My latest: in a dark time

— 02.19.2025 09:34 PM

As a starting proposition, I am grateful my parents are not alive to see any of this.

Babies and mothers abducted and murdered, for the sin of being Jewish, and much of the world shrugging. Monsters disguised as men, spraying schools and places of worship with bullets. Swastikas and symbols of death being paraded through places where ordinary people live, with impunity. Science being denied, democracy being denuded, ignorance being celebrated.

And, now, the most powerful man on Earth – in just one month – upending Western civilization, demonizing allies, and forming a Satanic alliance with the fascistic, genocidal Russian regime.

It is a cliché to say that we are living through history. But this? This? This feels like what my parents must have felt, observing the rise of Nazism and Hitler, and wondering if it was ever going to get better. Wondering if it could all be actually happening.

Now, as then, it is probably a waste of time to speculate about the motivations of madmen. Is Donald Trump mentally ill? Is he fashioning a dictatorship? Is Putin blackmailing him with some decade-old footage taken one night at the presidential suite at Moscow’s Ritz Carlton Hotel?

The same sorts of questions were asked about Hitler and his ilk, and no one had the answer. So, then – as now – politicians and pundits sought to defend the indefensible. All of us are familiar with the symptoms of that disease: asserting that Donald Trump is right on borders or fentanyl or dairy products or banking or military spending, or whatever lie he conjures up to justify his psychopathy. As long as he has the right ideology, these Vichy Canadians believe, Trump’s thuggery is justifiable.

Except it isn’t, not ever. Three years ago this week, Russia invaded Ukraine.

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My latest: Carney’s silence

— 02.18.2025 11:12 AM

With an uneasy ceasefire in place, and some hostages finally being released, it’s likely that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s brain trust figured they could keep doing what they had been doing on Israel.

Which is silence.

And, yes, Prime Minister Carney. On March 9, the Liberal Party will select a new leader. In less than three weeks, the Justin Trudeau era will (blessedly) come to an end, and Carney will become Prime Minister of All Of Canada. By all accounts, he’s far, far ahead in the Liberal leadership race. So he’s the one.

That’s how the system works. The party with the most seats in the House of Commons forms the government, and that party’s leader gets to be Prime Minister. Here, Carney.

He’s run a classic low-bridge campaign since he announced his candidacy on January 16. He’s avoided media, he’s avoided specifics, and – in particular – he’s mostly avoided talking about Israel.

The folks who advise him are entirely comprised of Justin Trudeau’s gang, so it’s no surprise that Carney’s has been AWOL on the Israel-Hamas war. Apart from those occasions where schools for little Jewish kids got shot up in the city he represents, Trudeau usually did the same thing. Thoughts and prayers, enough is enough, this isn’t who we are, etc. etc. Rinse and repeat.

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My latest: over the boards – and fight back

— 02.15.2025 02:26 PM

“Flooding the zone” is a football term, but it’s been appropriated by political people.

In football, flooding the zone happens when a team sends a lot of receivers to one side of the field – to force the other team to overcommit defenders to that side of the field, and thereby leave the middle or opposite side of the field exposed.

Political guys loves sports metaphors, because it makes them sound like tough guys, instead of what they mostly are, which is dweebs who never got picked for any team, and who got involved with the debate club instead.

Donald Trump’s Reubenesque former Chief of Staff, Steve Bannon, is apparently out of jail now, and he loves to use that term. In 2018, Bannon famously said this to a writer at Bloomberg: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.”

Politicos love that tough-guy jocky stuff. So, over on the search engine Bing, which keeps track of these things, “flood the zone” shows up in 2,280,000 places, most of them in the context of politics. Sorry, football.

So, that’s what the aforementioned Trump is now doing, albeit without the assistance of Bannon (see jail, above). He’s flooding the zone with sh*t.

There is literally not enough room in this entire newspaper to properly describe what Trump and his winged monkeys have done in the 27 days since he was re-inaugurated (feels like 27 years, don’t it?). Suffice to say it’s been a lot.

He’s thrown Ukraine to the Russian wolves. He’s threatened to use military force against Denmark, a NATO ally, to seize Greenland. He’s threatened force against Panama, another ally. He’s freed January 6 felons, and fired FBI agents. He’s pulled out of the World Health Organization and hired an anti-vaxxer and former junkie to run health care. He’s changed the names of mountains and bodies of water to things he likes better. He’s barred reporters who ask questions he doesn’t like.

And, most significantly, he’s threatened to use “economic force” against Canada. He’s said, a couple dozen times, that he wants to make us the 51st state. He’s mocked our Prime Minister and our Leader of the Opposition. He’s said that we offer nothing of value. And so on and so on.

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Happy birthday

— 02.15.2025 05:54 AM

Many guys will understand what I mean when I say this: your father is both a bit of light, and a bit of shadow, over your path through life.

Mine, T. Douglas Kinsella, MD, OC, would have been 93 years old today. Ninety-three! So many years after we lost him, he remains a constant in our lives. He still illuminates some of the path. Without even being here, he still quietly persuades me to examine the choices I have made.

Me? I have made some bad choices. I have been reckless and selfish. I have not lived by the single rule he left us.

“Love people, and be honest,” he said to us, and I sometimes feel I have done neither.

He saved many lives as a physician, and he won accolades, and he was a member of the Order of Canada. But for us – my brothers, my nephew he raised, my closest friends – he was the man we aspired to be. Not for the distinctions he received, but for how he was, in his heart.

He was unfailingly honest; he was kind to everyone he met. He married his high school sweetheart, and was with her every single day for 50 years, and my God how they loved each other. We would sit there at the kitchen table in Calgary or Kingston or Montreal, and we would listen to him. He’d listen to us, too, and persuade us to try and figure things out. There were some great times, around that table.

The best thing is having a father like that. The harder thing is knowing that you will never be like him.

I met a girl, once, who had also lost her father, too soon, and never got over it. Fell in love with her just for that. Hope she finally finds peace.

Anyway. I had a dream that my Dad died in 9/11; I don’t know why, but I did. I woke up weeping, and remembered that I wasn’t a boy anymore, and that he has been gone for much more than a decade. I don’t think he would like what his son has become. I usually don’t.

So I put on my pants and shoes, and went out into the day, looking for what’s left of the path.

Happy birthday. I miss you.


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The unChurchill

— 02.14.2025 05:04 AM

When a country is under attack, when the people want a leader to rally behind, the guy who sneers that the country is “broken” is not who you want leading you into battle.

 


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