
Oh, and about all that reading and thinking and fretting, I came up with the perfect response to anyone who has the perfect quote. Tell them Peach says, "Don't tell me what you've just read; tell me what you think".