A Place To Rebuild

One story during my blog interregnum was the new plans for Ontario Place. I’m reminded of that now because some of the nostalgia accounts I follow on social media have run pictures from its beginnings in the early seventies.

Ontario Place redevelopment wasn’t a big deal to me; I don’t really have a personal connection with it. My experience is the same as many in southern Ontario; I’ve been there a few times as an adjunct to a trip to the CNE, and that’s about it. But the announcements of the new plans for the site stuck in my mind for a very notable reason: It made me feel sorry for Doug Ford.

Yes, I detest our premier, but I couldn’t help but have sympathy for him for the same reason I feel sorry for all politicians in office: they have to work in reality, while the rest of us compare that to faulty memories of the past or unrealistic imaginings of the future.

This was a great example of that pattern. His government announced an uninspiring but reasonable plan to revitalize the park, and that was greeted by howls of complaints about how he had ruined one of the great amusement parks of the world. People, we’re talking about a park that’s been closed for a decade. It was closed because it was losing money so fast that a Liberal government thought it wasn't worth keeping open. So when people wax nostalgic about the park, I have to wonder where they've been recently. Or more specifically, if people were so happy with how the park was, how come it wasn't more popular.

I have at least learned a bit about the history of Ontario Place. It always seemed like an oddity in the entertainment world I grew up in, with low-fear rides and semi-intellectual attractions in a world where most amusement parks were competing to have the scariest roller coasters and as many licensed-characters as possible. 

Fun fact: Ontario Place opened less than four months before Disney World.

I just assumed that Ontario Place was what happened when the theme park concept was filtered through government. But no, it turns out Ontario Place was an attempt to recreate Montreal’s Expo 67. I guess it should have been obvious: artificial islands with a geodesic dome as the crown jewel; sounds familiar.  Rides have been added over the years to bring in more visitors, but it never truly became a ride-oriented park like Canada's Wonderland. 

Fun fact: Canada's Wonderland has 17 roller coasters, which is tied for second most in the world. 

Personally, I was cautiously optimistic about the new plans for the park. Like I say, the plan wasn’t that great. It was sort of like when Ford announced new license plates: “A Place to Grow” wasn’t the greatest plate motto ever, but it seemed like Shakespeare given that we were bracing for something like, “Open for Business.” With Ontario Place, the proposed assortment of attractions announced was a bit uninspiring, but because we were expecting casinos and condos, the plan came as a relief.

I have to be honest, if we look at this realistically, I doubt there’s any saving Ontario Place, and it’s all because of the location. Driving there means going through some very busy thoroughfares. It’s not well-served by public transit. Putting up condos on the land would be disappointing and boring, but at least it would be successful.

Lucretia, My Election

There's a series of ads going around trying to guilt us into buying jewelry for Mothers' Day. They each feature a mother's voice talking about things they've put up with over the years. In one of them, she talks about "putting up with your goth phase." It ends with a yearbook photo of a vaguely gothy teen - fair enough. But it's accompanied by some sort of death metal. So now I'm like, great, I have to boycott a jeweller, because they don't know the difference between goth and metal. The future sure is weird.

But on the other hand, gothism has been getting some respect. Andrew Yang, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has said that he would be the first ex-goth president. Oh, yeah, he could be the first Asian-American major party candidate, but the important thing is, we could have a former goth in the White House, which I assume would not stay white for long.

My first reaction was to marvel at how many people are running for the Democratic nomination. Candidates always try to carve out a niche for themselves: you have the education candidate, the law-and-order candidate etc. But there have got to be a lot of people if you're stuck with being the ex-goth candidate.

To be fair, most of the bands that Yang mentions as his favourites would be more accurately classed as Dark Wave. But I'm glad to finally find a left-wing politician who shares my musical sensibilities. I had an on-and-off series of articles about right-wingers who liked the same music I did, even when the music's message hugely contradicted their own policies.

But even though I'm tickled by this development, I have to temper my feelings, because I know that this is part of what is bad about politics today. People choosing politicians as though they are a lifestyle choice, rather than substantive policies. As they say, people vote for the candidate they'd rather have a beer with. That's an attitude that's led to many bad election choices, and it's not any better to ask which candidate you'd like to sip absinthe with. So remember, vote for the best candidate, even if they don't know anything about your music. Express your lifestyle through some other choice, like jewelry.

Cold Comfort

Recently we've had controversy because some radio stations have banned the song, "Baby, It's Cold Outside" for its connotations of date rape. While you might think that this is a result of oversensitivity in the age of #MeToo, I have to point out that people were finding it kind of creepy for years before. I also have to point out that others claim the song was originally intended quite differently: the idea was that the young lady wants to spend the night with the man, but social mores of the time prevent it, so the two of them are trying to build up the idea of the bad weather to give her an acceptable excuse to stay.

I'm no expert on the moral nuances of the 1940's so I can't say which interpretation is correct, but there's one thing I do know: The Anti-PC crowd has been so distracted by this that I haven't had to endure a single It's-Merry-Christmas-not-Happy-Holidays rant. Wow, all it took was sacrificing a song that lots of people hated anyway. We should do this every year.

The other big story that's been getting the goat of the Politically Incorrect is that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has demanded that we stop using phrases involving the disrespect of animals, such as "getting your goat." As I've observed before, PETA has a strange random targetting pattern, where they make proclamations as it occurs to them, not caring what the reaction to them.

As a liberal with an interest in political strategy, that's the sort of action that costs me patches of hair and years off my life: So many people and organizations just act on what ever they feel like, without asking if this is the battle we really need to be fighting right now, or if it will lead to a backlash that does more harm than good. And PETA is clearly the worst for this, regularly picking fights that make its whole cause a laughingstock for no gain at all.

And yet, part of me admires that bold disregard for consequences. I think we all admire audacity, and PETA has it in spades, even if it doesn't come with much guidance. Hey, you know who else likes people who act without considering the consequences? The Anti-PC crowd. Once again, the extremes have a lot in common.

Dougie Jekyll And Gordie McHyde

Canada has entered a spat with the United States. Of course, it’s not a common thing for us to be in a spat with anyone. Yes, we've had plenty of disputes with the US, but they’re usually esoteric trade issues that get fought in a court. National leaders taking shots at each other? Not our style.

People sometimes bring up our territorial dispute with Denmark over Hans Island. The Canadian government says it should be ours because it is part of the Northern Archipelago which was claimed by Britain and inherited by Canada. The Danes say it should be theirs because it is closer to Greenland, which they own. This “dispute” amuses others because of the comically low-key way that it is fought. That is, it’s “fought” by each nation occasionally sending a ship to the island to take down the other country’s flag and put up their own.

It may surprise outsiders, but there are those in Canada who don't like our low key approach. I'm not talking politicians - those in government who want a more active role are still confined by the limited tax base of a country that won't put up with the military taking up half our budget. So their get-tough attitude comes out as a commitment to buy 7 destroyers instead of the 6 that those wimpy liberals would have bought.

No, I'm thinking of the talk of average people, in coffee shops, living rooms, and online. Most Canadians appreciate our civility, but you occasionally come across folks who think we need to be more forceful, that we should go in to Hans Island guns blazing and set up a Tim Hortons.

But here's what makes this week's American dispute interesting: the subsection of Canadians that longs for aggression overlaps with populist conservatives who generally love the United States and would like us to be closer to them. Of course, most of the time this correlation works out fine; The US is the poster child for aggressive foreign policy, and the easiest way for us Canadians to get more aggressive would be to tag along on their latest adventure.

So what are they supposed to do when we're having a tiff with their beloved American role models? I swear I could hear heads exploding all over the country as they tried to solve that puzzle . It's made worse by the fact that the attack on the Great White North was entirely the creation of Donald Trump, a great aggressive role model.

I was kind of worried what I might see online: so often these days, political sides trump all else, so I wondered how many conservative Canadians might take Trump's side in all this. In the past I've been disappointed that many politically naive Canadians have assumed that their mild distaste for a pretty-boy PM is the equal of the ideological diametric opposite in the White House. But to my surprise, people have been coming out in support of Trudeau. Even self-professed Trump admirer Doug Ford took Trudeau's side.

So maybe this is one of those cases where the political sides are going to start realigning. If a Republican president can be anti-trade, maybe Canadian conservatives will start being anti-American.  It might be good for us if the urge to be nationally assertive could work with the desire to have a separate identity. Watch out, Denmark.

Kanye, It Was Really Nothing

Recently, we've seen Kanye West, Shania Twain, and Morrissey surprise fans by jumping on board the right-hand side of the cultural divide.

Shania showed herself to be in over her head from the start, saying that she would have voted for Trump, then backtracking wildly once she discovered how unpopular that was. It might seem unfair that she's getting heavily criticized for something she apparently knows little of, but I have no sympathy: after all, we're all incompetent on most matters, but the rest of us know enough to sit up on things we don't understand. She's shown a kind of political Dunning-Kruger.

Kanye West has come out in support of Donald Trump. Should we really be surprised? Stats show that at least one African-American voted for him, it might be Kanye. It seems to me that they have a lot in common. For one thing, they have the world's two largest free-standing egos.

Another similarity is that when people are discussing Trump often come back to that Maya Angelou quote that when people show you who they are, believe them. Like Trump, Kanye keeps showing us who he is, and we keep not believing him. I've seen some people kinda defend Kanye by claiming that he's such an innovator and unconventional thinker that he doesn't fit into any preconceived notions of political sides. But a better explanation for West's ideas being incoherent and all over the map is that he's a lot like Trump: lacking in understanding and concentration.

Likely, Kanye's subsequent description of slavery as a "choice" will be the end of his support, at least from African-Americans.

Morrissey is another star who keeps trying to show us who he is; he's had a string of increasingly offensive statements and actions. Because he's the only one of these musicians who I've ever been a fan of, it's a bit more disappointing for me, even if his devolution has been in slow-motion. I'd like to think that he - like many in our current culture - has just become addicted to the joy of pissing people off, and has lost sight of the fact that sometimes pissing people off is the hint that you should re-evaluate your life.

But whatever the reason, I don't care anymore. I've given up, and I see that many others have too. But I'm sure that each of these suddenly hated musicians will have many more second-chances from other fans in the years to come.

These experiences have made me realize another unrealistic thing about Star Wars: when someone turns to the dark side, everyone else just accepts it. They're like, okay, he's on the dark side now. No one makes excuses for him, no one forgets it happened just because he hasn't force-choked anyone in the past week. No one looks the other way because of his other skills.

"I can't believe you hired Darth Farius to do your taxes."
"Well whatever you think of his politics, he's still a good accountant."

The Fat Of The Land

Lots of people are looking at President Trump's cleanish bill of health after his first on-the-job physical. That surprised everyone by saying that he is in quite good health for a septuagenarian, and not, as assumed, like a sedentary fast-food devotee.

But putting aside his doctor's opinions, the numbers have raised doubts. It says that Trump is 6'3" and 240 pounds, which would count him as medically acceptable, though suspiciously close to the obese classification. That's led doubters to a lot of comparisons with athletes of similar size. For instance, Albert Pujols is the same height and a pound more, but more athletic looking than the President.

But that can be easily explained. After all, muscle is denser than fat, so an athlete is going to look slimmer than a non-exerciser of the same weight. A bigger oddity is his height. Although the physical pegged him at 6'3", he has apparently previously been listed as 6'2". Also, in photos, he looks to be of similar height to Barack Obama (6'1") and noticeably shorter than Jeb Bush (6'3".)

So lots of people have been making fun of the President's weight. It's far from the first time, though such jokes have been few and far between, since there's been so many other things to make fun of. Once again, I'm not really sure why I'm writing a blog post on this; it will probably be obsolete before I finish.

Ridiculing Trump's body has led to a question about the morality of humour. A long time ago, I noted that there are basically three reasons why you might make jokes at another's expense:

• playful teasing, such as what goes on between friends
• ridicule of someone you don't like
• you can't think of any other topic for a joke. And also, you're an asshole.

Most people would agree that the first category is acceptable. And all but the amoral would agree that the last is not (Keep in mind, we're only talking about the morality of humour, not the legality, so put the free speech placards away.) The second category is a bit more questionable. But I've always been okay with it.

Overall, a good way to decide whether a joke fits in an acceptable or unacceptable category is to ask whether you'd be comfortable saying it to the person who is the butt of the joke. If it's the first one, you wouldn't mind, because that person is in on the joke. The second should be okay too, as they'll be offended but you figure that they deserve it. And the third is unacceptable, since you'd be offending an innocent person, and you're really only making the joke because you assumed you'd never have to face the consequences.

So that's moral backing of my humour, which I've always tried to stick to in outlets such as my blog. I'm sure I haven't been completely faithful to it, but it's what I've tried to do.

In recent years, however, I've noticed that there's a flaw in the reasoning. I noticed it not with Trump, but with another not-so-sympathetic character in American politics, Newt Gingrich. I strongly disagree with his political priorities, as well as some of the things he's done in his personal life, so he would fit squarely into the second category.

He's also a bit overweight. And his round face tends to remind you of that fact. So I find that a lot of liberal comics use that weight and his general attractiveness as a convenient put-down. That made me feel uneasy. Sure, he may be an opportunistic bully who doesn't deserve to have his feelings respected. But insults are a bludgeon that hit everyone similar, most of whom have not done any of the things the original target did.

So I've added a caveat to that second kind of ridicule: you can make fun of these people, but only if you're going after the thing that made you want to attack them in the first place. If they are truly worthy of your scorn, you won't have trouble finding something.

Feel Good Ink

My parents asked me if I had bought the new book Fire and Fury. I had not, nor had they. It seems that we had each independently come to the same conclusion: it's a waste of money to buy the book, as you can just watch the news for a few days and they will read out the best parts to you.

Of course, you don't even need to do that much; the book can be summed up easily: Trump is an idiot. And you had probably already come to that conclusion. So I'm not sure why people are buying the book; you'll be reading anecdotes you've already heard, telling you something you already know. And apparently, it's now been leaked onto Wikileaks. I guess that site is trying to hurt the book sales as revenge for attacking their guy. And they're doing it by spreading a book that makes their guy look bad. Remember when the world sorta made sense?

An interesting aspect of the news around the book is a joke from cartoonist Ben Ward, who tweets as @pixelatedboat. He decided to spoof the bizarre anecdotes leaking out of the book by creating his own totally-exaggerated fake anecdote that was supposedly from the book. In his excerpt, it was alleged that Trump was very displeased that the TV in the White House does not have "The Gorilla Channel." This despite there never having been a gorilla channel. To placate him, aides created a fake Gorilla Channel by editing together Gorilla documentaries and feeding them on a loop to Trump's TV.

Of course, as many people are finding these days, it's pretty much impossible to ridicule through exaggeration. After all, making a fake cable channel is only a little beyond what we've heard White House employees do to placate their boss. I noticed that in one online discussion people were trying to assure themselves that the passage was fake, and the final convincing argument was not the content, but the fact that the author had put periods outside the quotes, which goes against standard editing practices.

What I found interesting is that Netflix tweeted a plea to stop asking them for the Gorilla Channel. By the same principle mentioned above, I have no idea if they are joking. But imagine if they aren't: here we all are making fun of Trump for wanting this channel that is quite silly and doesn't even exist. And yet, it turns out that given the chance, lots of people want the same thing.

And that's something that worries me in all this. Much as I don't like Trump, I worry that when we ridicule him, we let the rest of society off the hook. After all, the troubling aspect of his story is not the fact that he exists, but the fact that he has been allowed to take this much power. And to address that problem, we have to concern ourselves with the competence of our whole society, not just Trump. Reading about his exploits of stupidity makes us feel superior, but it allows us to avoid the need we all have to look at our inner Trump.

The Royal Weed

I have to admit a little bit of Schadenfreude when I found out that the soon-to-be-legal pot in Ontario will be sold through a small number of government-owned stores. I mean, I've always supported legalization, so that's good. But the government-owned stores concept gives me mixed emotions.

Just to be clear, I think this is a dumb decision by the government. It's essentially replicating Ontario's traditional way of selling alcohol in government stores. That never made sense to me: Alcohol isn't really dangerous enough to require such oversight, the government-run stores did nothing to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors, and for some reason, we're totally okay having private companies sell tobacco. And of course, we're now moving away from that approach in alcohol, selling it in grocery stores. That change, and the complete lack of a societal collapse resulting from it, would seem to show that the old approach was wrong, and we know it.

The decision to sell pot through government stores also makes little sense politically. Premier Wynne and government may be looking at this as a compromise between a ban and complete deregulation, so it will be a good way to sell the public on a change not everyone in comfortable with. But I think it's more likely to cancel-out support. Libertarians will hate the government control. Social conservatives won't be placated because they've been taught that pot is the creation of Satan, so careful distribution of the creation of Satan will seem no better. And even left-leaning people like me will see the move as paternalistic, rather than socialist.

Further, it looks like Wynne is developing a Hillary-Clinton-like anti-cult where a large segment of society has decided that they just don't like her or anything she does, not really sure why, but it couldn't possibly be sexism, really, I'm sure. As such, trying to reach a please-everyone compromise is impossible; people will just focus on what they didn't get, because the narrative is that everything Wynne does is bad. It doesn't really make sense for her to try to grab the centre; she'll find little traction there. She'd be better off trying to prove here bona fides to the left where more people will give here a chance.

But I am having a bit of Schadenfreude for Canada's prince of pot, Marc Emery. See, I've been waiting years for a chance to talk about him so that I could point out that I've actuality met him. After bragging about this to someone, that other person would then ask, "how did you meet him?" And I'd reply, "he spoke at my high school."

Okay, he technically spoke at our model U.N. assembly, invited by a school that was drifting towards the proto-alt-right. Back then, Emery wasn't concentrating on legalizing marijuana; he was just a general hard-core libertarian. For me, that was the beginning of a lifetime of finding extreme libertarianism both fascinating and scary. It's like how you might enjoy mob movies, but then you find out that people actually look up to their characters and suddenly it's not so much fun.

So I've taken note whenever Marc Emery's name has come up, as he's moved out west and taken marijuana as his life's cause. Living in Vancouver, he won't have to care about Ontario's nanny-state pot stores. But I'd like to think that his head did explode just a little bit when he heard about it.

How Do We Stand When Our Pants Are Burning?

This week, The Guardian had an article about how the post-truth era will come to an end because Elon Musk is building the world's biggest battery. Huh? See the battery is going to be part of the power grid in the state of South Australia, so they can store electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind. And the article makes the case that this will be the final nail in the coffin for dirtier energy sources like coal: the costs of renewals have gone down, and now they'll have reliability on their side too.

Keep in mind that Australia has lots of coal, and has made lots of money selling it to China and other countries that need to ramp up their energy supplies quickly. Thus, Australians have been torturing logic and ignoring reality to convince themselves that coal isn't really that bad.

Personally, I don't think that a compelling case for renewables will be enough to stop post-truth discourse. There are lots of forces pushing people to believe falsehoods, and convenience is only one. There's also the need to save face; people have invested their reputations in arguments, so they won't just admit they were wrong and go away. And of course they've invested plenty of money too. Coal companies and their hired guns won't just give up when there's so much money at stake. And then there's tradition. There's plenty of inertia behind the way things are. Just look at how Donald Trump scored points by promising to bring coal jobs back. That energized people in a way that promises of growing future technology never could.

But still, this article does bring up a point that I - and I'm sure many others - had wondered about: what is the post-truth endgame? I mean, you can pretend all you want, but eventually reality asserts itself. Another great example of that came up recently, and it's also from Australia. (What is going on down there?) Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was discussing encrypted communications, when he said,

“Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,"

Of course, this has lead to a global lambasting online. But the point is that however ignorant he and his laws are, at some point the rubber has to hit the road. The fact is that the only known way of breaking modern encryption is by time-consumingly impractical brute force methods. Eventually the government will be faced with the alternatives of changing the laws or attesting people for not doing the impossible, like a scene from Kafka or Italy.

Of course, most post-truth situations are less immediate. On, say, global warming, you could picture the deniers hanging on to their beliefs all the way down. Long-term trends can be easily ignored, and there will always be an excuse or alternate explanation for noticable things like sea levels. And in the case of competing power sources, people can always invent excuses why our past experience isn't representative ("If they'd just use the best way of burning coal, it would be better") or create unverifiable reasons things aren't as they seem ("the government is covering up the facts.") So I don't think anyone is going land a knockout in any post-truth argument, at least not by simply overwhelming the opponent's ability to delude.

Moving Time

In the wake of the Grenfell tower fire in London, there's been a lot of anger, and questions being asked. If you aren't up on it, I'll point out that a lot of people are focusing on the cladding added to the outside walls a few years ago. The Times has revealed that they used cheaper flammable cladding for a total saving of £5000.

The Guardian published a controversial column by journalist Simon Jenkins claiming that residential towers themselves are just too dangerous, and we need to push society away from them.

That really seems to be coming out of nowhere. One thing this incident had made me appreciate is how safe buildings normally are. In looking for precedents for this fire, journalists have gone to a fire in Melbourne in 2014. Not to diminish the tragedy of either event, but given the huge number of of residential towers, the fact that they had to go back two years and three other side of the world shows how seldom big does happen. Fires in apartment buildings happen all the time, but the fact that they so rarely consume a whole building is a tribute to how well our codes work, and why this fire needs to be put under the microscope.

Also, his attempt to lay all of society's ills at the foot of tall buildings seems strange. He contends that they destroy communities and cannot be part of a livable city - which is of course news to people around the world. But the argument is especially odd given the out-of-control housing prices around the world, and at epic levels in the UK. Moving away from apartment blocks would make that problem much worse. Solving phantom societal problems with no concern for the less fortunate is what we would expect from Britain's tabloids, not the Guardian.

Of course, this is all rooted in the British experience with high density housing. Scores of ugly, poorly thought-out blocks were thrown up quickly in the mid-twentieth-century. So Britons associate them with slums, instead of luxury condos or that first apartment you had out of college. Essentially this article is the old American problem: a judgement based on that nation's own experience, oblivious to the fact that it would be disproven with even the slightest knowledge of the outside world.

But the big difficulty going forward will be to change the culture. For years the western world has been in the most that regulation is inherently bad and getting rid of it is always the right thing to do. For instance, here's former British PM David Cameron five years ago, saying that he wants to kill the health and safety culture.

I'm seeing the same pattern that we had in Canada after the Lac-Mégantic train accident: the public asks how this could happen in such an advanced country, oblivious to the decades of deregulation that preceded it. At that point, many excitable journalists saw this anger and frustration coalescing into a political issue that would demand greater accountability for public safety. I, on the other hand, felt that you just needed to give the public time to forget, and then they'll go back to their attitude of slow-motion Galtization.

In the British case, I could more easily picture it becoming a shift in political thinking. For one thing, they have an aggressively left-leaning party with all the momentum, and a right-wing party that's in disarray on several fronts. But more than anything, the issue has become a class matter, with poor people feeling like this is a personal struggle. That's in sharp contrast to this side of the Atlantic, where the fury that's getting all the play is coming from the middle class.

A good symbol of the start of the shift is the call by Labour's Jeremy Corbyn to house the fire's homeless in the many empty houses in the area that are owned by absentee landlords. This has lead to one of those political situations where the two sides are so completely opposed that they are each trying to demonize the other simply by quoting their opponents, without even needing to exaggerate or twist their words. That's the point at which there is no doubt that there are different visions, rather than different spins on a general consensus, so it may well be that a lot of Britons have truly shifted their political sensibilities.

Boldly Vote

There's an election in Britain today, so remember everyone...

... get out there and vote in Spock as Prime Minister.

Sword Fight

There's this phenomenon I've noticed in activism, and I don't know if it has a name. It's when people waste their efforts on useless endeavours. There's a number of different reasons why:

• working harder to piss off The Man than on actual change
• fighting sectarian battles
• working for esoteric intellectual goals, not what actually helps
• laying the groundwork for idealistic concepts that will never come to be

The commonality in each of these is that they're overthinking the situation. It can be just a case of wasting effort, but what's really frustrating about it, is when people actually end up working against themselves. For instance, there was this case a few years ago when someone was trying to convince poor people not to vote as a protest. You'd think that voting would be a no-brainer for activists, but here you have people voluntarily forfeiting it, for no reason but their own over-analysis.

I've always had a theory that this activist tire-spinning is at its worst in times and places where liberal ideas are favoured. That's when activists are indulgent, and don't consider that they must eternally struggle against political enemies. When progressive ideas fall out of favour, activists are forced to fight for everything, and can't afford to waste effort. They think about what's truly important, fight for their priorities and compromise on those things that don't really make a difference.  It forces a rigorous efficiency.

I first came to this way of thinking in university. Universities are ripe for these problems to begin with, being filled with liberal intellectuals. And Canada is ripe for it, with our liberal leanings, and interventionist government traditions. People often take that for granted, and don't consider that others are working to roll back past progress. And this being the nineties, we'd had decades where the only conservative force was the Mulroney government, who in retrospect was hardly regressive. So an activist in this environment would feel quite unchallenged.

But there were plenty of hints that all was not well in progressive world. Newt Gingrich was trying to remake the American government. Here in Ontario, Mike Harris was handing out torches and pitchforks to angry suburbanites. And in pop-culture and word-of-mouth, it was clear that political correctness had become a lightning rod that was being used to demonize lots of positive actions.

I observed that this negativity seemed to be forcing American activists to think about what was important to them in a way that Canadians - particularly those around me on campus - didn't. I remember that when Bill Clinton's infidelities came out, Canadian feminists were ready to throw him under the bus, while American feminists defended him; they understood that a cad in the White House is a small price to pay to have a charismatic politician working against the conservative tsunami.

But now I think I may have to throw out the theory. It's because of what I'm seeing from African-American activists. You would think that if I'm right about political challenges forcing people to adopt a battle-tested robustness, then Black Americans in the alt-right era would be about as efficiently pragmatic as possible. And yet, I keep finding people disappearing into a spiral of opaque justifications of nonsensical actions.

The latest concerns a meme you may have seen recently. A white woman on the campus of Colgate University went around campus carrying a sword. Why she had a sword is a bit of a mystery - I thought Americans preferred guns. Anyway, her prancing around with a sword didn't seem to concern anyone, and was generally greeted as a whimsical prank. She goes on to report that months later, the campus was put on lock down after reports of a gunman. That turned out to be the result of someone seeing a black man with a glue gun and panicking. So now the woman is passing the story around as an example of white privilege: When people saw her they assumed the best, while they assumed the worst for that black man.

You would think that this meme would be welcomed by black activists. A white person finally understands white privilege! And she's explaining it to other white people! But no, in the upside-down world of activism, this woman's actions were criticized for... well - I don’t really know, but it sure has made the author of this article angry.

Obviously, you can understand why black activists would be frustrated by the circumstance. It’s unfair that this white woman gets credit for making point that black have been trying to make for years. But the writers of this article don’t seem to realize the unfairness is not her fault. I’m left wondering what exactly she should have done that would have been better. It’s telling that the author goes on to express frustration with white allies - a complaint I’ve heard a few times. If spreading your message for you leads to frustration, it’s hard to imagine how that relationship could work out better.

So here we are in an era of high racial tension, and people trying to fix problems are getting shouted down. It's not quite talking your own cohort into not voting, but it is the sort of  intellectual time waster I'd hoped we'd left behind.

Lady Macbeth

Last fall, I was really worried about the Presidential election. Although the polls were showing Hilary in the lead, it was a little too close for comfort. So when I came across three witches in the woods, I asked them to give me a prediction.  And they said that I shouldn't worry: as of next year, for the first time, the leader of the free world will be a woman.

I found that very reassuring. So you can imagine my surprise when Trump won.  I felt extra disappointed, like the finest occult prognosticators had let me down. But now I see that they tricked me:

Well played, witches.

The Alternative Facts Are Out There

There are many reasons to be disappointed by the Trump presidency, but here's one you may not have thought of: We now know definitively that there are no aliens.  I mean, aliens may exist, but no one on this planet knows about them.  The reasoning is simple: if the U.S. government was sitting on secret evidence of aliens - say, from Roswell - then they would have had to tell Donald Trump about it when he took office.  And there's no way he could sit on a secret like that.

You know that would be on Twitter within the first month.  At the very least, there'd be some hint of it. Say, he responds to a "small hands" joke with "hey, I've seen gray dudes and they have some really small hands."

Okay, maybe he'd leak it, but only to the Russians.  But even then we'd see some evidence of it.  You know, Putin annexes New Mexico, or announces a new fighter plane that's suspiciously saucer-shaped.

Just to be clear, I never thought that there was secret knowledge of aliens.  But a part of me sort of hoped that there was something to it. But now I know it's nothing, it's disappointing.  That's sort of emblematic of this administration, to reveal unpleasant realities.  Losing faith in humanity was worse, but now I've even lost faith in aliens.

London Stalling

I've mentioned before that I'm amused at the differences between my own Kitchener-Waterloo and London, Ontario. Both are similar size and close together, yet there remain distinct differences. We're seeing some of those differences played out right now, as both communities are going though the process of building new transit systems, with KW building the "Ion" Light Rail system, and London planning a Bus Rapid Transit (buses in dedicated lanes) system. They're at very different stages, though. London is still in the planning, while KW's is nearly finished.

We should keep in mind that when it comes to transit, KW has an unfair advantage: it's several communities that have grown into one (a conurbation, as the urban planers call it) so it's evolved into a long, thin community with a few urban areas more or less lined-up. Thus, it's always been fairly obvious how a single transit line would link the community.

London, on the other hand, has a layout that's more typical of Canadian cities: a small urban core, with lots of suburbs stretching off in all directions. So it's not immediately clear how transit lines can serve the whole city. They've gone for two lines; one in an "L" shape, and the other in a "7" shape, with the two "corners" meeting at the centre.

Looking back at our effort to get the system built, I have to say that I'm amazed at how easy it was. I know some people would be furious at hearing it called "easy", but stepping back and seeing that we accomplished this in an unprecedentedly-small, largely-suburban community in a time of constrained budgets, all in about a decade with no major roadblocks, that's pretty impressive.

London's plan has run into some problems. I'm not that familiar with the project, but what I find disturbing is that two big opposition groups are downtown businesses and property developers. That's troubling because they should be leading proponents: the system would bring more people downtown, and raise the value of land near stations. One has to wonder which groups are going to push the proposal forward if these two groups are not on side.

And although it's still early in the process with no shovels yet in the ground, setbacks now could cause an avalanche of problems: Submissions have already been made for approval and grants from higher levels of government, and changes to the plan would mean re-submitting and starting the process over. At best, that would introduce a year of delays; at worst, it would mean they'd be applying for massive public transit grants from a new Conservative government.

I'd like to claim that the difference in the two communities' experiences is the result of our being a little more forward-thinking and open-minded, but I don't think that explains it. We in KW have a kind of benevolent apathy towards civic government. Sure, people complain about local government, but they don't do anything about it. That seems unusual these days. In other communities, the voters periodically elect a human tantrum, while we just rubber-stamp the same folks over and over.

And that's the approach we've taken towards transit too. You heard people complain, but it never developed into anything meaningful. There were a few attempts at mounting political movements against it, but they didn't seem to get the quality personnel behind it, and they didn't really threaten incumbent councilors and mayors. Ultimately, it was hard for opponents to gain traction when the politicians supporting the LRT plan kept getting elected.

In contrast, complaints about London's transit plan seems to have reached a critical mass that will make it hard to continue. I mean mass in a more literal sense, seeing as the latest meeting took place at Budweiser Gardens, the city's hockey arena. While attendence was nowhere near the venue's 9,000 seat capacity, it's still a far cry from the community centre spare rooms where Waterloo's transit meetings took place.

But it's also reached a critical emotional mass, which will be a big problem for proponents. An idea like this inspires some, terrifies others, but leaves most with a mixture of reactions: neither good nor bad enough to act. Something like that might pass if the support is passionate enough, since there are only a few who will fight it. But if you get just enough emphasis on the downsides, you push the conflicted majority onto the no side, or at least, onto the skeptical side. And for a big project like this, skepticism is enough to sink it.

In London, opposition is large and well organized, and has taken the initiative. Aspiring politicians are seeing it as a route to the top. Again, this has roots in the particular politics of the city; While Kitchener and Waterloo's civic politics are relatively quiet, London has been very antagonistic and divided for a while now. An expensive and highly-visible issue is the perfect situation to bring out more rancor. At this point, even if they get a good number of politicians on the pro side, I’m guessing both sides will dig in enough that the issue will stagnate.

I Hope Melissa McCarthy Was Free This Weekend

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer got into trouble this week for his attempt to compare Syria's dictator to Hitler. He tried to say Assad is even worse, because he used chemical weapons against his own people, unlike Hitler. It was quickly pointed out that Hitler was quite famous for gassing his own people, even if it wasn't on the battlefield.

I'm amazed at how not-angry I am at this. After all, it has the classic Trump attrocity characteristics:

• It's incredibly agressive
• It's not true
• It has racist undertones
• It's from a guy who's clearly in over his head

So why can't I get angry at this? I'm sure it's partly because Trump vs. Assad is one of the few fights where I'd back Trump. But the main reason I'm not feeling the hate towards Spicer is that in this incident, normalicy seems to have reasserted itself.

Sure, the infraction may have been classic Trumpism. But as they say on the Internet, you'll never guess what happens next:

• A journalist corrects him immediately.
• Spicer admits he was wrong
• The media concentrates on the story, without some tortured attempt at false equivalence
• Spicer continues appologizing, rather than doubling down.
• Others with an interest in supporting Trump don't look the other way.

Wow, it's like the good old days of 2014. So, much as I would have liked to see Spicer resign, or come to some personal revelation about his life choices, I'm actually coming away from this feeling better about things.

Policy Of Alternative Facts

I don't want to sound like I'm obsessed with the musical tastes of conservatives.  Yes, I know, I've only written a couple of articles about it, but that seems like a lot. But we just keep getting stories about right-wingers and their love of the same bands I love.  The latest is Richard Spencer coming out as a fan of Depeche Mode, and declaring them "the official band of the Alt-Right."

Once again, I don't really understand how that happens.  A lot of their early music seems to be directly out of the Communist Manifesto. And one of their most popular songs, "People Are People," is as clear an anti-bigotry song as there is.

I think it's pretty weird for a person to listen to music with a message so different from their own beliefs. And most people seem to see it that way.  A few years ago there was a young pundit in Britain who became a laughingstock for suggesting that Morrissey was responsible for the country's turn to the right under David Cameron.

Okay, you may have been so distracted by the thought of someone thinking that left-of-Marx Morrissey could be a conservative icon, that you may have missed the irony that we were talking about David Cameron being shockingly right-wing.  Ah, simpler times.

Anyway, you can kind of see where she was coming from: Cameron - and many others in his government - would have come of age in the eighties, at the height of Morrissey's career. (Cameron has claimed to actually be a fan.) And consider that Morrissey is the sort of cult-level celebrity that means a lot to some but will be largely absent from the mainstream pop-cultural record.  Young people are forgiven for not knowing who he is, or why my generation cares about him. Just imagine hipster Millennials trying to explain to their kids who Jack White was. So when Morrissey's autobiography came out a few years ago, and people in Cameron's generation couldn't stop talking about this guy the young journalist had never heard of, she put two and two together and got the idea that he was the genesis for modern conservatism.

I still don't understand this concept. I mean, it's not like being a Sir-Mix-a-Lot fan who's attracted to svelte women. In that case you could say you disagree, but can respect his opinion, as well as his self-professed honesty about it. But with these alt-right alt-rock fans, they've dedicated their lives to fighting against the ideas in their favourite music, and their musical idols would despise their values.

Of course, it cuts both ways. If you're a left-leaning person, you probably don't have a problem with musicians unless you're into country. But there may be other areas of your life. Take sports, for instance. Massachusetts may be one of the most liberal parts of the US, yet in the Superbowl, they had to cheer for a coach and quarterback that supported Donald Trump, at least in as much as they are aware of a world beyond football.

And I'm feeling it too. Normally this weekend I'd be looking forward to the Daytona 500. But I've been put off by NASCAR and its overt support for Trump. Yes, despite this being the first time in a generation that a Canadian will be in the race. And even though that Canadian, DJ Kennington is a local boy from St. Thomas, who cut his teeth at my beloved Delaware Speedway in London. But I can't bring myself to watch the race, not even out of morbid curiosity of how many Confederate Flags will be in the audience, and how the TV coverage will avoid showing them. Unlike Spencer, I can't ignore the fact that someone is working against what I believe in.

Don't You Miss Barack Iguana?

Recently, I saw a discussion of people's favourite science fiction quote. There were some surprises (very little Yoda, but quite a lot of Babylon 5.) Interestingly, several people mentioned the same quote from one of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy books. In it, Ford explains to Arthur why a recently arrived alien has said not "take me to you leader," but rather, "take me to your lizard."

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in."

That passage is a pretty good example of how the series works: both humour and science fiction work as satire by allowing us to look at our world with a fresh perspective, and The Hitchhiker's Guide uses both at the same time to ridicule the absurdities of the modern world.

As a sci-fi fan who appreciates surreal humour, I love The Hitchhiker's Guide more than life itself. Having said that, the above passage has always bugged me a little.

When it comes to politics, most people are at least a little unhappy with how things are, and have an idea of how things should be. So how do you make the world a better place? You can take a revolutionary approach, where you push for a big change that will make things exactly as you want them. Or you could take the evolutionary approach, and just change the system in little ways to make it more like your ideal, even if it isn't exactly right. The first way certainly has a better outcome, but the disadvantage is that it has longer odds. Essentially, revolution is a long shot to get a perfect world, while evolution is a good chance at a better but still imperfect world.

Of course, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive; even while planning your utopia, you can spare fifteen minutes to go vote for one of the candidates you find unsatisfactory, thus giving you a hedge against your revolution failing, or at least being delayed.

And that leads to one of my supreme frustrations with politics: people who work on one approach but not the other. As you can see, I'm a dreamer with a practical streak, so I tend to focus on the evolutionary approach. I don't begrudge the revolutionaries their existence, but I'm alarmed when they ignore the evolutionary efforts going on around them. As I said, you don't lose anything by throwing a little effort behind practical efforts. Instead, it's emotional motivations that turn the two approaches to political change against one another. Not willing to entertain the possibility that their way isn't the best, they have to convince themselves that the other is useless, if not counter-productive.

So every election we find ourselves pulling teeth, making and remaking the point that even if you believe the candidates are corporate puppets, you don't lose anything by taking a moment to vote for the corporate puppet that will maintain a woman's right to choose, or gut government programs. And that brings us back to the lizard parable. Surely if there is any lesson to come out of last year's Presidential Election, it's that there is a "wrong lizard."

I can understand that things may happen to push people towards either approach to political change. Say, after Barack Obama was elected in a blaze of optimism, but did not deliver as much change as many desired, I could understand that you might go away with the idea that we need more radical change. And I'm sure that in the alternate universe where Bernie Sanders is currently putting together his cabinet, many of his supporters are feeling disillusioned that he isn't going to build a socialist wonderland, and now they're thinking that they just can't win while working within the system.

And yet I find a lot of people are trying to make the case that Trump's presidency shows that all politicians are awful and the system is corrupt. I can't understand how you would get that lesson our of our current circumstances. If you're watching night-and-day changes in politics after an election, that doesn't show that everyone in the system is bad. If anything, it shows that there is great variety among politicians.

Don't Tell Me 'Cause It Hurts

It's been a week since the election, and I've seen a lot of articles passed around social media from disillusioned liberals. A lot of them have been good: They explain people's perspectives and how the result affects them personally. It's informative, and can be emotionally healthy for people to share their burdens. And of course, they can show people how they can do constructive and/or cathartic things to help the causes they believe in.

However, I've seen a few themes that are not helpful. Please think before posting anything with the following ideas:

Bernie would have won

Yes I know, you have that poll from the primaries that showed he'd beat Trump. Well, there was also a poll showing Hillary would beat Trump. You know when it was taken? The day before the election!

We should run Michelle in 2020

A lawyer and ex-first-lady from a centre-left ideology who we look up to because she seems very intelligent and self-confident? I'm sure I've heard that before somewhere...

First of all, note that she - like any famous person entering politics - benefits from the fact that she hasn't taken a stance on anything yet. She'll drop in popularity once she starts taking stands on things. And of course, see my write-up about how we only like strong women when they're not looking for more power.

At least the campaign is over

My fellow straight white able bodied cis males really need to stop saying this. I'm looking your way, Stephen Colbert. Yes, for us, it's over. But for many others, it's only starting.

It was a vicious campaign, we as a nation lost perspective

I'm still looking your way, Stephen. Actually, it was one ordinary campaign, and one over-the-top negative, vindictive, dishonest campaign. And it was the over-the-top negative, vindictive, dishonest campaign that won, so we're going to see more of that in the future. So once again, it's only beginning.

Let's remember, we're all Americans

That's kind of the point. One campaign was built around exclusion, and that was the side that won. So if you're now saying, "can't we all just get along?" the answer is no, Americans apparently don't want to get along. This appeal to work together is another example of a plea we hear a lot: "Let's put aside our differences, and work together to achieve the things my side wants."

Top Ten Good Things About Donald Trump Winning The Election

10. No need to listen to years of "It was rigged!"
9. Make America Great Again? More like Make The Daily Show Great Again!
8. Years from now, when you meet a young man named "Donnie," you'll already know plenty about his parents.
7. Conservatives have bought about all the survivalist gear they'll ever need; it's time for liberals to get in on it.
6. All the commemorative country songs.
5. ...and all the hilarious products Trump himself will sell to commemorate his win.
4. We can spend the next few months watching the media slowly realize that Trump really is President, and it's not that entertaining.
3. Assuming the pattern goes full-circle, we'll now get intelligent, polite, experienced reality stars.
2. Now that we have a new paradigm for successful political personalities, it will be fun watching other candidates try to copy it.
1. Deep-down, we all know it: this is the Karmic price for the Cubs winning the World Series