Countdown to Smarmageddon

Here we are yet again at 'the most important election in US history.'  Of course we are! Seems to me every election since at least Ford - Carter has been the most important in US history. In fact, as America's democracy becomes demonstrably the opposite of "democratic," the global America-centric Western media empires now claim US elections are the 'most important, ever, not just in America,  BUT IN WORLD HISTORY!!!'

It's no secret that across the so-called liberal democracies, the 'will of the people,' voters, is everywhere usurped by the one-percenters, or more correctly, the point-double-O-one-percenters, more recently sometimes referred to as the Epstein Class.  American democracy was officially dismembered by the SCOTUS Citizens United decision in 2010. While the relationship between money and power was hardly hidden before, from that moment forward, money has  officially trumped the ballot box in America's electoral system.

The  Trump era has brought a new twist to  media coverage of  elections in the world's indispensable, greatest, and most admired democracy. Whenever Mafia Don shows up on the ballot, not only is the next election the most consequential in the history of democracy, it could be the LAST ELECTION EVER! And that goes double for today's midterms.  The future of American politics has never been at such risk... OMG, is he gonna pull out the BIG RED ATOMIC BUTTON?

Well, with the clown posse around Donny J, I suppose anything is possible, but I'll go out on a limb here and make a prediction.  When the dust settles (no no no... not the nuclear, but the metaphorical) it'll be business as usual. Regardless of the outcome of the most expensive midterms in history,  the Gaza genocide will continue, as will the ethnic cleansing of West Bank and the destruction of Syria and Lebanon. 

We will continue to ply our Ukrainian patsies with empty promises. We'll ship 500 Patriots... as soon as our defence industry, which is the envy of the world and the scourge of our enemies, gets around to building them. The American voters are tired of seeing their taxes fund wars they were never consulted on and couldn't care less about. All of these things will continue seamlessly, regardless of which party prevails today. 

Equally true: the actual concerns of the voting public will never be addressed.

Bibi-Donnie bromance shows signs of severe strain

Back in February last, when USA/Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, in the midst of pretend peace negotiations, it looked like the good guys had the upper hand for a few days. We murdered the top wog and most of his family, to say nothing of his ruling clique who all deader than dead! In fact, we killed so many of the evil-doers we don't even have anybody to talk to for the next round of fake peace negotiations.

And as we've been reminded once or twice by Mafia Don and the unctuous jerk-off of a platoon-leader who by some miracle became Secretary of War,  our forces of righteousness and projectiles of democracy have sent their navy to the bottom of the sea and its leaders to hell. Oh ya baby!... USA USA USA!!!

A few days into that glorious war, I posted this; The war Israel and USA started ten days ago now threatens the future of both.  

Bingo!

Seven months later, how's it going? The towelheads o' terror are still firing missiles with reckless abandon. The Good Guys seem to be running low on interceptors. There is no sign of peace on the horizon. The Nations of Virtue have sanctioned the Persians from top to bottom and up the wazoo since '79, to no avail. Those folks will eat grass and live in caves for a thousand years before they bow to the genocidal duopoly USAIsrael.

Both of these war criminals are getting more than a little nervous about where things are headed.  There's a real fear that the terrorists might launch a few thousand missiles before the Good Guys in Jerusalem get their next batch of Patriot interceptors, which are scheduled to arrive in three years time. Both of  'em are way out on political limbs they're furiously sawing off in hopes of distancing themselves from blame, but I don't see any hope. America will be in turmoil after Tuesday. The GOP will be decimated, but the Dems will explode in civil war. A lot of heavy hitters in the donkey club hate their fellow asses more than they hate Trump, if what just happened in Michigan is any taste of where we're heading.

Meanwhile, The Greatest Leader Since Moses, while having lost the election, nevertheless finds himself as the 'caretaker' PM while a coalition is formed, a process he should be able to stretch out indefinitely. So here we are. Trump knows Bibi has already destroyed his presidency.

That's not the kinda thing Mafia Don is gonna forgive and forget.

How your perspective on dying changes when you realize you're dying

Don't get me wrong; all of us are always dying, and like the motto of one of my fave alt-news sites proclaims; on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everybody drops to zero.

No shit!

But circumstances have brought me to a place where the odds of my dropping dead any moment have allegedly increased exponentially. That of course is the regrettable course of events that led to a couple of nasty diagnoses nobody wants to hear; CHF and COPD.

Well, you can't really make light of that sort of thing. At the same time, what are you supposed to do about it? I've had my issues in the past. In my "wild hare" days I graduated through one of the world's finest addiction rehab centres not once, but twice! Today I'm six years older than the life expectancy of a boy-child born in '55.

Not only that, but neither of my allegedly life-threatening ailments have in any way impacted my ability to do the things I love most: read and write!

So as far as I'm concerned, my best bet is to keep living life. At this point, cutting out the weed or the smokes or the beer is entirely beside the point. I owe life to the grace of God, and I give thanks every day. 

Some of the kids are still alright

With apologies to Roger and Pete, it brings me joy to say so.  We're so used to imbibing wall-to-wall doom & gloom about the future prospects for our children, we're blind to the good news, even when it's sitting right  next to us.

That's happened here a couple of times of late. Back a few months ago, during the height of high summer, we found ourselves on the patio at the Erie Belle, a seafood joint down Kincardine way we've been patronizing sporadically for at least thirty years, whenever we're down Kincardine way.

There's a boisterous gaggle of twenty-somethings in the street in front of us. Two-three couples and maybe 3-4 singles, but all one happy, ethnically diverse crew, vaping their way down the street, and about the time our drinks arrive, they arrive at the other end of the patio.

They're a little on the noisy side for our ears, but by golly there's an animated conversation happening over there about what sounds to me like office politics. Fifteen minutes in we concluded they were co-workers from some high-tech outfit in Waterloo, just an hour down the road, but here's what was so amazing; in the hour or so we shared that patio, none of them ever pulled out or consulted any "device."

That gives me hope.  I made a point of mentioning that on my way out. I'm guessing they marveled at how little it takes to give an aging boomer hope! 

Fast forward to this morning in one of our favorite local joints, Dockside Willies, named after the famous rodent, Wiarton Willie. The Farm Manager had a brutal week in her day job, and we were down for a quiet breakfast. We weren't settled into our window seats, overlooking Wiarton harbour and Colpoys Bay, more than a few minutes, when a crew of six kids, barely if at all out of their teens, take the next table. 

Believe it or not, none of that crew ever consulted any device in the 45 minutes we shared their space, and while we weren't "evesdropping" per se, their chit chat was mostly about the jobs they had and a couple of recent job interviews. Clearly, these are kids not hiding in parental safe houses seeking comfort in their video games and AI therapists.

Maybe it's easier to find engagement with the real world in these rural communities, where most of the folks still trust their neighbours.

Mavis Gallant, fathers and daughters and fathers and sons

Fathers and daughters

I happened to be watching the Daytona 500, and the race got red-flagged early on, so I took the opportunity to drive into town for a sixpack, and had the immense pleasure of hearing an interview with the late Mavis Gallant on the car radio.

Canadian literature has always left me a little cold. I think it's that "Canadian" label. Why do we need to have labels for literature? Isn't it enough that it's in a language I can read? As long as you're writing in English should it matter whether you write from India or Ceylon or Nigeria or the US or England?

Or Canada?

It struck me as a way to get some spotlight for otherwise mediocre writers who would have drowned in the big pool but were able to become big fish in the segregated pool we call Canlit.

So Michael Ondaatje came to Canada and is now a great Canadian writer; Malcom Lowry did some of his best work here but was never a Canadian writer. Elizabeth Smart was a Canadian but didn't write here so is excluded from the Canlit canon... it all seems a little arbitrary to me.

Mavis was a Canadian writer who wrote elsewhere and was therefore a Canlit outsider of sorts; proudly embraced after the fact of her international success, which only underscores my point that these labels of national identity are irrelevant if not illegitimate.

Good writing is always universal. Love, death, peace, war...

The father-daughter bond is one of those universals, and it was poignant to hear the octogenarian Gallant reminisce about events in her life from over 80 years ago. The father-daughter relationship was evidently a crucial one in her formative years. It's remarkable that she can wistfully recollect memories even though he died when she was ten years old.

I've had the extreme good fortune of not dying when my daughter was ten. That's allowed me to be a coach and cheerleader as a shy but precocious little girl has negotiated the innumerable hazards that lie in wait for a girl growing up, and I do believe it's tougher for girls than for boys.

For well beyond the first year of her life I walked her to sleep every night to Sing it again, Rod. At some level that hour-long walk every night created bonds that have been strained at times, by divorce and adolescence and all the baggage that goes with that, but have never been seriously threatened.

It's a joy I can scarcely articulate, to drive to the big city and visit with her, an independent and successful young professional making her way in the world.

The last ten years have also gifted me a step-daughter. That relationship did not have the benefit of that crucial first year of being walked to sleep to Rod Stewart tunes. As a result, we had to fight through a lot of that adolescent baggage, a process that had both highs and lows. But we made it.

She too is a fiercely intelligent and independent young woman successfully making her way in the world.

I feel bad for Mavis' dad. He missed so much.

And I am the luckiest dad in the world.

*************

Not sure why it's easier for me to write about the girls than the boys. The father-son bond between me and my boys was always coloured by my relationship with my own father. They say your personality is largely shaped in the first five years of life by what your parents do. 

My parents were dirt-poor immigrants fighting to make a go of it in their new country. For the first five years of my life Dad went to work in a factory every day. By the time I was six my life's ambition was to have the best job in the factory.

By the time I became father to a son, my own father had betrayed his factory beginnings and had reinvented himself as a real estate broker. At some level I was never able to forgive that betrayal. 

Fortunately, the confusion and despair that betrayal engendered made it utterly impossible to dictate the dreams and aspirations of my own boys.

While that may sound generous, the fact of the matter was none of the lads were the slightest bit interested in my insights, ever! Where the girls are high-energy over-achievers, the dudes are all laid-back under-achievers. Between the three of them I've got two cooks and an ed assistant. Thus far none have been featured in the alumni magazines post-secondary institutions use to brag up their grads!

Is Canada a serious country?

Given the hoo-ha around that EU delegation convening in Montreal, you'd almost think so. Queen Ursula herself has declared that Canada would make a meaningful addition to her stable, although I'm not sure why. Just today Global news has a story about our inability to provide ammo to our armed forces. Ponder this quote; " ... Canada's Auditor General Karen Hogan said a flawed inventory management system, dysfunctional data analysis and contracts plagued with inefficiencies has resulted in the Department of National Defence (DND) not knowing how much ammunition it has or needs, or how to get more."

So the EU Strike Force Ursula is building to defeat Putin wants to cosey up to a military that doesn't know how much ammo it needs, or how to get more? Well, we can't really build our own, because Canada's military-industrial infrastructure is but a tiny fraction of what we had 75 years ago. Lucky for the Western Alliance and their warmongering elites, Russia and her allies have also allowed their military-industrial capacity to atrophy... NOT!

Our blonde bimbette of a cabinet minister, recently given the boot out of the Foreign Ministry, has been drawing attention to her ineptitude by picking a fight with the American owners of Canada's largest steel producer. Does Ursula realize the target she is seducing doesn't even own its steel industry? Has zero armament-building capacity other than foreign-owned branch plants? Is decades away from replacing China as a source of rare earths and strategic metals? And she wants to partner the EU with Canada because... of our common values?

Ms Joly has stated loudly and publicly she will on no account entertain a face-to-face with the CEO of the company handing out layoff slips to the Hamilton steelworkers until he brings them all back. She's extra pissy because the dude once said Trump's tariffs were a good idea, and now she's gonna hold him accountable for that outrage!

What a moron! What clout does she imagine she has? Does she not realize CC would just as soon shut Stelco down?  That's a time honoured tradition in Canada - sell our success stories to foreigners who shut 'em down to eliminate the competition. Champion grader in Goderich and the GM Diesel locomotive works in London were both sold to Caterpillar and shuttered.

All this is bad enough, but we ain't seen nothing till we marvel at the truly bizarre take our official propaganda outlet has on matters pertaining to Canada's role in this world-on-the-brink. Long-time CBC staff writer (and I note that only to underline he is not a recent TMU grad dropped into a temp internship funded by Meta and Google) Evan Dyer, whose editors blessed his long-winded expose with the title, "Trump's increasing support for Russia carries existential danger for Canada."

Yup, Evan found at least half a dozen academics and think-tankers who missed the Mueller investigation's final report, and the lot of them are still banging on about Putin's seizure of American democracy. The reality is that they're half-right, but the folks who really call the shots in Washington reside in Jerusalem, not Moscow.

Congrats to Steve Liebig on his re-election win!

Hey Steve, good to see you prevailed in spite of  my endorsement!

I've got nothing but respect for the folks who try to make a go of governing at the local level. Insofar as our democracy has any claim to authenticity, it's found at the grass roots of local politics. That's gotta be a thankless task. In one of my previous lives I occasionally had dealings with local officials around minor zoning variances and such, and it was always a little disheartening when county councilors began to audibly snore during my presentations.

Once you go up the value chain in power politics, you soon realize actual democracy is limited to that very elemental "grass roots" level... anything beyond that, well by golly, thank God we've got some sensible mayors who appreciate their "strong mayor" powers. That ain't democratic, but at least it gets things done! Benito would be proud, and Doug Ford is too!

God bless the folks who give up their evenings to attend council meetings. You're keeping democracy alive!