Got an email from a friend the other day, headed “Enough already!” Like so many of us – especially we older folks – she’s sick and tired of being locked down, exasperated with the conflicting information we’ve received, really scared of leaving her home unless it’s absolutely necessary, and furious with the scoffers who put her health in danger with their refusal to wear a mask.
I am writing this week’s column from the only point of view which I can claim any familiarity with, that of a happily heterosexual middle aged caucasian male. Most of the people who know me in real life like me because I am a nice guy, and my Facebook friends who don’t know me personally like me mainly because of my sense of humour. Most of society likes, or at least tolerates me, because I fit in. I am a typical ” straight ” white man.
Richard Nixon gave a defiant concession speech in 1962 that ended with …. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
The incredible narcissism and entitlement in that statement, coming from a man that was lucky not to have been tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail, sends a frisson up my spine.
From time to time, people have accused me of ‘hating’ Donald Trump irrationally. But really, there’s nothing irrational about me hating the guy. I admit it, I despise him, and everything he is, has been, and currently represents. So should any free-thinking lover of progress, freedom, individual and civil rights, and most of all – democracy.
I blame social media and reality TV. I blame reality TV because the flood of singing, dancing, housewifing and endurance series that became ubiquitous during the early 2000s were the catalyst for too many narcissists to believe that their big fish in a small local pond anonymity was only an audition and a bunch of ‘likes and shares’ away from stardom. And that belief, that, in the past, would have been knocked out of them by cruel reality, has gone right to our collective heads.
Kids really know how to push their parent’s buttons. As a smart-ass teenager in the sixties, I pushed quite a few myself. At one family dinner, while I silently pondered the lyrics to Janis Ian’s song, Society’s Child, I suddenly announced to the table, “I’d marry a black man, if I was in love with him.”
“The further society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it” – George Orwell
The world is a fucking mess!! It’s a like a huge ball of dirt that can no longer be swept under the carpet. We’ve been doing that far too long and the carpet just isn’t big enough to hide the dirt anymore. Online news, social media, newspapers, all littered with the horrific happenings from around the world but with a particular focus on the U.S. A runaway virus, isolation, unemployment, too many deaths, hate crimes, looting, brutality, murder…..the list is endless. Any kind of optimism is taking a beating and beginning to fade as I sit typing this. I fear for what could possibly happen and how it will all turn out. It’s like we’ve all lost our collective minds!
I’m only half kidding when I say that I’m pretty sure we’ve been living in an alternate reality since 2008, created by firing up the Large Hadron Collider. What else could explain this bizarre branch of a timeline we’re currently experiencing?
The last Monday of May is when America celebrates Memorial Day, a federal holiday which honours and mourns the military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Patriots observe both this holiday, and the other day of note, Remembrance Day, to signify their appreciation and respect for past and present members of the military. These are America’s heroes.
This year, however, that holiday coincides with something that only a tiny percent of a percent of Americans, if any, have ever seen before – the sudden death of nearly 100,000 citizens in just two months, by the novel coronavirus known as COVID 19.
North Americans have been spoiled for the last hundred years. Sure, there were two World Wars, and a Great Depression, but few under the age of 50 even remember those days, let alone recognize the impact these events had on people. As peacekeepers, Canada felt even less of the sting of loss.
It’s a long weekend, and here in my little corner of the city, it’s sunny and warm, with just a gentle breeze ruffling the ferns. My ‘regular customers’ – the little birds, Blue Jays, and squirrels – have already been by for their morning treats and have now gone off to hide from the local felines.
Bullseye Records of Canada
