Decision 2024

 

The US election is just a few days away. It is being billed as one of the most important in US history (although 1860 could be the more the most important being in essence a vote for civil war). It is my firm opinion that Donald Trump will be the next President of the US.  Oh, he may not win the popular vote. He may not even win the Electoral College (that ridiculous hang over from the days when the states tried to determine who they would accept as president). He will win it through the courts, or failing that, through insurrection.

It would not be out of character for he and his followers to follow that path. Quite a number of his followers are members of the NRA and of militias. He has already claimed that he will use the US military against US citizens. But they will not wait until January 6^th to begin this operation. It will begin as soon as Kamala Harris has been declared the winner by the television networks a few hours or days after the voting ends.

Could I be wrong.  I hope so. Maybe Mr. Trump will win the presidency honestly and fairly.  It is a very close race the polls keep telling us. In that case, he will declare at the voting system is without fault. Will he then say that the 2020 election was fair and honest?  No likely.

If he does win the election, will that be the end of it? Again, not likely. He will try to use all of his executive powers to bend the country to his will. He will be successful in this if his party captures the two houses of congress. If they do not, it will undoubtedly lead to grid lock and government by presidential decree. 

Maybe Donald Trump is the poster boy for the idea that business executives should never be national leaders.  Business demands quick answers, profit, market share, the primacy of the shareholders, and the ability to make rule changes by decree (or memo if you prefer). I’m sure you have heard the plea that government should be run more like a business.  But government is not a business. It operates under vastly different dynamics than business.  Perhaps the best description of government is that it is the art of the possible. In a democracy, it needs consensus, the will of the people and compromise. A successful leader leads, not demands. He is in it for the good of the country in all its diversity, not just ‘shareholders’.  A political leader must achieve the possible. Shareholders don’t change governments, citizens do. It is failure to understand these things that makes Mr. Trump a bad choice to run a country.

Bombast Politics

 

Did you ever wonder why Donald Trump says something outrageous almost every day? Whether it’s at one of his rallies or at a news conference or interview, he will have something to say that stretches credulity or decorum. As long as there is a reporter, or better still, a news camera around, there he’ll be spouting his lies or exaggerations.

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
  - George Orwell

He does it because it ensures that he will be in the news the next day, preferably as the lead story. “At his rally last night, Donald Trump said . . .” He does it to drown out his opponent. He does it on purpose.

I call it bombast politics.  Being as bombastic, outrageous or loud as you can so you, and nobody else, gets heard. It is a style that Mr. Trump has mastered.  As someone once said, “Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.”

“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.”
  - Michel de Montaigne

Unfortunately, we are seeing this same phenomenon of bombast politics being played out in Canada. In this case by Pierre Poilievre. The venues may be different, but the effect is the same.  In his case, it’s in the House of Commons, where he dominates Question Period, or in the inevitable news conference.  Remember when he would not attend any news conferences? Slam you opponent, call the government side any number of names, exaggerate the condition of the country. You know that there are reporters around and that CSPAN is always videoing your encounters. Better yet, get yourself silenced for a day, or even ejected from the chamber.  You know right away that you will the headline in the news cycle. Bombast politics.

Bombast politics does nothing to advance the business of the government. It presents no substantive ideas. It does not include any ideas on how to make things better. Does it not bother you that neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Poilievre have given us anything but vague promises about how they would do something different to address their perceived problems?  Bombast works; plans can come back to haunt you.

“It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.”

  - Malcolm Forbes

Let’s silence bombast politics by not supporting it nor giving it anything but disdain.

Network

 

Recently, I watched the 1976 movie, Network.  It is quite a classic.  It stars Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, and Robert Duval. What got me thinking was the on-air exhortation by Peter Finch’s character, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” This was said during a news broadcast on a fictional television network.  He demands that people open their windows and shout that statement for the world to hear.  And apparently millions did.

Maybe it is time for us all to open our windows and yell, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Most of us, I believe, are what would be called middle of the road and pragmatic. It is not a bad place to be. We are reasonable people who do not adhere to any of the fringes in life.  But we are not being heard.  The extremists have silenced us.  But I say, it is time for us to “not take it anymore”.

So, let’s speak out:

-          To silence the extremists at both ends of the political, economic, and social spectrum.  Their voices are not our voices.

-          Against those who try to tell us what a horrible country Canada is. Canada is a wonderful place, one of the best democracies in the world and a country that is not afraid to acknowledge mistakes it has made.  How many other countries do you know that have undergone a truth and reconciliation process?

-          Against those who would, or threaten to, break the country apart.  Are you listening provincial governments?

-          Against those political leaders who would, and have, infringed on our rights.  The notwithstanding clause is being used for just that purpose. It can be used to take away all of our Charter rights.  It has to go.

-          Against those who spread misinformation and conspiracy theories. Be skeptical about these sorts of things and correct them when you can.

-          Against negativity of any sort. Negativity brings inaction which leads nowhere.

-          Against bias and discrimination of all types. Remember:

o   Most Muslims are not terrorists;

o   Jews do not control the world’s banks, nor do they carry out strange rituals;

o   Most African-Canadians are not criminals;

o   Asians did not cause SARS or COVID 19, it just happened to originate from there;

o   Most Indigenous people are not slovenly lay-abouts, but residential schools did do great damage to their society;

o   People of other political stripes are not the enemy;

o   Immigrants are not the problem.  The state of our country has caused most of the issues they are accused of;

o   Poor people did not choose to be that way; but

o   Most murders in Canada are perpetrated by white Christians so don’t be smug about your whiteness.

Respect of others goes a long way to heal rifts.

Each of us can reach out to others and in our own, hopefully respectful way, get the message across that we are in fact mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

 

A Most Influential Man and More

 

I have written several Christmas blogs including last year’s Changing Christmases, https://jgforb.blogspot.com/2022/12/. That was written in a period of mourning and loss. I must now admit that things have changed again.  I have a new friend and she has given me hope and a chance for a more inclusive Christmas.  For the first time ever, I am hosting an open house for my neighbours and friends.

Below, I have updated and reprinted a Christmas blog from several years ago.  I hope it means something to you.

* * *

Approximately two thousand and twenty-five years ago a baby was born.  He would be named Jesus, although people have since called him Christ, The Messiah, The Saviour, the Redeemer, the Holy One or The King.  This baby must now be considered the most influential man in the history of Europe, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, and large swaths of Africa.  His influence has directed the laws and customs of all of these places. But what about that famous birth?

In that time, old age was much younger than we are used to.  Disease, infection, and injury without modern medication meant that the average death mostly came in the 40s and even younger.  A man was middle aged when he was 25. 

It is important to remember the conditions when Jesus was born. Judea was a province of Rome and was ruled by a Roman ruler; at the time it was Herod.  However, to the Jewish people, local administration was carried out by the Jewish leaders.  There were two antagonistic groups of such leaders: The Liberals and . . . er, the Republicans and . . . er, the Pharisees and Sadducees.  They had been vying for power for over a hundred years and this caused considerable turmoil among the Jews of Judea and to the Jewish religion.  It is interesting to note that the time of Jesus’ birth, the Jewish people were a dispersed group.  As traders, emigrants, refugees, and administrators, they were prevalent in most of the known world.  It has been estimated that less than twenty-five percent of Jews actually lived in Judea. This is the world that Jesus entered.

Let’s start with his parents.  Joseph, his father, we are told was a carpenter in the town of Nazareth.  As a carpenter, he would have been a respected member of his community and well known.  His trade would have made him what we would call today, middle class.  He was neither a poor nor a rich man.  We are told that he traced his ancestry to King David.  We are also told that he was older than Mary.  Mary is described as a young virgin.  In that time, that would put her age at about thirteen to fifteen.  That was the age that people got married.  We can get some idea that she was that young by noting that thirty-three years later, when Jesus was crucified, she was still with him.  If she had been in her twenties when Jesus was born, she would have been very old and perhaps deceased; unlikely to have followed Jesus to Jerusalem. 

The well-known story of the conditions at Jesus’ birth, how he was born in a stable and slept in a manger are quite plausible. The family had travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to “be taxed”. It was actually a form of census taking. This was a Roman decree that applied to all of the Roman Empire.  This was long before the days of Holiday Inns and Best Westerns, and Expedia advanced reservations. When you travelled, you took your chances that there would be someplace where you could get a meal and a place to sleep at night.  Bethlehem was not a large town, perhaps only a few hundred people, and the places available to rest would be very limited; perhaps one or two inns.  There was no Bethlehem Hilton. But with the taxation decree forcing many people to travel to their family home, any town would have been sorely tested to accommodate everyone that needed a place to stay.  Jesus’ family were probably not the only ones that night to stay in places like stables, barns and even in the open.  Some later accounts state that the “stable” may, in fact, have been a cave, perhaps used to house animals or to store grain and animal feed.

Jesus had a mission.  He started that mission when he was about thirty years old, certainly not a young man for those times.  He became preacher or teacher (rabbi in Hebrew) in his country of Judea where he preached to his fellow Jews.  His mission seems to be to reform Judaism from the turmoil and strictures it was saddled with at that time.  Perhaps he hoped to put a more human face on the religion.  Jesus was born a Jew, and he died a Jew, condemned ironically enough by his own people.  Why?  Probably because Jesus was not the Messiah that the Jewish people wanted. They would have wanted a warrior king, like David, to rid them of the Romans and their other adversaries.  Jesus did not envision Christianity.  That was done by Paul.  Based on the fact that Jesus was Jewish, you have to wonder how so many Christians are anti-Semitic.