Here's the thing. A lot of important Guelph issues are really complex. And to understand them we need more than "sound bites" and knee-jerk ideology. The Guelph Back-Grounder is a place where people can read the background information that explains why things are the way they are, and, the complex issues that people have to negotiate if they want to make Guelph a better city. No anger, just the facts.
Eric Bannerman thought he was a pretty ordinary guy who wanted pretty
much the same as anyone else. He’d worked hard on his family farm
until he was old enough to leave home, then his uncle had got him a
job working for the town on the road crew. That had been OK until
that dam n*gg*r supervisor had caught him syphoning diesel out of his
grader into his pickup. Everyone else did it---or would if they were
smart enough to think of it. It was practically one of the benefits
of the job. That damn idjit should have known that. Would have known
it if he’d been hired from the drivers instead of being transferred
from city hall. He’d obviously been part of a quota hire---all he
knew about was working spread sheets and enforcing the rules. Damn
sp**r ch*ck*r had never gotten his hands dirty in his whole life---he
always wore a suit and tie, for shit’s sake. Damn his black hide.
After he lost the job working for the township, he’d had a Hell of
a time trying to find another one. The mine had closed down because
the damn tree-huggers complained about the tailings killing all the
fish downstream. Yeah, he missed being able to fish as much as anyone
else---but “a job’s a job”. That was something both his mom and
dad pounded into his head from a very young age. As long as the money
comes in, you get’r done! He got the odd day or two of work helping
out on farms and little moving jobs with his pickup, but that didn’t
do much more than pay for beer and gas. He’d have been SOL if he
hadn’t been able to stay at the parent’s place.
His older brother had taken over the family farm, and he helped out
with the chores and such---but there really wasn’t enough coming in
to support two families. That meant he was welcome to stay when he
had too, and his help was appreciated---but it was no substitute for
a job and place of his own.
The only thing that really kept it together for him was the Dancin
Folz. He’d been at a flea market where a fellow selling guns out
the trunk of his car got talking to him about hard times. When it
came out that he blamed a n*gg*r for getting fired from his job, the
fellow asked him “Why get upset about the n*gg*r in the road crew
office when we had one in the White House and still have lots in
Congress?” Eric admitted that the fellow had a point, but opined
that there was bugger-all hard-working ‘fly over’ types like the
two of them could ever do to change things. “The elites on the
coasts run everything---people like us haven’t got a chance.” The
fellow understood the sentiment, but asked if he’d be interested in
learning how he could get involved in something that really could
make difference? If he did, he wanted Bannerman’s name, address,
and, cell phone number. The idea was that there were a group of
people working on changing things for people like him, but they
wanted to check him out. If he seemed OK, they’d text an invite to
their next meeting.
On a whim, Eric said OK and gave him the contact info. He must have
‘checked out’, because a month later he got a text invite and met
some other guys at an abandoned one-room school house off a back side
road. There was a short talk about how the country was going down
hill, but mostly there was just a rifle range out back that people
used for a little target practice. After that, there were some
burgers on a barbeque and a case of beer. After this first
introduction, Eric decided that he liked these guys. The feeling was
mutual. At the next meeting they told him that they were the local
chapter of the Dancin Folz, and they’d be happy to have him join.
Again, the feeling was mutual.
&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
In the midst of the surprisingly popular support for Ukraine's struggle against Putin's invasion, there has been a minority opinion expressed that NATO has brought this upon Ukraine because it foolishly expanded to include a great many of the old Warsaw pact nations. This point of view is espoused by a group of foreign policy analysts who are generally described as "realists". I thought that this moment in world history might be a good time to talk about this tendency, which extends beyond foreign policy and also includes a school of political theory and which I often hear applied to a great many other issues---including the Climate Emergency.
The best example of this debate that I could quickly find on line was a panel discussion on TVO which pitted two realists against two (for want of a better term) "idealists".
The above discussion, while interesting, is quite long. So I've edited out what seemed to me to be the best concise definition the realist position that I've seen.
I tried to get a copy of the article that Steve Paikin is quoting, but Foreign Policyhas a significant paywall and the article is too new for it to be up on SciHub or any of the other "work arounds" that journalists without deep pockets use to access academic writing. But the title is worth quoting, because it is evocative of the realist position: Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis.
Another classic way of describing the realist viewpoint is through the saying to the effect that "Countries do not have friends or enemies, they only have interests". The idea with regard to Ukraine is that no matter how much we like its citizens, we shouldn't help them unless we get something important out of the deal or at least risk nothing in the process. Unfortunately, we foolishly helped countries like Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Baltic States, etc, join NATO and as a result have goaded Russia into invading Ukraine. Obviously, we were fools to do this because the cost we are now paying is nowhere near the "benefits" we have received.
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This op ed took a lot of work. I want people of all incomes to read what I write, so it won't go behind a pay wall. But if you can afford it, why not subscribe? Pay Pal and Patreon make it easy to do.
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I wouldn't be interested in this except for the fact that "realism" also exists outside of the foreign policy sphere. There are also environmental "realists". These are the people who oppose any move towards reducing our dependency on the automobile by saying "get real---people are always going to be driving cars". They also pop up in debates about dealing the Climate Emergency---"get real---we are always going to have to use oil".
I have also come across it in politics. When I was organizing the Greens in Guelph I was repeatedly approached by people who asked "why bother starting something new? you can just join the Liberals and work from the inside". The idea in both cases is that there is absolutely no sense at all trying to change anything substantially, because it simply won't ever work.
There's also another type of "realism" that I came across in one of the few Political Science courses I took at university. I won't mention the professor who taught the course (if you can't say anything good about someone---), but if memory serves the text was written by a fellow named Leo Strauss. Whomever it was, he was certainly a "realist" in terms of politics.
What I remember from this book was the author's attempts to convince the reader that there was absolutely no room at all for ethics in politics. In fact, he argued that whenever necessary politicians should lie to voters because the average citizen is simply too ill-informed and stupid to realize their own best interests. Moreover, he believed that politicians shouldn't be drawn from ordinary citizens but rather from an elite with specialized knowledge about the complexities of government.
This guy was a successful professor at an elite American university---Chicago---and I seem to recall that several of the students that studied directly under him as graduates ended up being the brains trust behind George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. Those guys certainly seemed to have thought that they were members of a self-styled "elite" and had no qualms at all about lying to the public about why they invaded Iraq.
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The above examples have several things in common.
First of all, the arguments in favour of "realism" aren't arguments at all, they are just assertions. A moment's reflection should be enough for most reasonable people to understand just how flimsy all these "realist" positions really are.
Consider the "people will always use cars" argument. It's probably true that there will always be a small number of personal use transportation devices. But that's not a response to the issues raised by transportation activists and environmentalists. Those people don't generally want all cars banned, they want cities to stop building everything around cars and instead build pedestrian and transit-friendly communities. So the best you can say about this assertion is that it has an implied straw man argument---which is also fallacious reasoning.
The "we'll always need oil" can be seen the same way. We may need to continue to use oil as feed stock for things like making a small amount of products like plastic and drugs. But that's not the same thing as saying we need to continue to use it for things like making electricity, powering transportation, heating our homes, etc. So there is the same implied straw man as before.
Moreover, the "realist" position in both cases also totally misses the point that there are catastrophic opportunity costs (ie: runaway climate change and unlivable cities) that come from refusing to get society off its over-dependence on fossil fuels and automobiles. Calling this position "realistic" is totally absurd.
Now let's look at the notion that there's no sense starting a new political party because it won't ever accomplish anything. First, it's important to realize that all political parties tend to start out as not much more than a "gleam in the eye" of their first supporters. This means that the sort of people who start important political movements often cannot be anything else but idealists. Take for example the following example from Canadian history. Do either Balwin or Lafontaine sound like "realists"? If they were, they'd have wormed their way into the "Family Compact" or "Chateau Clique" instead of attempting to drag a British colony into becoming a true democracy.
My experience in politics tells me that "realists" only start sniffing around after the "idealists" have done all the heavy lifting of educating the public about doing things a different way and teaching party members how to start amassing power through elections. That's because "political realists" aren't interested in grassroots education or community organizing---they just want to coast in on the work of others.
Much as it pains me to say it, there's generally no problem with some "realists" moving in and taking over once the idealists have created the machine that will get them elected. It's something like the difference between entrepreneurs versus institutional managers. But there is a real problem when people with a managerial mindset start thinking that there's no reason to have entrepreneurs at all.
At that point the party starts to lose touch with issues that are on the horizon but not immediately obvious to everyone. It also starts losing any real connection with the volunteers it needs to knock on doors and organize campaigns. And when it stops seeing new problems and solutions, and no longer listens to ordinary people, things stagnate. This was the situation with regard to the environment when it was still a huge problem off in the distance. None of the world's major parties were taking it seriously---so idealists started up the Green Parties. The point wasn't to immediately take over government or provide positions in government for "important people"---it was to nudge both society and the other parties into taking the issue more seriously sooner than they would have otherwise.
Political realists like Leo Strauss are another sort of beast. They don't particularly like democracy because they believe ordinary voters are too stupid to know their own best interests. So these thinkers suggest that an elite should lie to them in order to take over the country. In the case of the Iraq invasion, the Straussians lied about Saddam Hussein having "weapons of mass destruction" and suggested that he was responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington on 9/11. They did this because they sought a war that would "shock and awe" the world with US military might and destabilize the Middle East in order to gain more influence over it.
Unfortunately for them, their worldview was flawed, which is why what they actually did was lower US prestige by getting involved in two asymmetrical "forever wars" that actually diminished US influence or prestige. Moreover, these conflicts destabilized the Middle East to the point where militant, fundamentalist Islam is arguably even stronger than it was before.
On the domestic front the Bush administration's adventures resulted in yet more decline in the value of the US government in the eyes of voters. Citizens became even more cynical about whether or not anything any politician says can be trusted. And when you totally destroy all faith a voter has in the political class, they either stop voting at all or stop expecting anyone to tell the truth---or even make sense. At that point, they become perfectly willing to vote for cartoon villains---hence Donald Trump. (Perhaps he's also a member of Strauss's "elite").
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I think that we should also consider the actual case of the invasion of Ukraine. The realist argument is that NATO should have ignored the pleas of the new democracies of the old Warsaw Pact nations and refused them entry into both the European Union and the NATO alliance. That's because no matter who is in charge in Russia, these should always be considered something like "client states" that need to be either allied with Russia or at least neutral. That's because the country---Russia---wants it like this AND THEY HAVE ATOMIC WEAPONS.
There are several problems with this reasoning. First of all, isn't this point of view somewhat akin to deciding that Ukrainian, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Estonians, etc, are not really human beings with rights and aspirations? Secondly, isn't this also a great big message to these countries that they should move heaven-and-earth to get THEIR OWN ATOMIC WEAPONS? (Don't forget that when the Soviet Union split up, Ukraine did have its own atomic weapons---which they gave up in exchange for a promise from Russia that it would never threaten, let alone invade the country.)
I get that the idea that realists don't really care about what happens to the citizens of Eastern European---because they are realists and don't really care about what happens to anyone except the members of the self-appointed elites (ie: the Strauss' grad students) who run the country. But if that's the case, how are they any different from Putin and his Oligarchs?
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There's the problem with the realist position---it's inherently authoritarian and anti-democratic. I for one think that that's good enough reason to not support it. But the historical facts would suggest that the even on it's own terms, the realist framework doesn't work.
If you bully and lie to your population enough you can make them pliable, but it doesn't make them patriotic. And the great lesson that comes out of the Napoleonic wars is that patriotic armies tend to kick the butts of conscript armies made up of cannon fodder. The Ukrainians have fought long and hard for a really democratic form of government, and now that they've recently achieved it, they are fighting like tigers to keep it. Similarly, the other ex-Warsaw pact nations are also willing to fight to keep their versions of it too. And that's why they all wanted to join NATO and the European Union.
In contrast, it seems that few Russians really believe in or want the same vision as Putin. That's why the leadership of his army is filled with opportunists who looted its budget. That's also why so many conscripts are deserting and surrendering. It's why the tires on their trucks fail so often. And it's why their entire strategic plan seems to have been written on a cocktail napkin by some amateur who's had too much to drink.
It's also why the Russian economy is pretty much a fraction of what it should be given the size of the country, population, and, the enormous natural resources it is blessed/cursed with. Consider the fact that it's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is less than both Italy and Canada's---even though it has a much, much larger population, which is reflected in the per capita numbers.
Italy, $1.94 trillion, per capita $32,000
Canada, $1.67 trillion, per capita $44,800
Russia, $1.58 trillion, per capita $10,800
If the European Union is considered a country, it has a GDP of $18,3 trillion and per capita of $46,100. It also HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS, which means that if it wanted to, it could totally out-compete Russia both militarily and economically. Moreover, I have very little doubt that the level of technical sophistication, patriotism, and, professionalism in the European armed forces would result in a complete debacle for Russia if they were ever to fight a conventional war.
Could someone please tell me why Europe and NATO are supposed to be "realistic" about this situation, instead of Putin? Why does he get a "free card" that allows him to not be a "realist"?
I suppose I'll run afoul of Godwin's law, but I'm reminded about some of my historical reading. The Fascists thinkers in the Axis powers in WWII believed that they could win against the democracies because they believed that their elites could hold out longer in bitter struggles than politicians who had to bend to the will of the "fickle" voters. They were wrong, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt explained why in his third inaugural address:
Democracy is not dying. We know it because we have seen it revive—and grow. We know it cannot die—because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise—an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority. We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.
Let me repeat the last line, "democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will". That's why the little army of Ukraine has been able to stop the Russian juggernaut. It has the full force of the entire people of the Ukraine behind it. In contrast, the Russians only have the will of Putin---diffused by a government of crooks and an army of incompetents and cannon fodder.
FDR was certainly not a "realist", and neither should you!
When you follow the "realist" position---you hollow out and weaken your society. And that's why I am not a "realist".
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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
Silver O’Reilly had found a good source in the FBI who was feeding
him information. The Bureau was usually pretty good at controlling
leaks, which probably meant that the higher-ups wanted him to know
about this stuff so he wouldn’t be surprised at future events. He
couldn’t publish any of it without confirmation, and they knew he
and his publisher were too professional to publish the story from “an
anonymous source”. But they wanted O’Reilly to be able to publish
first and “set the tone of reporting” once things became public
knowledge. This was just one of the ways government bureaucrats were
able to exert a little influence on the free press. But in this case
it really did serve the public interest, so he wasn’t too upset
about the obvious manipulation. Moreover, they didn’t know that he
would pass on whatever he learned to the Elders—.
It was pretty explosive information. The FBI was committed to
fighting a covert war against two far-right militias: the “Dancin
Folz” and the “Smart Alecs”.
O’Reilly had vaguely heard about both groups. The Dancin Folz were
a fixture at various protests and demonstrations---ranging from Black
Lives Matter through union drives to Pride Parades. The membership
generally came from what some people called “fly-over country”
where right wing state governments had created a significant legal
tolerance towards the public display of private weaponry. They wore
bright floral-pattern shirts, semi-auto versions of military assault
rifles, “tactical” vests, and hand guns. The word “dancing”
in their name was a coded reference to a race war. And their armed
presence was a show of force aimed at empowering fellow racists and
intimidating minorities and their allies. The floral shirts were a
sick---yet effective---joke aimed at ‘normalizing’ them in the
eyes of the community.
The Smart Alecs were a more urban group that had been started by a
media personality in Canada and spread to American “blue states”
and urban settings. Generally, they filled the gap in Dancing Folz
coverage because more restrictive state gun laws prevented their
attendance in full armament. This didn’t mean that the Smart Alecs
were any less dangerous as they’d been responsible for a fair
number of vicious assaults with clubs and knives. Indeed, to even get
beyond being just a “pledge” individual Smart Aleks had to prove
that they’d been in an actually fight that drew blood with someone
who could be at least loosely described as being “Antifa”. They’d
been declared an actual terrorist organization in their home country,
but were still thriving in America because the relevant statutes had
been specifically written to make it hard to label any group
espousing right-wing opinions “terrorist”.
The FBI had become quite concerned about how much the Dancin Folz and
Smart Alecs had been involved in the January 6th coup
attempt. After some deep research, they became absolutely terrified
when they found out how much support both groups had within municipal
and state police forces, as well as prison guards. In some quarters
it looked like front-line police were actively co-ordinating
campaigns with these groups to stymie attempts at progressive
organizing. One example that illustrated this problem was a Black
Lives Matter protest where a teenager had brought a rifle where the
police were letting the Dancin Folz act as unofficial help. Feeling
empowered, the boy had gotten in over his head in a confrontation and
shot several protesters dead. Because it was an open carry and stand
your ground state, the child had been declared not guilty and had
since become a darling of the right-wing talk circuit.
The Bureau was terrified about the collusion between municipal police
and neo-facist organizations, because there was a direct parallel
between this activity and the creation of the Brown Shirts in NAZI
Germany and the Squadristi in Fascist Italy. Their theorists
explained to the higher ups that the creation of private political
militias is an unmistakable sign of a democracy at risk of being
over-thrown by a dictatorship. The fact that local police were
willing to turn a blind eye to this sort of activity showed that the
rot had set in a lot deeper than they had believed possible.
While gathering as much information as possible, the FBI had also set
up a secret task force plan for a “decapitation campaign” against
these organizations. Until the January 6th coup attempt,
their hands had been tied by the Republicans in Congress, simply
because the GOP considered any racist or authoritarian organizations
to be “natural allies” in electoral politics. This alliance had
been done mostly through dog whistles, winks, and, nods for
decades---but during the Blunt presidency these attempts at
camouflage were increasingly done away with as lawmakers contested
with one another to show more subservience to “punkin head”. Now
that Blunt was in prison, the Bureau felt it was safe to pursue the
sort of ambitious disruptive campaigns that had previously been used
against unions, socialists, native Americans, blacks, etc.
&&&&
Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
I was interested in hearing the Pope's apology to the aboriginal peoples about Catholic involvement in the residential school system. But after I saw it, I came away underwhelmed. I didn't seem to me that this was a statement by a thoughtful man or someone who really understands the meaning of the term "contrition". I thought my readers might be interested in my reasoning, so that's the subject of this post.
First---for those who might want to hear it but haven't yet---here's his address in full, care of the Aboriginal People's Television Network (APTN).
Next, here's a short excerpt that isolates the specific parts that really got me thinking.
Let's start by thinking about that word "tragedy". I know that it's common for people to use it to denote just about anything bad that happens to anyone, but it isn't what the word originally meant. In my judgement, we diminish our understanding of the world by not using the original meaning. In Shakespeare's time, a tragedy was a story of a great person's rise and fall, specifically with regard to how the very qualities that made him great were exactly what led to his fall. I think the word can also be applied to entire peoples, but I believe that it shouldn't be used to describe what has happened to the First Nations, Metis, and, Innuit children in residential schools.What happened to them wasn't a tragedy---it was a crime perpetrated by the powerful against people with very little control over their own lives.
It might be that the Catholic orders administering the residential schools were "merely" accessories to the actions of the government, but accessories are also criminals because they at least have an opportunity to say "no". Moreover, this wasn't just a "one off". The Catholic church is a repeat offender. The sorts of things that were done to aboriginal children also happened to orphans in Newfoundland (remember Mount Cashell?), "naughty girls" in Ireland (how about the Magdalene Laundries?), and, altar boys in parishes all over North America and the world (ever see the movie Spotlight?).
Where the word "tragedy" might accurately be used, however, would be to describe the Roman Catholic church itself. That's because even though many, many people of good will are members of it, it seems incapable of protecting the children that have been placed under its care. Why is that? I'd suggest that it isn't because of the moral failings of individuals, but rather because of deep flaws that are inherent in the structure of the institution itself and the teachings it holds dear. (That's the sort of thing I believe Shakespeare was getting at in those plays of his we call "tragedies".)
What could those flaws be? Well, one of them could be the way the church apes the old Roman Empire. Most people probably don't know this, but one of the names that the Pope uses is "Pontifex Maximus" (Latin for "greatest priest") and that was a title of an officer from the old Roman Republic. One that---starting with Augustus Caesar---became part of the formal list of titles used by Roman Emperors. The Pope isn't just---or even primarily---a religious leader, he's also the Emperor of an ancient political organization.And, I cannot help but think that a lot of the problems that we see in the church come about when the political need to protect the institution conflict with and overcome the spiritual needs of basic human decency.
And that's how people need to see the apology that he's given to the aboriginal peoples of Canada. What he offered was a diplomatic response to a moral question. That's why dragging children off to the residential schools was described as a "tragedy" instead of being a crime. The way modern people use the word "tragedy" seems to mean anything bad that happens to innocent people. That leaves aside the issue of human guilt. It may be that there is also human culpability, but it could also free from it---like if an meteor came crashing down on a city. And that's what I thought about the Pope's "apology", it really seemed like he was describing something that "just happened" to the aboriginal people's of Canada---not something the his organization was deeply involved with.
In contrast, what we call "crimes" involve human agency. The church freely chose to participate in the residential school system. Church officials decided that they knew better than these children's families and sent their minions out to find the children and drag them out of their community. And once they were there, other officials decided how much to spend per student, how much medical care they would receive, and, where to bury their bodies when they succumbed to their mistreatment. And the last thing that the Pope wants to do is admit punk and plain that the church has committed crimes against children.
A truly honest, spiritual, and, moral response to the delegation would have involved Pope Francis publicly admitting that there is something rotten at the heart of the church and asking the question "What is it about church teaching and ecclesiastic organization that results in our inability to respond genuinely to complaints that we are abusing children?" That is what real contrition looks like. It's hard to do and requires really heavy-duty soul searching. Nowhere in Francis' apology do I hear a hint of this sort of self-analysis or soul-searching. Instead, I heard a diplomat make general comments about something bad having happened. Once again, the Roman Catholic church was just an innocent bystander when someone "in an office" (presumably not even a clerical one) made bad decisions.
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This was a pig of an article to write. It involved a lot of research, learning a new video-editing program, and, deep soul-searching on my part. (I know that what I write here may deeply offend many people.) But I believe it needs to be said, and if I don't write this sort of thing, no one will. That's because the mainstream media is a business, and businesses don't prosper by telling subscribers what they might not want to hear. If you happen to think this sort of thing needs to be written---and you can afford it---why not subscribe? Patreon and Pay Pal make it easy to do.
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People might say that this is asking too much of the church. Nonsense. There are modern examples of societies that have gone through acts of real contrition and soul-searching. Take the example of modern Germany. It actually admitted it's collective guilt and showed what most people consider real contrition towards the people it horribly wronged under the NAZI regime. In an article on the subject from Johns Hopkins Magazine Joanna Neborsky interviewed Lily Gardner Feldman---a scholar at Johns Hopkins who has studied this issue for 40 years.
"Germany's ongoing relationship with Israel is unique, Gardner Feldman says, but one can see similar reconciliatory themes, approaches, and patterns through Germany's relations with its other former enemies. In her book, she argues that the "cornerstone, perhaps the very definition, of German foreign policy after World War II became, progressively, reconciliation." Germany had to reconcile with the countries and people it had attacked, occupied, and slaughtered during a brutal six years of war and destruction. Gardner Feldman examined all German chancellors from Adenauer to Merkel and found a common strain: an imperative to repay a deep moral debt."
How this happened was through deep soul-searching on the part of the German government. That deep reflection resulted in actions that showed the depth of guilt that if felt for the crimes of the German people.
it paid significant reparations to Israel
negotiated strong treaties of friendship with both France and Poland
made teaching the Holocaust a core part of the public education system
showed through sincere, symbolic gestures that the German leadership really did feel a sense of shame and guilt for the past behaviour of the German nation
The last point bears significant importance. Consider the following images. These are permanent memorials aimed at reminding citizens of the crimes perpetuated by Germans under the NAZI regime.
The Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
The Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism, Berlin.
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma People Persecuted Under National Socialism, Berlin.
"Stolpersteine" or "Stumbling Blocks", that memorialize the last known address of an individual, named Holocaust victim. Over 7,000 exist in Berlin, but they have spread across Europe, where over 60,000 now exist in 21 countries.
Here's another memorial, but it isn't in Germany, but rather Poland. It commemorates a spontaneous, unscripted act of contrition by a German Chancellor, Willi Brandt.
Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons, photo by Szczebrzeszynski.
Willi Brandt was the Chancellor of Germany. He had escaped to Sweden after the NAZIs took power, and worked as a leftist journalist during war. (Indeed, his original name was Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm---he adopted the other name to help hide from agents of the German secret police.) He had zero personal responsibility for the Holocaust. But as a post-war leader of the country, he felt a genuine sense of responsibility for the horrors done in its name. In 1970 he came to Poland to sign an agreement that renounced permanently any German claims to Polish territory. As part of this he came to lay a wreathe at The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw. Afterwards he spontaneously dropped to his knees for silent reflection in a gesture that the majority of those present felt reflected genuine emotion.
Here's a photo of the event. It had such an impact that it even has it's own title: "The Warsaw Genuflection".
Will we see something like this act of Contrition from the Catholic church? Will it freely give significant financial restitution to the First Nations, Metis, and, Inuit of Canada? Will it undertake to teach all Catholics of the horrible way that the Church has treated innocent children under it's care? Will it create monuments within the seats of Catholic power showing the depth of contrition towards it's own victims? For example, could Pope Francis order that the painting below be prominently and permanently placed on display in St. Peter's Basilica?
How a First Nation's artist understands the crime perpetuated by the Catholic Church. Kent Monkman'sThe Scream, 2017.
Will Pope Paul throw away all the pomp and dignity that comes with his office and humbly beg forgiveness from church elders the way Willi Brandt did with the Warsaw Genuflection?
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The next point in the short excerpt of the longer apology I want to focus on has to do with his phrase "ideological colonization". I'd never heard it before and I wondered what Francis was talking about. Luckily, in this day and age it's relatively easy to do a search of the Web to find out what a weird turn of phrase could mean. And what I found was surprising, to say the least.
It turns out that Francis uses "ideological colonization" to describe when a country offers aid to another but puts stipulations on it. Specifically, he's referring to European aid that says to a country "you don't get the help unless you use part of the money to offer birth control and safe therapeutic abortions to women so they don't have to carry unwanted children to term". So, in effect, when a group of people come to the Pope to complain about how their children were horribly abused, he felt compelled to get in yet one more dig against abortion and birth control.
The evidence I found for this comes from a statement that the Vatican on January 10th of 2022 titled ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS ACCREDITED TO THE HOLY SEE.
This is part of the tragedy that is Roman Catholicism. It is obsessed by trivialities while ignoring the beams of oppression hanging from its empty moral eye sockets. Even if there were a defensible argument to say that abortion is murder and birth control "anti-life", it is tremendously wrong of the pontiff to be thinking about abortion, birth control, and, foreign aid when he is supposed to be apologizing for a terrible crime that the church has committed against children---one that has been repeated over, and over again in other communities too.
It's like any other bully who gets called to task for some offense and is ordered by a higher up to apologize to the victim, but is so obsessed by his petty personal obsessions that he drifts into complaining about something else before he can even finish the so-called apology.
&&&&
What's truly galling about this reference to "ideological colonialism" is I cannot think of a worse perpetrator of this than the Catholic church itself. Forcing it's ideas onto other cultures is what the church has been in the business of doing since it stopped hiding in the catacombs and became the official religion of Rome. Just what the Hell is missionary work supposed to be but "ideological colonialization"? Has the Pope never heard of the long history of charity support given as a "quid pro quo" for conversion to Christianity (that's what's known as a "rice Christian")? Has he never heard about the British forcing China to allow missionaries in their country at gunpoint (along with capitalism and opium) after the First and Second Opium Wars? Or the Pueblo Revolt against Roman Catholicism being imposed at gun point in New Mexico?
Pope Francis is exactly spot on to mention "cancel culture" in his marching orders to papal diplomats. Just as "cancel culture" is what people of privilege call it when the "nobodies" call them out for their outrageous behaviour. It's pretty much the same thing when other nations of the world tell him "you don't get to define 'the natural foundations of humanity'".
&&&&
This gets back to why I think that the Roman Catholic church is a tragic organization, even though I believe that what happened to the First Nations, Metis, and, Inuit was just a crime. Besides being modeled on the extremely hierarchical Roman Imperial system, there is another fatal and tragic flaw at the root of the Papal system: historical revelation. By this I mean the basic foundation of Christianity as most people understand it.
Years ago I saw short clip on tv where a First Nation's medicine person explained the difference between what he called "revealed religion" and "inspired religion". As he defined the terms, a revealed religion is based on someone's claims about what happened a long time ago. Since people nowadays can only go on what was written down and what other people have told him, they simply have to accept what they are told. In other words, the religion is based on "faith". In contrast, an inspired religion is based on what a person learns about life after looking inside and at the world around her. This means the core is knowledge based on direct personal experience.
Of course it's a lot more complicated than that simple statement would imply. Revealed religions have practices that allow some people to promote experiences too---but they tend to have very harsh penalties for anyone who believes that she has learned things that contradict what the authorities believe to be true. Similarly, inspired religions have respected teachers who give advice---but ideally this should only be taken provisionally until someone has their own direct experiences themselves.
The old world of Imperial Rome and the absolute monarchies was based on the idea of revelation. You believed what you believed mostly on what someone else told you---either directly or from reading an ancient book. If you disagreed strenuously enough, well, ultimately there was torture and execution.
But the modern world doesn't act that way. It is based on inspiration and evidence. If someone comes up with a good argument with solid evidence they try to explain it to people and see if they also think it's a good idea too. That's how our democratic governments work. It's how science works too---that's how we got the vaccines for Covid and it's how the computer you are reading this article with was designed.
A religion based on revelation has to find some way to convince people that what they are saying is true. And since they don't have rational arguments with convincing proof, they have to fall back on what the Pope calls "ideological colonialism", and which I believe the Roman Catholic church has used during it's entire history to spread "the faith". And that's exactly what the problem with the residential school system was all about. The church was absolutely sure that it was right---but had no way to prove it using logical arguments or evidence, so they tried to bludgeon it into the children. And in the process, they did terrible harm to both individuals and entire cultures.
That's the second part of the tragedy that is the Roman Catholic church. It has the allegiance of many, many genuinely good people. But it gets that support by requiring that they believe in a worldview that cannot be justified by anything approaching proper evidence. And, if it cannot get that support, it becomes infuriated by anyone who calls them on their bullshit. That's when the "gloves come off" and that's when the unmarked graves get dug.
There are many parts of the Gospels that have wonderful teachings that the human race would benefit greatly from following. There are also many wonderful members of the church who've devoted their lives to making the world a better place. But there are good teachings in lots of books, and good people everywhere. And the forces that have been harnessed to create and sustain the Catholic institutions are based on are incompatible with an enlightened, decent world.
&&&&
Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
“The second item on the list is ‘deduction’. The best way to
understand this is to think about Sherlock Holmes. He’s the guy
everyone knows who uses it to solve his crimes. It’s very simple,
really. You just pay attention to all the little details that you can
notice about the person you are talking with. Do they have soft,
clean hands? Or are they calloused, stained, and hard? If they are
former, odds are they don’t do physical labour to make a
living---if the latter, they probably do. If you are observent
enough, you can often deduce a fair amount of information about a
person simply by paying attention and figuring out what they imply.
Since most people never do this, it can make you look like you have
access to some sort of occult power.”
“Choosing the
right person simply means that you try to figure out exactly what
sort of person is in front of you and making a quick decision about
whether or not they would be succeptible to being cold read. There’s
a big difference between cold reading someone with a tendency towards
New Age beliefs versus someone who’s a card-carrying member of the
American Skeptics society.”
“A good stage
mentalist can help sort things out in a variety of ways. It can be as
simple as having ‘helpers’ in the audience listen to the
conversations of the people around them and recommend people that
sound susceptible to go up on the stage. Or they can use deduction
and decide based on people’s clothing---someone wearing an New Age
symbol---like a Yin Yang---might be assumed to be a ‘soft target’.”
(Nate was suddenly
acutely aware of the taiji ring on his left hand.)
“Barnum
statements” are vague statements that can apply to most of the
human population but get directed to a specific individual. This is
where good deduction and choosing the right person can give the
mentalist some general ideas about the person in front of them, and
then seeing how they respond to a Barnum statement will help then
zero in more. Newspaper horoscopes generally consist of Barnum
statements such as It could be easy to get offended or take
something personally today. Before you react, take a moment to cool
off. The issue might not be that serious.”
Sally harumpffed and opined “I don’t know about you, but it’s
easy for me to ‘get offended or take something personally’ just
about every day. And taking moment to cool off is pretty good advice
all the time. And that’s the point, Barnum statements apply to
everyone---which means they are of real value to no one. But the
naive person can totally miss this fact.”
“The next items in the toolbox are recapitulation and
regurgitation. People will often tell you things about themselves and
forget that they did it. All you have to do is keep track of what
they tell you, and give it back to them later on. Lots of time that’s
enough to sound like a psychic to some folks. This is especially true
to someone who is used to not being listened to. And let me tell you,
that includes a LOT of people, including most women.”
“Ouch!”, Nate visibly winced.
“The next tool is ‘changing your meaning’. That involves making
words ‘plastic’ or ‘rubbery’ when necessary. This is
dramatically helped when you use ‘weasel words’ on a regular
basis. For example, I once read an air-quality brochure for a
photocopier that said ‘this machine doesn’t affect air quality
for normal usuage with adequate ventilation’. What the heck is
‘normal usuage’ and ‘adequate ventilation’? Pretty much
whatever management wants it to mean, I’d suggest. Mentalists doing
cold reading use this sort of ‘vague speak’ all the time.”
“It really goes a long way to reinforce the credibility of a cold
reading if the mentalist can toss in a ‘guaranteed statement’.
This is a dangerous maneuvor, but if he or she is absolutely sure
about something and can drop it at the right time, it can pretty much
wipe away all skepticism. This is the sort of thing that having
helpers doing research ahead of time can really make or break. For
example, if someone mentions to the person next to them that they
just went to a friend’s funeral, and that person died of a
stroke---a helper who overhears can tell the mentalist. Then the
mentalist can then ask the question ‘has someone close to you died
recently of something like a heart attack---no, maybe a stroke?”
“This leads to the final technique: never taking full
responsibility. People doing cold readings are going to have
misfires. When this happens they have to have some sort of “out”
that will allow them to keep the support of the crowd. The standard
way of doing this is to have some sort of ‘wiggle room’. One way
of doing this is to say that there is a disturbance in the ‘vibes’
of the audience---which creates a sort of psychic ‘static’ or
‘degraded receptivity’. Another would be to say that the usual
spirit who speaks to her is missing, and she’s working with someone
new who isn’t as good at communication with the living. That sort
of thing. If she makes a mistake, then, it boils down to a
communication error. Then she can come up with something on the
fly---like ‘oh it’s difficult for spirits to understand the lower
dimensions because they live in ‘non-linear time’ or
‘multi-dimensional space’.”
At this point Sally changed lanes. “I want a cup of coffee and a
donut. I suggest you have something too. It’s going to be a long
night.” She signaled and turned on an En Route. They go out of the
car and headed for a local chain restaurant with abysmal coffee and
terrible confectionary bombs---but clean toilets.
&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
As part of my second career as a journalist, I've become something of a collector of business cards. One day while at the Farmer's Market I bumped into someone I'd never met before and we had a brief conversation about Saint Louis Missouri (she'd noticed I was using a shopping bag promoting that city's excellent library). She mentioned that she'd published a novel and I asked for and received a card. Eventually I emailed her and got a review copy of Evidence of Uncertain Origin---which turned out to be an engaging "whodunit" set in Montreal during the October Crisis of 1970.
Soldier guarding buildings in Montreal, 1970. Image from Royal Montreal Regiment website, originally from the Toronto Star (used under Fair Dealing).
The result of the affair was a collective decision by both Anglos and Francophones that there are better mechanisms for dealing with the legitimate grievances of the population---which led to the election of leaders like Rene Levesque and the introduction of various regulations aimed at both allowing French Canadians to be "masters of their own home" and at the same time, more welcome in the rest of Canada.
I'll let Trudeau himself explain one key part of this. (If he seems a bit heated, it's because this was a very controversial project at the time, and fought against by many small "c" conservatives.)
People of good will sometimes say that Trudeau over-reacted when he brought in the War Measures Act, but I suspect that they don't understand the mood of the country at the time. Leading up to this event, radical Quebec separatists had been raiding militia armouries and construction sites to steal weapons and explosives. (If memory serves, when I was researching another story in the Mercury archives I read that Guelph's militia unit had some of it's inventory sent to Camp Borden where it could be better guarded.) I can only imagine what would happen today if some organization---the Proud Boys or Black Lives Matter maybe---started raiding militia armouries to steal weapons!
Having said that, there does seem to have been something of a paranoid reaction by the police in some ways. For example, the Ontarion (the University of Guelph student newspaper) attempted to publish the FLQ manifesto, but local police prevented it on suspicion that this constituted "sedition" under the War Measures Act. But while people will no doubt take refuge in the "slippery slope" fallacy, the salient points to remember are that the federal and Quebec provincial governments didn't really know how big a problem they were facing and in the long term no one ended-up in a Canadian version of the Gulag.
&&&&
I put a lot of work into these articles. I want them to always be free to whomever wants to read them. But the workman is worth his wages. So if you can afford it, why not subscribe? Patreon and Pay Pal make it easy to do.
&&&&
Evidence of Uncertain Origins brings all this context to bear on the lives of two Anglo Quebec sisters---Sondra and Kit---who are dealing with the death of their grandfather. Nikki Everts brings in the political background, but it is closely entwined with the family issues. In this book the "personal is the political" and the "political gets personal".
Nikki Everts in a photo series that look suspiciously like a mug shot---. Images provided by the author.
Sondra is happily married with two children, but she has a history of being somewhat mentally fragile. She's much more "in tune" with her instincts and believes that she's had a visitation by grand-dad in a dream which points to his having been murdered. Kit is much more scientifically-inclined and is concerned that Sondra is sliding back into depression and worse. She's left Montreal and now lives in Hamilton where her husband, Paul, is studying medicine at McMaster. Kit is toiling away at a job she loathes to support him and is afraid she's following in her mother's foot-steps, who eventually became so unhappy from playing second-fiddle to Kit's father's career (he too is a doctor) that she descended into alcoholism, leaving Gramps and Grandma to raise them instead of her. As the mystery gets solved and Quebec politics becomes more intrusive in their lives, her commitment to the marriage unravels.
In conversation, Everts freely admits that she sees a parallel between Kit's marital problems and the issues threatening the break-up of Canada. As well, the story also brings in other issues that were "in the air" at the time. For example, two of the minor characters turn out to be gay lovers who were upset about Gramps' self-righteous homophobia. (It was so early in that issue's progress that Sondra and Kit both are startled to realize that their grandfather's prejudice was a real "issue".)
&&&&
I can't get too much more into the plot for fear of giving it all away (it is a mystery, after all), but I can offer a few further general points.
Several people with more insight than me have pointed out that human beings seem to be hard-wired to learn from stories rather than catalogues of facts. Everts has written a book that explains to younger people what it felt like to be living in Quebec at this time. To cite two examples, it points out how central CBC radio was to a certain segment of the population. It also has Kit describe the chemical composition of cat pee that makes it so pungent---which gives us a glimpse into her scientific mind and also a "whiff" of life in a run-down apartment in the urban core.
In an interview, Everts told me that during the time of the novel she had just emigrated to Quebec from California. She lived on a farm in the countryside not far from Montreal, but I suspect that as a university graduate (microbiology) she was interested in finding out all she could about the exotic new country she found herself in. And at the time, Quebec nationalism would have absolutely dominated both print media and the CBC.
As just an ordinary person without any connection to the "movers and shakers", Everts probably lacked any "inside dope". But this was probably more than sufficiently compensated by the new immigrants hyper-sensitivity to the differences she found around her. (For example, she told me that she was surprised---in a good way---that the Canadian establishment was willing to negotiate with the FLQ cell, allow some members to escape to Cuba, and, then years later allowed them to return to Quebec. Would this ever be allowed in the USA?) Future historians will no doubt want to read cabinet documents, academic dissertations, and, newspaper articles from the time. But they will also need to read first-hand accounts and fiction written by people who lived through the events in order to get a feel for how ordinary people experienced them. I think that Evidence of Uncertain Origins is a useful addition to this literature.
&&&&
I've taken on writing these book reviews because I think it's important for a functioning community---like Guelph---to have a localized artistic scene. It's not just enough to have a few "rock star" authors, like Margaret Atwood. We also need to have local "word artisans". That's because culture thrives on conversations, instead of lectures. Lectures are where one person does all the talking and everyone else just listens. Real conversations involve a back-and-forth. That's what's happening when a local author writes a story about things that you experience---like cooking in the kitchen, listening to CBC radio, and, wondering if and when the Prime Minister is going to "drop the hammer" against a small group of people causing chaos in society. (Will some future author write a mystery set in Ottawa during the "Freedom Convoy"?)
A lot of people take it "as a given" that there is a value in having local musicians instead of just listening to recorded music. I think that people should also appreciate local writers who bring their own local and regional viewpoint to the page. The promise of the World Wide Web is that more and more people can get involved in the "community conversation". That's what I suspect Marshall McLuhan was fumbling towards with his statements "the medium is the message" and "we increasingly live in a global village".
Right now what has often happened instead is that capitalism has tried to change the conversation into a competition. The tech lord's algorithms seek to sift out a very small number of big name "influencers" who can then build a giant base that can be monetized to sell advertising. But the real promise of the Web is to create functioning communities---both geographic and of interests---that will be able to knit together an increasingly complex and resilient human ecosystem.
We've been told that it helps the planet to "eat local" and some hard-cores have even suggested we restrict ourselves to the "100 mile diet". That's maybe too much. But I do think it is important to learn to appreciate the local. And I think that music and literature is much the same. I think it would help Guelph and area if everyone decided to listen to local music and read local writers at least part of the time. If you'd like to make the effort to do this, you might want to attend the Wellington County Writer's Festival on April 23. (To be totally honest, I won't be going---COVID's sixth wave is here and I'd like to avoid getting the bug as long as possible. But there will be other ones in the future.)
If I've tweaked your interest, you can find Evidence of Uncertain Origin at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the Bookshelf Bookstore in downtown Guelph, and, other places listed by the publisher: Arboretum Press.
Arboretum Press Logo
&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
Sally sent Nate Kunstler an email asking him to be available for an
“excursion” at 7:00 in the evening on Friday. She told him to
dress “nice”---but not too formal---and meet him at the entrance
of the community. She said he should have a meal at the regular time.
He was there at the
time required. She drove up to him in a very conventional Toyota
sedan. He got in the car and asked the obvious question. “No Jag?”
“Nah. That’s
just for training or ‘showtime’. This is my regular ride. We’re
just tourists tonight. I’m taking you to a magic show. Think of it
as a field trip. Tonight you get your first lesson in how to be a
psychic!”
Nate could see from
the side of her face she was smirking. She added a question, “Do
you remember in the martial arts class where Kelly told us about
‘circus tricks’?”
“Yeah, they are
things that ‘qi Masters’ and teachers of ‘bullshido’ do to
wow naive students. They are either out-and-out trickery, or, the use
of simple physical laws to do things that most folk think are
impossible.”
“Exactly. Well
tonight we’re off to see a type of magician known as a ‘mentalist’.
He’ll give you an example of a ‘cold reading’ getting done.
It’s important to understand how they do this because this is often
how ‘charismatic influencers’ convince their followers that they
have some sort of secret powers or a direct pipeline to the divine.”
“You’ve
mentioned a ‘cold reading’ before. What are they? How do they
work?”
Sally took the time
to double-check where they were on the GPS to ensure she didn’t
miss a turn-off, decided it was safe to talk for a while, and,
launched into a mini-lecture.
“A cold reading
is a specific type of manipulative conversation where a person sets
out to convince another person that they have some sort of psychic
ability that either allows them to read minds, or, converse with some
sort of metaphysical entity that has super-human knowledge. They do
this by using the following techniques:
Confidence
speak
Deduction
Choosing the
right person
‘Barnum’
statements
Recap and
regurgitation
Changing their
meaning
Guaranteed
statements
Never taking
full responsibility”
Nate could see that Sally’s face was taking on special look, as if
she was accessing some sort of special ability.
“You sound like
you’ve memorized that list, are you an expert yourself?”
She smiled “No,
I’ve read up on the subject and been schooled in the science of
memory. It allows me to remember large amounts of information using
techniques that stretch way back into antiquity. It’s a useful
skill to have in the sort of work I do for the Elders. Now back to
cold readings---.”
“Confidence speak is something like the ‘Voice’ from Dune or
‘Jedi mind tricks’ from Star Wars. It’s simply the ability to
always project total confidence in what you say. It’s based on the
idea that great deal of our everyday judgement of whether or not
someone knows what they are talking about comes down to how confident
they are about what they are saying. People who’ve managed
confidence speak never have the ‘nerves’ or look to others for
validation. They speak as if they know with absolute certainty
whatever lie or half-truth they are selling to someone else.”
“There’s
nothing magical about confidence speak, it’s something that lots of
salespeople and politicians have mastered in order to be successful
at their jobs.”
&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
Kelly Hughson found out about
the attack at the feminist conference from a contact he had in one of
the national police agencies. Some sort of noxious gas was created by
smoke bombs left in a closed lecture hall. Before they were set
off, someone had blocked the two exits. The smoke had quickly filled
the closed space, which made it difficult to see. This
heightened the panic as people rushed to get out. By the time the
fire fighters had been able to get the doors open, there were piles
of bodies in front of them. Whatever was in the smoke, it was deadly
to inhale.
Hughson took a few moments. He sat up
straight in his chair, took three deep breaths, and, reminded himself
that all people die. He then recited a bit of poetry to himself.
Heaven and earth are not humane,
They treat the ten thousand beings as straw dogs.
The sage is not humane,
He treats the hundred families as straw dogs.
Between heaven and earth,
How like a bellows it is!
Empty and yet inexhaustible,
Moving and yet it pours out ever more.
By many words one’s reckoning is exhausted.
It is better to abide by the center.
He
thought about what
he was doing, the long history of the Elders, and, the thousands of
people who had worked over the ages to nudge humanity into becoming
kinder and wiser. He then recognized that even as the universe had
made every human being mortal, it had also created the instinct among
many people to try to
be kind and seek after wisdom. This
helped him still his emotions and return to the task at hand.
&&&&
Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
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