This will be your Legacy

It’s been a few days since the conclusion of the most recent U.S. election and media pundits across the political spectrum are all swapping theories about how it was that Harris lost as badly as she did. Some say she was too modest in her proposals; others say too radical. Some say she was too deferential to Israel; others say she wasn’t deferential enough. Personally, I am less interested in how it is that Harris lost and more concerned with why, when confronted with a choice between one candidate who didn’t quite meet their standards and a coked-up, narcissistic orangutan, a clear majority of voters chose the latter.

There were three instances during this campaign when I can remember President-elect Trump being granted the option to actually speak to policy issues. The first was the first presidential debate, which was more notable for Biden’s under-performance than Trump’s success. The other two were his exchange with the Association of Black Journalists and the second presidential debate. In the second two, he bombed so spectacularly that he spent the remainder of the campaign cowering among Republican-friendly podcasters and refusing to take policy questions in town halls – preferring to dance in a cringe-inducing attempt at appearing charming.

How will we explain this to future generations?
Source: NBC News (2024). “Trump ends town hall to listen to music with the crowd for nearly 40 minutes.” Taken from: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/watch-trump-ends-town-hall-to-listen-to-music-with-crowd-221766213669. Date Accessed: 08-Nov-24

How the hell did the voters let him get away with this?

The first Trump presidency has been thoroughly dissected by lawyers, economists and sundry other experts for any evidence he Made America Great Again. The verdict is in, both literally and figuratively. The emperor clearly has no clothes. His disastrous tariffs cost Americans an estimated $165 billion dollars per year through both increased prices and lost earnings from retaliatory tariffs. He is accused of stealing classified national security documents from the National Archives and storing them in a facility accessible to the public. When confronted he refused to return them, going so far as to trick his lawyer in to certifying a subpoena indicating that all boxes had been returned when he had just hid several others. And of course, on January 6, 2021, he famously attempted to overturn a democratic election, culminating in the first siege on the Capital in over a century. And yet, in spite of all of this, a majority of American voters still considered Trump the most capable candidate to manage the economy and safe-guard American democracy. How on Earth could a majority of people come to a conclusion so fundamentally at odds with reality?

There are many groups and organizations that bear some responsibility for realizing this nightmare but for now, I want to focus on Fox News, and Fox News-adjacent (?) media personality Tucker Carlson. They effectively told their viewers that the emperor was clothed in robes and if you’re smart you’ll see them, despite knowing full-well that Trump was naked.

Source: Batey, Eve (2024). “Tucker Carlson Spent Halloween with His Favorite “Demonic Force””. In Vanity Fair. Taken from: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/tucker-carlson-donald-trump-demonic-attack. Date Accessed 08-Nov-24

What makes Fox News’s lies so infuriating is we have ample evidence that so many of their employees knew they were lying. President-elect Trump is a pathological liar but it’s never obvious to what extent he believes his own lies. Sure, the word “narcissist” gets thrown around a lot and often without cause but for Trump, it really does seem that beneath the posturing and the ego lies a scared little rat who thinks he’s perfect and is desperate for others to affirm his delusions. In the case of Fox News, however, we have the receipts. During the Dominion lawsuit (a private lawsuit filed by Dominion against Fox News for spreading misinformation about their voting machines), we saw ample correspondence from Fox News employees showing that their public broadcasts were fundamentally at odds with their private thoughts.

For instance, regarding Trump’s four years as president, Carlson said:

“We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”

Regarding the “stolen election”, Carlson told Trump lawyer Sidney Powell:

“You keep telling our viewers that millions of votes were changed by the software. I hope you will prove that very soon…You’ve convinced them that Trump will win. If you don’t have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it’s a cruel and reckless thing to keep saying.”

To be clear, Carlson was far from alone on this. Other pundits like Laura Ingraham and Shawn Hannity chimed in on group texts with the occasional ‘lol’ and words of agreement – Carlson was just the most eloquent. Yet in spite of this, he and other Fox News pundits continued to peddle lies and misinformation on their shows. Carlson seemed to resent knowingly spreading misinformation – not out of journalistic integrity but fear that he personally was losing credibility. However he continued to do so, likely because in 2020, when Fox News called Arizona for Biden and their viewers rebelled, Fox was under pressure to appease the fan base.

It’s tempting to blame the viewers in this case and perhaps they do bear some responsibility (we’ll get to them some other time). At present it feels like Fox News and its viewers are locked in a chicken-and-egg scenario – Fox News has radicalized its base and now its base is working to further radicalize Fox News. It’s an interesting conundrum but it kind of misses the point. there’s no evidence of a grand conspiracy of Fox News viewers willfully engaging in defamation. Many viewers have shared misinformation but I suspect they don’t view it as such (plus there’s a first amendment conversation to be had there but I’ll leave that to the lawyers). In contrast, we have ample evidence that Fox News knew they were lying and are willing to risk undermining American democracy for the most shallow and self-serving reason of all: to improve ratings.

I was reflecting last night on some of the most influential and well-regarded American journalists and other news employees. Walter Cronkite was labelled “the most trusted man in America” for his reporting on the Vietnam War, which included some damning assertions that motivated Former President Johnson not to seek re-election. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are well-regarded for their role in exposing the Watergate scandal but less discussed is then-CEO of the Washington Post Katharine Graham, who faced enormous pressure from the Nixon administration to halt reporting on the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal. By refusing to cave to their demands, she enabled Woodward and Bernstein to finish their work.

Now, maybe I’m just walking in the wrong circles but when I discuss these figures with my peers, the focus is usually on what they did. It’s not always good – Woodward’s writing on the late John Belushi was rightly criticized and Bernstein squandered a lot of public goodwill in the aftermath of Watergate – but the discussion centers on their actions, not KPIs of public perception. What I’m getting at is, we don’t talk about their ratings.

Carlson was later fired from Fox News and now hosts his own show on Twitter (yes, I know it’s called ‘X’ but that was a terrible branding decision and I just don’t feel like indulging Elon). Hannity and Ingraham are still there, and all three are still firmly on the Trump train. Carlson went so far as to participate in Trump rallies, spewing words of praise in the lead-up to the election. Obviously we don’t have the benefit of a discovery process to lay bare his true thoughts this time, but I’m inclined to believe he’s singing the same song on a different network. He knows his base and is willing to intentionally peddle misinformation to score ratings points. After all, he kind of gave the game away during the Dominion discovery process with one of the most depressingly cynical texts of all:

“[Trump is] a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been thinking about this every day for four years.”

There you have it. Carlson is fine with Trump blindly firing shots in all directions, so long as he’s not in the line of fire.

I obviously don’t know what America’s future is. No one does. But I will say that for all the jokes and rhetoric that American progressives make about how other countries are laughing at the U.S., I’m not laughing. My emotions vacillate between anger, and fear and occasionally resolve to do something right. But mostly I’m just sad. I love America. I visited America many times throughout the Biden presidency where I had the pleasure of interacting with some of the kindest Americans I’ve ever known. I don’t know if America will survive a second Trump presidency but for their sake and the sake of so many others, I really hope it does. If it doesn’t, let’s be clear: This is the legacy of Fox News. No one will be singing praises of their ratings or their share prices or whatever other ridiculous metric they employ to gauge their success. They will be remembered as the level-headed cynics that willingly gave a coked-up orangutan lighter fluid and a book of matches, because it served their interest to watch the country burn.

Could it Happen Here, Revisited: Reassessing How we Talk About Unplanned Pregnancies and Abortion in Canada

In case it’s not abundantly clear, let me say for the record that I am pro-choice. I believe that a nation that restricts the bodily autonomy of its citizens effectively surrenders its identity as a ‘freedom-loving nation’. I think that in overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court of the United States further tarnished America’s reputation as ‘the land of the free’ and betrayed the citizens that they swore to serve and protect. If you think otherwise, I probably won’t change your mind but for the record, don’t bother using the comments section for your own ‘debate-me’ forum. I feel no obligation to grant you a platform so I suggest you limit your comments to your own blog.

Having said that, I do think it’s important that the pro-choice movement exercise some self-reflection and consider messages that they might have shared or beliefs that they held, which could have undermined support for abortion in Canada and around the world. This is not to belittle the pro-choice movement and it’s certainly not to characterize all pro-choice activists in the same light. In fact, in my experience, organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada tend to have some of the clearest and most inclusive messaging of the pro-choice movement. This blog is more for people on the periphery of the movement. People with social media accounts and a penchant for sharing snappy memes that mock and belittle people they disagree with because it makes us feel intelligent. I understand the anger and fear that has shaken so many people in the aftermath of SCOTUS’s overturning Roe v. Wade. But please, before you share that meme I ask you to reconsider. While it may be satisfying in the short-term, it risks alienating would-be activists and driving them into the open arms of the anti-abortion movement. 

In 2019 I wrote an article about the fragility of our safeguards to protect a person’s right to choose. I won’t repeat everything here, but will just say that I personally am guilty of taking access to a safe abortion for granted. Prior to the tabling of Bill C-484 – the Unborn Victims of Crime Act – in 2008, I’d assumed that access to abortion was constitutionally enshrined through R. v. Morgentaler but critically, the Supreme Court of Canada never ruled that access to abortion is a fundamental right. Instead it ruled that Section 251 of the Criminal Code of Canada – the requirement that a pregnant person present themselves to a panel to doctors to obtain permission for an abortion – violated their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Specifically, it said the following:

“The right to “liberty” contained in [section] 7 [of the Charter] guarantees to every individual a degree of personal autonomy over important decisions intimately affecting [their] private life. Liberty in a free and democratic society does not require the state to approve such decisions but it does require the state to respect them.

…“Section 251 of the Criminal Code takes a personal and private decision away from the [individual] and gives it to a committee which bases its decision on “criteria entirely unrelated to [the pregnant person’s] own priorities and aspirations”.

“…This violation of s. 7 does not accord with either procedural fairness or with the fundamental rights and freedoms laid down elsewhere in the Charter. A deprivation of the s. 7 right which has the effect of infringing a right guaranteed elsewhere in the Charter cannot be in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

Essentially, the court removed an existing impediment to accessing abortion without guaranteeing that access to abortion itself would be preserved. This is an important distinction as – say what you will about them – the anti-abortion movement is both persistent and organized. When they lose a case, they do not accept defeat, they regroup and plan a new approach. For instance, the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling in the United States may have upheld Roe. v. Wade, but it also established the now infamous “undue burden” clause, which individual states exploited to restrict access to abortion within their jurisdictions. In Canada, the Mulrooney government attempted to circumvent the R. v. Morgentaler ruling with a bill that would have required the consent of just one doctor as opposed to a panel. The bill failed, but this has done nothing to curtail the efforts of the anti-abortion movement. Indeed, the Unborn Victims of Crime bill that I mentioned earlier was introduced as a private members bill that may or may not have connections to the anti-abortion movement in Canada, and referred to an unborn foetus as a “child”. Taken together, we can see that until a person’s right to an abortion is constitutionally recognized, they will not accept defeat.

For his work securing access to abortion in Canada, Henri Morgentaler received the Order of Canada in 2008. In response, three recipients returned their Order of Canada and the Coalition for Life held a protest at Rideau Hall.

So, the pro-life movement in Canada exists, they are persistent, and if they want to impose abortion restrictions in Canada, we cannot count on R. v. Morgentaler to protect us. How much power do they wield? In truth, it’s difficult to say, but I am taken aback by the growing volume of participants in ant-abortion parades – particularly among young people. I think that’s in part because – at the risk of sounding patronizing – many of them haven’t experienced the same legal impediments to abortion that Canadians experienced before R. v. Morgentaler. I was born shortly after the ruling was made. I’ve known many people who’ve exercised their right to choose an abortion and as such, it’s hard for me to appreciate just how bad it was before the panel requirement was lifted.

Having said that, I am also concerned that growing elitism and classism within the pro-choice movement that shames individuals who choose to carry their child to term may be driving young people towards the anti-abortion movement. Historically, unplanned pregnancies were often associated with low-income families, while the occasional unplanned pregnancy in upper-middle class families referenced “nice kids” who “got in trouble”. In my own hometown, a local highschool situated in a low-income neighborhood was often ridiculed for having an in-house daycare program – often disregarding the fact that the free on-site daycare was the only thing keeping these kids in school. The result is that unplanned pregnancies are framed as an affliction of the lower classes, and not an option for good kids with big dreams.

These images were taken from a video I was shown in university about the 2008 financial crisis. The creators of the video distinguished between “responsible” borrowers on the left, and “not so responsible” borrowers on the right. Notice a key feature of the “not so responsible” borrowers is the presence of a lot of kids. The implicit assumption that they should not have been given a mortgage and by extension, a home. No one thought to question the affordability and accessibility of shelter – a basic human right – in the first place

Moreover, “parent-shaming”, to induce guilt-ridden parents into purchasing the best goods and services for their little ones persists. On the one-hand, this feels like just an occupational hazard of raising children in capitalist society. To put it frankly, guilt sells, and Osh Kosh isn’t running a charity. However it’s important to interrogate the assumptions that underpin these messages, rather than parrot them back to would-be parents like it’s some sort of critical benchmark that they have to meet in order to reproduce.

One mom shared an anecdote that illustrates this point nicely:

Long before I had a child, I was musing about the possibility of becoming a mom. Standing in my kitchen, I told a friend that I was hoping to try to have a baby sooner rather than later.

She expressed excitement for me, and then she said, “And I know you’ll do it right, too, like, you’ll make sure you have money set aside for emergencies and college and things like that!”

To be fair, if you have the means to do so, putting aside some funds to support your child’s education is probably a good idea. It is not, however, a requirement for giving birth.

In New York City, a targeted ad campaign was rightly criticized for shaming teenagers who became pregnant and led to a counter-movement called #NoTeenShame. One young mother named Gloria Malone stressed how her decisions were ridiculed as an undue financial burden on the community at large:

“Everyone is really good at being really terrible to teen moms,” she said. “Someone once told me that I’m stealing their tax dollars because I couldn’t keep my legs closed.”

Let me be clear, I am in no way suggesting that we deny pregnant people information about the financial constraints of raising a child. This is a critical piece of information and withholding it undermines the parent’s capacity to choose whether or not they want to terminate their pregnancy. However, acknowledging the financial constraints of child raising without taking proactive measures to address that financial burden reflects a classic neoliberal bias, which acknowledges the structural deficiencies of modern capitalism that limit choices for low-income people without taking proactive measures to address those problems.

The New York City campaign against teen pregnancy was rightly criticized for classist and insulting language against teen mothers

Yes, having children is expensive. Yes, there are some costs that parents will need to incur as they take responsibility for their tiny humans, but make no mistake: the persistence of child poverty among the wealthiest nations in the world is a moral failing, both of those who govern and those who watched with passive disinterest as children were punished for the mere crime of existence under late stage capitalism.

I know this sounds like a trivial or cosmetic distinction. After all, offering new parents vouchers for diapers and voting for subsidized day care will not fix capitalism. But there is a critical distinction between informing someone of the physical, financial and social risks so that they can make an informed decision and shaming them into deciding how their body gets used. Failure to make that distinction risks undermining the very movement you purport to support while driving would-be activists in to the open arms of the anti-abortion movement.

Neoliberalism is not inherently anti-choice. Hell, it’s right there in the title. Liberalism is predicated on the assumption that individuals should be able to choose for themselves the life that they want to lead. However, what makes neoliberalism so dangerous is it refuses to pull back the curtain and admit that the game is rigged. It taunts you with a series of choices while ensuring that the majority remain out of reach. If you exercise your right to choose but make the ‘wrong’ decision, it forces you to suffer the consequences without reflecting on the societal conditions that restricted your options in the first place. 

It’s hard to overstate the way that classist and elitist assumptions about low-income families have permeated our culture and distorted the way we think, act, and communicate, including conversations about abortion. However, understanding that unconscious bias exists does not excuse it. It just means that we must exercise caution and self-reflection when discussing issues of class privilege. 

If the pro-choice movement is to be truly pro-choice, it cannot limit itself to the mere exisistence of choice. It means that if a person decides to terminate their pregnancy, that they have access to a safe abortion. It also means that if someone decides to carry their pregnancy to term, that we work to ensure that the appropriate safeguards are in place to support them and eventually, their family. Critically, it means that under no circumstances, are we to shame individuals for deciding how their body is used for reasons that are frankly, no one’s business but their own.

I wavered a lot on whether or not I was going to share this post. This past week has been awful, and reminding pro-choice activists to ‘check their privilege’ after they’ve been gutted by the SCOTUS ruling feels incredibly insensitive. In the end, I decided to share because I’m scared. The SCOTUS ruling has illustrated how fragile abortion access is and that even as we are angry, broken, and disillusioned, we cannot afford to put our guard down. So many anti-abortion activists in Canada took inspiration from the overturning of Roe v. Wade and I’m scared because I don’t know how to stop them. What I can hope is that by checking our language and assumptions about unplanned pregnancy, we might be able to limit their ability to recruit.

The Hate you Give – My Thoughts on the Trucker’s Convoy

In previous articles I’ve acknowledged that I live in Ottawa, Canada – home of the world’s largest skating rink, highest per-capita concentration of Shawarmas nation-wide, and – at least for today – host of 2022 “Freedom Convoy”. If you are unfamiliar with the convoy, let me first express my envy and then crush your innocence by explaining what it is. 

The Freedom Convoy is a group of truckers that appear to be protesting the recent vaccine requirement on long-haul truckers traveling across the Canada-US border. The truckers have traveled from British Columbia to Ottawa and en route have acquired over eight million dollars in fundraising, 272 thousand Facebook followers (of course, let’s be real, some of them are ‘bots) and more importantly for this article, some very strange and unpleasant bedfellows. Links to right-wing extremism, and white nationalism are increasingly apparent within the movement, and some participants have explicitly called for a Canadian “January 6” – a reference to the storming of the US capitol on January 6, 2021.

Now to its credit, the “freedom convoy” organizers have explicitly disavowed the hate groups that have latched on to their movement. Convoy organizer and Canada Unity Member Tamara Lich has gone on record, saying:

“If you see participants along the way that are misbehaving, acting aggressively in any way or inciting any type of violence or hatred, please take down the truck number and their [license] plate number so that we can forward that to the police.”

Tamara Lich

I believe she also said that individuals engaging in violence or who are associated with hate groups will not be reimbursed for their hotel and transit fees, but as of writing I cannot find confirmation of this from a credible source.

Honestly, I feel conflicted about her statement. As someone who has participated in activist campaigns in the past, I can appreciate how frustrating it is when your cause is hijacked by a group of fringe activists who misrepresent your intentions and by extension, delegitmize your campaign in the public eye. I also remember how horrified I was when then-candidate Donald Trump failed to publicly disavow the endorsement he received from David Duke, former… “Grand Wizard” (their words, not mine) of the Klu Klux Klan, and how sharply that contrasted with Bernie Sanders’ public disavowal of the so-called “Bernie Bros”, even when there was little evidence to support their existence. So yeah, public statements matter, even when they come from people you disagree with. The question is whether their actions line up with their statements.

So as uncomfortable as this makes me, let’s put a pin in the fringe element for just a moment and talk about what the “Freedom Convoy” actually wants to confirm if their statements hold water (I promise, the hateful elements are very important and we will circle back to this). The convoy’s actual objectives are unclear, but according to their GoFundMe page written by Tamara Lich herself, they are “taking [their] fight to the doorsteps of our Federal Government and demanding that [the government] cease all mandates against its people.”

I’m not entirely sure who the “people” are in this statement. Maybe they are only referring to truckers or maybe it’s all citizens of Canada. The “all mandates” reference is also pretty baffling as I’ve never known truckers to protest brake inspections, load limits or driver physical exams, which have been health and safety requirements for their job for quite some time. Taken literally, their mission statement appears to be a public appeal to anarchy in which case, the Proud Boys should feel right at home. However, I don’t think this statement was meant to be taken literally. I don’t think it was meant to be thought of at all. I think this was an intentional branding exercise to appeal to the emotions of the masses as opposed to their reason. People who can’t explain why but just feel unsafe, and are prepared to take up arms to defend themselves against threats they don’t know or understand.

That being said, given the timing as well as comments from other participants, we can infer that they are referring to the Canadian government’s vaccine mandate, which came into effect on January 15. The mandate requires that all individuals must be fully vaccinated if they want to avoid a two-week quarantine and pre-arrival molecular test for COVID-19 before crossing into Canada. The purpose of the mandate is to keep goods and services flowing – especially groceries – while preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Honestly, it’s a pretty low bar to hop over. The vaccine has proven itself to be a safe, effective means of preventing transmission of a deadly virus and tends to limit the severity of infection, reducing the need for hospitalizations. This in turn will free up hospital beds enabling medical personnel to focus on treating other serious conditions that cannot be prevented, and frankly, after 2 years of this, there is quite a backlog of people waiting for medical attention.

One argument I’ve heard is that truckers traveled back and forth across the border throughout the pandemic without a vaccine, so why the change now? Well, let me first express my envy of your selective amnesia because you appear to have overlooked the fact that yeah, you did. 

And it was f&%#-ing awful!!! 

Throughout the course of the pandemic only select businesses selling essential goods and services were allowed to remain open, putting other businesses in jeopardy. Even under these tight constraints, the virus still devastated communities, landing millions in the hospital or worse, in the grave. Exhausted and traumatized health workers considered leaving the profession and indeed, some did, reducing our capacity to help people infected by the virus.

Maragaret Lyles in happier times

More than half a million additional surgeries were postponed between March 2020 and Jul 2021. Additional follow-up appointments were postponed and in-person consultations were limited, meaning that patients with serious conditions were less-able to access proper care. People like Margaret Lyles, whose “difficulty swallowing” didn’t meet the threshold for an in-person consultation until the tumor in her throat had grown so big that doctors couldn’t even see her esophagus. She died last February.

All things considered, I actually did fine during the pandemic. I was able to stay healthy, and work from home, and as an introvert by nature I kinda thrived under social distancing. But even I experienced challenges. Before the pandemic I had surgery to remove a pre-cancerous tumor from my cervix and had to delay my follow-up examination while hospitals dealt with the crisis. I’m pleased to say I’ve since had my follow-up and am cancer free, but what if I wasn’t? What if that tumor was able to fester until it grew so big that it threatened my life and well-being? Also, for the record I spent Christmas 2020 alone. Christmas itself was fine but there were a lot of tearful phone calls with my family beforehand as we acknowledged that we couldn’t be together as it wasn’t safe. And like I said, I got off light. 

Why on earth would anyone want to revert back to this reality???

I’ve heard some vaccine-skeptics argue that this isn’t about the vaccine per se. That many of them are vaccinated but are taking a principled stance against what they consider government overreach. This is a vital consideration! Governments can and do overstep their authority and it’s good to remain vigilant. But why this cause? Why didn’t we see eight million dollars raised in response to the illegal detention of Omar Khadr, or other government-sanctioned encroachments on constitutionally enshrined rights and freedoms?

Taken together, it’s hard to find any honor or integrity in the trucker’s rally. It honestly feels like blackmail – like a fringe group of conspiracy theorists are prepared to withhold access to food and other essential items unless we give them permission to threaten public health. And for what? Why the ambiguous wording on their GoFundMe page? Why the abstract appeal to ‘freedom from all mandates’ instead of explicitly rejecting which mandates they are against and why? Why the failure to even entertain the possibility of a rational, good-faith conversation on how to keep our communities safe?

Probably because this was never about appealing to logic, or taking ownership for thoughts and concerns. It’s about feelings. Specifically fear. This virus has derailed all social and economic norms as we know them and rather than find healthy means of managing fear, these truckers are determined to feign ignorance so that they don’t have to live in a world that takes the virus seriously, and are prepared to use force to preserve their delusions. Fear-based arguments don’t lend themselves well to logical and informed debates. But you know what groups respond really well to ignorant appeals to emotion rooted in hatred and fear?

Hate groups. It’s right there in the title.

Images Like these make it hard to deny the similarities between the Capital Riots and The Freedom Convoy. This is basically the Canadian equivalent of “Hang Mike Pence”. I don’t care what your politics are. Threatening to run over a leader because you disagree with them is disgusting

If you’ve ever studied the origins of modern fascism, you’ve likely at some point come across the work of Umberto Eco, specifically his essay “Ur-Fascism”. In it he links Fascism specifically to the party of Mussolini, but also identifies common traits and assumptions that could lead to similar movements around the world (think of it like ‘big F’ and ‘little f’ fascism). In his essay, he lists fourteen fixtures of modern ur-fascism, all of which overlap with modern right-wing populist movements including the Trucker’s Convoy. For now, I want to highlight the following:

“Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. 

“Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.”

Umberto Eco

So there you go, Tamara, that was a good-faith effort to cut off the fat and examine your convoy not by its association with hate groups but for its stated and implied intentions. 

Diagnosis: this convoy is at best, dishonorable. At worst, it might be evil.

This movement is, at its core, a spiteful and malicious effort to circumvent public health mandates for no apparent reason and is prepared to deny people access to food unless it gets its way. This is a hateful, ignorant movement that understandably attracted other hateful ignorant movements. You can disavow these groups until you’re blue in the face, but the reality appears to be that the hate, ignorance and fear that underpin your movement are antithetical to informed discussion. It is, however, attractive to people whose world-view is shaped by ignorance, hatred, and fear.

You made your bed Tamara, now go f#%$-ing lie in it.

Protect the Car? Hope and Gratitude in the Time of Coronavirus

Confession: One of my favorite guilty-pleasure movies of all time is The Mummy Returns, the sequel to the 1999 remake of the original Mummy. If you don’t like it then believe me, I get it. The story is an incoherent mess, the script is laden with every sequel cliché you can think of, the villains have pretty dubious motives, and the film itself has some of the worst CGI in motion picture history. That being said, I love a good power-couple and damnit if Rick and Evie O’Connell don’t deliver. Moreover, while much of the dialogue is clichéd and silly, there are some lines that still un-ironically make me laugh.

Take for example this exchange between Brendan Fraser’s Rick O’Connell and his on-screen son Alex. Rick is about to storm the metaphorical fortress to rescue the metaphorical princess and kick-start act 2, and needs his son to keep out of his way.

RICK: Alright Alex, I got a big boy job for you. I need you to stay here and protect the car.

ALEX: Protect the car? Dad, just ‘cause I’m a kid doesn’t mean I’m stupid.

  • Spoilers: these two were given one basic job and ultimately locked themselves out of the car and abandoned it to be trampled by by mummies. Perhaps there is more to protecting the car than I’d assumed.
    Source: Daniel, Sean and James Jacks (2001). The Mummy Returns [Motion Picture]

And yes, there were some comedic-relief lines from John Hannah that I omitted for brevity, and good on you if you noticed that.

I bring this up largely because I’ve new-found sympathy for little Alex O’Connell since the dawn of Coronapocalypse. Every day I turn on the news and watch the world go to hell in a handbag in real time yet I’m told the best thing I can do is nothing at all. To not visit friends. To not volunteer. To not even leave my apartment if I can help it. Even the few things I am still able to do have largely backfired. I tried to organize a virtual birthday party for a friend and as of today, only 2 attendees have agreed to participate. I tried to exercise in my apartment and blistered both my hands (which has the unfortunate effect of making them exceedingly painful to wash, but I digress). Under these circumstances, it’s easy to feel so overwhelmed by dire circumstances beyond your control that you slip in to despair.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I have a history with depression and anxiety, and earlier this year decided to speak to a therapist to manage some of the challenges I’ve been experiencing. Of course this was before COVID derailed all social norms as we know them, so therapy has taken a very different focus than I’d originally anticipated. So far we’ve had two appointments (don’t worry, we speak on the phone as per the social distancing requirements) and while it’s still early, it’s safe to say that doing therapy under quarantine is hard.

On the one hand, it makes sense to focus on myself because – let’s be real – what else am I going to do? On the other hand, I feel that many of the topics we discuss are difficult to put in to practice because I feel so isolated. If you’ve ever experienced mental health issues in the past, you may be familiar with the impulse to both literally and figuratively lock yourself away from the world at large. Ordinarily therapy could help with that yet there is nothing ordinary about life in Coronapocalypse, where a face-to-face interaction within a two-meter radius is borderline-homicidal, and true patriots are expected to lock themselves away from the world at large. As a result, I feel as though I’ve tumbled overboard and while the ship was good enough to through me a life-saver, it still sailed away. I’m floating, but that doesn’t negate or belittle the fact that I’m lost at sea.

Source: Green Queen (2020). “Social Distancing 101 During Covid-19: What Does It Mean & How Do You Do It?” Taken from: https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/social-distancing-101-during-covid-19-what-does-it-mean-how-do-you-do-it/.
Date Accessed: March 29, 2020

Last week my therapist emailed me a template for a journal to fill out every day. I’ll spare you my contributions so far because while I think they are valid from a mental health perspective, I’m not convinced they make for interesting reading. I will say that every day I have to do some variation of why I should be proud of myself and why I should be proud of others. The latter has been particularly difficult as I’ve never felt so cut-off from those I love. In the first week of the quarantine I made a concerted effort to reach out to friends and family through social media but I was also feeling relatively optimistic, which made it easier. Gradually that optimism gave way to fear and and fear hardened in to cynicism as I came to appreciate the magnitude of the problem and there is nothing I can do except, you know, protect the car. I stopped answering messages and even changed my status to appear offline. After all, if the lights are off people assume there’s no one home.

There’s a lot to be said for limiting social media use when you’re anxious and for setting and enforcing personal boundaries, but this should be to preserve your sense well being. There’s nothing healthy about hiding from your friends because you’re too jaded to talk. I realized this when I went to complete my journal and realized I had no accomplishments from friends to highlight, because I’d deliberately cut myself off.

That threw me. I opened my Messenger app and found multiple unread message threads, including one with over 90 unread messages on it. I opened it and randomly scrolled to one message from a friend stating the following:

“Doing alright. Had a headache last night so am moving a bit slowly today. Finished the dress I was sewing this morning and it turned out really well.”

There.

Right there.

It’s virtual. I didn’t witness it personally but there it is.

One of my friends powered through the aftermath of a headache compounded by COVID-induced grief to make something beautiful. By her own admission she’s moving slowly. After all, headaches can be debilitating and the WHO warnings about ibuprofen in the time of COVID have personally given me Advil-anxiety. But she did something. In her own way, she’s carrying on.

My friend Maverick messaged me as well (no it’s not his real name, but he challenged me to come up with an alias when I told him he was making a cameo appearance in this month’s blog). He included a picture unveiling his new look that I’m calling ‘Quarantine-chique’, which is best described as an every-man’s take on Johnny Depp, circa The Tourist. His hair is growing long, his face is unshaven, but his hair looked wet and brushed so I gather he’s still practicing basic hygiene and is yet to go full Castaway, but I’m getting off-topic. It made me smile and importantly, his message concluded by asking me if I was okay. It was a small gesture but even small gestures can make a huge difference when you need them most.

Guys, it’s so hard to be grateful right now, and it’s hard to feel motivated. I was really looking forward to turning a new page this year and while I may eventually do so, it’s true that social distancing and COVID anxiety are slowing me down. It sucks, and I don’t feel like a terrible person for acknowledging that. Do others have it worse? Definitely. Will I defy public health recommendations and go out to displace the ‘suck’? Of course not (and nor should you). But I think it’s fair to acknowledge that a lot sucks right now and it’s okay to feel sad about that.

That being said, I’m realizing more and more that there is still so much to be proud of and grateful for. I may have to dig for it but it’s there. And just as its okay to acknowledge that so much sucks right now, it’s important to remember there is still plenty of good. Seeking out things to feel grateful for and willing ourselves to carry on with our lives might be the most effective means of off-setting the despair that comes from sitting in a parking-lot, ‘protecting the car’ while our public health officials do everything in their power to take down the bad guy and save the world. Now more than ever, we need some perspective that reminds us that the world is in trouble but it’s not dead,* and we can’t act like it is.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I found some exercise gloves to cover my blistered hands, so I’m going to work out. After that I’m toying between reading or watching a movie. In case I go for the latter it probably won’t be The Mummy Returns, largely because I just re-watched it 2 weeks ago so I think I got my fix. Alternatively I may jump on Messenger for just a bit. It appears I have some unanswered messages that I’ve been neglecting, and I think it’s time I answered them.

Take care of yourselves and take care of each other. I look forward to reconnecting with you on the other side.

*Yes, I realize that pronouncement is somewhat undercut by my earlier references to “Coronapocalypse”, but I’m a sucker for a good portmanteau

Reflections on the Winter Solstice

Yuletide greetings, my friends! No, I’m not pagan but I always had a special affinity for the winter solstice. There’s something romantic and kind of sexy about the longest night of the year but it wasn’t until recently that I came to appreciate how it can also be a period of reflection. I realize it’s difficult to pause and take stock in the midst of the holiday cluster-fuck that encompasses everything from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, but that’s really too bad. Everything around us is dormant. Grass is dormant, animals are dormant, even the sun is operating on reduced hours. It’s only humans that continue to race about like an army of coked-up orangutans until our credit card bills effectively stage an intervention.

in many pagan traditions evergreens symbolize symbolize life, rebirth and renewal. They were thought to have power over death because their green never faded, and they were used to defeat winter demons and hold back death and destruction.

And yes, I am just as guilty of coked-out orang-itude as the next guy. On top of the holiday shit-show I’ve also been finishing up my post-graduate certificate by correspondence for the past year-and-a-bit. As a result, it has been almost two months since my last post, so to my loyal followers who resisted the urge to hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button, thanks for sticking around. While I have kept up with my writing, it’s mostly been hypothetical cost-benefit analyses and those don’t make for very interesting blog entries. However, I’m pleased to say that I successfully completed the program and will be graduating in the spring of 2020.

I probably complained more than was warranted over the course of my studies but it has been a tough ride. Some of the courses were harder than I’d anticipated and not having regular face-time with my professors took some getting used to. That being said, the most challenging part of the program was watching the people around me do exciting and wonderful things with their lives while I was stuck at school. I realize that this sounds mean-spirited, and part of me does feel ashamed that my good wishes towards my friends were tainted by a touch of envy, but hearing about what all the people around me were doing and being unable to participate left me feeling like I was wasting my time.

My lowest point was last winter. During a routine health examination my doctor discovered a small tumor on my cervix, which was at risk of becoming malignant if it wasn’t removed. They scheduled me for minor surgery at the end of January, which as luck would have it was the exact same week that my co-worker was scheduled to have surgery of his own. As I was the most senior member of my team, this meant that I had just one afternoon to sleep off my own procedure before coming back in to work and acting for him until he recovered. To be clear, my procedure was fairly simple and I would have come right back to work regardless, it just complicated matters. Not only was I obligated to balance both my studies and a more demanding job, but I did so when my own recovery barred me from exercise and by extension, some much-needed endorphins.

On top of all that I got bedbugs in my apartment, because of course I did.

God, I was angry. All the time. Any time someone even asked me how I was, I wanted to break whatever-the-hell I was holding or scream at them for the mere crime of asking. All around me people were sharing exciting and positive developments in their lives while I had little choice but to retreat to a bedbug-infested apartment to weigh costs and benefits or change my post-op dressings, which looked and felt like an adult diaper.

another important yule symbol, believed to provide warmth and fend off evil spirits until the sun’s return.
Painting by Lynea Skeet

Nevertheless, she persisted. I powered through my last few courses and upon completion, received a pleasant surprise in the mail from my university. I was selected among my peers for an award, which included a cash prize of $2,200.00 As soon as I received the notification I immediately jumped online and started pricing vacations to Vietnam. Yes, I’d been dreaming about this for a while but more than anything, I was just desperate for some experience that could help me feel like I was moving forward with my life. That I was no longer incarcerated in an adult diaper but was adult-ing proper, just as well as any of my adult friends that I’d been envying all year.

I’ve since revisited this and decided to put off Vietnam for another year. From a practical standpoint I can’t go because I can’t find my passport, which I suspect is tucked in a plastic bag somewhere in my apartment, hidden from my old roommates (read: bedbugs). I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to find it or replace it in the next couple of months, and there’s no way I’m going on a dream cycling holiday during the rainy season.

More importantly, I’m not ready. The past year and a half has been physically and emotionally exhausting and I don’t want to rush in to a vacation largely to project the illusion that I’m moving forward with my life. I realize now that I don’t need to project anything. I am moving forward. Cost-benefit homework and surgical procedures may not be instagram-worthy but contrary to what the infomercials tell you, self-care rarely is. Self-care is essentially self-parenting. It can be tedious or boring or downright painful, but without it, the instagram posts will never amount to anything more than a hollow projection of the life you wish you were leading.

In the end, I decided to put my winnings towards paying down my student debt, which if all goes to plan should be paid off in the coming year. I hope to do Vietnam next year with an active passport, peace of mind and absolutely no cancer. In the interim I’m resting at home, on a mattress and a box spring as the bugs were loath to leave the frame, and I sleep better knowing the bugs are gone. I also signed up for an inexpensive creative writing course at a local university. Nothing cost-benefit related, or even blogging-related, for that matter. It’s a brief course on writing short horror stories for no reason except I love horror and I need a passion project. I doubt it will generate anything close to $2,200. In fact I’m almost certain I’ll lose money but that’s kind of the point. I’m not trying to do more. I’m trying to be content with doing less.

The winter goddess: while pagan traditions typically regard the sun a masculine, it is through the winter goddess that the sun is reborn. Original painting by Emily Balivet, 2011.

The holiday season, for all its many splendors can be overwhelming. We have our ancient Mesopotamian relatives to thank for the alcohol induced debauchery that we’ve come to associate with the season and we’ve added to the hoopla since. It’s an odd way to mark the year’s end when you think about it. Again, the nights are longer, the days are colder, the natural world is both literally and figuratively hibernating while humans obsess over a ‘new-year-new-you’, as if having at least three party invitations, a list of unattainable resolutions and someone to kiss at midnight are all requisite indicators of a year done right. However hibernation is not synonymous with regression just as sleep is not synonymous with death. That’s the secret of the winter solstice. That you can pause to retreat inwards and still move forward with your life.

So for the last time this decade, let me wish you a happy solstice. If in the coming year you find yourself in school, or in surgery, or in Vietnam, or anywhere else, I wish you strength to manage life’s challenges and appreciation for what life has to offer. I won’t wish you happiness, because happiness is fleeting and I want more for you than that. I do however wish that you be content with the life you made for yourself and continue to add to every day.

Thank you for your readership. It means more to you than you know.

Strange Bedfellows: Bipartisan Politics and the Potential for Social Change

“Auntie K?”

                “Yes?”

“Do you have a…..fishy?”

                “I do not, go fish. Alright, my turn. Do you have a….puppy?”

“Nope, I got a ball and a cat an-“

                “No, don’t tell me.”

“Why not?”

                “It’s the rules.”

“That’s dumb.”

                “I know, but I didn’t write them.”

“Can we go in the pool?”

                “Do you want to finish the game first?”

“No.”

                Thinking: me neither. “Alright, where’s your swimsuit?”

Thus completed my first and only attempt at teaching my nephew how to play Go Fish. Of course that was years ago and I’m fairly confident he now plays regularly and adheres to the rules, but at the time I thought he was on to something. Go Fish, when you think about it, is a pretty stupid game. It would have been so much quicker if my nephew and I had just worked together to match our cards instead of trying to match them in isolation by essentially throwing darts. Some may argue that competitive games emphasizing deductive reasoning are more exciting, but whoever said that never had to sit through a 2 hour game of fucking Clue. No, I think the real reason we have so many long, arduous, competitive games is simple, so that we can have a winner. It doesn’t matter how silly or pointless the game may be, some people will play anyways for no reason except to say that they won.

  • What self-respecting hit man offs their target with a candlestick? Was it amateur night at Boddy Manor?

I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago when I was scrolling Facebook, which of course was littered with reactions to the recent Canadian election. Our incumbent Prime Minister managed to secure a second term in office, but if any of his fans are on my Facebook feed, they’re sure not posting. Most of the posts I read ranged from the darkly humorous (“I can’t wait to see what Justin Trudeau is going to wear for Halloween now that he’s a minority”) to the angry and disappointed (“What the hell, Markham-Stouffville?”), to the mildly disturbing (“In 1672, a mob of angry Dutch killed an ate their prime minister – options, just sayin’”), the latter being especially unsettling in light of the recent threats of violence against Canadian politicians. However, one that struck me was from a former school friend who wrote “I can’t wait for the next election in six months!”

Maybe she was being sarcastic, but there is something a little unsettling in seeing someone be that cavalier about toppling the government before the house is even back in session. After all, elections can induce incredible anxiety among vulnerable populations whose lives and wellbeing may be threatened by the outcome, and it’s not fair to subject them to the same ordeal a mere six months later because you’re still butt-hurt over the fact that your guy didn’t win. Of course these same populations may feel just as anxious about a sitting government as they do about a prospective government, but at least when the house is back in session there is a window of opportunity to civil society to lobby for social change. Once an election is called, all bets are off. Parliament is dissolved, all incomplete business is terminated, committees cease to exist and Canadian tax-payers fork up, up to $443 million dollars[1] to pay for an election.

Am I suggesting that we should prop up minority governments at all costs? Of course not. Toppling the government is a legitimate course of action but like a late-night drunk text to an ex-lover, it’s not a decision that should not be taken lightly. If new evidence comes to light that the government is behaving irresponsibly or is flatly unwilling to compromise on any policy proposal then yes, a vote of non-confidence is warranted. But the critical difference is there has to be a good faith effort to compromise before the vote of non-confidence should be initiated.

It’s easy to forget in times of increasingly polarized political discourse that bipartisan cooperation was once a thing. If you look hard enough you can still find examples of it today; in some cases through very strange bedfellows who swallowed their pride and bit their tongues so that they could work together for the public good. Take for example the Democratic Party’s rising star, and card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. No one would ever question AOC’s commitment to a more just, equitable society and she is not afraid to work alongside some surprising allies to see her agenda through. Take for example, Ted Cruz.

Yes, that Ted Cruz.

These two first connected via Twitter over their mutual distrust of politicians-turned-lobbyists, and made a tentative agreement to work on a bill to ban the practice. More recently they signed a letter, slamming Apple for deleting an app that enabled Hong Kong protesters to track police presence. Now, do these two politicians like each other? I doubt it. At best they probably regard each other with grudging respect. They just decided that the lives of innocent protesters are more important than interpersonal gripes.

Compare that level of maturity to the elephant in the Senate, Mitch McConnell. McConnell has taken a smug, palpable pride in being nothing but a cog in the wheel since he assumed the position of Senate majority leader. He has showcased is disdain for bipartisanship by blocking any and every motion from the Democratic Party for no reason except he can. The most famous examples include the sheer number of federal judicial appointments he blocked simply because they were appointed by former President Obama, most notably the Supreme Court vacancy left by Anton Scalia. As a result, the position remained vacant until President Trump appointed Brett Kavanaugh despite credible accusations of sexual assault and misconduct during his testimony. And of course McConnell approved that appointment. It’s all part of the grand ol’ party’s grand new strategy of ‘better the sex offender you know than the Democrat you don’t’.

  • I only just made the connection that the animal associated with the GOP is an elephant. Ergo, in conversations regarding bipartisanship, Mitch McConnell is both a literal and figurative elephant in the room. Makes you think.

While I can certainly understand Canadian’s disappointment with the election results, they do nevertheless present a remarkable opportunity for the opposition parties. The Liberals may be back, but they have been relegated to minority status and will therefore have to cooperate with the opposition parties to retain power. For instance, the last time that the Liberals ran a minority government was under former Prime Minister Paul Martin, which risked being toppled by the opposition unless they managed to pass their budget. Fortunately for Martin, the former leader of the NDP, the late-Jack Layton offered his support in exchange for a few amendments that would have bettered the lives of working Canadians. Guys, Layton got all but one of his requested amendments added to the budget. The government lived to see another day and desperate, vulnerable people did not have to wait in agony for an election to pass to secure their livelihoods.

Personally, I’m ready for round two. The Liberals have been able to pass bills for the past four years without contest despite having won less than 40% of the popular vote. They are now down to 33% but if they are able to work with the NDP, that’s 49%. If they can get the Greens on board we’re up to 56%. Just imagine the possibilities for a progressive agenda if the parties could put aside their differences and work together, if only for a while. One issue I’d love to see the NDP push for is electoral reform. Contrary to public perception, Justin Trudeau actually has a relatively good track record at keeping his election promises but one broken promise that still hurts is his failure to disband the first-past-the-post voting system. This outdated method has enabled majority governments to ignore the opposition for the duration of their time in office despite often winning less than 50% of the popular vote. Prior to the 2015 election, Trudeau repeatedly stated that he wanted to be the last Prime Minister elected under this system, but then reneged shortly in to his first term. His argument was that government consultations indicated that Canadians did not want electoral reform, though he never did share his findings that enabled him to come to that conclusion.

If memory serves, many Liberals were disappointed but many Greens and New Democrats were downright furious. As they have not yet won an election at the federal level, their ability to influence policy has traditionally been contingent on the other party’s willingness to work with them. This meant in practice that they were largely ignored until the governing party was relegated to – call it if you know where this is going – minority status.

In short, the time is now. To any third party member or politician reading this post, this is your window. You wield the balance of power and you can use it to ensure that you’re never ignored again. Justin Trudeau may have won the privilege of residing in the decrepit sarcophagus that is 24 Sussex drive if he so chooses (and as of this publication, he so chooses not) but if the Liberals want to get shit done, they require your consent. Because, yes, theoretically you could topple the government. That is your constitutionally enshrined right and may be called for under specific circumstances. But please, for all our sake’s, don’t let those circumstances be a dick-measuring contest you initiated to prove yours was biggest. You may take satisfaction in knowing you’re the winner but for a win to mean anything usually someone else has to lose. All too often it’s the electorate, the very people you swore an oath to serve.

[1] to be clear, the $443 million price tag was a bit of an outlier and came about when former Prime Minister Stephen Harper dissolved Parliament early in 2015, resulting in a campaign that was almost twice as long as previous election periods. The 2011 election price tag was $290 million and as of this publication, the 2019 election tally has not been determined yet.

The Party of “Intellectual Laziness” Episode I: The Carbon Menace

Julie Couillard was pissed. Three days after she’d left an urgent message with her ex-boyfriend, asking him to come by her apartment and pick up his files, he’d failed to show up. He’d initially suggested that she throw them in the trash, but after speaking with her lawyer she decided it didn’t feel right and went to his office to return them in person. It’s a good thing too, because her ex-boyfriend was then-Canadian foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier and the files contained classified information from a NATO summit concerning the military engagement in Afghanistan.

It should have been the end of him but if the 2016 American election taught me anything, it’s never underestimate the ability of an angry white dude to bounce back from political obscurity. Yes, Bernier resigned from his cabinet position but retained his position as MP within the Conservative party of Canada. After the Conservatives were re-elected in 2012, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper even reappointed Bernier to a cabinet position, albeit a junior position that lacked the prestige of his former office. After the Conservatives lost the 2015 election and Harper resigned, Bernier submitted his name as a candidate for the party leadership and was widely speculated to win.[1] In a surprise twist, Bernier lost the leadership race to current leader Andrew Scheer by less than 2% of the vote. Rather than accept defeat gracefully and present a united front going in to the next election, Bernier behaved as any self-aggrandizing narcissist would do. He jumped on Twitter where he denounced the Conservative party as “too intellectually and morally corrupt to be reformed“, and announced his intention to create his own political party. Hence the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) was born.

  • I honestly can’t think of a better metaphor for the PPC than their leader standing alone, in front of the logo, shrugging

After the public scandal regarding the forgotten documents, Julie Couillard wrote a book to counter the negative publicity she’d endured from Bernier and members of the Conservative Party of Canada. Here she dishes out a lot of dirt on her former lover, including a now-famous passage where she accuses him of “surprising intellectual laziness”. To be clear, this post is not a review of Couillard’s book. I didn’t start this blog to weigh in on inconsequential ‘he-said-she-saids’ between two consenting adults. More importantly, I didn’t read it. I don’t know anyone who did. No, I’d much rather discuss Bernier’s “intellectual laziness” that is a matter of public record, and turns out there is no shortage of material.

I’ve read the PPC platform and the best way I can describe it is sloppy. It was clearly written to pander to the angriest members of the ‘basket of deplorables’ this side of the border, with no regard for feasibility or importance. Considering that they’re polling at a mere 2% of the popular vote, it’s tempting to ignore them altogether. However, Canadian elections are just around the corner and we cannot afford to dismiss obscure candidates under the naive assumption that they’re too crazy to get elected. That being said, it’s difficult to comment on the PPC platform as it contains enough hasty generalizations, internal contradictions and other logical fallacies to make a Fox News commentator blush. I could not possibly address them all in a single blog entry and therefore decided to tackle this through a three-part series of posts, each of which focuses on one pillar of their election platform beginning with their environmental policy. So without further ado, let’s hop aboard the train to crazy town and see what shakes loose when a confederacy of dunces runs for public office.

Episode I: The Carbon Menace.

The Conservative government under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was widely criticized for regressive policies on climate change, and rightly so. They withdrew from the Kyoto Accord, muzzled federal scientists, and drastically cut funds to both Environment Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, all of which were widely perceived as politicizing science to appease the oil industry. I’ll say this for them, for as long as Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, he never had the nerve to publicly deny the existence of human-influenced climate change. In fact, while their plan was not nearly proactive enough, Harper himself went on record referring to human-influenced climate change as “perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today”. The PPC, in contrast, went full Alex Jones and embraced conspiracy theories denying the existence of global warming.

As a rule I try not post overly long quotations and guys, I’m sorry, I really tried to cut this down. However every time I thought the stupidity had run its course, the PPC communications team surprised me by squeezing in one more argument against global warming that frankly reads like a high school bio student trying to bullshit their way through their final exam. On a positive note, no one in the PPC can accuse me of bastardizing their environmental platform, as this was copied, verbatim, directly from their website. Literally all I did was adjust the formatting for spacing purposes and delete the word “facts” – largely because including it felt like complicity in their nefarious plot to set the planet on fire. I may be sassy but I’m not a liar.

Let’s do this:

“The Liberal government is spending billions of dollars at home and abroad to fight global warming—or “climate change” as it is now called to account for every natural weather event and its opposite. In order to lower greenhouse gas emissions, it has imposed taxes and countless regulations, it subsidizes inefficient and costly “green technology,” and it is blocking the development of oil resources crucial to our prosperity.

“It is an undisputed fact that the world’s climate has always changed and will continue to change. Until twelve thousand years ago, much of Canada was under ice, and it is thanks to natural climate change that we can live here today.

“There is however no scientific consensus on the theory that CO2 produced by human activity is causing dangerous global warming today or will in the future, and that the world is facing environmental catastrophes unless theseemissions are drastically reduced. Many renowned scientists continue to challenge this theory. The policy debate about global warming is not grounded on science anymore. It has been hijacked by proponents of big government who are using crude propaganda techniques to impose their views. They publicly ridicule and harass anyone who expresses doubt. They make exaggerated claims to scare people. They even manipulate school children, getting them to pressure their parents and to demonstrate in the streets.

“Climate change alarmism is based on flawed models that have consistently failed at correctly predicting the future. None of the cataclysmic predictions that have been made about the climate since the 1970s have come true. No new ice age. No steady warming in direct relation with increases in CO2 levels. No disappearance of polar ice caps. No exceptional rise in ocean levels. No abnormal increase in catastrophic weather events. No widespread crop failure and famine.

“In fact, CO2 is beneficial for agriculture and there has recently been a measurable “greening” of the world in part thanks to higher levels. Despite what global warming propaganda claims, CO2 is not a pollutant. It is an essential ingredient for life on Earth and needed for plant growth.” PPC website, as of August 2019

Welcome back. Congratulations on making it to the finish line, your skills of perseverance are admirable. Need a minute? I get it. Go for a walk or a cool glass of tap water. I’ll wait.

…

….

…..

Feel better? Good. Let’s discuss.

Okay…a lot to unpack here. Let’s start with the argument that the climate “has always changed and will continue to change” until the sun inevitably swallows the Earth whole. Essentially they’re arguing that global warming is just a phase that Mother Nature is going through, as she’s done time and time again since the days of Eden. While scientists agree that the Earth’s climate does evolve over time, these changes usually occur over hundreds of thousands of years, not decades. The rapid warming that the Earth has experienced since the Industrial Revolution, in contrast, correlates to the higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is a direct result of human activity. Scientists have produced dozens of models that support this theory, that – contrary to what Bernier and the PPC suggest – are actually pretty good.

  • average change in temperature from 1948-2012

The PPC continues by claiming that “there is however no scientific consensus on the theory that CO2 produced by human activity is causing dangerous global warming” and that “many renowned scientists continue to challenge this theory”. Really? Got a reference for that, preferably one you didn’t scrape out of the cavity of your own ass? Because I have an entire assembly of scientists who – with the help of peer-reviewed sources and university experts – came to a very different conclusion:

In 2019, the government released Canada’s Changing Climate Record, where nine public servants from two government departments when on public record saying:

“There is overwhelming evidence that the Earth has warmed during the Industrial Era and the main cause of this warming is human influence. This evidence includes increases in near-surface and lower-atmosphere air temperature, sea surface temperature, and ocean heat content…The observed warming and other climate changes cannot be explained by natural factors…only when human influences on climate are accounted for…can these observed changes in climate be explained.”

The report goes on to list some of the many threats – both social and economic – that jeopardize Canada’s future if we don’t take immediate action to address climate change. Indeed, some of them may have already materialized, which begs the question how much worse it could possibly get. Most of these risks are associated with changes in extreme weather, with more extreme hot temperatures augmenting risk of droughts and wildfires, and warmer extreme cold temperatures, resulting in more precipitation and by extension, flooding in parts of the country. The social or human cost of these disasters is immeasurable, however, there are some reports indicating how draining they are on the Canadian economy.

  • average change in precipitation by year with best/worst case scenario predictions for the future

The 2017 flooding in Ontario and Quebec alone cost the provinces an estimated $223 million in insurable damages to roads, businesses and residences as thousands were forced to flee from their homes as lakes and rivers climbed to a fifty-year-high. In addition, local businesses such as the Toronto Island Park lost millions in forgone earnings as their businesses remained closes for much of the tourist season. And these figures don’t even consider the costs associated with mobilizing the military to rescue flood victims, which generated enormous costs to the federal government and brought the national capital region to a stand-still.

And of course, there was the clean up.

The Disaster Financial Assistance program requires the federal government to cover up to 90% of the costs associated with eligible natural disasters, such as the flooding in Ontario and Quebec. From 1970 – when the program was launched – to 1996, this cost tax payers an average of $10 million per year. From 1996-2011, this climbed to $110 million. Since 2011, tax payers have paid approximately $360 million per year for clean-up costs, much of which was for natural disasters associated with global warming.

The PPC attempted to bury the sad truth under some absurdly optimistic pseudo-science, but if you were hoping to offset the apocalypse by planting a tree, then sorry to flood on your parade. Suggesting that global warming will help plants because carbon “is an essential ingredient for life on Earth and needed for plant growth” is almost as ridiculous as suggesting that plants need sunlight, therefore droughts are good for agriculture. Sure plants need carbon dioxide, but they can only absorb so much. The higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere compounded with loss of forests due to clear cutting means that plants cannot possibly keep pace with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This puts us back at square one.

So let’s be real. While climate change adaptation may pose some challenges to our economy, that doesn’t mean that the status quo doesn’t come at a cost. Moreover, the longer we put off the inevitable, the higher those costs are going to grow. Many of these will be monetary but some will not, and may include losing a loved one in a forest fire or losing your home in a flood. So yeah, I guess the PPC was accidentally, almost right about one thing. I do want to scare people. I’m all for educating children about the risks of climate change. I’m a socially inept, introvert who’s afraid of crowds, but I’ll demonstrate in the streets if that’s what it takes. But I need to know that my leaders will stand with me, not bury their heads in the sand and wait for the storm to pass. That kind of naivety will only encourage the storm to stick around. Failure to recognize that is intellectually deficient, and refusal to act upon it can only be described as laziness.

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Bummed out? Yeah, me too. Take a minute but please tune in next time for Episode II: the Demagogue Strikes Back, where I’ll be discussing the PPC’s policy on immigration and why it sucks.

[1] As an aside note I distinctly remember that leadership contest because former business man and reality TV star Kevin O’Leary was also in the running. At the time I considered O’Leary to be ‘Trump of the North’ and was actually hoping Bernier would win. Who knows what kind of leader O’Leary would have been but I’ll say this for him: as the son of a Lebanese immigrant who recognized the benefits of immigration, I don’t think we would have seen the same nationalist, racially-charged rhetoric that we’ve seen from Bernier. I bring this up only to acknowledge my own short-sightedness and I dunno, I guess to point out how innocent we all were back then

Hate is not a Partisan Issue

  • UNITED STATES – JULY 15: From left, Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., conduct a news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center responding to negative comments by President Trump that were directed the freshman House Democrats on Monday, July 15, 2019. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Man, the metaphorical ink has not even pseudo-dried on my most recent post concerning race relations in America and already the GOP is doing its upmost to plunge America in to round 2 of the Civil War. This time thanks to the mad ravings of the current president and his chronic inability to check his worst impulses before jumping on Twitter.

President Trump has always had a weirdly cozy relationship with white nationalism and a propensity to spew racist jargon without bothering to check his facts. From suggesting Mexicans are “rapists”, to allegedly referring to African countries as “shithole” countries, you can only slip up so many times before the public is forced to conclude that you’re not having a senior’s moment, you’re just an asshole. However, it was his most recent Twitter-tirade where he suggested that four minority Congress womyn should go back to the countries that they came from that finally spurred Democrats in to action.

To be frank I don’t know that I have much else to say regarding the President’s tweets. On the one hand I recognize that impulse is dangerous; that it is imperative that we never shrug off racially-motivated attacks, especially when they’re spoken by a man occupying the highest level of public office. However the sad truth is I have nothing more to add to this discussion that hasn’t already been said. I can repeatedly call the President’s behavior “racist” until I’m blue in the face, but if you’re reading this article you probably already agree with me or you never will. No, I’d much rather discuss how the majority of the GOP defended his behaviour and the implications of this on modern politics. The reason being that while I believe the current president is a hateful, bigoted, narcissistic man-child with delusions of grandeur undermined by mounting paranoia, I don’t think that description fits the majority of GOP senators. This begs the question how they can defend the President’s behavior and how this will influence the political discourse in America for years to come.

First up is Senate Minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who argued that neither the President nor House Speak Nancy Pelosi were racist, rather have competing ideologies:

” I believe this is about ideology.” He said. “I think (the Republican) party has been very clear, we are the party of Lincoln…yeah, it’s all politics.”

You know, what Kevin? Massage the language a bit and tweek your delivery and I think you’ve almost got it. Yeah, this about ideology. The president is demonstrating a racist ideology and politicians (who, as their title suggests, are “all politics”) are debating how to respond. It didn’t necessarily have to be this way. Ten years ago I might have assumed that a group of grown-ass men would have the courage to condemn racism regardless of which party it came from but here we are, on the other side of Charlottesville, where apparently you can’t even condemn Nazism without first suggesting that wrongs were committed on both sides. If this is a political issue worthy of public debate it’s only because the GOP made it so by defending or belittling the significance of the President’s actions.

And how are the actions of a previous presidents relevant to what you decide to do today? You don’t hear the Democrats screaming that the Trump campaign must have conspired to undermine the 2016 election because they hail from the party of Nixon. The campaign did that on its own. Moreover while it’s true that Lincoln did issue the Emancipation Proclamation, he did not believe that African Americans should have equal rights and considered forcibly relocating freed slaves back to American colonies. Might be time to find a new champion in your racism defense, for Lincoln has not aged well.

I think my favorite defense so far came from house Minority whip Steve Scalise, who used his air time to remind us all who the real victim in all this was:

(This is just) “one more attempt to personally attack President Trump instead of focusing on things that can actually get this economy going.”

That’s right, four minority womyn were the subject of a racist tirade but please, tell me more about how the trust fund baby and tax evader was the real wronged party. After all, who doesn’t love a good over-dog story? Let Goliath show that little turd David who’s boss, am I right fellas?

Sigh, for a party that’s constantly labelling the opposition a pack of “liberal snowflakes”, they sure don’t handle criticism well themselves.

Finally there is Senate Majority leader and Muppet- doppelganger Mitch McConnell, who opened by saying that the President is not a racist before adding the following:

“the tone of all of this is not good for the country. Everyone outta calm down their rhetoric, and we ought to move back to the issues.”

  • separated at birth?

I saved this one for last because I think it’s the sickest of all. What issue could possibly be more important than the lives and well-being of American citizens? “The squad” who were the subject of these attacks have proven themselves time and time again to be strong, resilient womyn but that cannot diminish the sad truth that language like this exposes them to some risk. I already discussed this in a previous posting but minority womyn are especially vulnerable to harassment, discrimination and even violence because of their gender and race, and when high ranking officials condone this behavior, it emboldens those who might wish them harm. The president’s tweets, whether McConnell wants to admit it or not, legitimizes acts of hatred against not just these Congress womyn but minority womyn in general.

I opened this posting by suggesting that the GOP is doing it upmost to ignite a race war but now that I’m nearing the end I’ve come to think that maybe that’s not fair. Their not trying to start a race war. They’re not trying to do anything at all. They’re simply burying their heads in the sand and waiting for the storm to pass, hopefully just in time to retire with a full pension so the next round of politicians can clean up the mess they left behind. And why? Probably for the one reason that they all bent the knee in the first place when Trump secured the leadership. You won’t find it in any of the statements I listed above but its something to the effect of “we realize our captain is bigoted demi-god with the self-restraint of a toddler at an ice cream bar, but he speaks to the worst elements of our base and we are a pack of leeches that would sooner sell our own mothers than give up power.”

This more than anything speaks to the tragedy of modern political systems such as those in the United States. Politicians may serve on multiple committees with conflicting objectives and beliefs but they should always be for the good of those they were elected to serve. Not the electorate that was born here, not the electorate whos skin pigmentation falls within a certain colour gradient, but the entire electorate, and preventing threats to their health and safety should be their number one priority. In this case not only has the GOP failed to respond to a racially motivated threat, but set a chilling precedent by effectively telling the President of the United States that his racist language is above reproach.

So under the wild and obscure possibility that my small corner of the internet has attracted a GOP-enthusiast who somehow kept reading after I called the president a narcissistic man-child, hear this: step up or get to work on some better excuses, because when the hour of reckoning inevitably comes, petty deflections such as those I listed above are definitely not going to cut it.

Joe Biden and the Sticky Issue of Segregation

So in hindsight I might have jumped the gun in posting my June entry when I gave Joe Biden a tepid thumbs-up rating on the like-ability meter. Of course hindsight is 20/20, and new information often comes to light that prompts us to question the motives or decisions of those we previously admired, or at least “liked”. In this case, I posted before Biden’s first debate and watched his like-ability start to waver when questioned by senator Kamala Harris about his messy history with racial segregation and bussing.[1] For those who missed the exchange, here is a summary below:

HARRIS: I’m going to now direct this to Vice President Biden. I do not believe you are a racist and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground. But, I also believe—and it’s personal. And I—I was actually very—it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose bussing…So, I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among democrats. We have to take it seriously.”

BIDEN: “I did not oppose bussing in America. What I opposed is bussing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed.”

Biden has since apologized for diminishing the impact of segregation in this reply but I still think it merits further discussion. First off, it’s worth considering that a career politician with a history as long as Biden’s is bound to have accumulated a few skeletons in his closet. Times change, and we change with them. The first problem with Biden’s initial response is that he seemed reluctant to learn from his mistakes. And yes, I do strongly believe that this was a mistake.

Intentionally or not, Biden’s response contained echoes of the popular narrative that conservative American activists have touted for centuries to defend the disenfranchisement and abuse of African Americans. The Civil War, these people argue, was not about slavery per se, but “states’ rights”. The problem with this civil war defence was been well-documented by people much smarter than me, so I’ll leave it to them to completely debunk any lingering beliefs you hold that the Southern cause was somehow a noble challenge against state tyranny. But I would like to reiterate one critical point: The real problem with the ‘state’s rights’ defense of the Civil War is that it is incomplete. After all, southern states had no problem deferring to the Federal government during the Nullification crisis and slave-holding states reaped huge benefits from the federal government’s decision to override states’ rights by implementing the Fugitive Slave Acts. The Civil War began because slave-holding states believed that they had an inherent right to own, trade, abuse, and disenfranchise slaves, on account of race. And if any state tries to enact laws or policies that defy the principles that America was founded upon then yes, I do believe that the federal government has a moral duty to intervene.

I am not trying to create a moral equivalency between slavery and segregation; that will only belittle the horrors and significance of slavery. However, both institutions are underpinned by a common assumption that African-Americans should receive inferior treatment on account of their race. And while African American activists are doing everything they can to remind us that black lives matter, we cannot risk electing a president who listens to their cries with deaf ears.

Last year, America and the world at large held its breath during the Alabama senatorial election where accused child-molester Roy Moore squared off against Democrat Doug Jones in a traditionally red state. Jones won the election, largely thanks to support from African American voters. 98 percent of black women voted for Jones, as did 93 percent of black men and are largely credited with having secured his victory. Multiple supporters and pundits were interviewed in the aftermath of the election but I think it was NBA-superstar and Doug Jones supporter Charles Barkley said it best in his closing appeal to the Democratic party.

BARKLEY: “Well, this is a wake-up call for Democrats… They’ve always had our votes and they have abused our votes and this is a wake-up call…for Democrat to do better for black people and poor white people.”

Yes, that was a supporting actor from the movie Space Jam demonstrating a greater understanding of African-American political engagement than a man who served as Vice President to the first black president in American history. Is it too late to phone in Barkley for President? Scratch that, the leadership race is full enough as-is. How about Secretary of State? After all, Dennis Rodhman informally served as America’s self-appointed ambassador to North Korea so yeah, basketball player-turned-politician wouldn’t be unprecedented.

  • Former NBA player and Auburn basketball star Charles Barkley speaks during a rally for Doug Jones. If the eventual winner of the Democratic leadership race is looking for a running mate, I’m just saying, he’s retired now.

Let me be clear and say that I agree with Harris in that I don’t think Biden is a racist. However it’s not good enough to oppose racism on a personal level if you are complicit in programs and policies that keep racial segregation alive. After all, if I can squeeze in one more Civil War parallel, Lincoln has been historically lauded for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and evidence suggests that he personally opposed slavery. However, in a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858, he famously stated:

“I have no purposes directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Abraham Lincoln – 1958

So yes, mea culpa. Biden’s history of turning a blind eye to segregation was well-documented and I should have been more vigilant in my research. The difference here is that I’ve demonstrated a willingness to learn from my mistakes and take responsibility when I was wrong. And it only took me one month! Joe Biden’s been sitting on more than a few lapses of judgement for decades but it’s 2019, and the ‘it-was-a-different-time’ defense is no longer acceptable. Time to step up, Joe, or fail to do so at our peril.

[1] Bussing refers to the practice of transporting students to schools in different neighbourhoods in an effort to address racial segregation, as segregated schools received much less funding and undermined the academic performance of minority students.

Forced to be free: Thoughts on the Quebec ban on Religious Symbols and Policing Womyn’s Dress

It was around this time over twenty years ago that I remember going to Corry McClane’s house for a summer barbeque and water balloon fight. I don’t remember too many details about the party itself, save one moment when all the girls crowded in to the living room and one asked if we’d heard the news that as of that year, womyn in Ontario, Canada were legally permitted to step out in public completely topless.

If any of the girls present thought that this was socially acceptable they kept their mouths shut, and let the rest of us prattle on about how this was icky because boobs are icky and good girls keep their ickies from the public eye. The fact that we were all in the process of changing out of bathing suits that 60 years ago might have been considered ‘icky’ was completely lost on us, largely because our means of determining relative icky-ness weren’t that sophisticated. By our metric, traditional western standards of dress alone reflected the perfect balance of freedom and modesty. Anything more was prudish, anything less was wanton, end of discussion.

Yes, I was incredibly narrow-minded but in my defence I was a) nine, and b) stupid. Rest assured that all these years later, my views have softened substantially. Between summer camp, the communal change room at the gym, and a brief stint as a sales rep at a lingerie store, I’ve seen enough boobs to be effectively bored by them, so partial nudity no longer fazes me. From a practical stand-point, I can also see how anti-boobists would make life particularly hellish for breastfeeding mothers and I for one have no interest in explaining public indecency laws to their screaming, milk-deprived offspring. That being said, it’s true that more than twenty years after Corry’s party I’m yet to exercise my court-sanctioned right to walk around topless in public.

No, it’s not an insecurity thing. I’m actually rather fond of my boobs but even if I wasn’t I can’t see that stopping me. I’m not terribly fond of my thighs but I never let that keep me from wearing shorts or dresses. It’s also not a morality thing. After all, I’m vegetarian so if I really believed in imposing my lifestyle choices on an unsuspecting public, I’d have gone topless at a PETA rally ages ago. No, the reason I’ve never gone topless in public is simpler than all of that. It’s the same reason I won’t watch a Kardashian spin-off or adopt a python. I just don’t want to. I have absolutely no issue with any womyn who choose take their shirts off in public but I’m not going to join them just to satisfy someone else’s notion of how I ought to dress.

I bring this up because the governing CAQ party in Quebec recently passed legislation that bars civil servants from wearing any religious symbols in the execution of their jobs. While the law technically applies to all religions, it will have an especial bearing on Muslim womyn who cover their face and/or their head at work. The new law enjoys popular support in its home-province and other parts of Canada as well, with many arguing that head scarves in particular are inherently oppressive and have no place in a modern, secular state. The cruel irony of this is that a top-down regulation banning individuals from wearing religious symbols is itself oppressive. It denies religious persons the freedom to choose how to dress and stigmatizes religious expression, thereby exposing all religious persons but especially Muslims to undue risk.

The assumption that a head scarf is synonymous with oppression is pretty weak, as we can see from example just how far Muslim womyn can and have gone to protect their right to wear one. For instance, in 2015, Zunera Ishaq successfully challenged the law requiring womyn to remove their veils while taking the Canadian Oath of Citizenship at the federal court level. More recently a group of women in France defied a public ban on “burkinis” and refused to vacate a public pool, despite later being questioned by the police and issued fines. And of course the hijab-wearing  Ilhan Omar recently made history as the first Somali-American congress womyn, all while enduring constant media scrutiny from Fox and Freaks and Jeanine Pirro, among others. These are just a few examples but the point I’m trying to make is do any of these womyn sound like they’re oppressed? Or can we at least entertain the possibility that many womyn really do wear a veil by choice?

The reasons why Muslim womyn choose to cover their head and/or face are very diverse. Some do so in order to show their submission to God or serve as a constant reminder to hold true to Islamic values, such as honesty and generosity. Others do so to show their pride in their ethnic identity and to maintain ties to their roots. Some even choose to cover their heads as an act of defiance against Western notions of feminine beauty, which has been heavily influenced by the male gaze. The list goes on but the most important take-away is these womyn are making a conscious choice. You don’t have to understand it, or agree with it, but you do have to respect it. Doing otherwise not only denies Muslim womyn agency but may expose them to harassment, discrimination and in some cases, violence.

This individual gets a passing reference below but for now, I just want to acknowledge his hat…

Islamaphobia is on the rise all over the world and Canada, despite its reputation as your friendly neighbour to the north is not immune to this. Indeed, inflammatory rhetoric that portrays Islam as an oppressive, dangerous force may actually inspire acts of discrimination and other hate crimes against Muslims. Multiple Muslim womyn in Canada have reported racially-motivated attacks and those who wear veils are at a particularly high risk by virtue of wearing a visual indicator that links them to their faith. However the most horrific example of Islamaphobia in Canada was undoubtedly the mass shooting at the Quebec City mosque in 2017. The perpetrator (who shall go unnamed in this article but can be seen in the image above) spent the day of the attack reading Islamaphobic statements from media personalities including Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly and of course, American president Donald Trump. You’d think that this revelation would have given some politicians pause to consider the link between hateful language and hate crimes, but no. The governing CAQ party pressed ahead with the ban on religious symbols despite having witnessed the worst excesses of religious discrimination in their own backyard.

Even as I write this I can feel my readers rolling their eyes and arguing that breasts are different. That compelling a womyn to remove her head scarf is not the same as requiring her to remove her top, but this misses the point. The question isn’t where should we draw the line, it’s why do we have to draw the line at all. Social norms governing dress have always been specific to time, culture and circumstance, so any regulation governing dress will always be somewhat arbitrary. However, creating artificial barriers that segregate vulnerable communities away from polite society only reinforces the view that there’s only one way for a womyn to be. The truly progressive stance would be to let womyn wear whatever the fuck they want.