Brief Thoughts on "Don't Look Up," "Vice," and "Casablanca."

 

Not much to say about the new Netflix film "Don't Look Up" since I haven't seen it and might never see it. I'm just reacting to the way that many leftists on my social media and internet sites I frequent are trashing it for how it didn't, instead, choose to be an uplifting film about the people coming together and showing their glorious and beautiful human spirit and overthrowing the oligarchs who are standing in the way of what obviously needs to be done.

Uh, "thwap to ever-optimistic leftist activists: You guys have been living in fucking fantasy-land for so many decades that it's hard to take you seriously. You have achieved SHIT. You have achieved NOTHING. We are closer to global heating catastrophe than ever before. Your record on Israel-Palestine, on Peace, on Inequality, on Police Racism & Violence, is terrible. It's your blinkered, unjustified optimism that keeps you going (Gawd bless you) but maybe you should shut-up here and sit this one out."

Also, some of these precious darlings object to the way that the mass of people are meant to look stupid. Because the people united can never be defeated. It's always our evil overlords who work full-time to divide us who are to blame. You know, to make those of us who think not being shot like animals in the street by racist cops for the colour of our skin should be a human right, to hate the slobbering racist troglodytes who celebrate that and who protest when a window gets broken or a fire gets started in anger over racist state violence. Those damned elites!

Also, ... while I'm sure that a film with this cast of Hollywood A-listers will no doubt be filled with smug, shit-lib hypocrisy and arrogance, ... I'm also pretty sure it's a satire. Or should we also toss Jonathan Swift and Joseph Heller and Terry Gilliam and South Park into the gutter for failing to recognize the eternal beauty of human nature?

Next: I watched about half of "Vice" (about bush II's sleazy VP Dick Cheney) on Netflix early in the pandemic. (The lockdown was why I got Netflix in the first place.) I stopped watching it because the filmmakers seemed to be repeating the term "Unitary Executive" without ever (in my opinion) explaining what it was, why Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted it for and what - therefore - made it so dangerous.

But here's some stuff that I found interesting: Cheney's girlfriend (and later wife) Lynne, apparently wrote his entrance exams to Yale (since he was incapable). Somehow or other his behaviour gets them kicked out. (Either his drinking, or they're living together. I honestly don't remember. But they both had to leave.) He gets work as a telephone lineman but his drinking continues to escalate. Lynne gets him out of jail for drunkeness and sits him down and tells him straight out that her father was an abusive drunk and she is NOT going to live her mother's life. Dick Cheney has to either shape-up or ship-out. 

That took a lot of guts and determination. For a young woman with such a childhood, to stand up to a man and read him the riot act like that. And Dick Cheney doesn't hit her in a drunken rage. He agrees to sober up. And does so. And together, with Lynne's help as the brains of the operation, he gets a career in Washington. Working for like-minded scumbags.

Lynne Cheney's long-suffering mother drowns in suspicious circumstances. She's convinced her father murdered her. At the funeral Dick Cheney tells his (drunken) father-in-law to never try to come near his wife or their two daughters ever again.

I can't remember which scenes came first, but at one point Dick Cheney suffers a heart attack right before an election campaign and Lynne is forced to make speeches on his behalf. (Some of his advisors didn't think Cheney's crowd of voters would listen to a woman but she is clearly good at it and they love her.) I've often said that I never thought Dick Cheney was very smart. His leadership of Haliburton was a disaster and he had to go back into politics and employ raw power and naked corruption to toss public dollars at Haliburton to get it back in the black. From this biopic it really appears that Dick Cheney was Lynne Cheney's creation.

The last scene that I want to mention is the hospital scene after Mary Cheney's car accident. Lynne Cheney thinks Mary has had a fight with her close female friend. But Mary blurts out that she's a lesbian and that they'd broken up and that's what made her so upset that she ended up in a fender-bender. Lynne Cheney's face registers disgust but Dick Cheney immediately says that she's their daughter and that they love her unconditionally. From her Wikipedia page it says that Mary Cheney is a close confidant to her father, so there's some cause to believe this scene happened in life as it did in the movie. Which is touching until you think about all the blood on Dick Cheney's hands. All the millions upon millions of lives he's harmed. It's kind of similar to how the racist father of the USA's racist, mass-incarceration policies of the 1990's, Joe Biden, no doubt loves his wastrel son Hunter, who would probably be serving a life-sentence if he was Black or poor by now.  It's entirely possible for these political psychopaths to be doting parents. loving spouses and true supporters of their inner circles, but that doesn't change the monstrous nature of their policies.

Lynne Cheney's courage and willpower, to not only NOT live her mother's life, but to be a female public speaker and writer, is cancelled-out by the sickening policies of oligarchy, delusion and hatred that she embraces. Dick Cheney's love for his family is totally cancelled-out by his boorish stupidity and indifference to the lives of anyone outside his own chosen circle.

Finally, and like a lot of other people apparently, I've taken to watching movie reaction videos on YouTube. There's two different female YouTubers that I watch. And recently they've each watched "Casablanca." It's a treat to see these millenials become so invested in the story and the characters and to both respond with such shock to the relatively mild (compared to the present day) violence, such as when [SPOILER ALERT!!! ;) ] Rick shoots Major Strasser.

But at the end of her video, one of the YouTubers refers to Strasser's death and says "Bad stuff was happening." IOW: The Nazis were bad. They were villains. That's what happens when people fight back. And both of these YouTubers are from the United States. And so much of the bad stuff happening now is because of the USA. In Iraq. In Libya. In Syria. In Palestine. In the Sudan. In the Ukraine. In Iran. In Venezuela. In Central America. In South America. In US prisons. In Yemen. 

No. The US oligarchy is NOT as 100% racist as the Nazis were. Their system is quite racist but I'd say a large minority of the US capitalist elite could easily tolerate a non-white person for almost an entire day. And, no, the US system of domination has not created literal factories of murder such as the gas chambers. They just use starvation sanctions, brutal mercenaries of all sorts, their own military, and other methods of slaughter to destroy or end the lives of tens of millions of people. If you want to question that then you've already identified yourself as an imbecile.

Then there's the stirring scene where the Czech anti-Nazi patriot Victor Lazlow leads the crowd at Rick's nightclub to sing "La Marseillaise" in response to the Nazi soldiers singing "Die Wacht am Rhein." The whole crowd of French refugees and unhappy Vichy collaborators and residents remember their love of country, homeland. They stand up to their conquerers. They do so in French-controlled Morocco. I wonder how the Moroccans felt about their French occupiers?  I once worked with a man from a former French colony in Central Africa. He was about my age (fifties). He recalled that when he was a child his father asked him and his brother if they dreamed in their native language or French. He told his father that he dreamed in French. His father got visibly depressed. [FWIW: "Die Wacht am Rhein" is a song, based on a poem, about German Rhinelanders resisting French attempts to conquer them.]

I don't want to claim that that's not a stirring scene or that "Casablanca" isn't a great film. Or that those two young ladies are contemptible ignoramuses. I actually watch them because of the few reaction video YouTubers that I've seen, their responses are consistently eloquent and their editing professional. It's a guilty pleasure and I don't want to get too involved with it.

Surveying the Failures of Neoliberalism

 

Greg Fingas's blog "Accidental Deliberations" often has posts containing links to many excellent mainstream and alternative political articles, essays and analyses. A while back there was a link to this article from the Roosevelt Institute: "The Empirical Failures of Neoliberalism." I just wanted to mention it here. Some choice quotes:

Advocates of deregulation promised both more efficient markets and economic growth (as measured by gross domestic product) that would “trickle down” to benefit the economy as a whole. Such an approach, they promised, would be like a rising tide that lifts all boats. Contrary to the theory, however, regressive policies, including lower tax rates for corporations and the already wealthy, deregulation, and privatization, have resulted in slower growth, greater income inequality, wage stagnation, and decreased labor market mobility.

...

COVID-19 is going to kill 20-40% of us ...

 

That's not the jist of this post by the brilliant Umair Haque: "It's Been Two Years - And We Still Haven't Learned COVID's Lessons." Haque actually argues that we could be facing mortality rates like that if we don't smarten up.  We need to treat this pandemic as the public health catastrophe that it is and mashall the collective resources necessary to defeat it.

The really scary stuff? It’s Covid 19 recombining with SARS or MERS. Why? Because SARS has a mortality rate of 15%. MERS has a mortality rate of 40%.

We got away easy with Covid 19. It has a mortality rate of “just” 2%. That’s incredibly high on average — but it’s low for a Coronavirus outbreak.

Now imagine the chaos and devastation that happens if, God forbid, Covid 19, this Coronavirus, recombines with its cousins, SARS or MERS. Then we don’t have a new “variant” — we have a whole new strain.

What does that strain look like? It has the infectiousness of Omicron — an R of 5, which means one person infects five more, which is incredibly high, and why Omicron has exploded in country after country at lightning speed.

Only this future strain isn’t “mild.” It’s the very opposite. It’s incredibly deadly. It has a mortality rate of between 20 and 40%.

Why? Because it’s picked up the lethality genes from SARS and MERS, and the spike protein genes make Omicron ultra infectious, and recombined them.

And far from being unlikely, Covid-19 recombining with a much, much worse Coronavirus is very likely — because Coronaviruses are adept at recombining their genes, and now there are billions of hosts for Covid. All it would take is one immunocompromised person or maybe even animal getting Covid 19 and SARS or MERS, incubating the new strain — and bang. Say hello to a new plague.

So what is the cost of precaution? How high is it? It’s super, super cheap, in fact. Protecting the world from the plague Covid could — will become — if it goes unchecked is the best bargain in human history. It would take a few billion dollars — between ten and fifty — to vaccinate the planet. That’s not even one Jeff “I like to exploit my workers” Bezos.

But we live in a society where Doug Ford panders to shit-heads like his daughter and her husband so that he and his selfish businessman constituency can play "business-as-usual" and where dreamy Justin Trudeau sides with Big Pharma against vaccinating the world while "progressive" Montreal Simon jerks himself off to all the dreaminess.

In other news, David Sirota says it's hard not to think that Joe Biden and the Democrats want to lose in 2022. 

On the one hand, we see congressional Democrats casting themselves as the heroes of a West Wing episode, rightly screaming about all the web of connections between the January 6 rioters, right-wing news outlets, and top Donald Trump administration officials, who appear to have been entertaining plans for an actual coup.

On the other hand, we see Democrats fully leaning into a likely 2022 disaster. They are going far beyond merely refusing to give Americans an affirmative reason to vote for them;  in sabotaging their own purported agenda, they seem to be deliberately trying to lose to the very fascists they claim to oppose, going out of their way to insult and harm as many voters as possible before their likely collapse.

Of course they do. It's hard to blame the Republicans for stopping all your initiatives when you control the House, the Senate and the Executive. They know people are seeing through this bullshit. But Biden is such a low-functioning moron that he probably thinks people will really be fooled by his giving the Repugs control of the legislature and then saying Repug control is the solitary reason why he can't do anything for them.

I wonder how Democratic Party hack blogger Driftglass would respond to that essay?

Capitalism is going to KILL US ALL

 

[NOTE: I don't have any prepared thoughts on the latest foreign-policy insanity, but I still feel the need to mention the recent hypocritical drivel coming out of Washington about Russia and China. Canada's Liberal government continues to embarrass us by going along 101% with the USA's "diplomatic boycott" of China over something. Also, the country that employed lies to invade Iraq and which lied about "winning" in Afghanistan for over twenty years is now telling us that Russia wants to invade the Ukraine and that China is all set to invade Taiwan. The country that destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and other countries, and which is currently committing crimes against humanity in Iran and Venezuela with the imposition of illegal starvation sanctions and whose ruling elites happily consign tens of thousands of their own citizens to needless death to preserve the profits of private health insurance providers, is just SOOOOO concerned about the well-being of Ukrainians and Taiwanese that it's willing to go to war to protect them from the threats from Russia and China. Meanwhile, US ally Saudi Arabia has a free pass to commit genocide in Yemen. What stupid bullshit.]

The Mental and Moral Consequences of Long-Term Partisan Hackery

 

I usually don't read the idiot anymore but it was morbid curiosity that made me click on the link to his blog at the blog-roll of The Galloping Beaver.  Montreal Simon was writing about the Liberal's anti-conversion-therapy bill and something about the Conservative Party's fraudulent behaviour. As I've been saying for years now, I don't follow the news closely anymore. And last I'd heard, the Liberals had a bill that hadn't passed the Senate before Justin Trudeau called that totally unnecessary election last September. 

You can read about what happened at his blog if you're interested. All I want to point out is this bit of narcissistic, self-righteous, hypocritical drivel that Simon (as he descends further into madness) felt compelled to include:

P.S. I'd like to end my post with that, but I couldn't help noticing that none of the old geezers at Progressive Bloggers bothered to write a word about this significant step in the human rights struggle in this country.

Including those who are retired TEACHERS.

How dare they call themselves progressives? Why do they bother to blog?

What bloody FRAUDS...

Really Simon? Let's ignore the stupid ageism. Simple Simon is going to be old himself one day. I'm sure he'll be delighted to hear his critics dismiss his opinions, not only for their stupidity, but also due to his geezerdom.  Let's deal with the hypocrisy. Currently the RCMP (a federally-run institution) has invaded the sovereign territory of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation, (the First Nations' well-being is the stated responsibility of the Canadian federal government) in order to advance a natural gas pipeline that will only increase Canada's greenhouse gas emissions (which the Trudeau government itself committed to reducing at the latest international climate-change conference). 

Simon has said NOTHING about this. Instead he has chosen to continue to deflect with his obsessive chronicling of the doings of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada.  I condemn both the Trudeau Liberals and the BC NDP in this matter. Montreal Simon just imitates Sergeant Schultz from "Hogan's Heroes" and says "I see nothing!!"

But speaking of global warming, ... one writer after another after another after another wrote about how the results of the COP26 were a disaster for the world. The wealthy countries made empty promises and uttered platitudes. And Trudeau played his role as the errand boy of Canada's (foreign-dominated) fossil fuels industry and the privileged Bay Street elite mediocrities who invest in it. But Simon managed to find one commentator, Michael Mann, who (for whatever reasons, which I personally think was mainly an attempt to avoid the doom and gloom that continues to descend upon climate activists) chose to write as if these politicians meant their promises and that some of those promises were very big indeed. Then, like the crude, untalented propagandist he is, Simon uses Mann's opinion to talk about Canadian opinion polls showing majority support for genuine policies to reduce global warming and then somehow uses those opinion polls to argue that Justin ("No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there") Trudeau is committed to taking on the Petro-State here in Canada. What a fucking joke. Goddamnit! Global warming is going to kill us all and Trudeau has neither the courage or the inclination to stand up to Calgary and Bay Street and yet Simple Simon continues to demand that we all drop to our knees and worship him!

Has Simon said anything about his precious dreamboat Trudeau's defense of the profitability rights of Big Pharma over the lives of literally BILLIONS of people in the Global South (and also the well-being of those billions and the few billion more in the wealthier countries which will be compromised as COVID-19 continues?)

Has Simon ever acknowledged the ghastliness of Canada's foreign policy under Trudeau and the rancid Crystia Freeland? To take just one example; Our targetting Venezuela with murderous sanctions because of trumped-up "human rights" concerns in the so-called "Lima Group" which is itself filled with genuine fascist mass-murderers?  No. Simon would rather write about the opposition Conservative's internal problems on an almost daily basis than confront the monstrousness of his dreamboat Justin Trudeau.

At the end of the day you have to take stock of Simon's record of cowardice and deceit and ask if he isn't a shameless hypocrite. But I have to wonder if Simon has the brains to understand how and why he should be ashamed. As his blogging began to corrupt I would occasionally say that Simon's heart was in the right place. Because I didn't really think he had much in the way of penetrating intelligence. His criticisms of stephen harper were always more emotional than rational. And while I deludedly thought that harper would end up in prison, Simon would end post after post saying that "we" (the anti-harper resistance) would "defeat" and "destroy" him. It took a couple of years of disappointment for me to come to the conclusion that the left (or "progressives") are hopeless and that the world is a shit-hole of evil and failure. But Simon has never lost that intense desire to do battle with right-wing monsters.  Even when those monsters aren't in power and it is the Liberals who are continuing their policies. Maybe Simon genuinely can't see what a pathetic joke he is. Maybe he is simply too stupid to grasp that he is a partisan hack whose opinion is worth shit because of his towering hypocrisy.

I felt moved to write this post both out of personal disgust at that specific instance of Simple Simon's hypocrisy about "old geezers" not writing about the anti-conversion therapy bill. But I also think there's a wider relevance. The Liberal Party, the Democratic party in the USA, the BC NDP, ... all political parties, ... they're all filled with and supported by partisan hacks who ignore their own sins to focus on the sins of others. They all shriek and thunder about crimes elsewhere while committing similar or worse crimes. And to the extent that they succeed in deluding themselves and others, to that extent does humanity continue to stumble dowards the edge of the cliff.

Short Memories, Afghanistan & Propaganda, China, Iran and Russia

 

Caitlin Johnstone has been sounding the alarm against the propaganda system's ratcheting up hatred towards China lately. China and Russia together. Two nuclear-armed world powers. Somehow or other a majority of US-Americans support going to war with China to preserve Taiwan's autonomy. And the propaganda system is working overtime to convince people that Russia wants to conquer The Ukraine and that war with Russia is justified to prevent this. 

I share her concern and her frustration. Don't we have enough to worry about with COVID and global warming? Why are we bothering with the Washington imperialists' hypocritical ravings about China and Russia? I have no fondness for either of those countries' governments but I also have very little concern about what they're doing. The Ukraine is presently a hell-hole. An economic basketcase governed by fascists. It makes no difference to me if Russia swallows the Donbas Region or turns it into a client statelet. And, really, nobody in Washington's foreign policy elite gives a shit about the Ukrainian people anyway. All this hysteria is meant to justify military spending (huge, private-sector profits) and to harrass Russia for daring to resist US hegemony.  With Taiwan, perhaps it really is more free and democratic than the Peoples Republic of China (now). If it is, it would be a shame if it were to be absorbed by the PPR.  But if it was, do we really think the results would be worse for the people of Taiwan than, say, the way the millions of people in Central and South America have suffered for decades under the neo-liberal puppets who rule those countries under the protection and leadership of the USA? The  reign of corruption, non-development, death-squads?

No. This is all hypocrisy being mobilized as propaganda to justify US imperialism. And nothing else. The same goes for the idiocy of the idiots Biden and Blinken on Iran. Both of them blathering on about Iran's "danger" to stability in the Middle East. It was the USA that set the Middle East on fire, smothered people's movements for democracy and which subsidizes Israeli racism, for decades under Democrat and Republican administrations. Even before his descent into dementia Joe Biden couldn't have articulated why he was so opposed to Iran. The man has always been a soulless opportunist, a hypocrite and an imbecile. The US behaviour towards Iran has been nothing but shameful.

But these nitwits continue to hold sway over our minds. Because most of us simply don't care. We get on with our lives, with all too many of us stirring only to rage against refugees coming to our countries from the lands devastated or destroyed by this imperialism. And, as well, besides apathy, there's ignorance and short memories. For ten years, Canada participated in the occupation of Afghanistan. And both the Liberals and the Conservatives and the mainstream media all told us how we were "winning" in Afghanistan, and it was all lies. And then the USA stayed for ten more years and continued to lie about "winning" until Donald Trump (who had campaigned as an anti-interventionist) negotiated the final withdrawl of US troops from Afghanistan. He did that at the tail-end of his presidency because the Washington foreign policy apparatus would not (and did not) respond well to any shrinking of their evil, asinine interventionism. And, besides, Trump is a narcissistic coward. He just thought the wars were stupid, but he held their victims in racist contempt. But Trump needed to do something for the large numbers of his voting base that wants an end to the "forever wars." He did it because he was desperate and seeking re-election.  It turned out to be Biden who would have to oversee the withdrawl. Biden didn't reverse it. He would never have initiated it but since it was now a done-deal, he probably knew he wouldn't be able to revive what had always been a hopeless failure that was now almost universally unpopular. 

The corporate news media/propaganda system did its job though. Instead of spending their time apologizing for their stupidities and lies about "winning" and telling their audiences how and why the US mission in Afghanistan failed, they bewailed the fate of Afghanistan's women at the hands of the misogynist, fundamentalist Taliban.  And then they moved on as if there were no further lessons to be learned. Leftists and peace activists who were right the whole time are still sneered at (when we're not ignored).

But always remember, we failed in Afghanistan because our leaders are scumbags. Their arguments for intervention anywhere are always rank hypocrisy. And listening to them is a gaurantee for misery and failure.

Freedom Isn't Free Fuck-Face!

 

Despite what asshats like Jimmy Dore say, the case for COVID vaccines is pretty strong. Most of the people ending up in the emergency rooms with COVID symptoms now are unvaccinated. Areas of Canada with the lowest vaccination rates are suffering the most from COVID-19. COVID-19 is real. (How many years do you remember an annual flu season and the government was imposing lockdowns and vaccine passports/mandates and almost daily some imbecile is posting on social media about how they had denied that the flu was dangerous, didn't get the flu-shot and now they're dying in the hospital?)

With the reality of COVID-19 being a fact, the question is: "Should I get vaccinated or should I stand up strong and proud for my bodily autonomy until I find that I'm one of those unlucky people who finds out that COVID-19 doesn't give a fuck for my bodily autonomy and now I'm in the hospitals, consuming public resources and putting people who are sick THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN waiting longer and longer for treatments and surgeries because of stupid assholes such as myself?"

I used to think that maybe the government should offer a card to COVID-denying/anti-vaxxers that told hospital staff: "This person doesn't believe COVID-19 is real or dangerous. This person refused to wear a mask or practice any social distancing for any number of stupid reasons. This person rejected getting vaccinated for still more unimportant, asinine reasons. If this person has ended up in your emergency room due to the results of having been infected with COVID-19 then you are within your rights to SEND THIS PERSON HOME TO DIE."

Of course, how do you carry out such a policy? Certainly some of these nitwits would happily apply for the card, act like shit-heads and then come crawling to the hospital when their stupidity smacks them hard in the face. But others wouldn't bother. Those who did might throw their cards away on the way to the hospital. The logistics of it would probably be more trouble than it was worth. But then it occurred to me: Being unvaccinated (without good reason) is all the proof you need to have to recognize that the feverish, gasping human before you is a formerly arrogant asshole who is now begging for help. Yet another narcissistic moron with delusions of intelligence whose stupidity is harming others, and exposing overworked, traumatized healthcare workers to a life-threatening virus. 

Send them the fuck home and let any of their similary stupid friends and family treat them with the latest wonder drugs they've heard about from the internet or while they were crouching by Donald Trump's fat, ugly ass hoping to breath in one of his rancid farts.

The High Cost of Crap

 

We've all heard about the gi-normous costs of paying welfare to all the lazy people who don't want to work and how all those billions of taxpayer $$$ are being siphoned away from decent, upstanding folks, and discouraging them from becoming job-creating entrepreneurs and it constitutes a crippling drain on society as the parasites and the moochers get the public housing and the free food and the clothes and the females push out babies every year to get that cool $1,000 a month (or whatever) for each ward of the state they produce.

And even though our society has been brought to its knees by this siphoning off of the life-force to subsidize the lazy "useless eaters" the lib-left shitheads continue to tax and tax hardworking types until there's no more blood to be obtained by that stone and society descends into anarchy. And THEN those lazy welfare bums are going to find the state sugar-daddy is dead. And they'll probably die from SHOCK when they realize they're going to have to actually WORK to survive. (Growing food, building their own housing, finding their own fuel, whatever.)

Of course, in reality, this is all overblown, fear-fueled right-wing delusion. I mean, the part about society collapsing under the weight of the "socialism" of leftist politicians granting welfare to lazy people in return for their votes. (It never dawns on the people propagating this tale of vote-buying that poor people vote less proportionately than wealthier people.) The facts are that most people on welfare aren't on it for very long. Often they're the working-poor who suffer from precarious employment in a "flexible" 21st-Century, neo-liberal labour market. Often it's a woman with a few kids who left an abusive partner, and who was not in paid employment and who cannot find paid employment in the absence of affordable daycare. [This anti-welfare thesis also fails to account for the observable fall in the income provide by welfare payments to the poor over the decades. Supposedly, even though the money is MUCH less than what people got in the 1970's, more and more people, a veritable flood, are pouring on to the system, threatening to swamp us all.]

Yes, yes. Everyone knows an anecdote about a layabout substance abuser receiving welfare. Or a single-mother who continues to have children while on welfare. But Toronto has about 2.5 million people. Ontario has about 11 million people. Canada has around 35 million people. That's a lot of people. Of course you can find anecdotes about a few individuals who seem to live up to the "parasite on society" meme. But this is a minority of the small minority of the population that is on welfare. Most people want to work. The minimum wage in Ontario is insufficient to afford an average one-bedroom apartment nowadays. And the full-time minimum wage paycheque is more that double what a single individual gets from welfare.

Society isn't crumbling because of the welfare state. It never was either. This theory is (I believe) a product of the general sense of unease produced by the larger amygdala of the right-wing brain. 

But one thing that nobody seems to talk about is the high-cost to human civilization of making and consuming crap. Garbage that we don't need. They'll talk all the time about how much money it costs to provide housing and a subsistence to poor people. When there's a blackout they'll talk about the dollar value of the lost output. Or if people miss work because of accidents or hangovers, there's a monetary price that this costs "the economy" or society. But what about business-as-usual?

Don't we see it as a waste of resources when we manufacture mountains of useless, unnecessary consumer products? The human physical labour and thinking ability that goes into designing, building and distributing garbage are wasted resources. The money we spend as consumers on products that we don't need, that don't last and are occasionally damaging to our health, should be considered as wasted as well.

But according to our culture, everyone has to justify their existence by selling something. Capitalism rests on the idea that you can make people want what you're selling via brainwashing campaigns of marketing and advertising. So everyone's hustling, thinking up crap that they'll try to convince people to buy. And it's a never-ending treadmill of garbage. 

I was going to say more but I'll just finish by saying that this is no way to run a sustainable civilization. 

An Annoucement About My Book Depository

Just letting my vast readership know about how they can follow my vast readings at this post. I've decided to constantly update it to either just mention, or occasionally actually discuss my latest readings.  Because the world needs to know.

Goodbye to Jimmy (Anti-Vaxxer) Dore [Updated]

I wasn't happy about it, but I was prepared to give Jimmy Dore the benefit of the doubt. In this post you can read how I had some sympathy for some of Dore's contrarian position on COVID vaccines. But it's become a flood of deranged stupidity and I've unsubscribed from his YouTube channel and have (for the most part) stopped watching him.

This video by "Shaun" outlines Dore's insanity:

Now, I don't agree with everything "Shaun" says. (He's done brilliant videos about "The Bell Curve" and the racist rally at Charlottesville though.) But, like Shaun, I think Dore has entered grifter territory. I think he senses that right-wing anti-vaxxers are a loyal, gullible fanbase who are quick to open their wallets and purses to anyone who tells them what they want to hear. I was always nauseated with the Trump shit-eaters in Dore's comments section with their ignorance, hypocrisy, racism. As I've said before, these assholes were so sexually gratified from Dore's evisceration of Democratic perfidy that they ignored his stances on immigration and the welfare state which are the polar opposite of theirs.

But in the comments section of "Shaun's" Dore video, there's all these people saying that Dore is and has always been a useless, stupid asshole. And these people disgust me. These people are probably apologists for the Democratic Party or practice some other form of revolting idiocy. Jimmy Dore was right about "Russiagate." He's right about the uselessness of the Democrats. He's right about Palestine. He's right about Syria. I watched enough of his material to know he was at one time a valuable person to have on our side. I know enough to recognize that it's a damned tragedy what's happened to him. I thought I had an alternative to pompous stammerers like Sam Seder, arrogant narcissists like Jeffrey St. Clair, and self-defeating hysterical essays from people like Paul Street who has convinced himself that the 70 million US-Americans who voted for Trump are all fascists and it's a waste of time to try speaking to them. (As I said elsewhere, I think Paul Street's revolutionary strategy is to keep writing his embittered essays for his thousands of readers, until he dies, having impacted virtually nothing.)

In the case of this pandemic, which is real, so all you COVID-deniers and anti-VAXXERS can shove your delusions about your superior intellects and commitment to freedom and science up your asses sideways, the stakes are too high to tolerate drivel like Dore's anti-vaxx tirades.

Un-fuck you Jimmy Dore. Your arrogance, delusion and/or dishonesty are going to get people killed.

==========================================================================

UPDATE: Dore has produced a video in response to his critics. Here it is:

A couple of thoughts: How many of the loathsome right-wing people in the comments section have glided easily from denying that the pandemic even existed to agreeing that everyone is going to get COVID eventually?

Dore shows himself saying, multiple times that vulnerable people should get vaxxed. But he has to know that posting video after video with huge banner headlines about the dangers and the lies about vaccines and the heroism and "science" of people who refuse to get vaccinated is only going to discourage people from getting vaccinated. He appears to be directly responding to the section of Shaun's video where Shaun accuses him of misrepresenting an article about a COVID wave in Singapore. Dore admits he was wrong and blames it on a producer who has since been fired. If you watch that section of Dore's video you have to ask yourself whether that producer was only giving Jimmy what he thought he wanted to hear.

Dore insists that it's entirely a personal decision whether to get vaccinated or not. That there are no public consequences when someone chooses not to get vaccinated. In so doing, Dore ignores the fact that the people who require hospitalization are the un-vaxxed. And that therefore these people are putting continued pressure on the healthcare system.

Listen; Starting from the premise that the pandemic is real (and I've already written about my personal experience of this reality for any of the morons who might show up here and arrogantly tell me that I have to open my eyes to the truth about the Davos/UN "Great Re-set" conspiracy to blah, blah, blah) let's discuss things from that perspective. The pandemic is real and all the fucking losers who protested against masks (that they impair your breathing and cause you to panic/that they "don't work" which means that doctors performing surgeries have been wasting their time for at least a century by wearing them), against social distancing and lockdowns (showing that they don't understand what a virus is) and who are clearly anti-vaxxers (of all sorts) ... It has been vastly the case that it is these assholes who have been spreading the virus, getting sick from the virus and overwhelming our emergency rooms, and where these idiots congregate in large enough numbers so as to encourage politicians to pander to them (such as Alberta and Saskatchewan) it is those places that have suffered the most from COVID-19.

Dore has a point (he's had a few points over the past several months which I have always acknowledged) that since it's a fact that the vaccine doesn't prevent one from becoming infected from the virus (as opposed to the measles and polio vaccines) that harsh mandates and vaccine passports are useless because one can get infected from a vaxxed person as easily as from an un-vaxxed person.  But, again, the vast majority of people deciding not to get vaxxed are stupid assholes and their fears of the vaccines are generally delusional. Get the damned vaccine. 

[Edited to add: At the time I wrote this post I really did think that vaxxed people were still as contagious as un-vaxxed people.  I've since learned that this is not the case:  But vaccinated people clear the virus faster, with lower levels of virus overall, and have less time with very high levels of virus present.

Therefore, vaccinated people are, on average, likely to be less contagious.]

Maybe You'll Like This

 My friend Kevin Mackay is now making videos at "Rise Like Lions." I'm listening to this now. Just started. Thought I'd get the word out:

So there you go ...

Another Look At Egerton Ryerson

 

People I tend to respect have condemned Egerton Ryerson as the chief instigator of the culturally genocidal and abusive and murderous residential schools. I took their word for it as I know very little about the man. I didn't know he had anything to do with the residential schools. This CounterPunch article by University of Athabasca's Dr. Michael Welton presents Ryerson in a far different light. 

What many Canadians do not understand is that an Ojibwe leader such as Peter Jones was determined to “see manual labour schools established in Canada West, schools run by Indigenous people themselves as administrators and teachers.” Clearly, Jones (and Ryerson) knew that to compete, “the Indians needed to know basic reading, writing, and arithmetic to have a fund of general knowledge about the larger society. Once they had become self-reliant, they could protect their tiny reserves from outsiders’ intrusions, defend the unsurrendered lands to the north and the west, and also participate in the settler’s world around them” (Smith, 1987, p. 193). In other words, Jones and other Anishinaabeg leaders “supported the idea of a residential school, not as a means of working to erase their separate identity, but rather as a defence tactic to strengthen it.”

In a word, they needed formal schools to enable them to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and sensibilities to defend their cultures and engage the white settler society as equals. It would be up to Indigenous leaders to decide if a residential form of schooling would be appropriate for their youth. Ryerson’s advocacy of training males to be “industrial farmers” makes sense in pre-industrial Canada where farming was the driver of the economy. He thought the churches would run the residential schools; the government would play a supervisory role. Ryerson, Smith states, “worked for the economic self-sufficiency of the Anishinaabeg.”

I thought it was worthy of mentioning.

Venting About Stupid People

 

I'm typing with STONER ROCK blaring from my headphones to drown out the incessant yapping and screeching of my stupid neighbours' tiny lapdog/toy something or other. (These fucking morons leave this miniature monstrosity out in their backyard for half-an-hour at a time and it yaps and screeches insanely at the world almost the entire time. Furthermore, these dipshits have had the fucking thing outside before 7 am and after midnight on several occasions. [How anyone who can hold down a job can be so fucking stupid as to need it explained to them that such behaviour is unacceptable is beyond my ability to comprehend.])

Question for Proponents of "Plandemic" Conspiracy Theories ... Who Decides to Cancel Surgeries?

Just a quick question for yeez all: So, according to you there is no healthcare crisis. Because COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the seasonal flu. It might even BE the seasonal flu. Everyone else dying during the non-flu season has been dying FROM co-morbidities (high blood pressure, obesity, cancer, whatevah) that they had (perhaps) WITH COVID-19.

According to you guys, there are a few brave hospital workers posting the TRUTH about hospitals with only business-as-usual numbers of patients on their social media pages, but everyone else (including, of course, the corporate media) refuses to inform the public about this. And then there are those doctors, nurses and orderlies who know to keep quiet about the Globalist Agenda -- OR ELSE! -- and gosh darn it, it's all so frustrating! Trying to get your story out to the sheeple in the face of this obstruction and cowardice.

What's more dastardly, ... is the decision of hospitals to cancel surgeries, ... allegedly in the face of the numbers of COVID-19 patients swamping the hospitals. 

So my question to you who question whether the pandemic is even real; my question to you people who appear to have "The Rebel" website, the right-wing, Islamophobic, global-warming denying/fossil fuels supporting, People's Party of Canada supporting, "questioning" of the mass graves of the residential schools website as one of your biggest sources of information and moral support, .... You people who have among you a large number of fans of the repulsive Donald Trump, ... my question is; Who is responsible for the decision to cancel surgeries, allegedly (according to you) in a situation where there is no crisis?

What's the benefit to, say, the head of the Alberta Health Service, to cancel these surgeries when there is NO crisis and therefore, cancelling these surgeries is cruel and inhuman? What rewards to you imagine they obtain from "The Globalists" to make this call?

And what's in it for the doctors who should know that there's no healthcare crisis, and that therefore these surgeries are supposedly being cancelled for political-conspiracy reasons, thereby needlessly endangering their patients' health and well-being? What is keeping these doctors from shouting to anyone who will listen about this scandal?

I ask you this in the hopes that perhaps seeing the absurdity of what you believe and what you're trying to get everyone else to believe will become obvious to you. But perhaps you have an answer that isn't hilarious in a bizarre sort of way?

Start From the Premise that the Virus is REAL

 

Two people I tend to admire, Jimmy Dore (who steadfastly refuses to swallow the line that the Democratic Party USA is the only hope for progressives, or any hope at all for anyone not an oligarch) and Caitlin Johnstone, have been expressing sympathy for people who don't want to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Dore's obsession with this has caused me to unsubscribe from his YouTube channel. 

There are legitimate issues and principles behind their stances. I recognize this. I actually totally agree with Dore and Johnstone's opposition to establishment proposals to censor social media (or any media) in the form of deleting discussion of anti-vaccine, pro-vaccine alternatives, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, etc.,. These social media giants, the oligarchy in general and their politician hirelings are pro-censorship against opposition voices in general. Getting progressives and left-wingers to actually agree to allowing FaceBook to delete people's posts due to their being "disinformation" is a dream come true for the oligarchy. 

Dore is rightfully critical of Anthony Fauci (the Chief Medical Advisor to the President) for his calculated dishonesty early in the pandemic regarding the general public wearing masks. Fauci had said that people should NOT wear masks. They wouldn't help. But later he said that masks DO help. His earlier statements had been an attempt to prevent the public from trying to access N95 masks (and other suitable masks) that were in short supply for healthcare workers. Whatever short-term benefits Fauci hoped for were undeniably overwhelmed by the blow to his credibility. (Dore's YouTube comments section is infested with Trump-worshipping shitheads who get such a masturbatory rush from his evisceration of the Democratic Party that they follow him despite his support for immigrants' rights and for a greater welfare state. They wholeheartedly agree with Dore on Fauci saying that he's a liar who should never be believed again. What these shit-for-brains fuckwads don't admit is that their own bloated, orange spray-tanned, daughter-luster-after, yellow-haired combover, serial conman, Donald J. Trump is also an admitted liar. Trump told Bob Woodward that he knew COVID-19 was deadly serious, but was publicly downplaying because he didn't want to create a panic. Being right-wing imbeciles it is second-nature for these turds to hypocritically ignore Trump's admitted lying while pompously declaring Fauci as permanently shredded of credibility.)

Dore did a video on the subject of the medicine "ivermectin" that points out that besides being a horse de-wormer, it is also made in versions for human use. It's no secret that ivermectin is used to treat scabies, worm infections and acne. Continuing to insist that it is solely "horse de-wormer" is brazen, calculated dishonesty.  It's been a while since I watched that video, but I believe Dore says that ivermectin is officially being used in Japan. That appears to be untrue. They are conducting a largescale clinical study of it though. 

When I first heard about ivermectin (actually from Dore's comments section where it was celebrated as the latest right-wing, anti-vaxxer wonder drug) I decided to look it up. It was being promoted by some group called "Frontline Healthcare Experts" (or something) and that they'd had an article about its use for treating COVID-19 in a medical journal called CHEST (which I also looked up and it seemed legit). (The "Frontline Healthcare" ... or whatever ... people have been characterized as quacks and kooks by establishment media and healthcare experts, but these are the same people who insist that ivermectin is only ever used for horses. So make up your own mind.)

I'm going to provide one link in this quickly written post. It's a link to studies on the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 from the National Center for Biotechnology (which is part of a branch of the USA's National Institute of Health). From the Abstract of the study I was sorta looking for:

A 5-day course of ivermectin was found to be safe and effective in treating adult patients with mild COVID-19. Larger trials will be needed to confirm these preliminary findings.

This is part of what I said recently about how we shouldn't give right-wing douchebags ammunition. Obviously there are imbeciles out there obtaining veterninary-use ivermectin and self-medicating and getting sick. Just like some absolute idiots drank bleach when Trump blathered on about how that could clean out one's internal plumbing, with the result that those absolute idiots died.  But when these anti-vaxxers read these easily refuted criticisms of ivermectin in general it only adds fuel to their fire of stupidity and hypocrisy. 

But Dore is interviewing guests who are (or at least have some shred of legitimacy to claim they are) experts on vaccines or COVID-19 or SARS in general and he is giving them a respectful hearing when he simply isn't qualified to know if they're charlatans or not. And he doesn't get on alternative voices to help him to decide. And this is dangerous. I mean, he can do whatever he wants. (See my agreement with his anti-censorship views above.) But as a communicator, a public broadcaster, and as someone who has no real grasp of the medical science, to be giving a platform to medical rebels who could (for all he knows) be conmen or quacks spewing disinformation about a public health crisis, is highly irresponsible. 

I guess what I'm trying to lead up to is this: In a recent post (okay, one more link) from Caitlin Johnstone, condemning the hatred against vaccine-refusers, someone in the comments section writes this:

I’m afraid Keith Olbermann is right! I am personally afraid to put into my system the content of a syringe abusively called “vaccine” only authorized in case of an emergency artificially created by the overreaching western governmental denial of treatments proved remarkably effective in India, inter alia, and certainly better than nothing – which failed the honesty test bench from the get go. This experimental mRNA shit has already killed tens of thousands and harmed hundreds of thousands according to the CDC/FDA’s VAERS itself, which is why a sizeable number of nurses – who should know – won’t take the jab to protect themselves against a disease that’s nothing more than a strain of flu (like most coronavirus diseases) and that, in spite of PCR tests run at 40 CT grossly over-estimating its impact through overwhelming production of false positives, has still been officially survived in the first year, without a vaccine, by 99,97% of the world population (!)

Okay. First. Caitlin Johnstone argues the valid principle that giving governments the power to inject you with chemicals against your will is somewhat a denial of your bodily autonomy. Fine. But when it comes to vaccines, we have to consider the possibility that the things they're vaccinating us against (polio, measles for instance) are real. With regards to polio and measles we can also look to the historical results of immunization campaigns and see that they worked and that they were not actually a plot by Big Pharma to inject micro-chips into the population. The shithead commenter quoted above exposes themself as a shithead with their drivel about PCR "false positives" and "nothing more than a strain of the flu" garbage.

The virus is real. That should be our starting point. I know the virus is real. In my own life, my own experience, I know this is not a hoax.

In the factory where I recently worked for five years (I've since gotten another shit-paying job just to have a change of scenery) the past two years have been different from the previous three. As I said in another COVID-related post: In my experience, as long as they've been advertising annual flu vaccines in Ontario I have never gotten the vaccine, I have never gotten the flu, and I have never heard of anyone in my family, friends or co-worker circles of having gotten the flu either. But during this pandemic, three guys in my last department got it. Two of them (one in his mid-twenties, the other in his late-forties) said it was very bad. Another guy in the the department I'd worked in before that was hospitalised from COVID and was off work for months. A young man in another section who I joked around with caught it from his wife, and while she had only mild symptoms, he described it as "a motherfucker" that he never wants again. Another guy was hospitalized with it, came back to work after time-off but would routinely have to clock-out early, being too dragged-out to continue. One arrogant boor came in WITH the virus, knowing he was sick, and looking like death warmed-over. He was fired for his stupidity. Oh yeah, another guy in my old department had to go home to Mexico to help his parents deal with the death of his brother from COVID. And EVERYONE in the factory knew about a woman on the assemblyline whose elderly father (whom she lived with) died from COVID.

So, COVID-19 is real. All your local boards of health are telling the truth about hospitals being overwhelmed. That stupid woman who showed up at protests wearing an eye-mask (so clever!) and ranting about conspiracies until she herself was hospitalized and subsequently killed by the virus (with hordes of her shit-head allies calling the hospital and demanding they treat her with ivermectin) found out it was real. All the right-wing radio hosts who denied the virus and rejected the vaccines and then got infected with COVID-19, admitted they were wrong from their hospital beds, and died from it, were not creatures of Bilderberg, whose whole lives had been performative frauds designed for this one psy-op. 

Yes. It is an invasion of your bodily autonomy to have to get mandatory vaccines. But the COVID-19 virus IS REAL. It is highly contagious and highly deadly. And just as the cost of some small loss in bodily autonomy, and the pain of having to admit that sometimes modern medicine knows what it's doing, are very real, ... it has been agreed that the benefits of reducing deaths and disabilities caused by measles and polio from mandatory vaccines were worth the cause. We live in a society. The social benefit of your freedom to be a plague rat is less than the social benefit of masses of people not getting sick from your stupidity. The FACT that a lot of the anti-vaxx/COVID-deniers are right-wing shitheads, who are stupid hypocrites and deluded assholes is something else to remember.

To his credit, Jimmy Dore has been vaccinated and admits it. (Unlike Tucker Carlson who has been vaccinated but won't admit it while simultaneously telling his millions of viewers how dangerous the vaccines are.) There are genuine values and principles behind some of what he is saying. The way that the vile US political-economy won't give low-wage workers a day-off to get vaccinated and deal with the side-effects is another one of his valid criticisms.

But the virus is real. It's very dangerous. It could kill millions if these COVID-denying morons are treated with anything more than the tiny morsel of respect that they deserve.

Something Weird

 

When Justin Trudeau called the last election it was clear that he wanted to try to obtain a majority in Parliament. And Liberal hacks were all singing in unison about how this was necessary because the opposition parties were blocking him at every turn. Why, no bills had been passed in the previous five months before the election! Partisan gridlock!

Strangely, when the election turned out to deliver another Liberal minority, Liberal hacks were all united under the message that this was a victory. "A strong minority" as one shameless shithead put it. I find that kinda weird because those Liberals should have been (if they had any intellectual consistency) been dismayed at finding themselves in the same situation that had created the lose-lose situation of the precious Liberal Party of Canada, led by the dreamy, perfect Justin Trudeau, being stymied in all its efforts to save our glorious Canada from the toxic Trudeau-haters and Canada-haters. 

Apparently Bill Kristol Got His Ass Kicked

 

I've been too busy to watch it all but according to Caitlin Johnstone it's entirely one-sided. Scott Horton has the facts and the logic and Bill Kristol is reduced to whining about how he's being portrayed as a bad guy.  I like Johnstone's speculation as to why Kristol got himself into this predicament:

The only unanswered question when all was said and done was, how the hell did Kristol get it in his head that entering this debate was a good idea?

One can only assume hubris. Hubris arising from a life in an elitist echo chamber where his warped views are seldom challenged, and continual marination in the kind of unearned validation that only Beltway swamp monsters ever receive.

So far it's only had 11,000 views. But now that the Thwapster is behind it I'm sure that number will rocket into the stratosphere!

Justin Trudeau: Evil or Stupid?

 Obviously the question doesn't preclude the possibility that he could be a little bit of both. But I've been on-and-off musing about Justin Trudeau's decision to vacation in Tofino rather than honour the first National Day For Truth & Reconciliation. Was Trudeau a dim bulb who wanted to relax with his family and really didn't think it would be that big a deal? Or did he take a pass on the Day of Truth & Reconciliation because he wanted to send the First Nations a signal that he holds them in contempt?

Isn't it sobering to realize that this question has to be asked?

COVID & the Differences Betwixt Conservatives & Liberals

 

If you vote for a federal Conservative politician you get tax cuts for the wealthy, slavish devotion to the oil industry, racist abuse of the First Nations, and support for imperialist wars. If you vote for a federal Liberal politician you get tax cuts for the wealthy, slavish devotion to the oil industry, slightly less racist abuse of the First Nations, and support for imperialist wars.

The main thrusts of the two capitalist parties are basically the same because they're capitalist parties. Capital puts profit before people. It puts profit before the health of the environment. It puts short-term benefit for the wealthy, powerful few ahead of long-term sustainability and sanity. Capitalism will happily use war and other forms of violence to impose its will. To the extent that parties embrace capitalism and are dominated by capitalism, to that extent will they pursue similar ends.

"Politicizing" Trudeau in Tofino

 

Some people (including members of the First Nations) are frustrated at how the news about Canada's first ever Day of National Truth and Reconciliation became dominated instead by the story of Justin Trudeau's decision to spend the day vacationing with his family instead of performing any public act of rememberance and atonement for Canada's numerous crimes and our abysmal record of physical and cultural genocide.

And that is perfectly valid. I can see where they're coming from.

On the other hand, I ask the mewling Liberal apologists who are shamelessly appropriating that argument: Could you not just SHUT THE FUCK UP and take your lumps on this? If you're so appalled at how the national conversation has been diverted to the subject of Trudeau's bone-headed decision, why not make the choice to ignore the criticisms (or, alternatively, make a quick apology for Trudeau's bone-headed decision) and return the discussion to where it should be? Write a blog post or tweet about Canada's past and present crimes and about how you personally will atone and how you will try to help make "Canada" as a whole atone. On that same "other hand" there are many First Nations activists (like Cindy Blackstock)  who are publicly condemning Trudeau's decision.

For my part, while I acknowledge the frustrations mentioned above, I also think it's important for us to realize that Trudeau's behaviour does deserve and, indeed, require condemnation. Getting out of the way the fact that many of the people criticizing Trudeau on this are hypocrites who demonstrably don't give a shit about the sufferings of the First Nations, with some of them even endorsing the policies that cause(d) that suffering, it's important to look at how Trudeau's behaviour is par for the course on the way that Canada treats the idea of truth and reconciliation with the First Nations.

Justin Trudeau is not a private citizen. He's the Prime Minister of Canada. He just stood for re-election to continue to be prime minister so it's not as if he's sick of the job and really wants to be somewhere else. So he's prime minister and his government has legislated a federal holiday: The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This federal holiday had already been planned before the confirmation (not "discovery" because the First Nations knew they existed) of a mass grave of First Nations' children on the site of a former residential school. The revelation of this mass grave would (one would think) have made honouring the very first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation at least TEN TIMES as important as before. 

So what does airhead Justin Trudeau decide to do? 

Use the day to vacation with his family.

...

In other words: "Yeah. Sorry about the whole mass graves and genocide and continued abuse and theft and all that other shit. Sucks to be you. Catch you on the flip-side babies!!!"

Is this not indicative of the hollowness of all official promises from Canadian governments, individual politicians, and institutions (like the Catholic Church)? Wouldn't someone who really cared about Truth & Reconciliation do more than provide lip service to it?

And the rush with which partisan hack Liberals are claiming to be offended on behalf on whoever First Nations people are more angry with the diversion of the reportage is sickening. Case in point is the execrable Montreal Simon. Simon tries to excuse how Trudeau attended a ceremony for the day the evening before heading off for a vacation. I'm sorry Simon, this was Canada's VERY FIRST National Day for Truth & Reconciliation. Trudeau is supposed to lead. He's supposed to set an example. Running off to a vacation with his family is the WRONG example. (Which, stupid as he is, Trudeau knew. Hence his itinerary's saying that he was in Ottawa working, with his vacationing in Tofino being mentioned late in the day.)

Then, Simon attempts to tug at our heart-strings by mentioning how:

this is the time of the year when the Trudeau family gathers to remember  Pierre Trudeau, and Michel Trudeau who was killed in an avalanche in 1998.

Did the Trudeau family really all gather together in Tofino? Like, extended family, like his mother and his brother? Or was it just him and the wife and kids? Because if it was the latter, well it goes without saying that they could have easily "gathered" in Ottawa. And, even if it was the former, ... well, ... so what?

Pierre Trudeau died on September 28th, 2000. I get that September 30th is only two days away from the anniversary of his father's death. But that was twenty-one years ago. I'm willing to bet that Justin isn't incapacitated by grief (for days on end) every September 28th. And, as I said above, Justin Trudeau is not a private citizen. He chose to be a public figure and therefore he has to face up to his responsibilities. (Michel Trudeau died in mid-November. It's disgusting for Simon to attempt to wedge that into this discussion.) 

What's even more disgusting is how tone-deaf Simon is with this argument about Trudeau wanting to be with his family to remember their dead. Do you know who else wanted to be with their families you fucking SHIT-HEAD???? The First Nations' children whose bodies are in those MASS GRAVES!!!!! Do you know who else wants to remember their dead? The FIRST NATIONS!!!!

Jesus Christ! The more you think about it, the more insane Montreal Simon's garbage becomes! (He spends much of the rest of the post babbling like an idiot about how Trudeau's failed attempt at a majority government was a resounding victory. Just like how if someone lost in the woods wanders around all day and finds themselves back where they started could be said to have made progress!)

Simon wrote a post about his "own journey" to truth and reconciliation. I thought about reading it, but, and I'm being quite honest here, ... I'm worried that it would make me throw-up on my laptop forcing me to have to buy a new one. But when I read that title, my mind went back to a memory of Montreal Shithead stupidly asking "Will the Native Protests Kill the Reconciliation Process?" Not the fucking pipelines being shoved through First Nations' territories against their protest; Not the fucking RCMP arresting them at peaceful roadblocks on their own land with RCMP snipers pointing rifles at their heads; but the "Native Protests" are the threat to reconciliation!!! Supposedly (according to Simon) none of this was Trudeau's fault because of provincial jurisdiction and the autonomy of the RCMP.  As if a trans-national pipeline (and all the subsidies and approvals it got) has nothing to do with federal authority! As if the federal government has not jurisdiction in Aboriginal affairs! As if Trudeau was genuinely helpless to do anything about the RCMP's actions! Poor lambikins Justin Trudeau! Being unfairly "bullied" by those First Nations' goons and their "monstrous" non-Native allies!

You know, when Simon first started acting like a groupie/apologist for Justin Trudeau, I began to criticize him for it, but I always said that his heart was in the right place and maybe he was just too traumatized by the stephen harper years to process that the Liberal Party of Canada are definitely not the friends of ordinary Canadians. But as the years go by, I fear that Simon continues to lose whatever grasp of morals and principles that he ever had as he descends further and further into hackery.

And cases like this expose the dangers of said hackery. At the end of the day it was disgusting and inexcusable for Justin Trudeau to use the very first National Day For Truth & Reconciliation to take a family holiday. And the legions of Liberal hacks making apologies and rationalizations for him are only helping to perpetuate the issues that have led us to needing a day for Truth and Reconciliation in the first place.