From "How Canadian are you? Visible-minority immigrants and their children identify less and less with the country, report says" (Globe and Mail, Jan. 11):
"We need to address the racial divide," Prof. '[Jeffrey] Reitz said. "Otherwise there is a danger of social breakdown. The principle of multiculturalism was equal participation of minorities in mainstream institutions. That is no longer happening."
Oh yeah? Just ask Stephen Harper...
Friday, January 12, 2007
Friday, January 05, 2007
Jack on the Rocks
As several outlets have noted, today's shuffle in the House of Commons now means that the NDP hold the the power in the current Parliament - crunch the numbers yourself here.
I wrote a month or so ago that the NDP needed to take some action to avoid being blended into a pulp by pressure from the Liberal and Green parties. One might be tempted to suggest that the NDP could now use their newfound clout to make themselves look good on the national stage by propping up some of the relatively scummy (as opposed to plain ol' repugnant) pieces of Conservative agenda, and then taking credit very loudly.
Conventional wisdom says that this strategy would be a good idea, for the NDP if not for progressive Canadians (who are watching the country go down the drain). Sometimes conventional wisdom is even right.
Here is the problem though: the NDP's influence with the Conservative party lacks credibility. I'm not saying it doesn't exist - but its existence reeks of such partisan self-interest that, for a party keen to take the moral high ground, such a dissonance between professed values and how they're put into practice might be too much to for its long-suffering supporters to bear.
Simply: if Jack Layton does a deal with the devil, there are gonna be a lot of people who will be very unhappy, and also very unimpressed. Including, to some extent, the national media. The NDP got a lot of positive coverage when it was playing roadie to the Paul Martin Farewell Tour. But Stephen Harper makes Kurt Cobain look like Shirley Temple. And for the NDP, I'm not sure that the adage that "there's no such thing as bad press" is gonna hold water.
I wrote a month or so ago that the NDP needed to take some action to avoid being blended into a pulp by pressure from the Liberal and Green parties. One might be tempted to suggest that the NDP could now use their newfound clout to make themselves look good on the national stage by propping up some of the relatively scummy (as opposed to plain ol' repugnant) pieces of Conservative agenda, and then taking credit very loudly.
Conventional wisdom says that this strategy would be a good idea, for the NDP if not for progressive Canadians (who are watching the country go down the drain). Sometimes conventional wisdom is even right.
Here is the problem though: the NDP's influence with the Conservative party lacks credibility. I'm not saying it doesn't exist - but its existence reeks of such partisan self-interest that, for a party keen to take the moral high ground, such a dissonance between professed values and how they're put into practice might be too much to for its long-suffering supporters to bear.
Simply: if Jack Layton does a deal with the devil, there are gonna be a lot of people who will be very unhappy, and also very unimpressed. Including, to some extent, the national media. The NDP got a lot of positive coverage when it was playing roadie to the Paul Martin Farewell Tour. But Stephen Harper makes Kurt Cobain look like Shirley Temple. And for the NDP, I'm not sure that the adage that "there's no such thing as bad press" is gonna hold water.
No Khan Do
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Lost in Space...
...is where we've always known the Conservatives stashed any of their ideas that weren't short-sighted, grasping or just plain ruinous. Danger, Rona Ambrose, danger!
This CBC story suggests that yet another brilliant move by Stephen Harper's government is going to send Canadian aerospace dreams crashing back down to earth - apparently Maxime Bernier's "strict adherence to free market principles" extends to pissing off the Americans AND the EU at the same time (no mean feat, that). I guess anything involving reaching fo the stars just smacks of being too Liberal - or is it simply that the Conservatives don't want anyone taking a bird's eye view of the sorry state of the country any time soon?
In other news, it looks like sober second thought is going to give way to cheap party tricks.
This CBC story suggests that yet another brilliant move by Stephen Harper's government is going to send Canadian aerospace dreams crashing back down to earth - apparently Maxime Bernier's "strict adherence to free market principles" extends to pissing off the Americans AND the EU at the same time (no mean feat, that). I guess anything involving reaching fo the stars just smacks of being too Liberal - or is it simply that the Conservatives don't want anyone taking a bird's eye view of the sorry state of the country any time soon?
In other news, it looks like sober second thought is going to give way to cheap party tricks.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Grapeshot
Do you the remember the Mike Harris "Common Sense Revolution"? 'Cause I do.
I remember making a deal with God the day before vote in 1995- if I managed to get my last project of the year finished early, then the Conservatives wouldn't win, and my parents would stop looking so upset and worried. I guess God doesn't like presentations about Star Trek.
I remember marching up University Avenue with 10,000 people during the Days of Action; I remember Dudley George, shot because Mike Harris wanted "the fucking Indians out of the park"; I remember the 7 people who died in Walkerton because "common sense" meant cutting 700 jobs from the Ministry of the Environment.
I remember the homeless who froze to death on Toronto streets. I remember the suburbanites paralyzed by West Nile virus because the Conservatives refused to allow the Ministry of Health to warn people about mosquitos in 2002. And I remember Kimberley Rogers, who was 8 months pregnant and who died because the Conservative government refused her welfare.
Remember friends: John Baird and Jim Flaherty and Tony Clemente, all ministers under Harris, all serve a new master now. Remember that our federal government of vicious, cunning ideologues has the putative support of perhaps 30% of the population, but is doing 100% damage to the national fabric of Canada. And remember why it's called a revolution - because there's already been blood, and the casualties continue to mount.
I remember making a deal with God the day before vote in 1995- if I managed to get my last project of the year finished early, then the Conservatives wouldn't win, and my parents would stop looking so upset and worried. I guess God doesn't like presentations about Star Trek.
I remember marching up University Avenue with 10,000 people during the Days of Action; I remember Dudley George, shot because Mike Harris wanted "the fucking Indians out of the park"; I remember the 7 people who died in Walkerton because "common sense" meant cutting 700 jobs from the Ministry of the Environment.
I remember the homeless who froze to death on Toronto streets. I remember the suburbanites paralyzed by West Nile virus because the Conservatives refused to allow the Ministry of Health to warn people about mosquitos in 2002. And I remember Kimberley Rogers, who was 8 months pregnant and who died because the Conservative government refused her welfare.
Remember friends: John Baird and Jim Flaherty and Tony Clemente, all ministers under Harris, all serve a new master now. Remember that our federal government of vicious, cunning ideologues has the putative support of perhaps 30% of the population, but is doing 100% damage to the national fabric of Canada. And remember why it's called a revolution - because there's already been blood, and the casualties continue to mount.
Their Ancient Custom
"I don’t have to remind Quebecers of this, but all Canadians need to realize that when they hear Mr. Martin talking...it is all just to cover a record of scandal."
- Stephen Harper, December 19, 2005
"In one of those you-gotta-be-kidding moments too typical of this capital, Harper's government declared full confidence in Giuliano Zaccardelli just minutes after the RCMP Commissioner admitted keeping silent publicly about Maher Arar's innocence.... Think about that. A party that fought and won an election on accountability is now saying it's acceptable to do next to nothing about a Canadian citizen rotting in a Syrian prison, ultimately provoking a needless and pricey public inquiry."
-James Travers in the Toronto Star, October 3, 2006
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed "concern" over RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's conflicting Commons committee testimony Tuesday about the Maher Arar affair....
"You can't just go out and fire someone without due process," Harper said. It's the first time Harper has expressed anything other than full confidence in the embattled commissioner."
-CBC News, December 5, 2006 (italics mine)
"[Wheat Board CEO Adrian] Measner, who supports the current [single-desk] system, received a letter from federal Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl last month saying his position is under review and he will likely lose his job... Strahl told CBC Tuesday he hasn't fired Measner yet, but has asked for a response from Measner outlining why he should continue as president. 'That's a position that serves at the pleasure of the government,' Strahl said. 'Obviously, I'm not pleased right now at what's going on at the wheat board.'"
-CBC News, December 5, 2006 (italics mine)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me get this straight, O Righteous Rulers - you're allowed to fire someone whom you disagree with (although he doesn't actually work for you), but you can't fire the nation's highest law enforcement official who has perjured himself to the House of Commons?
There's nothing like talk to cover up scandal. But Steven Harper already knows that, doesn't he.
- Stephen Harper, December 19, 2005
"In one of those you-gotta-be-kidding moments too typical of this capital, Harper's government declared full confidence in Giuliano Zaccardelli just minutes after the RCMP Commissioner admitted keeping silent publicly about Maher Arar's innocence.... Think about that. A party that fought and won an election on accountability is now saying it's acceptable to do next to nothing about a Canadian citizen rotting in a Syrian prison, ultimately provoking a needless and pricey public inquiry."
-James Travers in the Toronto Star, October 3, 2006
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed "concern" over RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's conflicting Commons committee testimony Tuesday about the Maher Arar affair....
"You can't just go out and fire someone without due process," Harper said. It's the first time Harper has expressed anything other than full confidence in the embattled commissioner."
-CBC News, December 5, 2006 (italics mine)
"[Wheat Board CEO Adrian] Measner, who supports the current [single-desk] system, received a letter from federal Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl last month saying his position is under review and he will likely lose his job... Strahl told CBC Tuesday he hasn't fired Measner yet, but has asked for a response from Measner outlining why he should continue as president. 'That's a position that serves at the pleasure of the government,' Strahl said. 'Obviously, I'm not pleased right now at what's going on at the wheat board.'"
-CBC News, December 5, 2006 (italics mine)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me get this straight, O Righteous Rulers - you're allowed to fire someone whom you disagree with (although he doesn't actually work for you), but you can't fire the nation's highest law enforcement official who has perjured himself to the House of Commons?
There's nothing like talk to cover up scandal. But Steven Harper already knows that, doesn't he.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Someone find that man an airport...
My hunch about all this is that we've just been through something that is a lot closer to the 1958 Liberal leadership convention than the 1968 one. That's not to say Dion won't be more successful than Pearson, because I hope and think he could be. But there's a similar kind of instability in the current climate, and I don't just mean global warming.
It would be interesting to examine Pearson and Dion comparatively - both well-respected academics with international reputations, both possibly a little shaky getting off the ground (Liberals: remember the 1958 election? You don't want to), both (in my view) doomed to a lot of minority governments. Yet Pearson shaped this country into what it is, and into what most Canadians ( I think) want it to be. Dion could do the same. And as everyone noted this weekend, there's no shortage of young blood (Gerard? Is that with one R or two?) hovering in the wings to carry things on.
Memo to the NDP: do something. Now. Or else you're gonna get creamed into pumpkin pie.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Addendum - one place where 1958 and 2006 have NO similarity whatsoever is in the actual convention voting pattern - Lester got it in a landslide. If only Paul Martin Jr. had avenged his father's loss by being more like Mike....
It would be interesting to examine Pearson and Dion comparatively - both well-respected academics with international reputations, both possibly a little shaky getting off the ground (Liberals: remember the 1958 election? You don't want to), both (in my view) doomed to a lot of minority governments. Yet Pearson shaped this country into what it is, and into what most Canadians ( I think) want it to be. Dion could do the same. And as everyone noted this weekend, there's no shortage of young blood (Gerard? Is that with one R or two?) hovering in the wings to carry things on.
Memo to the NDP: do something. Now. Or else you're gonna get creamed into pumpkin pie.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Addendum - one place where 1958 and 2006 have NO similarity whatsoever is in the actual convention voting pattern - Lester got it in a landslide. If only Paul Martin Jr. had avenged his father's loss by being more like Mike....
Unconventional Wisdom
A few questions/queries about Canadian politics, in the wake of this weekend's seismic shift in the landscape:
- Isn't Jean Charest supposed to be a federalist? Just how Liberal are Quebec Liberals anyway? I know they need to be a little more autonomous than they might...but surely the definition of supporting federalism implies a federation of more than two actors? Maybe they could annex New Brunswick before they go?
-Conservative Cabinet ministers sure do throw a lot of stones for people whose houses aren't just glass, but air-conditioned as well.
- Wouldn't you expect Jacques Parizeau to spin Stephan Dion's election as good for separatism? Why should anyone take this as anything other than partisan rhetoric? Only because it's being repeated by every journalist from Moncton to Manitoba...
- Ed Stelmach's victory was even more improbable than, though eerily similar to, Stephan Dion's.
- Let me get this straight just once: Dion won't attract votes in the West because he's from Quebec, even though he's hated in Quebec because he's not nationalist enough. What to make of this? Completely irrational region-based xenophobia? Well, stranger things have happened I guess...but don't Albertans like the Clarity Act? Or would they prefer a flamethrower?
- People in British Columbia are rumoured to care quite a lot about the environment. Especially when bits of the environment are putting food (and turning up as food) on the table. Come to think of it, doesn't this sustainable economy thing involve some sort of rural policy?
- Dalton McGuinty sure did look sour on Saturday evening.
- Isn't Jean Charest supposed to be a federalist? Just how Liberal are Quebec Liberals anyway? I know they need to be a little more autonomous than they might...but surely the definition of supporting federalism implies a federation of more than two actors? Maybe they could annex New Brunswick before they go?
-Conservative Cabinet ministers sure do throw a lot of stones for people whose houses aren't just glass, but air-conditioned as well.
- Wouldn't you expect Jacques Parizeau to spin Stephan Dion's election as good for separatism? Why should anyone take this as anything other than partisan rhetoric? Only because it's being repeated by every journalist from Moncton to Manitoba...
- Ed Stelmach's victory was even more improbable than, though eerily similar to, Stephan Dion's.
- Let me get this straight just once: Dion won't attract votes in the West because he's from Quebec, even though he's hated in Quebec because he's not nationalist enough. What to make of this? Completely irrational region-based xenophobia? Well, stranger things have happened I guess...but don't Albertans like the Clarity Act? Or would they prefer a flamethrower?
- People in British Columbia are rumoured to care quite a lot about the environment. Especially when bits of the environment are putting food (and turning up as food) on the table. Come to think of it, doesn't this sustainable economy thing involve some sort of rural policy?
- Dalton McGuinty sure did look sour on Saturday evening.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
"Canada First, Canada Last, Canada Always"
The line was Bob Rae's, but the victory was Stephan Dion's.
I watched the final ballot of the Liberal Leadership Convention with a number of family members. They live in Scarborough, and tend to vote Liberal, or Progressive Conservative in the old days. Some of them still vote Conservative, even without the Progressive part attached.
They were spitting mad when Stephan Dion won. Not so much because of what he represented (though my grandmother's "milquetoast" comment wasn't expecially flattering) but more because he, in their opinion, wouldn't be able to beat Stephen Harper's government. There was despondency because Dion didn't seem "winnable," wasn't likely to win over the legions of Canadians who voted Conservative. "He's from Quebec," someone said, Quebec apparently turning into a four letter word.
I didn't ask if any of my relatives would vote for another party because Dion had won. Maybe I should have. All I know is that there's a good chance that I will vote Liberal in the next federal election.
People who know me well are going to be aghast, jubilant, or scornful at this news. Or maybe they won't. Maybe I'm falling into the same trap that Bob Rae once came into, only in reverse - sacrificing principle for practicality. I don't know - I'm going to have to ponder that for a while in private.
Canadians, if any of you are reading this: remember the kilometres of railway track that were laid, foot by laborious foot, between Halifax and Vancouver. Those tracks meant we were all going from somewhere, to somewhere else, be it Montreal or Calgary (two places, incidentally, that my grandfather spent quite a lot of time). The contention that a man from Quebec cannot speak with, to and for all Canadians is calumny. After all, a man from Alberta currently claims to be speaking for all of us.
Just remember those railroad tracks, and think about what else binds us all together. One Stephen would have you believe that all that Canada should be is a firewall, a stripmall, and a garage. The other has a bigger, better view.
I watched the final ballot of the Liberal Leadership Convention with a number of family members. They live in Scarborough, and tend to vote Liberal, or Progressive Conservative in the old days. Some of them still vote Conservative, even without the Progressive part attached.
They were spitting mad when Stephan Dion won. Not so much because of what he represented (though my grandmother's "milquetoast" comment wasn't expecially flattering) but more because he, in their opinion, wouldn't be able to beat Stephen Harper's government. There was despondency because Dion didn't seem "winnable," wasn't likely to win over the legions of Canadians who voted Conservative. "He's from Quebec," someone said, Quebec apparently turning into a four letter word.
I didn't ask if any of my relatives would vote for another party because Dion had won. Maybe I should have. All I know is that there's a good chance that I will vote Liberal in the next federal election.
People who know me well are going to be aghast, jubilant, or scornful at this news. Or maybe they won't. Maybe I'm falling into the same trap that Bob Rae once came into, only in reverse - sacrificing principle for practicality. I don't know - I'm going to have to ponder that for a while in private.
Canadians, if any of you are reading this: remember the kilometres of railway track that were laid, foot by laborious foot, between Halifax and Vancouver. Those tracks meant we were all going from somewhere, to somewhere else, be it Montreal or Calgary (two places, incidentally, that my grandfather spent quite a lot of time). The contention that a man from Quebec cannot speak with, to and for all Canadians is calumny. After all, a man from Alberta currently claims to be speaking for all of us.
Just remember those railroad tracks, and think about what else binds us all together. One Stephen would have you believe that all that Canada should be is a firewall, a stripmall, and a garage. The other has a bigger, better view.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Fairy Tale
"Where have you been," you might well ask. Well, I'll tell you.
I go every morning to le palais du bureaucracie. It is a great and prominent building, with long colonnades and high walls. Inside, the passageways are made of gorgeous marble, flawlessly set so that patterns repeat themselves down hallways that seem to never end. There are huge paintings and mosaics intersperced among the stone, by many famous artists, lit cleverly with recessed lights.
I have le palais almost to myself, but I cannot linger too long. I must daily do a task, without the completion of which many powerful men and women would be brought low, and would become confused and powerless. My task is to stare into a glowing glass and conjure words out of the ether - I must direct these words hither and yon, and countless mandarins hang on every one. Moreover, these words concern the life and death of millions of people, and their stories are indeed a heavy burden.
Alas, I may only enter le palais du bureaucracie under the cover of darkness - if I failed to do so, I would be banished from the palace for ever.
I go every morning to le palais du bureaucracie. It is a great and prominent building, with long colonnades and high walls. Inside, the passageways are made of gorgeous marble, flawlessly set so that patterns repeat themselves down hallways that seem to never end. There are huge paintings and mosaics intersperced among the stone, by many famous artists, lit cleverly with recessed lights.
I have le palais almost to myself, but I cannot linger too long. I must daily do a task, without the completion of which many powerful men and women would be brought low, and would become confused and powerless. My task is to stare into a glowing glass and conjure words out of the ether - I must direct these words hither and yon, and countless mandarins hang on every one. Moreover, these words concern the life and death of millions of people, and their stories are indeed a heavy burden.
Alas, I may only enter le palais du bureaucracie under the cover of darkness - if I failed to do so, I would be banished from the palace for ever.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Rona Ambrose should have a talk show
She could replace TV's current It Girl, Rachel Ray. It couldn't possibly get any worse.
Actually, that's not true, Rona Ambrose might start speaking French. I do not know if Rachel Ray knows how to speak French. Frankly, I am afraid to find out.
Actually, that's not true, Rona Ambrose might start speaking French. I do not know if Rachel Ray knows how to speak French. Frankly, I am afraid to find out.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Phobias are for phuckwits
phuckwit n. [var. of fuckwit]
a person whose foolishness or idiocy is specifically caused by bigotry, narrow-mindedness or prejudice and its resulting behaviours (eg. islamophobia, homophobia)
ex: That girl who called my friend a "Moooooslim" was a grade A phuckwit.
a person whose foolishness or idiocy is specifically caused by bigotry, narrow-mindedness or prejudice and its resulting behaviours (eg. islamophobia, homophobia)
ex: That girl who called my friend a "Moooooslim" was a grade A phuckwit.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
The History of Errors
Perhaps he was having trouble with his Oxford Book of Quotations or whatever the equivalent compendium of encyclicals, bulls and learned writings of the Roman Catholic Church happens to be called. In any event, the Pope has put his foot in it.
I'm not often one to defend His Holiness. I emphatically disagree with most Roman Catholic doctrine regarding homosexuals, birth control and abortion; I think that priests should be allowed to marry if they want to; and I'm generally unimpressed by the conservatism of church leaders. All this being said, the overarching message of the Pope's address, as noted by Jewish Studies Chair James Diamond, is an overwhelmingly positive and balanced one (well, for the Pope): Benedict's conclusion - that to act without reason in any religion is to contravene divine will and law - is both pertinent, timely, widely applicable to everything from consumerism to nuclear proliferation, and to my belief, true.
What's just as distressing as the Vatican's inept editing skills is the fact that every news outlet I've seen has made a hash of the Pope's befuddled, crypto-Orientalist (but not I think malicious) point, including its context both within the history of Christian thought, and in the current climate of world events.
His former Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is a conservative, highly doctrinaire Roman Catholic (if he weren't, this guy might be the Holy Father right now.) As such, when Benedict XVI hit the stage at his alma mater, the good ol' U of R Theological School, I have to assume he decided to get all erudite on the Faculty's ass - and being well-regarded as one of the world's foremost conservative Catholic theologians even before he became Pope, he might have disappointed the crowd if he hadn't been. So the Pope dug up what I can only assume is a fairly obscure reference in a very obscure book to an even more obscure historical figure - Manuel II Palaeologus, the second last Byzantine Emperor.
Manuel's position in the winter of 1391 was an exceedingly awkward one, involving heavy dynastic infighting with his own family, not to mention the fact that the Byzantine Empire was the 14th century equivalent of Vietnam, with less communism and more sand - European powers jockeyed for interest and territory, fighting the indigenous (in this case Turkish) forces and playing politics with the powerless Byzantine rulers while wasting huge amounts of treasure and manpower in what was truly a quagmire. Manuel was, at age 41, living in the court of the Ottoman Sultan, and licking boots as part of the game of power politics. Sounds suspiciously like another epoch I could mention, doesn't it.
Something I read the other day claimed the whole document was made up. It's not implausible. There have also been a number of reports that the Pope, unlike his predecessor, has had little use for the opinions of his advisers on sensitive topics, particularly Islam. That's not implausible either. What's hardest to believe is that in our future imperfect, dialogue with Muslim interlocutors is perceived by the essentializing powers that be to be more difficult, and less necessary, than in our civilization's "semi-barbaric" pre-Renaissance.
Evil, indeed.
I'm not often one to defend His Holiness. I emphatically disagree with most Roman Catholic doctrine regarding homosexuals, birth control and abortion; I think that priests should be allowed to marry if they want to; and I'm generally unimpressed by the conservatism of church leaders. All this being said, the overarching message of the Pope's address, as noted by Jewish Studies Chair James Diamond, is an overwhelmingly positive and balanced one (well, for the Pope): Benedict's conclusion - that to act without reason in any religion is to contravene divine will and law - is both pertinent, timely, widely applicable to everything from consumerism to nuclear proliferation, and to my belief, true.
What's just as distressing as the Vatican's inept editing skills is the fact that every news outlet I've seen has made a hash of the Pope's befuddled, crypto-Orientalist (but not I think malicious) point, including its context both within the history of Christian thought, and in the current climate of world events.
His former Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is a conservative, highly doctrinaire Roman Catholic (if he weren't, this guy might be the Holy Father right now.) As such, when Benedict XVI hit the stage at his alma mater, the good ol' U of R Theological School, I have to assume he decided to get all erudite on the Faculty's ass - and being well-regarded as one of the world's foremost conservative Catholic theologians even before he became Pope, he might have disappointed the crowd if he hadn't been. So the Pope dug up what I can only assume is a fairly obscure reference in a very obscure book to an even more obscure historical figure - Manuel II Palaeologus, the second last Byzantine Emperor.
Manuel's position in the winter of 1391 was an exceedingly awkward one, involving heavy dynastic infighting with his own family, not to mention the fact that the Byzantine Empire was the 14th century equivalent of Vietnam, with less communism and more sand - European powers jockeyed for interest and territory, fighting the indigenous (in this case Turkish) forces and playing politics with the powerless Byzantine rulers while wasting huge amounts of treasure and manpower in what was truly a quagmire. Manuel was, at age 41, living in the court of the Ottoman Sultan, and licking boots as part of the game of power politics. Sounds suspiciously like another epoch I could mention, doesn't it.
Something I read the other day claimed the whole document was made up. It's not implausible. There have also been a number of reports that the Pope, unlike his predecessor, has had little use for the opinions of his advisers on sensitive topics, particularly Islam. That's not implausible either. What's hardest to believe is that in our future imperfect, dialogue with Muslim interlocutors is perceived by the essentializing powers that be to be more difficult, and less necessary, than in our civilization's "semi-barbaric" pre-Renaissance.
Evil, indeed.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
1 gazillion miles to the gallon
Most of my friends seem to have jumped on the blogging bandwagon. This of course is a very large wagon (hopefully a hybrid, perhaps built by Toyota), but I am proud to say that I was second among my immediate circle of friends to start blogging it up. Well, maybe third....
Happily, I'm lucky to know so many dynamic types with such a varied set of interests: Aldous on food, Simon on fashion, David on photography, Nick on painting and urbanisme, Eric on spirituality, Stephanie on living in Scotland, Andy on...miscellaneous topics.
What is my blog on? I am not sure. Perhaps I should review cultural events. Or music. Or fish. Any thoughts?
Happily, I'm lucky to know so many dynamic types with such a varied set of interests: Aldous on food, Simon on fashion, David on photography, Nick on painting and urbanisme, Eric on spirituality, Stephanie on living in Scotland, Andy on...miscellaneous topics.
What is my blog on? I am not sure. Perhaps I should review cultural events. Or music. Or fish. Any thoughts?
It's dusty, not to mention heartwrenching
Speaking of memory lane, I spent a good deal of today at a task I always have mixed feelings about: cleaning my closet.
The closet in my room is actually quite small, and has some queer angles, if you'll pardon the joke. Yet it's astonishing how much of the detritus of my youth is still crammed into it. Or rather, how much of the detritus of my family's collective past is jammed into its dusty expanse - in our house, perennially low on storage space, it's always a temptation for my siblings and I to stow things we can't bring ourselves to part with in the closets and corners of the next room down, and return to our own with the clutter of yesterday safely out of sight and therefore out of mind. So sorting through my brother's stuffed animals, my mother's summer dresses and my father's old shirts, I had a fairly full account of the last twenty years, written in that revealing and moving language, Clutter.
The motivations for preserving some of the momenti I'd stashed away along the line seemed, blessedly, entirely meaningless - what on earth possessed me to keep a cassette walkman from 1989? Or my American history notes from second year? By and large however, the contents of my closetmoved me not with their emotional obsolescence, but with their continuing resonance, their hold on my heart's history.
For instance, the piece of green plastic emblazoned with the image of a smiling frog, cut from my plastic wading pool before it was thrown away when I was nine. Or the photo album filled with my Grade One and Two pictures, taken with my first camera. And the book my mother made to give structure to my father's departure for several months in Cameroon, when I was two. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the physical reminders of the past ring so clearly. I do have some pretensions towards being an historian in embryo, after all.
Still, that green plastic frog almost made me cry.
The closet in my room is actually quite small, and has some queer angles, if you'll pardon the joke. Yet it's astonishing how much of the detritus of my youth is still crammed into it. Or rather, how much of the detritus of my family's collective past is jammed into its dusty expanse - in our house, perennially low on storage space, it's always a temptation for my siblings and I to stow things we can't bring ourselves to part with in the closets and corners of the next room down, and return to our own with the clutter of yesterday safely out of sight and therefore out of mind. So sorting through my brother's stuffed animals, my mother's summer dresses and my father's old shirts, I had a fairly full account of the last twenty years, written in that revealing and moving language, Clutter.
The motivations for preserving some of the momenti I'd stashed away along the line seemed, blessedly, entirely meaningless - what on earth possessed me to keep a cassette walkman from 1989? Or my American history notes from second year? By and large however, the contents of my closetmoved me not with their emotional obsolescence, but with their continuing resonance, their hold on my heart's history.
For instance, the piece of green plastic emblazoned with the image of a smiling frog, cut from my plastic wading pool before it was thrown away when I was nine. Or the photo album filled with my Grade One and Two pictures, taken with my first camera. And the book my mother made to give structure to my father's departure for several months in Cameroon, when I was two. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the physical reminders of the past ring so clearly. I do have some pretensions towards being an historian in embryo, after all.
Still, that green plastic frog almost made me cry.
Memory Lane
Well, that took a while.
For those of you still occasionally reading this, my apologies. Real life (in the murderous-clown-wielding-a-hatchet guise of the University of Toronto's Student Administrative Council Orientation Day) intruded on my thoughts, actions, and nightmares for about a month, and didn't give me much time to hone lengthy expository screeds for the net to read.
Happily, as I'm now unemployed, I have MUCH more time on my hands.
For those of you still occasionally reading this, my apologies. Real life (in the murderous-clown-wielding-a-hatchet guise of the University of Toronto's Student Administrative Council Orientation Day) intruded on my thoughts, actions, and nightmares for about a month, and didn't give me much time to hone lengthy expository screeds for the net to read.
Happily, as I'm now unemployed, I have MUCH more time on my hands.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Global Warming
Christopher Hitchens pines for the good old days, when all the men were strong, all the women good looking, and all the terrorists above average.
I have trouble reading Christopher Hitchens, mainly because I so often agree with him. Hitchens is a man unafraid to say what he believes, though I suspect sometimes (and it's rich coming from me, I know) that he speaks with a hot head. I often wish that he would think more coolly, and perhaps by extension believe more carefully, on what he ends up saying.
Is it really plausible to say, for instance, that all members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or the Black Panthers were enlightened freedom fighters prone to lofty thoughts about the future and the sanctity of innocent life? Of course not. Those organisations contained members as fanatical and fascistic as those of the worst Islamic fundamentalist movement, though I will grant Hitchens that religion slightly outpaces ethnicity or nationalism as the ideological form most congenial to fanaticism.
Why though does Hitchens consistently draw a line in the sand around Islamic fundamentalism and its crop of associated terrorists? Because, it seems, suicide bombers "long for death," foolishly ignoring the pleasures of this life in favor of those of the next.
It might be argued that many of the young men inclined to blow up airplanes and destroy buses in the name of Islamist terror have no reason to eschew the material world, growing up as they often do in suburban and thoroughly middle class splendour. Yet here lies a clue to the root of the question. What is it about our modern world that causes citizens to radicalize themselves? Is it that modern iterations of society hold such conflicting and sometimes hypocritical accounts of truth and justice within themselves - say for instance, arguing that all humans are created equal, but implicitly condoning the death of ten Lebanese civilians for every Israeli soldier - that those held deeply within the physical cocoon of western modernity throw over its trappings and apparently empty promises and go for the big prize: heaven, with virgins or no.
Hitchens would decry this view as being "soft on terrorists," and insofar as I try to make it a habit to seek to understand the core motivations of all human actions, he would be right. Hitchens might also claim that Islamist terror has a higher degree of truly pathological - that is, insane - devotees as opposed to other terrorist groups. Here I am not sure I agree. There are no doubt a number of quite certifiable Islamist terrorists at the moment, but surely there are an equal number of certifiable Tamil Tigers, American Christian nationalists, or chihuahua collectors. My point of course is that ideologies (the chihuahuas aside) attract pathologies, and the more ideological one gets, the more likely one is to exhibit the signs of a mental illness.
All this being said, I suppose my opposition to Hitchens on all this comes down to the following: Hitchens claims that some things (namely people and their motivations) have fundamentally changed in the Age of Terror, when they haven't; and he implies that society and its trappings (culture and technology) have not changed, when they have.
To say that people and their psychology, instincts and capacities have fundamentally changed since, thanks to and as the cause of September 11th is both untrue, presumptuous, and astonishingly dangerous: it implies that humans are now more bloodthirsty or more saintly than they were ten, a hundred or a thousand years, which is hogwash of the first order. This kind of thinking sets one on the slippery slope of defining the idea of "human" as a temporal phenomenon, a trend unhelpful in any field other than perhaos evolutionary anthropology. People evolve biologically, but not, sadly, so quickly as all that - to imply otherwise passes the street sign pointing towards horrors with which the world, unfortunately, is all too familiar.
On the other hand, to ignore the evolution of global society and its role as a motivating factor over the past 100, 50 or even 10 years is equally dangerous. It's clear that societies are in some ways greater (or less) than the sum of their parts - so to ignore the fact that a Brazilian fighting against a corrupt dictatorship and a Islamist terrorist acting against the United States are not in entirely analogous situations is, of course, foolish and criminally irresponsible. But there must be an understanding and acceptance of the weight of history when crafting political policy: if this anchor is absent, politics risks floating off into the same ideological hot air that sometimes motivates the Islamists, capitalists, fascists and other ideologues of the world. The Internet has profound social and cultural implications, the threat of terrorist dialogue being one, in my view, of the more prosaic ones - but only a fool, and an ahistorical fool at that, would decide to deal with this problem by invading a tin pot Middle Eastern dictatorship.
If terrorists are motivated these days by some of the same old concerns about nationalisms, lands, freedoms etc (Lebanon? Palestine? Sri Lanka? Aceh?) how then are they (or some of them, at least) fundamentally different from Christopher Hitchens' friends from the good old days, and who is to say that we should not deal with them (some of them, at least) in a similar way? And if terrorists do seem different in their motivations and tactics, what explains it? Surely not biology (though if this really is the explanation, it's another barrel of monkeys entirely). And if not biology, what?
I suspect that our Age of Terror, as William Saletan intelligently noted the other day, is all about a dissolution of boundaries, mental and physical. A young man in Manchester not even of Arab or Muslim heritage can feel as if "his" people are being oppressed on the sands of Iraq, and connect that oppression, however tenuously, with blowing up an American airliner. This brave new world is indeed terrifying - this latest iteration of Marx's assertion that in the modern world "all that is solid melts into air" is destabilizing and upsetting for us, generations brought up in the reasonably stable political chill of the Cold War.
But thawing out doesn't mean we need despair. Because people can still be good like they always could be bad - it's only our technology that sometimes clouds the issue and makes it hard for us to see. Call it condensation, if you like. So I do wish that Christopher Hitchens would nostalge a little less for the good old days, and turn his considerable intellect and formidable talents to bear on the present and its exigencies. Because we're all getting a little hot under the collar, and it will take all honest people, with sharp minds and good hearts, to clear the air.
I have trouble reading Christopher Hitchens, mainly because I so often agree with him. Hitchens is a man unafraid to say what he believes, though I suspect sometimes (and it's rich coming from me, I know) that he speaks with a hot head. I often wish that he would think more coolly, and perhaps by extension believe more carefully, on what he ends up saying.
Is it really plausible to say, for instance, that all members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or the Black Panthers were enlightened freedom fighters prone to lofty thoughts about the future and the sanctity of innocent life? Of course not. Those organisations contained members as fanatical and fascistic as those of the worst Islamic fundamentalist movement, though I will grant Hitchens that religion slightly outpaces ethnicity or nationalism as the ideological form most congenial to fanaticism.
Why though does Hitchens consistently draw a line in the sand around Islamic fundamentalism and its crop of associated terrorists? Because, it seems, suicide bombers "long for death," foolishly ignoring the pleasures of this life in favor of those of the next.
It might be argued that many of the young men inclined to blow up airplanes and destroy buses in the name of Islamist terror have no reason to eschew the material world, growing up as they often do in suburban and thoroughly middle class splendour. Yet here lies a clue to the root of the question. What is it about our modern world that causes citizens to radicalize themselves? Is it that modern iterations of society hold such conflicting and sometimes hypocritical accounts of truth and justice within themselves - say for instance, arguing that all humans are created equal, but implicitly condoning the death of ten Lebanese civilians for every Israeli soldier - that those held deeply within the physical cocoon of western modernity throw over its trappings and apparently empty promises and go for the big prize: heaven, with virgins or no.
Hitchens would decry this view as being "soft on terrorists," and insofar as I try to make it a habit to seek to understand the core motivations of all human actions, he would be right. Hitchens might also claim that Islamist terror has a higher degree of truly pathological - that is, insane - devotees as opposed to other terrorist groups. Here I am not sure I agree. There are no doubt a number of quite certifiable Islamist terrorists at the moment, but surely there are an equal number of certifiable Tamil Tigers, American Christian nationalists, or chihuahua collectors. My point of course is that ideologies (the chihuahuas aside) attract pathologies, and the more ideological one gets, the more likely one is to exhibit the signs of a mental illness.
All this being said, I suppose my opposition to Hitchens on all this comes down to the following: Hitchens claims that some things (namely people and their motivations) have fundamentally changed in the Age of Terror, when they haven't; and he implies that society and its trappings (culture and technology) have not changed, when they have.
To say that people and their psychology, instincts and capacities have fundamentally changed since, thanks to and as the cause of September 11th is both untrue, presumptuous, and astonishingly dangerous: it implies that humans are now more bloodthirsty or more saintly than they were ten, a hundred or a thousand years, which is hogwash of the first order. This kind of thinking sets one on the slippery slope of defining the idea of "human" as a temporal phenomenon, a trend unhelpful in any field other than perhaos evolutionary anthropology. People evolve biologically, but not, sadly, so quickly as all that - to imply otherwise passes the street sign pointing towards horrors with which the world, unfortunately, is all too familiar.
On the other hand, to ignore the evolution of global society and its role as a motivating factor over the past 100, 50 or even 10 years is equally dangerous. It's clear that societies are in some ways greater (or less) than the sum of their parts - so to ignore the fact that a Brazilian fighting against a corrupt dictatorship and a Islamist terrorist acting against the United States are not in entirely analogous situations is, of course, foolish and criminally irresponsible. But there must be an understanding and acceptance of the weight of history when crafting political policy: if this anchor is absent, politics risks floating off into the same ideological hot air that sometimes motivates the Islamists, capitalists, fascists and other ideologues of the world. The Internet has profound social and cultural implications, the threat of terrorist dialogue being one, in my view, of the more prosaic ones - but only a fool, and an ahistorical fool at that, would decide to deal with this problem by invading a tin pot Middle Eastern dictatorship.
If terrorists are motivated these days by some of the same old concerns about nationalisms, lands, freedoms etc (Lebanon? Palestine? Sri Lanka? Aceh?) how then are they (or some of them, at least) fundamentally different from Christopher Hitchens' friends from the good old days, and who is to say that we should not deal with them (some of them, at least) in a similar way? And if terrorists do seem different in their motivations and tactics, what explains it? Surely not biology (though if this really is the explanation, it's another barrel of monkeys entirely). And if not biology, what?
I suspect that our Age of Terror, as William Saletan intelligently noted the other day, is all about a dissolution of boundaries, mental and physical. A young man in Manchester not even of Arab or Muslim heritage can feel as if "his" people are being oppressed on the sands of Iraq, and connect that oppression, however tenuously, with blowing up an American airliner. This brave new world is indeed terrifying - this latest iteration of Marx's assertion that in the modern world "all that is solid melts into air" is destabilizing and upsetting for us, generations brought up in the reasonably stable political chill of the Cold War.
But thawing out doesn't mean we need despair. Because people can still be good like they always could be bad - it's only our technology that sometimes clouds the issue and makes it hard for us to see. Call it condensation, if you like. So I do wish that Christopher Hitchens would nostalge a little less for the good old days, and turn his considerable intellect and formidable talents to bear on the present and its exigencies. Because we're all getting a little hot under the collar, and it will take all honest people, with sharp minds and good hearts, to clear the air.
Dog days mean big words
August is truly a terrible month, particularly in the realm of the mass media. Take for instance radio hosts - with the CBC's on-air talent pool already looking a little brackish at the best of times, it only takes a few vacation-motivated desertions for the Mothercorp to start stinking up the airwaves worse than the Long Island Sound during a garbage strike.
But at least the CBC occasionally aspires to quality in broadcasting. Not so CNN, whose descent into a tacky clearinghouse of popular superstitions, right-wing nostrums and trashy inanities has occasionally made even that tedious cesspool that is CTV News look good.
For instance: not only is the "which celebrity is gay?" story about as hackneyed as Reagonomics, but what does it say about the prejudices, vacuity, and sheer unadulterated ignorance of not just the American people but the American journalistic corps when a story that snidely suggests that Rosie O'Donnell "wears her homosexuality like a badge of honour" is worthy of the front page? I suppose that anyone who's gay in America has a big invisible neon sign hanging over their their crotch that only straight people can see? Or is the mere iteration of a sexuality even marginally different from that peddled by the mass-marketed, patriarchal and poisonously consumerist mainstream so threatening to conservative North America that its existence must be qualified, exposed and explained away, archived into a little box of paradoxically ignorant awareness?
In certain circles (the Toronto Star, Fab Magazine and elsewhere) the question has been asked more than once in the past year: why is there such a distressing homogeniety in the characterizations of gays and lesbians on network television, so distinct a lack of original queer stories in the the mainstream cinema (pace, Annie Proulx, Felicity Huffman et. al - last year was a good one, but we still didn't win Best Picture), so few "out" entertainers, and almost no gay politicians at all?
Why? In the minds of some, the only "real" fags are bitchy dykes like Rosie O'Donnell and poncy queens like Lance Bass - people who 'wear the homosexuality like a badge of honour' because the're forced by their overweening "otherness" to explain their deviation from (or conformity to?) societal norms in a way society understands - that deviance can then be seen for what it is believed to be, and treated as such. In the minds of some, to be a homosexual is to be what it has been (at least in the United States cultural mythos) for a hundred years: a failed man and freak if a woman, and a half-woman and clown if a man. And it's not hard to see what's homologous about those two extremes.
I hadn't intended to get quite this involved with something so apparently trivial as an Entertainment Tonight fluff piece; but CNN's boorishness is disturbing precisely because it's so banal, so absent-minded. I was astonishingly lucky, in some respects at least, to grow up in a cocoon of relative sexual isolation. Thanks in part to parental reserve and in part to my own innate reticence, I didn't know much about homosexuality until the Internet revealed to me at around thirteen (one way or another) that my sexuality was neither universal nor unique. If I didn't have any positive gay role models at an early age, I also managed to avoid developing feelings of guilt, anxiety or depression about being a fag - by the time I understood that my crush on a boy in Grade 1 (props to you Mark, if you're out there) or my urge to marry Jonathan Brandis in Grade 4 weren't isolated incidents, I hadn't had to face the kind of white noise of bigotry that so many North American kids still experience in their daily lives.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as mollycoddled as I was. The kids out there who know what a fag is by the age of five (to wit: something you don't want to be) and who grow up listening to a concert of "don't be a fag, man," "dude, that's so gay," and "man, don't be such a pansy," desperately need exposure to queer role models of all shapes, sizes, and degrees of fabulousness. They need exposure to public figures who do "wear their sexuality as a badge of honour" - Ellen DeGeneris is great, but we need about 100 of her ilk, and fast.
Canadians are more fortunate than our southern neighbors (as we are on most queer issues) in that we do have some prominent gays and lesbians to look up to. Look at the Mark Tewskberys and George Smithermans of the world, or the K.D. Langs and Libby Davies'. Yet the fact remains that until the purveyors of our mass culture, the moguls and marketing departments in Burbank and Newark and Denver and Miami , decide it's in their interest to portray queers as they truly are - as diverse and fascinating as ordinary folk - LGBTQ youth in Canada as well as in the United States will continue to lose out on a key weapon in the fight for not just tolerance, but acceptance: to have the public look at a fluff piece about who's gay and who's straight and laugh at it for its anachronism, not its content.
But at least the CBC occasionally aspires to quality in broadcasting. Not so CNN, whose descent into a tacky clearinghouse of popular superstitions, right-wing nostrums and trashy inanities has occasionally made even that tedious cesspool that is CTV News look good.
For instance: not only is the "which celebrity is gay?" story about as hackneyed as Reagonomics, but what does it say about the prejudices, vacuity, and sheer unadulterated ignorance of not just the American people but the American journalistic corps when a story that snidely suggests that Rosie O'Donnell "wears her homosexuality like a badge of honour" is worthy of the front page? I suppose that anyone who's gay in America has a big invisible neon sign hanging over their their crotch that only straight people can see? Or is the mere iteration of a sexuality even marginally different from that peddled by the mass-marketed, patriarchal and poisonously consumerist mainstream so threatening to conservative North America that its existence must be qualified, exposed and explained away, archived into a little box of paradoxically ignorant awareness?
In certain circles (the Toronto Star, Fab Magazine and elsewhere) the question has been asked more than once in the past year: why is there such a distressing homogeniety in the characterizations of gays and lesbians on network television, so distinct a lack of original queer stories in the the mainstream cinema (pace, Annie Proulx, Felicity Huffman et. al - last year was a good one, but we still didn't win Best Picture), so few "out" entertainers, and almost no gay politicians at all?
Why? In the minds of some, the only "real" fags are bitchy dykes like Rosie O'Donnell and poncy queens like Lance Bass - people who 'wear the homosexuality like a badge of honour' because the're forced by their overweening "otherness" to explain their deviation from (or conformity to?) societal norms in a way society understands - that deviance can then be seen for what it is believed to be, and treated as such. In the minds of some, to be a homosexual is to be what it has been (at least in the United States cultural mythos) for a hundred years: a failed man and freak if a woman, and a half-woman and clown if a man. And it's not hard to see what's homologous about those two extremes.
I hadn't intended to get quite this involved with something so apparently trivial as an Entertainment Tonight fluff piece; but CNN's boorishness is disturbing precisely because it's so banal, so absent-minded. I was astonishingly lucky, in some respects at least, to grow up in a cocoon of relative sexual isolation. Thanks in part to parental reserve and in part to my own innate reticence, I didn't know much about homosexuality until the Internet revealed to me at around thirteen (one way or another) that my sexuality was neither universal nor unique. If I didn't have any positive gay role models at an early age, I also managed to avoid developing feelings of guilt, anxiety or depression about being a fag - by the time I understood that my crush on a boy in Grade 1 (props to you Mark, if you're out there) or my urge to marry Jonathan Brandis in Grade 4 weren't isolated incidents, I hadn't had to face the kind of white noise of bigotry that so many North American kids still experience in their daily lives.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as mollycoddled as I was. The kids out there who know what a fag is by the age of five (to wit: something you don't want to be) and who grow up listening to a concert of "don't be a fag, man," "dude, that's so gay," and "man, don't be such a pansy," desperately need exposure to queer role models of all shapes, sizes, and degrees of fabulousness. They need exposure to public figures who do "wear their sexuality as a badge of honour" - Ellen DeGeneris is great, but we need about 100 of her ilk, and fast.
Canadians are more fortunate than our southern neighbors (as we are on most queer issues) in that we do have some prominent gays and lesbians to look up to. Look at the Mark Tewskberys and George Smithermans of the world, or the K.D. Langs and Libby Davies'. Yet the fact remains that until the purveyors of our mass culture, the moguls and marketing departments in Burbank and Newark and Denver and Miami , decide it's in their interest to portray queers as they truly are - as diverse and fascinating as ordinary folk - LGBTQ youth in Canada as well as in the United States will continue to lose out on a key weapon in the fight for not just tolerance, but acceptance: to have the public look at a fluff piece about who's gay and who's straight and laugh at it for its anachronism, not its content.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Screw this, I'm writing what I want
My small cadre of loyal readers may have noticed that there's been a distinct lull in blog posting of late. This is attributable to three factors:
a) I have been busy, and Paul was making fun of me for posting at work
b) Most of the things I feel inclined to write about are not things that go over well in the delicate world of online chitchat
c) People kept complaining that my posts were too long, and that there were too many embedded links.
I know I have complained before about the exigencies of the online reading public before. I promise that this is the last time. Because from now on, I'm writing whatever comes naturally. In the words of my brother, screw all y'all.
a) I have been busy, and Paul was making fun of me for posting at work
b) Most of the things I feel inclined to write about are not things that go over well in the delicate world of online chitchat
c) People kept complaining that my posts were too long, and that there were too many embedded links.
I know I have complained before about the exigencies of the online reading public before. I promise that this is the last time. Because from now on, I'm writing whatever comes naturally. In the words of my brother, screw all y'all.
Green Light
I find myself in a dilemma - I very rarely ever feel inclined to blog about anything light. Most of the things that move me to write these days are not things that I'm inclined to face in print, at least not in a form anywhere near as direct as my own words.
However, note William Saletan's fine piece on the age of terror. Will Saletan claims we now live in a "liquid" world, one in which certainty comes only from believing that a higher purpose will prevail despite personal sacrifice. But this theme's nothing new: as Karl Marx noted, in the modern world, "all that is solid melts into air."
So we soldier on, boats against the current, bourn back ceaselessly into the past.
However, note William Saletan's fine piece on the age of terror. Will Saletan claims we now live in a "liquid" world, one in which certainty comes only from believing that a higher purpose will prevail despite personal sacrifice. But this theme's nothing new: as Karl Marx noted, in the modern world, "all that is solid melts into air."
So we soldier on, boats against the current, bourn back ceaselessly into the past.
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