Category Archives: Politics

To my conservative friends…

29 Wednesday Aug 2018

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Many conservative voters object to overt, extreme forms of racism, then have a hard time reconciling how leftists can accuse them of being racist. They don’t feel racist. They get defensive and accuse the liberal in turn of being over-sensitive, or using “racist” as a smear to dismiss without cause anyone they disagree with. Everyone and everything is racist, these days.

I posted an article to Facebook shortly before the 2018 Ontario election about a white supremacist podcaster hoping Doug Ford would win. There was nothing contentious or up for dispute in the article: the white supremacist was a self-declared white supremacist, cheering on Doug Ford because, in his opinion, Ford was the only candidate who would implement white supremacy.

“Ronny Cameron, a white nationalist blogger who has recently published several pro-Ford posts, suggested that when Ford declared ‘we gotta take of our own before we take care of anybody else,’ every single white nationalist said to themselves: ‘we know what you’re sayin’, Dougie.’”

I didn’t sabotage Ford’s character by connecting him to something odious where there was no real connection. I would never do that. Rather, I sabotaged his character by highlighting a very real connection he has to something odious.

Here is how I introduced the article on FB on June 3: “self-declared white supremacists have a crystal clear favourite in this upcoming Ontario election and if your vote aligns with theirs, have a talk with yourself.

Don’t let trumpism rat fuckery come here, for the love of all that’s holy.”

I said nothing inaccurate, or even contentious. An interesting thing happened next though.

A Conservative insider who worked for Doug Ford’s provincial campaign and once wrote speeches for Stephen Harper, commented: “I’m voting for Ford. Are you calling me racist?”

The conservative’s must have a PR handbook for deflecting attention away from conservative racism. Such a handbook could read, “when a liberal draws attention to our racism, respond with attack by implying that the accusation itself is a grave insult—but, and this is key, never address the actual racism they were correct to highlight, it’s bad branding. Make racism about you, not them.”

A motto for conservatives could be, “Are you the victim of racism, ie did someone call you ‘racist’? Vote conservative!” Conservatives love it when liberals accuse them of racism. They feed off anger, it unites them. That people called “racist” are currently drawn to one party, well, what does that say?

Conservatives, I say to you: racism isn’t a feeling. Whether a person feels racist only matters to that person, but racism happens (at least one form…) when non-white communities receive second- or third-class treatment.

There are reasons a person may vote for Ford that have nothing to do with race, but none of them change the fact that a vote for Ford is a vote for a certified racist.

Ford was elected premier only a couple months ago, and here is a partial list of what he has already done so far:

–Ford cancelled a promised $500,000 grant for at-risk youth to receive musical instruments and instruction.

–Ford pledged to increase police presence in at-risk neighbourhoods, bringing back the cancelled TAVIS, against the wishes of community leaders and experts

–Ford wants to bring back “carding,” a practice the Liberals cancelled because it stigmatizes and hassles racialized people and has absolutely no proven benefit in fighting crime. (Police have been asked repeatedly to provide proof carding helps them fight crime, and have never provided any.) It’s also unclear how the personal data on private and innocent citizens, dubiously acquired by police, is stored and used.

–After a shooting near Jane and Finch, Ford was pictured with three local residents and the anti-racism minister, Michael Tibollo, who wore a bullet proof vest and described the area as, essentially, a war zone. (In contrast, after the Danforth mass shooting local politicians were (correctly!) destigmatizing the Danforth, promoting it as safe family-oriented place, and encouraging Toronto residents to visit, mourn and patronize businesses. While a police spokesperson said Tibollo’s bulletproof vest was given “to err on the side of caution”…it is impossible to imagine this photo op happening in a white neighbourhood. Note, Ford didn’t wear a bullet proof vest.)

If you examine the quotes and gestures in isolation and one at a time it may appear like simple nitpicking from oversensitive libtards keen for another hammer to attack Conservatives with. But if you connect the words and images with where and how Conservatives are choosing to spend money, a picture emerges. Is it really a coincidence that Ford and his people say allegedly racist things, then do in fact de-fund these communities and send in more weaponized police with pre-emptive permission to hassle residents? It’s only been two months.

If Ford and Tibollo and other Conservative politicians merely said but did not do racist things, it’d be less of an actual problem. But make no mistake, the words are followed up with action. People said trump was just all talk, that his racism was for ratings. No, no, no. The Conservatives will harm at-risk communities in real and tangible ways. Lives will be damaged. People may even die in ways that don’t immediately appear directly linked to Ford’s cuts and policy, but are.

Not to be too dramatic, but it’s true. The point isn’t that Doug Ford (or other Conservatives labeled “racist”) is a cartoon embodiment of a racist: I doubt he is restraining an urge to wear KKK sheets or lynch minorities. Racism can be very damaging when it’s more subtle. It often takes the form of white men in suits making policies which favour white communities at the expense of non-white communities. It’s economics. Whether the cancelled investment in Jane/Finch was driven by active hate or “taking care of our own before we take care of anyone else,” it’s racist. It is a distinction without a difference.

I know people who grew up on Talib, Tribe and De La, who today oppose their politics. Conscious hip hoppers were always social justice warriors. The Right Wing Culture War machine would have you believe that SJWs are “virtue signaling” about minorities to be retweeted, or sticking up for women’s rights merely as a tactic to fuck them. They disparage the alleged motive, and do not address the argument itself. Trump and his people like to paint critics as just humourless PC babies…sure, like Eminem and Borat.

I’m sure there are many good and conscientious wealthy Conservative voters who would be appalled if they saw what their vote contributed to up close. But they won’t see this. They may see lower taxes, but never what paid for the reduction, so they’ll never really come to understand the harm Conservatives inflict.

They don’t live in these communities, and have no contact with the people there whatsoever. Like me, they don’t go to Jane and Finch. I “taught” at Emery for one brief and disastrous month. But I grew up in Forest Hill. The closest people there get to Jane/Finch is Oakdale Country Club. To get a sense of how sheltered conservative thinking can be, consider that Federal Conservatives are pitching the idea that the people in crisis in the “Refugee Crisis” are the people safe in their homes inside Canada, not the stateless and traumatized refugees fleeing war and death. I doubt Conservatives actively want to harm non-white communities, they’re just indifferent to them, and this leads to harm. In any case, malice in the motive isn’t required for harm to occur.

In 2010 Rob Ford cancelled the planned LRT that was going to finally connect Jane and Finch with the rest of the city via rapid transit. Doug will continue making cuts, there and elsewhere. I didn’t feel racist when I voted for Rob Ford, but eight years later I still wrestle with the fact that before I was politically formed, I voted for an international disgrace in a mere municipal election.

I felt and feel extremely stupid and ashamed of this. There’s more I can say, but my feelings then and even now are irrelevant. I didn’t feel racist, but I voted for one. Today, my conservative friends, your feelings do not matter. What happens in the world does.

 

Addendum:

I’d like to describe briefly how and why I have come to believe what I do, because the general public probably has a Right Wing Media conception of “social justice warrior,” so people may read things I wrote above through that lens.

Like all smart-ass young writers I was enthusiastic to reject all teams and labels, etc. I still do, but with less of a hard edge, and some laughter. People will call me a leftist, and my views tend to fall that way, but I’m not associated with any organization, I don’t get paid to express certain views, I don’t represent any group—it’s just how I feel is all, and underlying it is:

The god of organized religion doesn’t exist; we’re all going to die one day and there’s no purpose to any of this shit apart from what we make of it; race is a social construct that is in one sense completely arbitrary and made up, but try saying race doesn’t exist, or that oblivious phrase “I don’t see race,” to the descendants of slaves.

The individual’s ability to love people and things and produce fascinating, sublime, beautiful works of art is what’s truly worth the reverence religion receives.

I hear things from conservatives like, “I support equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome,” which is a naïve but surface-smart sounding way of saying, effectively, “It’s OK if generations suffer harmful yet predictable outcomes in life based on their race, gender and class, so long as these social evils are arrived at naturally, not by state coercion.”

You’ll notice, conservatives often criticize “SJWs” for allegedly having some filthy ulterior motive, but they never consider the possibility that, actually, things like fiscal conservatism, often described in lofty universal philosophical terms, nearly always results in whatever benefits that person’s self interest the most.

The theorists who reduce humans to animals are half right—we are animals, obvs, but they often take it one step further, saying we ought to continue our existence in the jungle conditions of other animals. No! The whole point of civilization is to use our intelligence to impose and shape order on our natural impulses for the betterment of society. The notion that it’s wrong to correct for our inherent flaws, such as our innate tendency to break into tribes and then war against neighbouring tribes, opposes the very idea of civilization influencing our civilization.

“Equality of opportunity” is a super important thing to have enshrined in law, and can’t be taken for granted. We need it, it must be celebrated. But we know that in practice things like generational wealth, gender and race undermines the living shit out of “equality of opportunity.” The people dealt the best hand say, “sorry, such are the cards!” And the people dealt the bad hand say, “this isn’t a fucking game, this is life.”

I understand that the ancient Greeks distinguished between two kinds of knowledge. First is understanding a concept abstractly, then there’s first-hand knowledge from experience. You know someone must feel extremely sad when somebody they love dies, but you don’t know the feeling until your loved one is dead. There’s knowing and there’s knowing. 

There’s a kind of argument I see a lot of online that’s so pedantic and theoretical and unconcerned in how life actually is–it’s based on this first kind of knowledge only. I’ll never know what it’s like to grow up poor, black, female, Native. I just won’t. No social discourse can be complete without this second kind of knowledge. Various people must give input, or life is only described in two dimensions, not three, and the world is three dimensional.

It’s in this sense that I’ve learned a lot from listening to people from a wide range of backgrounds, from reading and traveling, but really from listening to people. You don’t know what you don’t know. I’ve been humbled, I‘m more convinced I don’t know a fucking thing on this earth, that the more confident someone sounds the more likely they’re faking it, they’re simply wrong or paid to lie.

So, anyway, to my conservative friends: Zuckerberg and co benefit from people freaking out. The internet is murder. Unwind, unplug. Give it all a think. Listen to different kinds of people. I’m the same pretty chilled dude I always was, but I will definitely write some more angry shit on my facebook about trump, ford or whatever right wing shitlord you voted for. They’re disgusting, and I reserve that right. If you disagree with something I write, feel free to respond in the comment section. I’ll be nice! It’s good to have a group airing. Or DM me. This will avoid that performative urge to appear better informed or too pithy that sometimes comes when private chats are conducted in public. You won’t be piled on or dragged by my ruthless FB friends, either.

Love,

J

Identity politics VS politics

30 Friday Mar 2018

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The conservative idea of “identity politics” is sheltered and oblivious and needs consideration.

In one of the latest incidents in US police brutality Stephon Clark, a father of two, was in his grandmother’s backyard holding a cellphone when police shot him twenty times. Fatally. [Correction: eight bullets hit him, they fired 20 times.] Drawing attention to this, calling this outrageous and demanding it end is a no-brainer. It’s not a partisan cause or some niche side-interest to take up unless you think black people are only secondary members of society.

Maybe conservatives would care about it more if framed as an issue of government overreach, as in it’s wrong to spend tax dollars (often a huge salary) on government workers who don’t just fail to do their jobs, they literally kill sovereign citizens. 

In the age of video, white people need to be wilfully ignorant to still believe the innocent people killed posed a reasonable threat to police, that police were justified to feel their lives were at risk.

Stephon Clark was unarmed on his grandmother’s property and they shot him 20 times.

Philando Castile was calmly telling police he had a gun in his glove compartment before they shot him dead in front of his wife and child—it was licensed and they were in an open-carry  state and the entire interaction lasted about 40 seconds. The examples go on and on.

There are also multiple incidents of white people carrying machine guns brought in alive by police, even after they killed people or even after they pointed the guns at police.

The difference is instructive and extremely damning. The problem isn’t that these white people are brought in alive by cops—that’s a good thing. It’s that evidently police feel more threatened by an unarmed black man than a white man pointing a gun at them.

Police couldn’t be failing more to meet any standard of discretion, let alone the high one required before society should grant them the right to use lethal force on citizens.

Let’s do a thought experiment: if you didn’t know to what race you belonged and were told of two problems plaguing society, the first encouraging the use of trans-approved pronouns and the second state agents killing people with the court system’s permission, what would you say is a bigger problem?

Conservatives here are single-mindedly fixated on changing pronouns for two reasons: even the slightest accommodation they’re asked to make feels oppressive because people in power are used to demanding not accommodating, and conservatives are utterly sheltered from actual social problems.

Even if you thought that government control of language was only a prelude to gulags, the police are already killing people with the state’s permission. Why are those frothing mad about what they claim is potential fascism silent on what’s already happening?

Because conservatives only care about their identity politics.

Consider how natural it is for the conservative to see his identity mirrored in NFL pregame ceremonies, with Navy or Army veterans singing the anthem with a brass band, an American flag seen from space and fighter jets screaming over the field in formation.

They don’t even term this “identity politics” because it’s just the default way of doing things. But what else is it?

Conservatives feel under siege when their identity politics pre-game ritual is even slightly altered, so slightly nobody even saw Colin Kaepernick take a knee during the anthem for weeks until a reporter caught on and asked him about it. They were deaf to the fighter jets but the man silently kneeling pierces their ears. Think about that.

Conservatives often get offended when you tell them that actually the flag and fighter jets are blatantly identity politics, especially the kind of conservative who brags about how they cannot be offended.

In the way conservative’s invoke the supposedly sacrosanct right to own guns but defend police for killing a black person because they claim the black person was holding one, conservative fury at Kaepernick exposes their sham concern for free speech and the right to protest.

Identity politics is politics and the stakes are high. The FBI is surveilling Black Lives Matter activists, like they did Martin Luther King Jr, calling them “black identity extremists.” In other words, the feds are potentially criminalizing innocent black people joining a group that is peacefully responding to innocent black people being killed by police. Think about that circular logic.

Identity and politics are seldom separated. So for people to minimize what is literally a life and death issue marginalized communities face as mere “identity politics”? Anyone who does this must take a hard look at themselves and ask why.

Hopefully conservatives reading this won’t become defensive. I know political alignment is mostly determined by Clan Loyalty and it’s hard to break group ties and emotional bonds. Just, really consider what you actually believe and why.

Uninspired: thoughts about TO’s mayoral race

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

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October 27, election night, is under two weeks away. So, some thoughts:

After dealing with that barbaric pig of a mayor it was distressing that the bar for political discourse was so low, barely a shade above Fordian levels. This is as profoundly unsurprising as it is pathetic. If there was widespread apathy about municipal politics before Ford, there was a mild hope that not only would political engagement increase, but the level of conversation would become more sophisticated given the new prominence of local politics in newspapers and in general chatter. To put it lightly, John Tory has made sure this hasn’t happened.

His campaign assumed the population at large was ignorant and unwilling to look at anything beyond a headline, and it appears this estimation was correct. Tory’s paltry arguments wouldn’t stand up in a real debate against a single person who knew what they were talking about, but when he’s up against Olivia Chow in a mayoral “debate” he uses a cocky dismissive tone and repeats trite/winning slogans, burying data and, that thing he and other Conservatives feel they have a patent on, common sense.

It’s ironic what a hypocrite he and the business community are on the transit file and on taxes in general: they generally accuse the left of being platitudinous, but actually it’s Tory who is running on repeating fancy sentences and no data, and who plans on squandering billions of dollars in unaccounted for money on transit that doesn’t meet the stated objectives experts say are needed (doesn’t relieve existing transit lines, or provide areas that need transit the most–Malvern, Jane and Finch, Rexdale– with transit).

If Olivia Chow had Tory’s ideas, the right would correctly lambaste her for being the archetypal lefty, not just a tax-and-spend, but a tax-and-spend concealing intent. Who in the business community believes something can be purchased without money? Or that there’s no important distinction between capital and operating budgets because “money is money.” Tory unrepentantly says this! If a woman uttered these ridiculous things she’d be publicly humiliated, but Tory still has credibility in people’s eyes. They don’t hear or weigh what he’s saying, they just see a tall old white man with decent hair, and a mellifluous radio voice. But he’s a total and utter fraud, as pandering and pathetically empty as they come. Ford with bourgeois decorum. This makes him less uncouth but no better, and more dangerous. His ideas and agenda are the same, and anyone who can’t see this is naïve, not paying attention, or unwilling.

I do sympathize with the person who wants to believe Tory is acceptable. Many perceive Chow through a nightmare lens, as if when she becomes mayor everyone must instantly forfeit the password to their online banking, so she can conveniently pocket your money when she is running low, or feels like it. It is as if the substance of the candidate’s platforms have no existence, only the perception of these people influences people’s vote.

In case you think substance does matter, her transit plan corresponds more with what experts recommend, the funding plan is comparably reasonable and secure. Never mind that she actually has experience pertaining to the job, time in Toronto and Ottawa. Tory has never won an election. He’s a seasoned loser.

But the average voter in Toronto isn’t sophisticated politically whatsoever. This is reasonable, maybe even commendable. While a knowledgeable and engaged body of citizens is essential to a functional democracy, politics is a sordid depressing world that doesn’t really reward the time spent thinking and talking about it. But people hear “taxes” and their mind is made up. Tory seems to view forming a platform as a meaningless task. Can you say he’s wrong, when people do only vote based on whose ad is better? That’s why Tory avoids calling his phantom dollars a tax or debt. Chow says the city needs money if it wants to make purchases, an undeniable truth the other candidates devote their platforms to denying.

I have never been in the Chow camp, and if my new hatred for Tory is seen as an endorsement for her, take that for what it is, an endorsement by default. I was a Soknacki supporter, and I miss David dearly, and hope he is on a well-deserved tropical vacation away from this squalid city that stupidly didn’t embrace him. I wish Toronto well, I have a profound love this my home city, but I also hope it goes down the toilet, only so Soknacki can feel validated. He deserves the I-Told-You-So.

From the outset I was neutral, maybe even hopeful, about Tory, but am surprised what a pure charlatan and simpleton he has proved himself to be. It’s not just bad for the city, though it is that, but his brazen duplicity is highly offensive to me personally. I hate it and I hate him. The sight of him makes my stomach sick. Do I need to write here about why his transit “plan” is a scam? No, it’s been written about over and over and over again, and if you haven’t read it it’s because of your apathy.

(Fine, a brief word: by definition Tory isn’t proposing “rapid transit,” the trains come every fifteen minutes. He touts the 22 stations, as if their location is irrelevant, but it doesn’t go where planners say transit is needed. One is in fucking Ajax, outside his purview. It’s hugely expensive, his estimate is $8-billion, $2.7-billion for the city, but no politician cites the actual cost and it’ll surely grow by billions, and that depends on getting funding from other levels of government which they have explicitly stated we can’t depend on. He said tunneling was unnecessary, then it was pointed out that he’d have to, and he agreed, and it costs $300-million a kilometer. His faults are truly this stupid on the surface, that’s why people with any loyalty to Toronto and intelligence have been lining up to blast him.)

I have just enough respect for Tory to debunk him, a courtesy I won’t extend to Doug, who of course is a fraudulent boor and a disgusting man by every meausre.

PS: in case any reader thinks I’m overstating things, I dare you: look at the three paltry pages of text Tory devotes to describing SmartTrack [sic], the centrepiece of his “platform,” and tell me I’m wrong.

Morsi Code: Egyptian President’s bile easy to decipher

16 Wednesday Jan 2013

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The National Post published an article in today’s paper with three year-old quotes from Mohammad Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was democratically elected to the Presidency of Egypt—as if how he got into power has any bearing on the man himself. During the Egyptian Presidential race, many here and there called Morsi a “moderate,” and many still do. Perhaps seeing how grim the situation could become some ignored all the painfully obvious evidence pointing the other way. Suggesting that the Muslim Brotherhood was really a gang of Islamic fundamentalists there to impose Shariah law was considered not just misinformed, but uncouth. Why add unnecessary negativity to the stirring promise of the Arab Spring?

Here are Morsi’s own words from three years ago: “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.” Notice his subversion of the phrase “never forget,” probably unintentional, but maybe not. He throws in a comrade cadence too. He goes on. The article states Egyptian children must “feed on hatred,” adding, “Who is our enemy? The Zionists. Who occupies our land? The Zionists. Who hates us? The Zionists. Who destroys our land? The Zionists.” Western defenders of Morsi, if such a thing is currently conceivable, will now point to some time he uttered an uplifting humanistic message. Such paltry, pathetic apologies happen all the time. In effect, it allows a politician to whitewash any abominable speech, or even straight up war crimes, by cancelling it out with a cheery platitude. Simple! But it’s impossible to simultaneously believe in peace with your neighbours when you identify them as enemies to be warred upon ceaselessly. Unless you think Morsi was just lying to placate the rabid part of his base (which is admittedly conceivable but very unlikely, and very much reprehensible still), there is no question about his real feelings towards Jews. That such an obvious statement needs to be made points to discouraging gullibility. Hopefully these loathsome comments change that.

But in case there was any ambiguity left, Morsi continued by harking back to traditional anti-Semitic themes, Zionists as “bloodsuckers” who attack Palestinians, and Jews as not the descendants of Abraham and Sarah but of “apes and pigs.” Well, sorry to break the mood but he is half correct. I am reminded of perhaps my favourite Tolstoy humour from Anna Karenin: “Oblonsky was fond of a pleasant joke, and sometimes liked to perplex a simple-minded man by observing that if you’re going to be proud of your ancestry, why stop at Prince Rurik and repudiate your oldest ancestor—the ape?” To say nothing else about him, Morsi is a simple-minded man who apparently doesn’t go for evolution, believing instead that he came literally from Hagar, not an ape. So Jews as descendant of apes, yes, like everybody, but, glatt kosher, Jews are most certainly not the descendants of pigs. Those anti-Israel people who wax philosophical, rightly pointing out how criticizing Israel isn’t necessarily synonymous with anti-Semitism, often forget how frequently, and in what prominent places, it is.

The Obama administration’s reaction was “blistering.” Not only do they “completely reject ” Morsi’s statements, but, in their opinion, “it’s counter to the goals of peace.” How clairvoyant. And yet, as self-evident as the American response seems there isn’t much else that can be done or said for now. The vapid response is unavoidable. America can’t intervene militarily, and calling Morsi out isn’t productive. It may not be currently politically expedient for Morsi to act on his real feelings, but at the very least these unambiguously deplorable statements should eliminate even the most naïve hopes that he is at heart anything but a despicable anti-Semitic warmonger, whatever token peace talk he might have once uttered notwithstanding.

(Sure enough, shortly after completing this article I read the latest follow up: Morsi’s comments were taken out of context. While inevitably the US and Egyptian spokespeople scrambled to diffuse the situation, no comforting other context was offered. In case the claim that his speech was taken from an address in response to “Israeli aggression against Gaza” doesn’t fully assuage you, Morsi assured [the reporters] “of his respect for all monolithic religions, freedom of belief and practicing religions.”

Overzealous parking police

10 Thursday May 2012

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While it is hard to fault someone for carrying out their chief function, there is a disproportionate amount of police force devoted to procuring money from people whose only crime is turning off their cars and walking away. When you think about it, it’s odd that we can freely drive on public roads anywhere and for any length of time, but must hand over money the second we desist.

There are different classes of parking infractions, but none of them constitute an egregious moral breech. Of course, I am not against paying for parking and punishing those who don’t pay, but it’s a question of how tightly it’s enforced. The ebb and flow of a hockey game requires the invisible presence of a ref who skilfully balances the ratio of infractions to called-penalties. Parking your car in Toronto feels like playing in a hockey game where the ref blows the whistle on every single tiny hook and hold, real or imagined.

I don’t use “imagined” loosely. I’ve heard of enough instances where someone received a ticket after paying to park. Keep in mind the parallel to hockey doesn’t really exist: refs have to make key split-second decisions during an impossibly fast game, while the parking police leisurely observe dormant vehicles. While the incompetence, or perhaps malevolence, involved in ticketing someone who has paid for parking isn’t standard, it is baffling and inexcusable. If brushing off fulminating heckles is an inevitable part of the ref’s job, we owe parking police a backlog of abuse.

That people who pay for parking shouldn’t suffer an additional charge is obvious, but it used to be possible to leave the car for a minute without receiving a guaranteed ticket. This should still be possible…risky, but possible. The equilibrium is currently too far askew.  Parking police are ubiquitous. If we adjust to the current  pressure and everyone always pays for parking, the parking police will actually be out of a job, truly a paradoxical revenge. Unless, of course, they ticket those who have paid! The fault isn’t with the individual ticketers…they’re just following orders. They are required by the city to issue a minimum amount of tickets. Parking tickets must constitute a substantial stream of income and budgets are dependent on these dollars, so parking infractions need to be found, whether they’re really there or not. I hope the parking police’s distant cousin, the police, hunt terrorists, drug dealers and rapists as vigilantly and effectively as parked cars are hunted. 

There’s a lesser-known but pervasive parking evil that is quite simply an open racket perpetrated by the city. For six months of the year my street, like numerous others downtown, requires drivers (who have already paid the city for an overnight parking permit) to alternate every two weeks what side of the road they park on. Before midnight it’s on the left, after midnight it’s on the right. Without fail, the next morning there is a parking police ticketing a procession of cars whose owners were guilty of simply forgetting what day it is.

My roommate’s working life as a bar manager makes him especially vulnerable to succumbing to this trivial law. He can’t move his car before he goes to work in the afternoon because then he’s liable to get a ticket for moving it too early. It’s understandable that when he returns from a ten hour bartending shift at 3-4am he doesn’t always have the presence of mind to recall that it’s precisely the month’s halfway point. No mens rea! He is a hard worker, not a nefarious parker to be punished. It was a legal park when he parked, but in this surreal Daliesque world where the law is tied to melting clocks, such is justice. It has cost him literally hundreds of dollars. 

What does the city accomplish by demanding drivers play a veritable game of parking hopscotch? This has nothing to do with snow removal, as the law is not in effect during winter. If it’s to do with street cleaning, why is it essential the way is cleared for them to clean first thing in the morning when they have two weeks to clean? Anyone who doubts this is purely a money grab is adorable. If there is a reason it must be this way, I am all ears.

Otherwise, this deplorable bylaw should be removed immediately and the city should retroactively compensate my unfortunate roommate. That would be a nice gesture. Of course, anyone who believes the city will do the honourable thing and consciously change the law so as to make less money is living inside a Dali canvas.

Political language: combing for clichés

06 Friday Jan 2012

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No politician is free of platitudes, but some seem more blatantly devoid of meaning than others.  As someone who cares about the meaning of words, hollow-speak of any kind offends me, and I have a hard time looking past the breathtaking abuse words suffer at the hands of federal politicians publishing in national newspapers.

In today’s National Post, Sheila Copps amply demonstrates that she is just another Liberal lemming, continuing the parties’ predictable script that, adjusted only in the wake of defeat, has been changed in word but not in essence.  But my main contention is her constant violation of Orwell’s rules of good writing.

First, she explains the Latin root of the word “manifesto,” as deriving from manifestus, “clear or readily apparent.” As a political writer and a heavyweight politician running for presidency of the Liberals, such a violation of Orwell’s caution against using foreign language is inadvisable, yet she seems to dwell, soak and luxuriate in it, setting the tone for the horrors to come. Anyway, is there a worse way to begin a piece about evolving to modern times than invoking Latin etymology?

No Liberal today can begin a speech without addressing the parties’ recent demise. Next, a self-righteous assessment of what went wrong is followed in turn by a way forward invariably laden with the same hubris-ridden entitlement that caused their defeat in the first place. Of this, Copps’ is guilty.

A Liberal who believes “we have been dining out for too long on former glories” can’t also write in the same article “the values of our beautiful Canada were shaped by the Liberal party. Canada is a Liberal country.”  These statements are incompatible: she professes to understand that the meal is over, yet she can’t stop stuffing her face.

Here is a prolix sentence trying to assume grandeur by using needlessly puffed-up words: “We must use technology to continually interconnect so that we operate as a unified organization to protect the values of all reasonable Canadians.”

Without changing the meaning, this could read: “We must use technology effectively to connect with Canadians.” Hardly a profound or impressive statement in an age defined by social media, though her assumption that only Liberal Canadians are “reasonable” is typically patronizing, condescending, and more evidence of hubris.

Copps hands out clichés like Halloween candy with the expectation we will eat them up just as readily, but, just like devouring too much candy, consuming her hackneyed speech in one sitting sickens my stomach. The offences bleed one into another. Addressing and redressing each example of brutal writing requires an elephantine effort that’s unnecessary. The point is clear.

Copps ends where she begins, with one final Orwellian violation: “winners never quit and quitters never win.” If it were me, I’d conclude with something lucid and powerful.  This common aphorism is irrelevant and vague. It can mean different things. Does she mean that the Liberals lost last May because the quit? No. Presumably, she means she will work tenaciously to get into power–hardly a unique trait in politics, the natural home and breeding grounds for cut-throat opportunists. She doesn’t say what she means. Unlike her Latin definition of manifestus, her conclusion, and everything else, is anything but “clear or readily apparent.”

Post Script:

Every party and politician is guilty of using similar barbarous language. I oppose it everywhere. I hope to alert my very small, noble readership to the dangers of this pernicious breed of writing, not to denounce Liberals in general, though in this case it’s hard to do one and not the other.  Copps was the unfortunate victim of this entry because I happened to fall upon her article today and the mood struck me.

ORWELL’S 6 RULES OF WRITING:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use a passive voice where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

–From, “Politics and the English Language”

Republican morons: all just different shades of disgrace

28 Monday Nov 2011

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Even staunch Republicans can’t deny that the leaders on offer today have never been more pathetic. They are not merely poor or bad, they are abysmal. It’s beyond embarrassing, and if it were my country I’d be ashamed that such abjectly inadequate people could be taken seriously at all, let alone be poised for a Presidential race.  Such a thing could only take place in an anti-intellectual climate that celebrates stupidity. It’s hard to describe without it sounding like exaggeration. British writer Martin Amis published a terrific collection of his journalism on a cross-section of American topics in the 80s called the Moronic Inferno, a perfect phrase for the climate that enables such monstrously stupid politicians.  We expect left-wing media to attack Republicans, but it should be noted whenever the right does. The Canadian right has stepped forward in this regard.

The National Post did a segment Saturday where eleven writers named their pick for Republican candidates, followed by a brief explanation. They mostly sounded jaded and hopeless, as if they were picking which gun they’d use to shoot themselves in the head.  My two favourite NP writers, George Jonas and Robert Fulford, opted for “none of the above.”  Beyond pessimism, Jonas suggested politicians should be drafted since anyone who believes they possess all it takes to run a country is a lunatic, and should be disqualified on these grounds alone.  Fulford said it’s the worst lineup of potential candidates he’s seen in his lifetime.

This week’s Maclean’s discussed Republicans in an article titled “American Idiots.”  It proposes that perhaps becoming a presidential candidate is no longer solely a political objective, but a financial one. Presidential candidates are assured of fame. Politics is merely branding.  This perspective explains why Herman Cain was so stunningly unprepared to answer basic questions about Libya. Even more revealing was his explanation for the gaffe: “I got all this stuff twirling around in my head.” This should disqualify him off the bat: thinking is a non-negotiable job requirement for the leader of the free world.

The article notes that the New York Times looked at Cain’s calendar of campaign events and found that “19 of the 31 days of October were blank.”  Commentators suggest his campaign is fake, just a publicity stunt masquerading as politics. Maybe this is true, maybe not: what’s the bigger disgrace? For a serious political campaign to be so stunningly amateur as to be mistaken for a joke is pathetic, but is it worse or better than using the most serious office in the country for such shameless pursuit of profit? Instead of work on his campaign, the devastatingly prudent thing to do, Cain promoted his book. This is a scandal! It used to be that if you wanted to gain money, fame and notoriety from the President’s office you didn’t try to become the President. A blowjob sufficed.

But this isn’t a dictator ruthlessly inserting himself.  This is democracy. Pathetically, Cain actually has voluntary support, making Americans complicit. The bigger problem is that Cain is not out of place beside Gingrich, Bachmann, Perry, Palin, and Trump, and too many voters are OK with this.

In Ancient Greece, citizens not only voted for politicians, but could vote to ostracize for ten years any politician who they felt was a threat to the state.  While there’d be no politicians left in Greece today if this were still practiced, it would allow the US to filter politicians who perniciously hijack the political system to get rich. Although, it is shameful that this can’t be entrusted to the voters good sense. But Presidential candidates must all be devoted, capable politicians who know about the world and care about the country. Does this really need to be said? It’s a bizarre, scary world when this statement is not overwhelmingly self-evident, but it cannot be overstated.  This is a race for President of the United States, not high school.

But even ostracizing politicians is a band-aid solution if the climate of stupidity which enables them doesn’t change. Otherwise, a new moron will rise.  Any aspect of culture, media, or even advertising which actively or passively encourages or takes advantage of people’s stupidity is guilty of contributing to fanning the flames of the moronic inferno.  This should not be considered an “elitist” view, a term stupid people use as a shield. And anyway, movies like Dumb and Dumber, intelligence only lacquered in low IQ, aren’t the target of my criticism.  I’m talking about Fox News and everything else that trades the collective IQ of the country for ratings and money. I am not so naive to believe this will ever stop. Indeed, money at all costs is practically the country’s guiding principle.  Perhaps Obama recognized this essential hopelessness and won on a slogan of “hope.”

I fear the media get a kick out of bashing Republicans so much that a part of them is glad they’re there. Bad for politics, good for journalism. But this isn’t funny. This is a deplorable state of affairs that jeopardizes the country, and even the world. Millions of Americans understand this and helplessly watch their country sink into a bog. The focus of concerned, responsible adults should be on rising up; laughter just makes the sinking more enjoyable.

Democracy isn’t inherently good or bad, as Jonas reminds us in an earlier NP article from last week: “democracy is only a method of succession.” It fails without a body of intelligent, discerning and informed citizens. The Maclean’s article suggests that Mitt Romney, “the only serious Republican candidate,” is stuck at 21% support since he fails to make attention grabbing gaffes. He alienates his voters by refusing to behave like a vulgar spectacle on a reality TV show. This is his obstacle.

I was seriously disappointed in American intelligence after the show Arrested Development got cancelled (though intelligent Americans created it), but politics is important.  Countries need more than one plausible political party. The States has only two parties, but one is pathologically immature and obstinately refuses to care about the good of the country. I love the United States. This isn’t disappointing, or funny. This is terrifying.

Universities actually threaten freedom of speech

03 Thursday Nov 2011

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I subscribe to the National Post because they publish a handful of writers I admire, namely George Jonas, an excellent writer and thinker of admirable historical sensibility who writes candidly.  He grew up in Hungary under communism, and of all writers I know sceptical of left-wing ideology, I feel he’s got the most cause.  It’s not just an idea for him, though it’s that too. Policies that make a light go off in my head must stir his stomach.

I provide this background because his article yesterday, “Deliver us from the universities,” is guilty of generalizing a bit, and while I’d actually agree with him if I had to make a bet, I’m holding out for more evidence. Essentially: universities were and are the chief threat to freedom of speech.

Jonas cites a study being conducted by civil rights lawyer John Carpay, who created an index that promises to “evaluate the state of free speech at Canadian Universities.” The findings come out in November, but Carpay demonstrated them last week in an apparently convincing sneak peek organized by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy for Calgary’s Chamber of Commerce.  I’m curious and sceptical about the methodology, but my personal experience inclines me towards agreeing with the conclusion.

First Jonas reminds us that in origin, Universities were religious, not liberal. They believed they had to educate students to learn the truths they already possessed.  In the 20th century, “universities incubated both fascism and communism, along with their many sub-versions (pub intended).” In one sentence, Jonas provides some history, a great use of “incubated,” and doesn’t succumb to that brutal reflex where people claim they don’t mean to write the puns they mean to write. “As for the 21st century, with jihadism infesting campuses all over the world, we’re off to a rocky start.”  He denounces Hamas apologists, dubbing them “terrorist chic.” Wicked stuff.

Aside: academics are disproportionately left wing because they have theoretical jobs, and in theory everything works, even communism. Doubting the theoretical on grounds it’s only theoretical undermines the foundation of their life’s work, and so essentially, it undermines their life.  Perhaps the chief virtue in a good intellectual is to resist the impulse to merge the theoretical and the practical, and be always able to separate and distinguish the two.

Back to Jonas’ idea: I read a fantastic book on Orwell a few weeks ago describing all the left-wing hostility aimed at Orwell during the 40s, despite Orwell’s ardent allegiance of the left.  “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”  In spite of Orwell’s devotion to the left, he admirably refused to stop criticizing where he saw problems.  This was before the extent of Stalin’s crimes, the Gulags, were widely known and the left-wing intelligentsia frequently apologized and praised him.  To do so was modish.  Nobody wanted to publish Animal Farm because, spoiler alert!, in the end the animal’s revolution fails.  Orwell wanted socialism to work, but he couldn’t suppress his doubt no matter how much it irritated his comrades.  His allegiance was wholly to the truth, and for this he was ostracised. Jonas understands this dilemna: if Orwell had trouble criticising the Left, what can us mortals do and say?

My goal isn’t to denounce left-wing ideology, just the practice of silencing the other side’s argument on grounds that the verdict is already in. Though most universities have a dominant left-wing ideology in place, I’d be equally opposed to a right-wing one. I hate thinking that succumbs to grotesque oversimplification that obliterates nuance. Indeed, universities have a mandate to instil critical thinking abilities in their students to overcome this unforgivable weakness in mind.  But academic environments are rife with suspicion and hatred for people who think differently.  The chief fault is the inability to believe your ideological opponent is honest and intelligent.

But this difference in thought doesn’t even have to be highly charged political opinion.  In all kinds of classes I’ve heard friends lament that they feel uncomfortable diverging from their professor’s opinion in print for fear he’ll disapprove, and they’ll be graded accordingly.  But a different interpretation of poetry or literature doesn’t arouse the indignation and hostility that political disagreement does.  In all situations, students must not be made to feel uncomfortable voicing and writing their unfettered opinion, supported of course by convincing textual evidence. It’s precisely here, in classrooms, where Jonas’ charge resonates most with me.  Most faculty, and especially students, are smart enough to know they ought to voice in favour of freedom of speech, but insufficiently principled to commit to it in full. Rather, they’re principles are devoted solely to their cause, and there are none left over for the cause of free speech.

Example, a professor with an overt bias (voiced in politically correct terms so as not to get fired) would likely go mostly unchallenged by students who either: want to avoid a scene; don’t want to jeopardize their grade; don’t have the confidence to speak up, don’t want to be class nerd; don’t have a clue what the professor is even talking about; feel total indifference.  Maybe they’re simply hung over.  They’re understandable reasons, and at various moments I have succumbed and overcame all these things myself.  How many professors really say and believe: “my class is only useful if I’m challenged at every step of the way because the only valuable opinions are those which have survived the heaviest scrutiny?”  Even the polite Canadian tendency towards non-confrontation is incompatible with a robust academic environment where ideas become important only after they’ve survived harsh, weighty scrutiny.

I’m eternally grateful to Dalhousie, which I realised was a freakin’ Xanadu after spending a year in that putrid swamp OISE.  I left Dal with my innocence intact under the naive belief that academics want to get at the truth. They’re smart, passionate intellectuals.  Yes, but they’re all too frequently under the false belief that their views embody everything that’s good or desirable, and they tolerate no other view.  I’d like to see the results from this Campus Freedom Index and learn how the study was conducted.

If you’ve managed to sit through all this, bless your heart. Next writings will be light hearted: the “curmudgeon’s fall-fashion style guide” or perhaps, “the Kardashian divorce: I knew she was a skank.”

Israel Shouldn’t Have Swapped Thousands of Terrorists for Gilad Shalit

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

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When Brian Burke made a multi-player swap to land Dion Phaneuf, it was pronounced that the Leafs won the trade since, of all the players dealt, the Leafs got the best one. Unfortunately, this logic doesn’t transfer well when dealing with terrorists.

Now that Israel has its longed after kid soldier they are in more danger than they used to be, though you would never know this hearing Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations’ Secretary-General: “This release will have a far-reaching positive impact to the stalled Middle East peace process.” Perhaps the moon isn’t only in Ban’s name, but his place of residence.  To be fair, he’s in the UN, so preposterous statements are his mandate. I fail to see how rearming a sworn enemy with their fiercest combatants will help the cause of peace.  Amongst those released are Yehive Sinwar, founder of Hamas’ military wing, and other notable vicious and vile perpetrators of mass murder who have been candid in their desire to kill again and express no remorse. Sure, it’s unlikely over 13,000 former prisoners will re-offend, but does anybody doubt that a serious number intend to?  Shouldn’t “1” constitute a “serious number” of blood-thirsty terrorists?  Not all prisoners released founded Hamas’ military, but I doubt there’s even one among them I’d like to have a beer with. Or vice versa.

I’m not alone in thinking there’s trouble ahead.  The Popular Resistance Committee (the Hamas dominated coalition that captured Shalit) had a representative vow: “We are going to capture another soldier and cleanse all the Israeli jails.” This is the most obvious thing for them to do, something everybody should expect, except of course Ban Ki-moon. I usually take a terrorist’s words with a grain of salt, but I believe them this time. They have all the incentive in the world to do it again and nothing to lose.

With Israeli citizens overwhelmingly happy about the swap, it’s hard to fault Netanyahu.  If they don’t blame him and they have to live next to Hamas, who am I to say? But that’s just it: it seems Netanyahu put political expediency ahead of national security. The response of my friends Facebook status’s has been joy over doubt at Gilad’s return, but unless you think rearming Hamas in exchange for Shalit actually helps the cause of peace, this is bad news.  This is the question it boils down to.

I’m obviously happy for Shalit.  Five years of living with Hamas must be an unimaginable horror beyond description, far worse than any quarrel I’ve had with my roommate. When I was in Rome in 2009 I walked by a Shul which posted a sign with Gilad’s face.  I didn’t understand Italian but the message was clear. It goes without saying Israel wanted his return, and for obvious reasons, but it doesn’t seem prudent, and possibly it’s even a breach of duty, to privilege emotional resolution over national security. Israel today is undoubtedly less secure than it was a week ago.

Israel might be giving Hamas something to crow about after the PA went to supplicate the UN, or perhaps now Hamas will stick to their word and take more innocent hostages, creating a pretext for an Israeli military response.  The only thing that won’t come of this is peace. I like Burke’s trade better.

Toronto Needs the Arts to Balance the Budget

11 Tuesday Oct 2011

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Toronto is apparently suffering a deficit of over $700 million.  It might be interesting to consider that during the mayoral election nobody mentioned this shortfall, and that this crippling debt seems to have appeared from nowhere, yet dominates the budget.  But that’s a topic for another day. The fact is, the city is poised to stop funding frills in the name of austerity–no surprise, Ford’s sawed off shitgun is aiming straight for the arts.  Fuelling this is the assumption that anything enjoyable or soul-nourishing must be unaffordable–literally, Ford can’t afford it. Har har har.  But according to a visual graph from the Grid (the kind that unfortunately looks cute and has the undesired effect of not being taken seriously), far from a decadent expense, the arts is an economic engine.

Consider: Nuit Blanche got an initial investment of $600,000 and brought in $34.7 million; TIFF received $800,000 in grants this year and brought in $27 million in tourism from out of town visitors.  There’s no need to exhaust similar stats, the trend is clear: even accounting for exaggeration and faulty methods, the return is irresistible.  So why is it being resisted? Are these numbers that wrong?

As an innate sceptic, I find a return this crazy hard to swallow whole, but the graph is pretty compelling. Though admittedly I’m not an economics major, in my humble opinion it behooves our mayor to receive millions of dollars, especially when he’s searching desperately for every penny.  I know if I had millions of dollars coming at me on condition I suffer some art, I’d oblige. Hell, for millions I’d do all kinds of unmentionable things. But what I can’t ever imagine is being too poor to buy beers after refusing to be paid handsomely to watch Leaf games.  Is it possible our mayor hates art more than he loves money?

Unless the Grid’s numbers are a severe misrepresentation, the mayor is under heavy obligation to explain why a cherished and lucrative revenue stream is being cut while the belt is tightened all over the city.