Segarini – Teamwork 2

Last night I watched the Director’s cut of a film called “Cowboys and Aliens”, and the first Part of Ken Burns’ epic history of America’s National Parks. In both of these disparate entertainments, the wisdom and spirituality of the American Indian brings calm and understanding, and makes sense of the importance of the wealth of our surroundings, of the beauty of nature, that we have all but destroyed in the pursuit of money, control over others, and intolerance. We need to unite and embrace a lot of what the Indigenous peoples of this continent have believed for centuries, and face off with those whose obsession with the accumulation of wealth and power over others. I want Gene Rodenberry’s future, not George Miller’s. It’s time we stopped whining and yelling and arguing…and DID something about our problems.

The meat of this column is from a year ago. I have updated it with new additions and a better perspective, but it rings truer today than it did then.

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I love social media. Because of it, I have connected with lost friends and old chums, been reminded of past pleasures and experiences I had nearly or completely forgotten, and have over 4000 NEW friends I have never met, know nothing about, and will probably never meet. Instant Pen Pals from all over the world…but one thing about this mostly wonderful technology is driving me nuts.

All the whining. Including mine….

We bitch, we moan, we decry, we rant, we spew, and we complain. We waffle, we blame, we demand change, and we yell, scream, and pout. We have even figured out how to shout at everyone BY TYPING OUR POSTS IN CAPITAL LETTERS AND ADDING EXCLAMATION POINTS, THE NUMBER OF WHICH INDICATES JUST HOW PISSED OFF/FED UP WE ARE, AND HOW  LOUD WE ARE SHOUTING!!!!!

Sorry…shouldn’t have raised my voice like that.

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Problems

When we’re young our problems (such as they are) seem enormous. They usually fall into three basic categories…

1. Does she/he like me?
2. Am I handsome/pretty/smart/funny/cool/sweating?
3. Do I say something/do something/smell okay?

That’s pretty much it.

Of course those are First World Problems, and nothing like Third World Problems, which are more like…

1. Will I get a drink of water tomorrow?
2. Will a lion eat my new daddy too?
3. My village was prettier when it wasn’t on fire.

and

4. Are all these flies going to eat me before morning?

…and that’s just Flint.

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As we get older, our problems change. They come from without as well as from within, and from far away as well as close to home. We become aware of the world around us, and realize that what happens in France or Russia, or Chad, or Sudbury, can eventually affect us too. For most of us, this is an eye-opener and turning point in our lives. For others, it is easily dismissed and ignored. There ARE people to whom a line-up at the checkout stand is much more troubling than rising ocean levels and the continued popularity of the Kardashians.

Some of us are perfectly happy to skip through life with little concern for anything other than getting a new iPhone, while half a world away a woman who was caught listening to the new One Direction CD is subjected to a severe stoning, and I’m not talking bong here.

Lately, however, there seems to be a growing awareness of injustice, inequality, racism, and bigotry in its many forms, and a climate change of concern and involvement seems to be replacing the apathy and tolerance toward these uneducated and uninformed behaviours. Maybe, at long last, we are maturing. …or maybe we are just starting to realize that if we don’t address these ongoing, festering problems, we are just as guilty as the perpetrators and supporters of greed, avarice, judgemental posturing, and out and out inhuman attacks on those who will not conform to their demands and self-righteous leanings.

Maybe we don’t want to be part of the problem. Maybe we want to be part of the solution.

Maybe we are tired of talking about the problems both close to home and far away.

Maybe we want to take action, or see some action…or possibly shake some action.

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Turning a blind eye to the problems of the day, the apparent censorship of the news by the mainstream media, denying the right of the people to know the truth and limiting access to the available facts, and the lack of a balanced world view and not reporting both sides of an issue is nothing new. This has been going on for a looong time.

We are culpable insofar that few of us have the time or are willing to verify anything we read or hear, and just accept opinions as fact, assumptions as truth, rumours as written in stone NEWS.

Between hypocritical Neo-Puritans trying to re-repress us, and those terrified people who want the Government to raise their children because they can’t be bothered, we face a possible future where you will be fined for being overheard saying anything about s-e-x or d-r-u-g-s, or a-l-t-e-r-n-a-t-i-v-e e-n-e-r-g-y or the dreaded c-l-i-m-a-t-e c-h-a-n-g-e, and swaddling your kids in bubble wrap, a football helmet and Number 1000 Sunscreen, just so he can ride his 8 wheeled octocycle to the Organic Inconvenience Store for this week’s supply of kale, yogurt, tofu, and almond soy gluten free organic milk-like protein powder.

We will be buying sugar, red meat, coffee, and hot dogs in dark alleys…using code names…like a bunch of fucking crackheads.

Buying Sugar 2017

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Here in America’s Hat, Home of the Care Bear People, we recently ended a 10 year hostage situation in which our government decided to pay all of its attention to money and dick-swinging, and very little to the people who work their asses off for it while keeping their own dicks in their pants. We need that money to pay our taxes, our rent, our bills, and buy beer, and hockey tickets.

For 10 years we just wrote the odd letter to the editor and bitched on Facebook, and turned on one another until we were actually divided on the issues to the point that we became America Junior.

Well…we’re NOT America Junior…we are fucking CANADA.

…and we finally got to the point where we wanted our identity back.

…and now we are divided over our NEW Prime Minister because of a growing number of right leaning, angry citizens informed by the same group of malcontents in The Lower 48, and to whom power and money take precedence over common sense and equality. That ‘My Way or the Highway’ is a goal, not an impediment.

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Ever since 9/11, North America has been dragged deeper and deeper into a pit of doubt, fear, and stupidity. Our common sense has become uncommon, our popular music has become vacuous and homogenized, our newscasts have become puff pieces about celebrities and frightening warnings about everything from the weather to hot dogs.

Everything is out to get us, and by gum, if we don’t put on our tin-foil hats and use every nickel we have to stay safe on this Venus Fly Trap of a mudball, then we are crazy and too uninformed to have a say in just how we accomplish the seemingly impossible task of turning this bus around.

We better let those in authority handle this.

All we have to do is let them spend our money where it will do the most good. You know…more bombs, more weapons, more rules, more regulations, more people to make sure we are safe, more security…because freedom without security is…ummm…is…uhhh…is…er….Oh Yeah…!

Life.

…and if LIFE was good enough for my parents, and my parent’s parents, and so forth and so on, well then, it is good enough for me.

Security is a myth perpetuated by those who can profit from it.

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Look, I’m not saying that being prepared and doing what we can to stay safe in this currently fucked up climate of heightened tension and greed driven decisions should be dropped altogether, but I am saying that we have a way to deal with the widening gap between sense and the lack thereof, besides yelling, bitching, blaming, accusing, cowering, giving up, and (for the more threatening boogiemen we have been saddled with) bombing the shit out of everything that moves and looks like Ringo in an Italian tablecloth.

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We have weapons that are far more powerful in today’s world than any amount of ordnance a standing army, or a billion dollar corporation can muster. We have a couple of things that every Government, Corporation, Idiot, and Asshole are terrified of or desperate to make their own.

Our votes…and our wallets.

And our votes and our wallets give us the one thing that the governments, corporations, idiots, and assholes do not want us to have.

A say in how things go.

People Power.

…and the possibility of that power gives us hope.

And when we used that power here in Canada on October 19th, 2015, we changed the course of a mighty river. A river whose direction had been sullying the reputation and tarnishing the ideology of this great country, and the people who love it, for the previous 10 years.

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America has one of the greatest leaders it has ever had. A man who has faced obstacle after obstacle, who has suffered lies, and untruths at the hands of those who fear him and his desire to make America and the world a better place for the PEOPLE he serves. No amount of Imaginary Facts or Bullshit flung by those who oppose him, fear him, or judge him through bigoted, racist, eyeballs, is going to change that. He has stood his ground and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat multiple times, but he needs more of his PEOPLE to reject what they have embraced because of the lies and untruths foisted upon them by those who WANT the inequality, the fear, and the uncertainty, to drive the populace into giving up more and more of their freedom and finances for a kind of security that does not exist, against an enemy who remains faceless and elusive, hiding amongst their brothers and sisters who are being judged by the actual criminals heinous actions, and are now as feared and despised as those who are guilty, though they are not guilty themselves.

We hate arbitrarily based on religion or ethnicity, and we do this based on the fear instilled in us by those who wish to profit from that fear. The same fear that has taken a culture of individuals and turned a loud minority of them into conformists who feel the need to belong, listen to the same music, watch the same shows, read the same books, and be comforted by news of this NBA star’s vagina addiction and that celebrity woman’s thrice weekly high colonic dependence. They long to be part of the huddled masses, be complacent, be proud to be a part of a country that has clearly, and tragically lost its way.

The squeaky wheel has ALWAYS gotten the grease.

Now America has to attempt to elect a leader who can at least continue to try and do the right thing as far as the people are concerned. That the sitting President cannot be elected for more than 2 terms is a tragedy that no one seems willing to correct, and the promise of a political system ‘By the People For the People’ that has stood for over 200 years, has been all but reduced to a shouting match between the angry, fearful, ill informed and their frustrated, knowledgeable, equally frightened opposite.

Clinton VS Trump

As far as the United States’ upcoming decision is concerned, and…

…at the risk of trying to teach a fish to ride a bicycle, let me get this off my chest….

I will explain this as simply as I can so you understand it the first time…although, I fear I will be wasting my time.

Dear America,

You are on a plane. You have the choice of an experienced pilot who is familiar with not only how the plane is flown and landed, but the conditions of all the airports in the world and how best to land your plane safely at all of them. Your OTHER choice is a screaming 12 year old boy who has bullied the other children on the plane, grabbed some of the stewardesses by the groin, made fun of a passenger in a wheelchair, and called anyone of colour a derogatory name. He has never BEEN in a plane before let alone FLY one, does not know or care to know what the airports around the world are like, or what he needs to know to land safely at any of them. He has also made a point of telling everyone on your plane that he is the best at all of the things that are needed to make sure you arrive at your destinations safely…but has no experience, no education, no familiarity, and no DESIRE to learn ANYTHING about doing it successfully. Those are your choices. Do the math.

Choose the Angry, Visogothic, Delusional, Boy? Really?

We came very close to going down that path here in Canada. For 10 years we let it slowly open up before us, and many of us fell for the promise of sitting at the Big Dog table open-carrying a gun, and ultimately, forgetting who, and what, we are.

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We don’t know what the future will bring, no one does, but we , as a people, got to the point where we worked in consort to change the course of our river back to its original direction, and because we used our votes, and our wallets, and because we were willing to take a chance, we now have hope.

Hope that we can retain our identity and regain what has been diminished in our heritage.

Hope that we can continue to say “Pardon me”, and “After you”. Hope that we can help solve problems around the world with diplomacy and kindness. Hope that we can maintain and raise our standard of living, educate our children, heal the sick without costing them their homes, and create art and artists who will entertain and inform the world.

We can accomplish anything if we stand together for each other…and with one victory under our belts and a new government that offers hope and may even act on righting 10 years of wrongs, there is a chance that the feeling we all felt after the election will grow and our hopes will be fulfilled.

At least we have a chance.

…but damned if I know what we can do about the fucking Leafs.

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Segarini’s column appears whenever someone remembers Ben Carson

Contact us at dbawis@rogers.com

Bob “The Iceman” Segarini was in the bands The Family Tree, Roxy, The Wackers, The Dudes, and The Segarini Band and nominated for a Juno for production in 1978. He also hosted “Late Great Movies” on CITY TV, was a producer of Much Music, and an on-air personality on CHUM FM, Q107, SIRIUS Sat/Rad’s Iceberg 95, (now 85), and now publishes, edits, and writes for DBAWIS, continues to write music, make music, and record.