Author: Peter Scott Cameron

A Letter to the President

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

January 3, 2025

President Joseph Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Biden:

     We are writing to express our heartfelt gratitude for your service in the White House, and really for your whole life. We will miss you and your decency and thoughtfulness more than can be measured.

     You served honorably for all those years in public life – in the Senate, as vice-president, and finally president – and in the latter you guided us out of both a great public health crisis, but also out of the chaos and negativity of the regime that preceded you. You also did right things that were so urgently needed: including getting America on a path to mitigate climate change and restoring credibility and decency to our relationships with our allies.

     Of course, there were tremendous challenges: Ukraine, Afghanistan, Gaza and Israel, a Supreme Court gone awry – none of which had easy or obvious solutions. Nevertheless, we could trust that you were doing your best, with grace and intelligence.

     You were, quite simply, a great president, and history will say so.

     Thank you.

     We are most apprehensive about what is next, but we will keep you and Vice-President Harris in mind, as beacons, to guide us through the darkness.

Yours truly,

Peter S. Cameron

Kathleen C. Flanagan

The Time of Ashes

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

 

America, drawing from its deep collective unconscious, has elected the Shadow King. (1) This person represents what is regressive in human nature and in our twenty-first century culture: greed, misogyny, racism, hatred, ignorance, and negligence – this, in a time of great need, especially the need to restore wholeness to nature and creation.

     We need not document here what the man has said and done to deserve the above description. It is all part of the public record, including his first term as president. We do not need to wring our hands and wonder what his intentions are. He has stated these clearly, and his early appointments to important positions document the destructionist purposes.

     The Shadow King brings not strength, harmony, order and justice, but rather its opposite: weakness and vanity, disharmony and disorder, chaos, injustice, and retribution. The Shadow King is indecent. (2) Norms of decency are violated as a matter of course, and the society falls out of civility and cooperation.

     Thus, with the civitas having elected him, many of us have arrived at the time of ashes. (3) This is a time of reckoning, when positive aspiration and ambition have come to nothing. Good intention, great effort, and the propagation of compassion have ended in failure. This is where we are now. Here, in 2024, after so many people working for decades to increase tolerance, understanding, and appreciation, and to improve life conditions for all, and to save the planet from our own excesses, it has come to this. The time of ashes may include grief, but above all, it is the recognition of reality. The fire has gone out.

     The above comes with the realization of personal failure. The fact that the majority of the people of America, my present home and adopted second country, have selected the Shadow King as president, tells me that I have been mistaken. I am out of tune with the world. I must be at the wrong place at the right time, or I’m in the right place but it must be the wrong song. (4)  In my life – with more mistakes than I care to admit – I have carried out a flawed effort, through study and learning, community work, and teaching, to make the world a little better, to nudge myself and human consciousness in general toward greater caring. Of course, it can’t all have been in vain. I trust that these efforts by myself and so many others has done some good.

     Still. Here we are: time not just to rake ashes, but to eat them.

     But what else is to be done? As a holder of two citizenships, my first impulse is to flee with my wife, because I can. But there are reasons not to: a lovely home on an acre of paradise, a loving companion, dear old friends. And Canada itself is highly likely to elect its own shadowy populist leader in the next year. There is no escape from these people. They are everywhere.

     The second option is to be part of the resistance. Picture the French Resistance after June in 1942. Certainly this is a noble and right thing to do: to resist the negation of civil life at every opportunity. This is happening; already the little local band of Democrats in our small township are talking and organizing themselves, bless them.

     The third and perhaps most important option will be just to do what you do, and to keep the lights on in a dark time. The writer and social philosopher Morris Berman saw that at the turn of the century, American culture was entering its equivalent of the medieval ages. It is in the twilight of its culture, when knowledge would give way to superstition, when enlightenment values and understandings would be lost to ignorance. (5)

     Clearly in the age of social media, he was not wrong. Consider, for example, an armed militia group, fuelling itself via their Telegram Messenger chats, planning to attack the U.S. military for its role as an accomplice in the Democratic administration’s directing of hurricanes at Florida and other parts of the South – this government weather-directing having been carried out in order to ensure control of lithium deposits in a “planned Ashville SmartCity.” Apparently “chemtrails” are part of it – and, oh right – the military also is poisoning citizens. (6)

     The task then, in our modern medieval period, is to be like certain monks of the Middle Ages: to keep the light of knowledge and reason alive. Just as these monks, in the glow of candles, copied by hand the manuscripts of the more enlightened Greeks and Romans, we must keep the understanding alive until the time comes for our own Renaissance.

     This last is what I hope to do. That is, in my own twilight, to embody the ideals of compassion, caring, understanding, and gratitude for the beauty of our planet, and to act accordingly, every day. To be sure, I will have to sift through the ashes. But I will not allow the dark forces to take away my joy in daily life, my peace of mind in my old age, and the love that I share. No matter what, they cannot have these.

     I am not depressed. I am pissed.  We will resist. We will fight. We will keep the lights on. The darkness will not prevail.

______________________________

1. Moore, Robert, and Douglas Gillette. King Warrior Magician Lover: Recovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine. HarperOne, 1990. 

2. Frankl, Viktor. Embracing Hope: On Freedom, Responsibility and the Meaning of Life. Beacon Press, 2023. Frankl, based on his surviving the Nazi concentration camps, says there are just two “races:” the decent and the indecent.

3. Bly, Robert. Iron John: A Book About Men. De Capo Press, 1990. The road of ashes involves facing the failures of one’s dreams and aspirations – facing the reality that these have come to little or to nothing at all.

4. Forgive the misquote, Dr. John, wherever you are. Malcolm John Rebennack, Jr. (Dr. John). Right Place, Wrong Time. Warner Chappel Music, Inc., 1973.

5. Berman, Morris. The Twilight of American Culture. W. W. Norton and Company, 2000. 

6. Wilson, Jason. “Far-right militia targets US military over baseless hurricane ‘weather weapon’ claims.” The Guardian, 19 Nov. 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/19/ far-right-militia-targets-military-weather-manipulation. Accessed 21 Nov. 2024.

 

I Talk to the Animals

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

 

On this sunny, blue-skied autumn day, I take my usual walk. Whichever way I end up finally going on these country roads, it begins with an initial flat stretch on the gravel, then heading more or less south, down the steep hill toward the old barn, storage building, and silo at the bottom of the hill on the east side. Before that I pass by the big, fenced pasture, with its rambling shape and outcrops of shelter trees – last year it was scruffy and bushy, but now it is cropped, green and neat from grazing. There is a herd of beautiful, black Angus cows and calves that I stop to look at and talk to each day.

     But today I am stunned. There is a haunting and eerie silence hanging over the empty pasture. The cows are gone. I think perhaps they have been taken to the barn for some reason, but down there, again I see nothing. I hear nothing. They are gone. The place is hollow. There is nothing: only grief.

 

Early in the spring, a pair of men had begun sinking fence posts and stringing wire, after mowing the scrub down in the large field. It had once been pasture for dairy cows, but not for several years, and now it looked like it would be so again. Some days after the men started, the animals arrived, but were kept in the barn and a small field adjoining it, while the men continued their work. They were Angus: beautiful black creatures, who shied away and headed to the barn when I stopped by fence. One day the farmer, Bill, was there and we stopped to talk. It was a small herd, he said, and some were calving; previously they had been in an isolated field and were not used to people, and so were shy of newcomers. One day K and I helped him corral one who had gotten through the gate and was on a roam – by spreading out and staking ourselves in three of four directions, we were able to direct her back through the gate and into the yard.

     Spring days moved into summer, and the cows and their calves now roamed the big field that had been fenced for them. It was lovely and a wonder to see them. They would move around in a clump, foraging, with the little black calves followed their mothers. Usually, for some part of the day at least – when the sun was very hot, or when it was raining – they would gather under a big, gnarly tree. I am not sure what kind it is, never having gone close, but it looked like a multi-trunk apple tree gone rogue, although I don’t know if there is such a possibility. Without fail it would cheer me, as I trudged down the hill, to see them appearing happy and at peace – if I do not anthropomorphize too much.

     At first, if they were feeding near the road when I came by, they looked and then would move away quickly. I would greet them, asking “how’s it going?” and would comment on the quality of the day, the state of the fields and so on. I might compliment them on their good looks. A regular little Doctor Dolittle I was, chatting to them. After a couple of weeks, the cows stopped moving away, usually just raising their heads and taking a moment to look at me, then going back to their grass.

     One week K and I were dog-sitting Lucy, a black, medium-sized, gentle hound mix (you could not have a more companionable dog) and I would take her down the hill on a long leash for my walks. To my surprise, the cows (with calves following) came right up to the fence – and not only that, but followed me along the fence line, down the hill. I thought I saw consternation – there was something to be sure, a concern. A couple of them bawled at me, quite obviously objecting to the situation. I soon realized that to them, black Lucy looked like one of their calves, and so they were concerned that I was taking her away. Of course, I tried to reassure them.

     And so, through the summer we went: me walking, and the Angus cattle feeding and wandering about – sometimes close to the road, other times back on the hill or nearly out of sight behind the pond, and sometimes lying happily under the tree. At one point in the summer, I thought that the herd grew a bit smaller. I wondered if some had been sold off: maybe male calves, if Bill’s business plan is about breeding stock. But then I thought no more of it.

 

Down the hill I would continue on these walks, arriving at Jim’s place on the paved road. There, usually, a greeting committee – “the boys,” two Great Dane pups in a pen, and “the ladies” (they were older), two Newfoundlands on a landing on other side of the house – sang to me. The Danes were pro forma about it, just a couple of curious barks, but the Newfies threw their hearts into the job and made a racket. This occurred day after day, even though I explained to the ladies: “Hey! Same guy, different day. You know me.” Jim’s driveway-and-barn-dwelling chickens clucked and eyed me with some suspicion, but overall they were not too worried. His rescue horses in the paddock raised their heads to watch me as I greeted them, and then went back to their grazing.

     When the third horse arrived a couple of years ago, he had a bad case of what is called “stall vice,” in this case a stereotypical head swaying motion, reminiscent of the repetitive motions of a child with severe autism. I read and found that it’s a result of too much time stuck unattended in a stall, with the inevitable isolation, boredom, sometimes fear and anxiety, lack of exercise, hunger and bad nutrition. I, of course, let the fellow know that he no longer had to do that, but if it felt comforting for the short term, I said, then by all means carry on. At first the other two horses would have nothing to do with him, but that changed over time, and now they are a trio. The stall vice, under Jim’s kind care and the companionship of the other two horses, the chickens and the dogs, eventually went away. He is a kind man, that Jim.

     I carried on, my curved and polished walking stick in hand, and the pepper spray on my belt. The stick is general purpose, but mainly for warding off The Proud Boys or their minions should they pull up in their battered Dodge pickup on particularly remote section of Smith Road. The spray is for the German Shepherd down at Warner Road, who has demonstrated every intention of ripping off my arms and maybe my face, if he were to get off his lead. Once, when the owner was walking him, he reared up full height bellowing and snarling, pulling her nearly off balance. It was all she could do to hold onto him. After that unnerving event, I ordered the spray. At the time, the woman, my neighbour, gave me attitude and acted as though it was my fault. It must have been that I was the problem for being out walking, not her insane dog.

     Obviously, I am not loving this neighbour as myself, although I want to try. She no doubt has problems of her own, say, for example, a bad husband. But in fact I confess that my esteem for humanity has been in rapid decline since the pandemic. They are part of the same species that would not wear masks during Covid, took part in the Trucker Convoy in Ottawa, or who thought the deep state was somehow involved in paedophilic and cannibalistic activities at the Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria in D. C. And these terrible wars this year, our refusal to do what is needed about climate change, especially after the most sweltering summer ever recorded, and the second coming of the most reprehensible presidential candidate of all time, have not helped my outlook. Add that having to pick up Twisted Tea and Bud Light cans on the roadside, tossed out of car windows by drinking drivers – well, it makes me like the animals better.

     Sometimes I would see a turtle on the road. If it was a big one, I just guarded the crossing to make sure that a car did not hit it. If it was a small one, I picked it up and moved it to the other side. When you pick up the big snappers, they do this sudden very powerful shudder that can scare the hell out of you and make you drop them. Better just to stand guard. We have a huge snapper that crosses the road by the house and then our yard a couple of times a season. Primordial, bigger than a platter, probably as old as I am. No doubt remembers the sixties, just like I do. We have a pond in front of us, on the other side of the road, and then another back of us in the field, bordering the cow pasture. This big one travels between the two of them – I assume he is visiting relatives, or is looking for an amorous encounter, which is admirable at his age. Although K notes that it could be a female, perhaps looking for a place to lay eggs. I hadn’t thought of that, and have not asked the snapper about its preferred pronouns.

     I’ve seen other creatures: deer all the time, turkeys, often, and a heron now-and-then, which surprises me – there just doesn’t seem to be enough water and creatures in it to support the big bird. I’ve encountered porcupines and possums and a fox or two, and woodchucks – you have to love their roly-poly running style. I came upon a dead, not-fully-grown coyote with its guts ripped out – how did that happen? The turkey vultures got it and after a day or two there was nothing but bones and some bits of fur.

     I’ve seen a lynx. New York State has decreed that this is impossible as they have pronounced the lynx extinct in the state. But I know what I saw: not a bobcat, they are different. Anyway, more tolerant Vermont has declared that they are not extinct at all and since we are only a couple of miles from the border, it is possible one slipped across in the dark, sans passport, away from the eyes of officials. Vermont is more libertarian in any case. (A classmate back in business school, a senior banker from New Hampshire, declared that Vermont was socialist, the first and only time I’d heard that. But then, frankly – and I hate to say this of a person responsible for other people’s money – he was a bit of an idiot. He also said that Canada was “communistic.”)

     There have been bear sightings at both ends of our road, although I have not seen one, and I’m just as glad. They scare me, even though I am from Northern Ontario and therefore am expected to be more nonchalant about bears. I’ve seen a water snake in the stream – you have to love the way they swim, all slinky like that. The other day I saw a garter snake on the road, not unusual in the fall particularly, enjoying a warm-up on the asphalt on a sunny day. I plunked the end of my stick down in front of its nose, to get its attention, and gave it a verbal warning about the danger of traffic, along encouragement to get off the road. It raised its head and flicked its tongue, decided I was nothing to worry about and then ignored me, paying no attention to my admonition. I was gladdened to see on my return journey that there was no snake still on the road, flattened or otherwise. All theses sentient creatures: all of them are trying to live, trying to eat and not to be eaten.

     My walks past the Angus cows and their growing calves continued through August. And then one day, late in the month, when I tramped down the hill, they were all gone.

 

We human beings are not to be trusted. It is true that we can be kind, that we will take care of you and bring you food and water, and we will shield you from your other enemies if we are able. But too often we do this for our own purposes. In the case of pretty Angus cattle, we may keep you well over a season, then, without warning we will transport you to the auction barn, and then sell you off, as likely as not, to the slaughterhouse, then to the butcher, the grocery store, and then to somebody’s plate. Then we will eat you.

     Humans eat anything and everything. Someone reminded me once – when I was not eating much meat and my red cell count dropped a bit low – that we were carnivores, as though that explained everything. In any case, that is not really correct; more accurately speaking, we are omnivores. If you are a fish, we will eat not just you, but also your gooey eggs, smack our lips and call it caviar. If you are a goose, we will perform gavage on you until you develop steatotic liver disease, and then we will take that liver and make paté of it and spread it on crackers or toast. If you are squid, we’ll eat your arms and tentacles as well as your body – usually battered, of course. You name it; we’ll dine on it and invent a sexy name for it while we are at it, such as “sushi.” Of course, we can’t entirely help it; like every creature, we would and must eat. It is an inevitable part of the great catastrophe of living – or is it the calamity? – as I believe Jack Kerouac termed it, although I’m having trouble finding where he did say so.

     And yet. Do we have to be so unkind, nay, so hubristic and cruel about it, with our factory farms, our industrial chicken farms, our crowded, filthy, and terrifying tractor-trailer transporters, and our grisly abattoirs?

     We could, after all, be vegetarian. Maybe, with cows, we could just “steal her butter and cheese,” as it says in the musical Oklahoma, not to mention stealing eggs from chickens. This would be a fair exchange for shelter and food and for playing country music for them on an old radio in a snow-proof barn. Or we could, as indigenous people once did, show courage and kill by hand if we have to, and afterwards pay homage to the creature in a ceremony and give thanks to the Animal Master. Not that I do this of course: I am no better.

     People will say, “well, they are just animals.” True, I say, and so are we. They are not so different, although certainly not so wily as we are. If you prick them, do they not bleed? Do these animals not experience fear and pain? Do they not experience contentment and what looks like happiness? Do they not experience attachment to both their kin, and in some cases to us? Are they not sentient?

     Ask Fido who gazes at you like a lover, or that mouser of yours that lives behind the living room sofa and pokes her head out when you come into the room.

     No, no, I say to the cattle in the field. Do not trust us. Look at how our eyes are placed. We have the eyes of predators. It is part of our nature.

 

And then one day, the cows were back – or at least most of them. I thought some were missing. I speculated that the ones who were back were unsold at an auction. Where had they been? Surely they had not been in the barn – I would have heard them, would I not, even with my dodgy right ear? Bill was not around to ask, and as a reclusive neighbour myself, I don’t know where he lives, to go pepper him with questions. But K went out with the binoculars and counted: twenty-three, which is about right.

     So it had to be that I was mistaken or misinterpreting. It is extremely rare for me to be wrong, naturally, and I am reluctant to admit such, but there you have it. I can’t argue with K’s count. I do feel happiness at seeing them again, of course, but the experience has affected me; now that happiness is tinged with some foreknowledge. After all, I know the ultimate outcome, and their temporary absence brought that fully to consciousness. Bill is not keeping them as a hobby, unlike the wealthy gentleman farmer up over the hill who keeps his sleek race-horses, or Jim with his rescues.

     So for now, I go on, as we all do. I walk by and I stop to watch them. If they are close by, I talk to them, ask them how things are. They raise their heads and look at me with not-unintelligent eyes. They have decided I am okay, if a bit nutty.

     What is there to be said about all of this? Given that we are all in the same predicament, there can be no reason for these wars we wage, and no reason to wreck the climate. There is no reason to elect a nincompoop as president or throw Bud Light cans out your truck window. But it is the case we must eat and there are so many of us – so many human beings. It is a calamity, no doubt. Given that, there is only one possible stance. Not indifference, but rather as the Buddhists would prescribe, to practice loving kindness, if not vegetarianism. We are all in this life together: human beings, the other sentient creatures, even the plants, the land and the waters.

     It the face of it all, there really is only one possible living stance: radical compassion, for all of us. I can’t think of anything else. And so for now, for today, I walk, and the sight of my Angus cattle gives me great joy.

     I’ll take that. The rest I can’t fix.

 

A Thank You to Uncle Joe

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

The old news is that Joe Biden, under great pressure, yet graciously and selflessly, has taken himself out of the presidential race.

     I will step around an opinion about whether or not this was the right thing to happen, although it is clear that the Democratic campaign is reinvigorated under the capable and battle-ready Kamala Harris. So be it. The orange-headed bloviator must be defeated.

     I will say that I have been appalled by the public attacks on President Biden over the past weeks by supposed supporters, his fellow Democrats, and press members such as the New York Times and The Economist. Shame. The issue is not whether they were right that he should go; rather, it is about the public disloyalty and the disheartening take-down of this venerable leader. Et Tu, Brute?! As an aside, but in relation to this, I hereby give notice that I have cancelled George Clooney.

     That said, let us take a moment to praise and thank Uncle Joe. He has been an exceptional president. He has accomplished the nearly impossible, after inheriting the chaotic mess left by his predecessor. He quickly established administrative order, bringing in many top minds to help the effort. He directed the country to come to grips with the menacing pandemic. In partnership with the Fed, he led the charge against runaway inflation, and pretty much stopped it in its tracks, the best record in the Western economies. Against the great odds of the recalcitrant legislative bodies, he managed to get legislation through that has begun to address America’s tattered infrastructure, while generating jobs, and he set country on a course to address climate change, the first president to do so. He also inaugurated a modernization of the American economy, moving toward high-level manufacturing, for example, in nanotechnology and renewables. And he did all this while restoring America’s position as a respectable, honourable, and trustworthy international partner for the world’s democracies, a position trashed by his hoodlum predecessor. Without being inflammatory or reckless, he took on the autocrats of China and Russia. We could say that, at least thus far, along with the European allies and Canada, he has saved Ukraine. What a record for a short three-and-a-half years!

     Of course, he has not been perfect. Although following a script written by the previous administration, he left Afghanistan in a shambles, and in the hands of the monstrous Taliban. And his – shall we call it ambivalent? – support for  the thuggish Prime Minister Netanyahu, in the face of the Gaza tragedy, has been perplexing at best. He has been between a rock and a hard place with Israeli policy, the situation is hideously complex, and the massacre by Hamas was unbelievably barbaric – but still. More should have been done to prevent the wipe-out of Gaza and so many everyday people.

     But in the end, he has been a good man and an excellent president. He has cared, and has tried to do the right thing as he saw it. He has acted honourably in the face of nearly insurmountable odds and cynical opposition. And he has acted honourably once again, by acceding to the wishes of his party, and withdrawing.

     We owe this man, Joe Biden, immense gratitude. Immense. We are in his debt. Thank you, Uncle Joe.

The United States Imperial Presidency

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

The Supreme Court decision, released on July 1, is abundantly clear to all. There is no need for subtle legal analysis. The president of the United States, from this date forward, has immunity from criminal prosecution for any act undertaken while performing so-called “official duties.”

     Any act. Ordering a vice-president not to certify an election, for example. Directing the burglary of the opponent party’s headquarters, for example. Ordering the jailing or assassination of a political opponent, for example. Ordering the U.S. military onto the streets of an American city to end a political protest or otherwise peaceful assembly, for example.

     Richard Nixon’s infamous (and erroneous then) declaration is now the reality in practice: “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal, by definition.”

 

A most basic foundation of democracy is that no person is above the law.

     The country’s founders would be appalled to find that this principle has been scrapped. They deliberately eschewed giving the president sovereign status.

     Six Supreme Court judges have taken the country back to a time predating the start of our common democratic heritage, best symbolized by the declaration of Britain’s Magna Carta.

     It is just possible that the democracy can be saved from the sovereign presidency. It will take a specific amendment to the American constitution.

It Makes Ya Think, Don’t It! (4)

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

A Harris-Guardian Poll in May 2024, (1) shows that the majority of Americans believe, incorrectly, that the U.S. is in recession (and blame Joe Biden).

     Beliefs:

1. 55% think the economy is shrinking and 56% believe the country is in a recession.
2. 49% believe the stock market, particularly the S&P 500 is down for the year.
3. 49% believe that unemployment has hit a 50-year high.
4. 72% think that the rate of inflation is increasing.
5. 55% say that the economy is “only getting worse.”

     Facts:

1. 2023 GDP for the U.S. grew by 2.5%, (2) real disposable income increased by 4.3%, savings rate increased by 4.5%. (3) GDP growth continued in the first quarter of 2024. The last recession was in 2020, at the height of the pandemic.

2. The S&P was up 24% in 2023, is up 12% so far this year, and this month the DOW hit its highest level ever, over 40,000.

3. Unemployment is at a 50 year low, consistently hovering below 4%.

4. The rate of inflation is decreasing from its post-pandemic high of 9% plus, and is now around 3.4% (above the target rate of 2%, but still decreasing toward the goal).

5. The economy has improved continuously since the pandemic low (of 128 million jobs in the economy). Since April, 2020,  not only did those jobs recover to the pre-pandemic 150 million job level, but we are now at 158 million jobs and disposable income is rising above the inflation rate.

     It makes ya think. All this information is commonly available on regular mainstream news sources – although not on Fox “News,” of course, where such content is suppressed.

     I’m confused. Are we still considered to be in the “information age?”

_______________

1. Aratani, Lauren. Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden. The Guardian, May 22, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ article/2024/may/22/poll-economy-recession-biden. 

2. Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter and Year 2023 (Advance Estimate). U. S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, January 25, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.bea.gov/news/2024/ ross-domestic-product-fourth-quarter-and-year-2023-advance-estimate.

3. By the Numbers: U.S. Economy Grows Faster than Expected for Year and Final Quarter of 2023. U.S. Department of Commerce, January 26, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.commerce. gov/news/blog/2024/01/numbers-us-economy-grows-faster-expected-year-and-final-quarter-2023. 

 

Who Are You Calling “Woke!?”

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Them’s fightin’ words.

     At least some people, particularly politicians, appear to think so. Lianne Rood, a Conservative Member of Parliament for Lambton, Ontario, has been railing against “woke” coffee lids, of all things. She is complaining about the Canadian coffee and doughnut chain, Tim Hortons, that in an effort to become more planet-friendly, is changing from plastic to fibre lids for its take-out coffee. She has Xed (1) about “woke paper lids that dissolve in your mouth” (2) – which does beg the question of what kind of person eats coffee cup lids, but we will leave that for now. “Until Tim Hortons gets rid of this paper lid, I’m done with Tim Hortons,” she has said.

     The lawmaker’s pronouncements make one wonder what has happened to us. How is it that our politicians have ditched the concern that generations of parliamentarians have had for the Canadian value of good governance, and instead have elevated warring about cultural leanings to prominence – along with dissing those who care about the planet and social issues?

     Another Conservative anti-woke warrior, Saskatchewan MP Corey Tochor introduced a private member’s bill in February that would reverse the federal government’s single use plastic ban. He is most concerned about the loss of plastic straws, and in a moment of cleverness, he said: “Soggy, limp, wet and utterly useless: we are not talking about the Liberals. We are talking about paper straws.” Heh, heh, witty that. I hope it got recorded in Hansard, the official parliamentary record, for posterity. It’s a keeper.

     There are many entangled issues here, such as: what is “woke” anyway, what is the job of Members of Parliament, how should they spend their time (should they be eating coffee lids, for example, while on the country’s payroll), and what about the importance of cultural symbols, the environmental crisis, and bad grammar? However, we can only deal with a few of these.

     First, for our American readers, some background on Tim Hortons, since there is no U.S. equivalent. Comparison to Dunkin’ Donuts falls flat (it is now called Dunkin’ in a radical re-branding effort, given that in the age of social media, remembering two words in a row taxes the attention span). Not even close. There is nothing similar in American culture, not even the family bonding ritual of consuming a six-pack of Bud Light while watching football on Thanksgiving day. Tim Hortons is sacred, representing a trinity that includes sacramental doughnuts, coffee, and a deceased hockey hero all in one. At the heart of it – other than a great Canuck staple, doughnuts (its stature matched in Canadian cuisine only by Kraft Dinner) – is the beloved Maple Leaf (and later, Buffalo Sabres) hockey hero, Tim Horton. He died on the Queen Elizabeth Way in February 1974, on his way home from Buffalo, heading to Toronto.

     Tim was driving his exotic De Tomasa Pantera, going so fast that the cop he passed could not be sure of the colour. Rumours at the time were that he had been with a mistress, but no! Not Tim, don’t even say that! In any case, no Canadian hockey heroes ever had mistresses. No, instead he was having a business conference at one a.m. in Hamilton. Perhaps there was consumption of salutary social lubricants at the business meeting. After that, he took to the road, and sadly lost control at well over one hundred miles an hour, was ejected from the car, not wearing a seatbelt. (Hey, it was 1974!) It was too sad and the whole country grieved. (3) Tim was a good guy and we all loved him.

     There you have it, the Canadian Holy Trinity: a dead hockey hero, coffee, and most important, doughnuts, preferably chocolate-glazed. I offer a warning about this. For generations, the U.S. has had, and still has, standing plans for an invasion of Canada (4) – and in fact, during the pandemic, Candace Owens, a supporter of Trump right-wing rowdies, called for the invasion of Canada to stop Prime Minister Trudeau from cracking down on “Convoy” hooligans. (5) But given the importance of doughnuts, I have a warning for the Marines: Don’t get between Canadians and their Timbits. You will regret it, profoundly so. The hand-to-hand combat will be vicious.

     So, then! We have to admit that Ms. Rood exhibits some substantial cojones. To attack Tim’s because of its apparent wokeness, and to say she is done with the brand is unprecedented, radical. It may even be against Canadian law, violating hate-speech statutes. I’m not sure of this, but it is just possible.

 

But just what is a “woke” coffee lid, anyway?

     Webster’s, at least the online version, defines woke as: “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” (6) “Stay woke” has been in use since the nineteen-thirties in the African-American community, and the blues singer Lead Belly is reputed to have used the term as early as last mid-century. The word was used to refer to awareness of structural racism that goes beyond individual prejudice, especially in the American South during the Jim Crow era. Use of the term became more common after 2010, particularly within the Black Lives Matter movement. Since then its meaning has widened to include injustice in many forms: to be aware of not only racism, but prejudice and discrimination aimed at many groups, including women, gay people, and people who do not conform to gender expectations, as well as advocates for environmental and climate concerns. Quite simply, although expressed in dodgy grammar, the word refers to consciousness of important societal and civic issues, particularly those of injustice.

     Rapidly there was a backlash, as there always is, when the status of the privileged is challenged. The word quickly became a pejorative. This transformation was an extension of a tactic that the right has been enormously successful in carrying out; that is, co-optation of positive words that call for social change and progress. Now, even hard-core Liberals can be heard denigrating wokeness, as though it implied someone who is fey, superior in attitude, someone who is ridicules, but who nevertheless fascistically wants to impose thinking and beliefs on others. This disdain for woke has spread to Canada and many other countries. A good deal of this has been orchestrated by entrenched powers: for example, fossil fuel interests manufactured a deliberate war on “wokeness” in order to undermine environmentalists. (7) More on that it a bit, but first…

     It is not that “woke” is without problems: questionable grammar, for one. My inner- grammar-child recoils at “woke.” I can feel Miss Scott’s ruler, my second grade teacher at King George School, rapping my knuckles as I say the word. Ouch. “Awakened,” would be more correct in terms of the English language, but it implies that the individual is in a state of Buddhist enlightenment, so that is not quite right. “Awake” would be correct – as in, “she is awake to the reality of structural racism.” But I have to grant that the inventors of the term wanted something unique, something that would stand out, hence: woke. This is similar to the adoption of the term “gay,” by gender-script non-conformists. Although I miss the old usage of gay, I have to accede to them the right to take the term, given how much mistreatment they have had to endure.

     Of course there is another tangential English problem associated with this discussion: namely, Tim “Hortons.” It should be Tim Horton’s, of course, unless there were several hockey players who started different restaurants and who were all called Tim Horton. I don’t understand why we accept this travesty so passively. They could call it Tim Horton, as in Walmart, but since they chose the possessive, there should be an apostrophe, and we ought not tolerate its absence without a fight. It is the same for Lands End and Starbucks, which should be Land’s End (or less sensible, but still correct, Lands’ End) and Starbuck’s. I wrote to Lands End about the issue and received a jokey reply intended to humour me. I was not amused. Even more egregious, from a few years back, was Apple and “Think Different.” Outrageous. Of course, despite the catastrophic loss of the adverb in North American culture, it should have been “Think Differently.” Or, if the monsters at the helm of Apple did want people to think the word “different,” then it would have been “Think: Different.” A simple colon would take care of the problem. But no – the cads said to hell with the decline of civilization – we don’t care! Low.

     The other problem is that woke people can appear superior, intolerant, and downright annoying. What comes to mind is the unfair treatment of J. K. Rowling, who, without rancour or prejudice against trans people, put forth a not-unreasonable position on sex vs. gender. (8)  Another example concerns the invented concept of “cultural appropriation.” For instance, there was the cancellation of yoga classes at the University of Ottawa a number of years back. Some students complained of discomfort due to North American people engaging in a practice that is originally part of the culture of India. Yoga was being “appropriated” by Canadians, the woke students kvetched. (9) What nonsense. There can be misappropriation, as when a fashion house, in a massive exhibition of crass insensitivity, used faux North American Indigenous headdresses in a show. Ugh – tacky and disrespectful. Still, there is really no such thing as cultural appropriation.

     Cultures are not things; nobody owns them. Culture is a process, a way of living, and elements of culture spread or diffuse to other people all the time and there is nothing wrong with that. It would be silly of me to be upset, for example, if a Sherpa mountaineer wore a kilt in the traditional way, without undershorts, during an ascent of Everest, nor should I be perturbed with a Japanese teenager playing the bagpipes, nor an Iranian who chose to wear a Montréal Canadiens’ hockey sweater. So woke people: enough with self-righteous posturing, already.

     But back to the organized war on wokeness. In addition to the think-tank inspired campaigns, such as that noted of the fossil-fuel industry, commercial entities and politicians are jumping on the ant-woke honey wagon. Not for comedic effect, although it would appear that way, there are retail marketers that cater to the denigration of social consciousness. Right wing outlets, such as The Daily Wire, have launched lines of anti-woke products, including vitamins to “reclaim masculinity,” called “Manly Green Vitamin Capsules.” Jeremy’s Razors, Black Rifle Coffee, Ultra Right Beer all follow this line, promoting themselves as antidotes to the “woke mind virus.” The working class staple, Bud Light, almost tanked after using a transgender person in an advert. The Daily Wire advocates that people not “buy your men’s health products from a company that partners with drag queens and supports radical organizations that push gender procedures on children.” (10)

     The cynics of the political world have seized the opportunity also: the aforementioned Ms. Rood, and the Canadian Conservative populist wanna-be, Pierre Poilievre are two. But most notable is the self-declared leader of the anti-woke Brownshirts, Ron DeSantis in the U.S. “Florida is where woke goes to die,” he has famously declared. (11) It would be tempting to ridicule this statement and this man, were the consequences of this not so disheartening and harmful. For example, under his approval, the Florida middle school social studies curriculum and texts discuss how African slaves benefited from slavery by learning new skills! The curriculum makes no mention of who it was that did the enslaving, or slavery’s horrors. Despicable, that.

     But this tells us what is at the root of the antipathy. The most fundamental basis is racism. The foundation of anti-woke is simply good old-fashioned racism dressed up in a brand new suit. We can add to that broader feelings of fear, hate and prejudice toward people who do not conform to society’s gender scripts, toward those who advocate for fairness and justice, and those who care about our fellow creatures and the planet. Couple all that to greed – that is, protection of wealth, especially fossil-fuel wealth – and there you have it.

     So there it is; now we understand what Ms. Rood is getting at. God forbid that Tim Hortons joins the attempt to take on the monstrous problem of plastic pollution, and thus take away our plastic lids and straws. What is next? Giving up incandescent light bulbs, having to drive electrical vehicles, and being forced to see wind turbines on the horizon? Equal and just treatment of all people, regardless of skin colour, or ethnicity, gender, or gender behaviour? Ensuring that all eligible citizens get to vote? Children free of gunfire in their classrooms, safe, happy, and learning in their schools? Living wages? Access to health care? Where will it all end?

     It probably would end in that great dream of the Enlightenment: democracy and decency – things we should be willing to fight for. I hereby declare that I, for one, am willing to fight. In that spirit, keeping in mind our rich and exemplary role-models Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who challenged each other to an ultimate fighting contest, I demand satisfaction from DeSantis and Poilievre, as a tag-team, to a fight in the octagon. Once I was a martial artist who could kick seven feet in the air (in case I was attacked by a seven-foot opponent, I suppose). Now, at 77, the best I can do is aim for the ankles, but still, I would take them. That famous arc of history that bends toward justice is definitely on my side. And by all means, Lianne Rood can join them: they will still go down. I will wear a robe with a Black Lives Matter  flag on the back, Pride flags imprinted on my gloves, an Extinction Rebellion baseball cap, and my trunks will have WOKE! printed on my arse.

     I urge every Liberal and other people, including true small-c conservatives, to embrace the term and use it with pride. I consider that every college and university sophomore, if not woke, should consider themselves as failing in their work. Let there be Woke Pride.

     After all, who would not want to live with compassion, with understanding of structural injustice, a concern for our planet, and its well-being, with a desire to defend the decency and the dignity of all people and other creatures? Count me in. Please, call me woke!

_____________

  1. There is uncertainty as to what to call “tweets,” now that the company is X. Musk as suggested “X’s,” and a completed X would then be “X’ed,” including the incorrect apostrophes. One wag suggested they be called “2 cents,” since that is what the company is worth, post the Musk takeover. Retrieved from: https://mashable.com/article/twitter-x-what-are-tweets-called.
  2. Major, Darren. Are Tim Hortons’ new lids ‘woke’? One Conservative MP thinks so. CBC News, May 8, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative- mp-tim-hortons-fibre-lids-1.7199306.
  3. 50 years after Tim Horton’s deadly car crash, we clear up one lingering mystery. The Toronto Star, February 17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/50-years-after- tim-hortons-deadly-car-crash-we-clear-up-one-lingering-mystery/article_079468f2-c9d1-11ee-a912-97985739c8f3.html.
  4. For example: Lewis, Dan. The 1927 U.S. Plan to Invade Canada. August 26, 2012. Retrieved from: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12366/1927-us-plan-invade-canada.
  5. Porter, Tom. Candace Owens called for the US to invade Canada to stop Justin Trudeau cracking down on trucker protests. Business Insider, February 21, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.com/candace-owens-wants-us-invade-canada-defend-truckers-trudeau-2022-2?op=1.
  6. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved from: https://merriam-webster.com/wordplay/woke-meaning-origin. My old Webster print version, copyright from 1955, simply defines it as the alternative past tense of wake.
  7. Noor, Dharna. Rightwing war on ‘woke capitalism’ partly driven by fossil fuel interests and allies: Report shows connections of business and rightwing thinktanks to laws aimed at environmental, social and corporate governance. The Guardian, June 22, 2023. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/22/rightwing-war-on-woke-capitalism-industry- interests.
  8. Petter, Olivia. JK Rowling criticised over ‘transphobic’ tweet about menstruation. Independent, June 15, 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/jk- rowling-tweet-women-menstruate-people-transphobia-twitter-a9552866.html.
  9. Foote, Andrew. Yoga class cancelled at University of Ottawa over ‘cultural issues’: “There were some cultural sensitivity issues and people were offended,” says instructor. CBC News, November 22, 2015, Retrieved from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/university- ottawa-yoga-cultural-sensitivity-1.3330441.
  10. Gabbatt, Adam. Poor reviews, missing product: firms’ anti-woke offerings soak consumers: A thriving retail niche caters to the performative masculinity of the right wing, oftentimes bilking its chauvinistic client base. The Guardian, May 11, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/11/anti-woke-vitamin-economy.
  11. Czachor, Emily Mae. “Florida is where woke goes to die,” Gov. Ron DeSantis says after reelection victory. CBS News, November 9, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.cbsnews.com/ news/ron-desantis-florida-where-woke-goes-to-die-midterm-election-win/.

What Has Befallen Us: Hitler and the Rise of Trump

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

What has befallen America? It has been a privilege to split my life between two great democracies, Canada and the United States, and I have lived comfortably here despite the country’s foibles. I became a citizen after 9/11, as an expression of gratitude for and solidarity with the American people. The U.S. has been generous and hospitable to me, and I am grateful.

     And yet. I have grown increasingly disquieted and anxious here among my neighbours and fellow citizens. After a first inexplicable and frightening Trump presidency, and with electoral polls showing him possibly winning again, I no longer feel at home in this United States. How could nearly half the people support such a person?

     Before the 2020 election, my neighbours over the hill and down the road hung their Trump banners on their house and barn: Finally a president with balls, one stated. On a few weekends before the election, they practised shooting their semi-automatic weapons in their fields. They mowed gigantic letters into their hillside: FREEDOM. After Joe Biden was elected, they hung their huge American flag, inverted, dominating the hilltop, meaning: Distress. Extreme danger to life and property. Who are these people?

 

I fear they are the same people who allowed Hitler to take power in 1933 in Germany. The everyday view of Hitler’s ascent is that he “seized” power, but this not really correct. Instead, the despot was handed power by enablers who believed they could control and manage him. He was appointed Chancellor, through the legitimate democratic process of the time. Then he consolidated and took over, using available means. He did not have a mandate from the majority in the election that preceded his appointment; rather, he was given his position as a kind of compromise candidate, even though most of the “conservative political class” at the time regarded him as a “chaotic clown” – an idiot. (1)

     Here in America, we are facing a situation that is parallel to the Weimar Republic of 1933. Although the mechanisms are different, we have an aspiring dictator who may well be handed power once again in November of this year. This is despite the facts: that Trump is a convicted fraudster and molester of women, that he is a misogynist, a racist and supporter of white supremacists, a chronic liar, a chaotic incompetent (demonstrated by his first term in office), a fool (such as pondering the internal use of disinfectants (2) to treat Covid), a threat to world peace and order, who undermines venerable domestic and international social and political institutions such as NATO, who is a foe of women’s rights and an impediment to climate action, who admires dictatorship, and who, by his own words, is a clear threat to the American Democracy itself. One wonders how so many people can support a person who threatens the foundation of the two-hundred-and-fifty year old American experiment in democracy and its – imperfect and uneven to be sure – struggle for development of the human potential.

     We know the story of Nazi Germany too well: a once-decent society consumed by hatred and the holocaust, with not only six million Jews exterminated, but also another five million Gypsies, Poles, communist, gay, lesbian, mentally ill, and developmentally disabled people murdered. Along with that was the worst war in history, with an estimated 75 to 80 million deaths (worldwide) – in Europe occurring under the rule of a megalomaniac who nevertheless many saw as a fool. The Germans were not an uncivilized people – quite the opposite. The Jewish people were not outsiders in German society of the time – again, quite the opposite. There was of course, a virulent strain of anti-Semitism concentrated in the higher echelons, propagated mainly by elitists, pseudo-scientific thinkers, and some artists at the time, such as the notorious racist, the composer Richard Wagner. But overall, the Jewish people were integrated into German society. How could this catastrophe have happened? How could decent Germans have allowed a person such as Hitler to take power in their democracy?

     Similarly, how could the decent American people allow a potential despot to take power in their democracy? In the end, this may be unanswerable. But there are themes:

1. Various constituencies believe the despot will represent their interests.

     Too many people in Weimar Germany considered Adolf Hitler to be an idiot who would be useful to them, someone who could be manipulated while he would protect their assets. And so it is that too many people in America consider Donald Trump as, at least, an unsavoury character, but as someone who will defend their interests and position. A common refrain among Trump supporters is that “I don’t like the man, but I like the policies.” This judgement is a terrible error and it is the same thing that groups of Germans thought about Hitler.

     Various communities of people, although they had a dim view of Hitler’s character, saw him as someone who would shield them from harm or loss. The conservative wealthy class and the managers of industry saw Hitler as a “performative” clown, but one who nevertheless would protect their wealth. Small business people and the self-employed, who felt their livelihoods were threatened, supported him. He appealed to the Catholics by his posing as someone who would defend Christian values. Likewise, he attracted the employed Protestant voters and domestic workers who felt secure in a rigid hierarchy with strong leadership. Of course, angry down-and-outers, accurately or not, saw in him someone who would recognize their victim-hood and help them our of their misery. Finally, there were those, the underground power-broker trolls of their day, like the Steve Bannons of our time, who wanted to tear down Germany society and establish strongman rule – although not by Hitler himself. They thought he would prove useful in the transition to autocracy but then could be disposed of and replaced by themselves.

     All these constituencies together formed a powerful coalition with adequate numbers to create a pathway to power for Hitler.

    The parallels are obvious. Somewhat unfairly, we Liberals often think of Trump supporters as rabble, donning red MAGA hats and yelling “lock her up” at his earlier rallies. But really these are disaffected people, many of whom have been harmed by long-term social and economic changes over which they have no power. Many are just angry working people partly disenfranchised by massive social and economic shifts. Trump appears to stand up for them by giving the finger to the more liberal, better-educated and self-satisfied establishment. The more outrageous and lawless he is, the better they like it; after all, they feel they have little left to lose.

     In addition to that group, there is a very sizeable number of Evangelicals who see Donald Trump as a “flawed messenger,” but who nevertheless stands for their values and issues, particularly their determination to have control over women’s sex and reproductive lives. Also, there are some Catholics who will vote for him because of his opportunistic opposition to abortion. There is a swath of the middle class whose position feels threatened by economic changes, the influx of immigrants, and seismic shifts in social values. To them, Trump is seen as a defender of both their way of life and their social position. Further, he provides, as Hitler did with the Jews, convenient scapegoats: Muslims, who are believed to threaten us with cultural change and terrorism, and migrants who are “not people” and who are “poisoning the blood” of the country. Add to this a fantasy – a promised return to a better, prouder time, the “Reich,” a time of power and glory – and you have a perfect, complementary emotional formula to focus the projections of those who are unhappy or afraid in the present. Make American Great Again.

     The conservative wealthy upper classes, knowing full well that Trump is a dishonest businessman who only dimly comprehends economics, nevertheless see him as someone who will work for them, ensuring that they will be well rewarded with tax-cutting, with libertarian policies, and with protection for entrenched interests such as the fossil fuel industries. Finally, there are those ready to tear down American democracy, from American proto-fascists like Steve Bannon (noted above) and Roger Stone, to radical libertarians like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, to professional political power cynics like Mitch McConnell in the Senate , and all the way to lunatic fringe members of the Freedom Caucus in the House. To these people, Trump is the useful idiot, who can be put into service, and then outflanked, in establishing a new order.

     Underpinning all this, there is a powerful foundation of simple anti-black racism among white members all of the above groups; Trump has communicated clearly that he represents them.

     Add to all this the single-issue gun people and climate deniers, and those who will vote Republican no matter what, and you have a sizeable coalition. This fusion of interests into a collective, similar to 1933 Germany, might fall short of a popular majority, but it represents enough people to enable Trump to win the presidency, especially with spoiler candidates such as the befuddled Robert Kennedy in play.

2. The despot is an astute media player and has major media enablers.

     Donald Trump has been a brilliant player in the era of social media. I am certain that not a single day has gone by since June, 2015, when he announced his candidacy, that he has not been in the news. His very erraticism and unpredictability ensure that he garners attention and even his most abhorrent behaviours serve to promote him. He said it himself: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?” (3) Perhaps he underestimated himself here; if coverage of his criminal and other cases is an indication, he would not only not lose voters, but rather would gain them.

     Hitler was also a master of the media of the time. He exploited “sound recordings, newsreels, and radio,” and he even campaigned, theatrically dramatic for the era, by aeroplane. In this, he was supported and used by media moguls, such Alfred Hugenberg, who like right-wingers of our time, imagined a media bias against conservatism. Hugenberg, like Rupert Murdoch of Fox News, and the likes of Tucker Carlson with Trump, capitalized on Hitler’s persona despite privately thinking he was “manic.” Hugenberg used Hitler to promulgate “catastrophic politics” with inflammatory news, and a disinformation campaign of “half-truths, rumours, and outright lies.” His goal, like the Murdochs, was to promulgate culture wars, divide the society, and polarize politics, in order to preclude a socially progressive consensus. Like Trump in the present, Hitler was seen as a useful actor in promoting this destructive agenda. Of course, once entrenched in the chancellorship, Herr Hitler took that agenda to extremes that even Hugenberg and others could not imagine.

3. Decent people believe that their playing by the rules will contain the despot.

     Democracy is vulnerable and fragile, as indeed, is civilization itself. As Goebbels famously said: “The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction.” In order to work, democracy’s inherent untidiness has to be supported by people of good will and good faith, who agree to play by both the letter and the intention of the rules. The decent left, centre, and right of present-day America, and other democracies like Canada, the U.K., and The Netherlands, are prone to a belief that if they, themselves, continue to work fairly within it, the democratic system inevitably will protect against the lawless players. But this is a fallacy that the populist demagogue exploits at will. Hitler used this delusion to advantage, as did Senator McCarthy two decades later in America. Trump, even more bold-faced, has publicly promised to use the system against itself, for example by employing the Justice Department against his political enemies generally and Joe Biden personally if he is elected president.

      Earlier on, the first line of defence in the U.S. against Trump populism would have been the Republican Party itself, but unfortunately the party has been following a long arc of decline in political ethics.(4) In the Trump era, decent Republicans, from very conservative like Liz Cheney to the moderately so like Mitt Romney, have either been railroaded from the party or have run for the hills themselves, unable or unwilling to subject themselves to the virulent onslaught. Too many of those who are left are fawning minions like Lindsey Graham, destructionists such as Matt Gaetz, the unhinged like Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and cynical manipulators of power such as Elise Stefanik and the previously noted Mitch McConnell.

4. Decent people believe the motivations of the despot are like their own.

     A second fallacy of decent people is that they assume that someone like a Hitler is motivated by the same, normal things that they are: wanting to make things better, wanting to help, enjoying being liked by others for doing good, and being part of the human community. The normal person wants to avoid wrongdoing and does not want to feel shame or guilt. Decent people assume that the demagogue will respond to these things and feel good when they do right, and feel shame when they do wrong. But this is wrong. These normal motivations simply to not apply to a Hitler or a Trump – people with psychopathic and narcissistic character structures. A person with the psychopathic traits (5) easily exploits the decency and normal motivation of regular people – as easily as he takes advantage of the vulnerabilities of political systems. He sneers at normal people, considering them inferior, or as Trump calls them, “losers.”

     Much has been written of the character structure of Adolf Hitler (6), and certainly it is true that after-the-fact psychiatry can be all too facile and glib. Nevertheless, it is easy to see the psychopathy of Hitler, and to see that he was motivated by rage, and a desire to wreak upon the world his hatred and need for destruction. He lacked a conscience and empathy: these, the penultimate indicators of the psychopath. Further, obviously he craved attention and admiration: signifiers of the narcissist. There is no need to peer inside the psyche or to analyse his childhood in order to see these things; they are in plain sight. Hitler was a psychopath with narcissistic traits.

     Similarly, Donald Trump’s narcissism and psychopathy are in plain sight, in his words and deeds. However in his case, it would be fair to reverse the sequence and describe him as narcissistic, with psychopathic tendencies. His primary motivation is his need for admiration and attention. He craves notice and tolerates only fawning acclaim from those around him and from the public. Hence, his favourite moments on earth are his rallies. When admiration falters or is withdrawn, as a narcissist he lashes out and dismisses the transgressor. “Pathetic,” he called Nikki Haley. (7) These moments alternate with episodes of farcical self-aggrandisement – he has proclaimed himself the most “presidential” of Presidents since Abraham Lincoln. (8)

     However, his character structure does include psychopathic components of rage and hatred; life is about dominance, and winning. Others, even a venerable war hero and public servant, like John McCain, are “losers” – in this case because he “lost” by becoming a prisoner of war, after being captured serving his country in combat. (9) Trump never admits defeat, never admits errors, exploits others, and exhibits a lack of conscience and empathy. Still, his destructive rage is not primary, as it was in Hitler. He would not necessarily embark on a program to exterminate groups of people, as Hitler did. He is racist to be sure, but likely does not care that much about these people, as long as he is getting attention and admiration. His demonizing of migrants and Muslims is mostly opportunistic, a way to capture notoriety.

     It is, perhaps, psychological hair-splitting to discuss whether narcissism or psychopathy is primary in these two people. Whichever way around it is, the narcissistic-psychopathic pairing in character structure is dangerous: dangerous to those around the person, and dangerous to the society. And in the case of the U.S., this person with the personality disorder is a clear threat not only to the decency and civility of the nation, but also to the Democracy itself.

 

The strength of American democratic institutions is greater than that of the post-world-war Weimar Republic, and Trump is no Hitler, exactly. Perhaps Mussolini would be a more apt comparison in character and deportment. But make no mistake: he is a very dangerous aspiring despot and conditions are ripe for the ascent of such a person. We should not be complacent or deceived. The parallels with the rise of Hitler are apparent. The means to subvert democracy are available and there is a broad coalition of people who believe Trump will protect their interests. The candidate is adept at media use and there are media players who capitalize on this. This candidate with a narcissistic-psychopathic character structure is an admirer of dictators and a would-be dictator himself, and there is a cadre of determined enablers, with plans prepared, that is ready to enable their useful idiot. As Isaac Arnsdorf has reported, Steve Bannon, for instance, one of Trump’s handlers, has a detailed plan for at least one-hundred years of rule by a gang of MAGA proto-fascists. (10)

     Trump does not need to seize power. All he has to do is be elected, and then be allowed to consolidate. If he can be defeated at the polls, it will be a bumpy ride, but he will go away, and the road will be clearer to protect against the next Trump. If he is not defeated at the polls, then it will be up to all of us, and to every decent person who believes in democracy, to oppose, to challenge, and to stop him, by whatever peaceful and lawful means we have available to us. (11)

     Meanwhile, what to do about the discomfort with my fellow citizens and my neighbours? Part of me, of course, just wants to flee. But it would be hard to do so in good conscience. The right thing to do is to stay and resist tyranny. In any case, we truly are one world, and there really is no escape from these people. Canada has its opportunistic, “populist” prime ministerial candidate, Pierre Poilievre. The Netherlands has Geert Wilders; France has Marine Le Pen, Italy has Giorgia Meloni, and Hungary, Viktor Mihály Orbán. They are everywhere, and this is not to mention Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping, Min Aung Hlaing of Myanmar, Nicolás Maduro Moros of Venezuela, and all the other tin-pot dictators the world over. No, there is no escape; the only way forward is to stay and fight.

     The simple truth is that I just have to live with the disquiet I feel, and know that I am not alone in this. Kathy and I meditate; and every evening, she lights candles for peace on the dining room table. I take solace in knowing that there are very many good people out there in this country. Although the Supreme Court has become an unreliable protector of democracy, I know that if the man is elected, the good states, such as New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, will fight to resist the despot.

     I also know that there are also many decent people who will vote for Trump. I have to accept that they have their reasons. To live with that, I can only adopt a Buddhist take on it. They are not bad people; they are just mistaken. As to my gun-toting neighbours: I can’t offer friendship, but I can offer peace. For now, their banners are down, the flag is upright, and there has been no shooting for a long time. Maybe they have had an epiphany and realize that the man is no good. We will see what they do.

     I can only hope for the best, while preparing for the worst. And prepare to resist. To fight.

____________

After-note:

I find it depressing to write about this man, and I hope not to do so again.

Sources:

Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin Books, 2003.

Gopnik, Adam. The Enablers. The New Yorker Magazine, March 25, 2024

Ryback, Timothy W. Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power. Knopf, 2024.

Notes:

1. The historical analysis of the rise of Hitler here is entirely dependent upon the review by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker Magazine, and on Timothy Ryback’s book, both listed above. Most quotations are from Gopnik.

2. President Trump Task Force Briefing. C-Span, April 23, 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.c-span.org/video/?471458-1/president-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing. 

3. Flores, Reena. Donald Trump: I could shoot someone and not lose any voters. CBS News, January 26, 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters/. 

4. Milbank, Dana. The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party. Doubleday, 2022.

5. I do not use the term, “Antisocial Personality Disorder,” from the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The Committee has whitewashed the diagnosis; it sounds like someone who doesn’t like social gatherings much, as opposed to an inhuman character structure that lacks a conscience and any empathy and is prone to interpersonal abuse and often violence. That is a psychopath: not someone who is “antisocial.”

6. See, for example: Martin-Joy, John. Erik Erikson: A Psychoanalyst Looks at Hitler. Psychology Today, July 28, 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/politics-psychiatry-and-psychoanalysis/202007/erik-erikson-psychoanalyst-looks-hitler. 

7. Moran, Lee. Donald Trump’s ‘Pathetic’ Excuse For D.C. Primary Loss To Haley Is Mercilessly Mocked. Huffington Post, March 4, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-responds-nikki-haley-defeat_n_65e5743ce4b0f89059333258. 

8. Cillizza, Chris. Donald Trump ranked himself 2nd on a list of most ‘presidential’ presidents. The Point, CNN, July 26, 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/politics/donald-trump-abe-lincoln/index.html. 

9. Associated Press. Fact check: Trump says he never called John McCain a ‘loser.’ He definitely did. Chicago Tribune, September 5, 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2020/09/05/fact-check-trump-says-he-never-called-john-mccain-a-loser-he-definitely-did/.

10. Pengelly, Martin. New book details Steve Bannon’s ‘Maga movement’ plan to rule for 100 years: Isaac Arnsdorf’s Finish What We Started shows how the strategist wanted to create a dominant coalition to take US political power. The Guardian, April 4, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/04/steve-bannon-book-maga.

11. Over 20% (28% of Republicans, 12% of Democrats) agree that violence may be necessary to “get the county back on track.” Santhanam, Laura. 1 in 5 Americans think violence may solve U.S. divisions, poll finds. PBS News Hour, April 3, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/1-in-5-americans-think-violence-may-solve-u-s-divisions-poll-finds.

Revised April 29. 2024.

In Praise of Luddites

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

A confession: while I was living in Toronto, Amazon announced that it was planning to begin using robots – these would travel along city sidewalks and make deliveries to individual addresses. It was rumoured that they would start very soon in the city. I couldn’t wait. I imagined messing with them in numerous ways: from simply blocking the robots’ paths to see if I could confuse them, to forcing them to drop off the curb into the line of an oncoming Toronto Transit bus. I took pleasure in picturing assaulting the things with a baseball bat if there were no constables around. I mentioned my thoughts to a friend, explaining that sidewalks were for people, not corporate interests, and every delivery robot represented jobs lost for individuals for whom unemployment in the capitalist economy is the great motivating terror. “Luddite!” my friend exclaimed.

     Indeed. Thank you.

     Luddite is a pejorative that we have deep affection for, using it, as we do, to insult those we love, and even relatives. It means our victims are resisting technology pointlessly, or they won’t do what we want them to do, such as wasting ten minutes of their short life watching a TikTok influencer with mauve hair explaining why we should use only organic asparagus butter. Luddites are people who are uselessly anti-progress, negative nay-sayers, inept at using technology, standing against the development of human productivity and well-being. They are a bit stupid, unruly and stubborn, a bit like donkeys, we think. However, we are wrong.

     Our estimation of Luddites is incorrect, as is our assessment of donkeys. What we think about them is not who they were at all.

     The Luddites, in fact, were intelligent and self-controlled craftspeople who correctly foresaw their lives altering for the worse as a result of disruptive technological change. They consciously chose to resist. They wanted to preserve a life that was home-based, autonomous, productive, satisfying, and even artistic.

     The Luddites took their name from a “Ned Ludd,” a mythical figure in the Robin Hood tradition, who, legend has it, fought for justice in the same area of Nottinghamshire as had Robin and his merry band. “General” Ludd was said to be more or less up to the same devilry: protecting the poor and powerless from arbitrary exploitation, oppression and debasement, as carried out by the powers that be – Kings, Sheriffs, land owners, and the wealthy.(1)

     They were mainly skilled weavers, combers, and dressers of wool, along with cotton trade artisans, who worked as independent craftspeople in their workshops in homes and cottages. As a group, they were described as highly disciplined, organized and effective. They were also well supported; despite bribes and threats, no one ever betrayed them to the authorities. Given that they operated merely for a fifteen month period in 1811 and 1812, in an area that included only parts of five counties around Nottinghamshire, it is remarkable how well they became known and how long they have been remembered.

     The accurate view of them has been buried in propaganda propagated by authorities of the day, and perpetuated by the corporate and technology interests of our own time. Our current Techno-Nottingham Sheriffs would have us believe, in a form of false consciousness, that, for example, watching a video of nature online is the same as being in nature, or that we should be enchanted with the prospect of artificial intelligence.

     Yet, despite all the efforts to discredit the Luddites and our use of their name as a deprecatory label, their call echos still, if mostly in the subconscious level. I believe we know that they were on to something. Their cause, in fact, is one that resonates in all of us: our humanity itself. They were not fighting against machinery; rather, they were fighting for what it means to be a human being.

     But were they not violent, you ask? If violence can be committed against inanimate objects, I suppose that we have to say yes, they were. They attacked the new factories at night and destroyed the power looms and other machinery. In some cases they burned buildings, including factories and in a few cases, the homes of owners. However, there were no known instances of Luddites attacking or killing human beings. (There were instances of personal violence during the period, when members of the starving general population rebelled against the terrible conditions of the time but these killings were not carried out by followers of General Ludd.) Despite the actions of the Luddites being directed at machines and not people, authorities responded with everything they had, including shooting, imprisoning, transporting and executing people who they believed were part of the cause. In less than a year and a half, their resistance collapsed, although the broader unrest noted above continued because of the dreadful social conditions of the time.

    On a most basic level, the Luddites were just protecting their livelihoods, but you could say they were prescient. They did not hate machinery as such. What they hated was the life that the new industrial age devices was bringing, and they saw that life with clarity. Workers in the new factories quickly became near-slaves, held to their work hour after hour, day after day, in dirty, hot, and dark conditions. Foremen walked the aisles with whips, to ensure absolute focus on the mind-numbing and body-damaging toil. Women were abused, sexually and otherwise, and children who did not perform up to standard were beaten. The prevailing industrial theory of the day – not so far removed from the ideas of some of our present titans of the gig economy (2) – was that one should pay enough so that workers would not starve, but not so much that they would not be hungry, literally speaking.

     The result has been well documented: gruesome factory conditions, ghastly tenements, increasing crime and corruption, starvation, disease, addiction and alcoholism, demoralization and mental illness. Descriptions are nearly unbearable to read:

Not one father in a family of ten in the whole neighbourhood has other clothing than his working suit, and that is as bad and tattered as possible, many, indeed have no other covering for the night than these rags, and no bed, save a sack of
straw and shavings…

On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 1843, by Mr. Carter, coroner for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the newspapers related the following particulars concerning the deceased: she lived at No. 3 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her husband and a nineteen-year-old son in a little room, in which neither bedstead nor any other furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked body, there being neither sheet nor coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast over the whole body that the physician could not examine the corpse until it was cleansed, and then found it starved and scarred from the bites of vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn up, and the hole used by the family as a privy. (3)

     Who would not want to resist this?

     But of course, over time things did get better, at least in part of the world. In the Western world conditions did improve over the course of more than a century. Working conditions got better, wages grew, and health, housing and living circumstances improved to the point that it can be said that the industrial revolution resulted in a standard of living and personal longevity that was beyond the most fantastical imaginings of everyday humanity. And so, were the Luddites mistaken?

     Not exactly. Such working conditions remain in many areas of the world: the clothing factories of Bangladesh, for example. Aside from that, the changes for the better were a result of decades and decades of struggle by workers, by unions of people, by individual humanitarian champions, by agencies and governments who saw the plight of people and responded to it with regulation and legislation. The Luddites were not wrong in what they were seeing.

     However, we could say that the Luddites could not see the bigger picture, and so were shortsighted – that change is always disruptive, and technological improvement will ultimately lead to a betterment of life for humanity, if we give it time. But is this true?

     I would respond: not necessarily. First, all technological improvement comes with a price tag. The automobile was instrumental in getting rid of the mountains of horse manure on city streets, but now the planet is choking on the exhaust fumes. Cell phone technology resulted in instantaneous, full-time communication among people, but also has resulted in a distracted, misinformed population with their noses stuck in their devices at the dinner table, uninterested in communicating directly with one another. Our rivers, our lakes and oceans, our land, and even our bodies are full of plastic. Reefs are bleaching, birds are dying, animals are disappearing. And overall, we seem to believe that the meaning of life can be found in what we own. To be human, it has become, is to consume. Meanwhile, this wealthy Western world is in a crisis of meaning, wherein thousands, addicted to opioids, are dying in streets and alleys, and where, at least in America, automatic-weapon-carrying young men in a state of anomie are murdering children with great regularity in their school rooms.

 

There was a more recent span of Luddite-ism in the twentieth century: the short-lived Hippie period and its back-to-the-land movement. The Hippies have been denigrated too, and perhaps some of that is deserving. But at the heart of the movement was a rejection of materialism, a resistance to the conversion of human beings into consumers. The Hippies were opting for a life that was more generous, loving, sharing and made of authentic experience rather than possession of material goods. Of course, pampered Baby-Boomers were ill prepared for the hardship, complexity and skill requirements that life on the land entailed, and so mostly they failed. In addition, it is extraordinarily difficult to try to live outside of mainstream culture; to do so, your customs and ideology have to be very strong, as is, for example, the ethos of the Mennonites. The Hippies did not have this cohesion of practise. Finally, corporate powers recognized the threat and mobilized powerfully during the period to counter the movement and to complete the colonization of the culture. One can see this clearly in the co-opting advertisements of the nineteen-seventies. Consider these paint colours offered for your new Ford Maverick in 1970: Freudian Gilt, Hulla Blue, and the best one, Anti-Establish Mint. It was completely successful of course: the Hippies and anti-materialism became an inside joke. We capitulated and the Baby-Boomers became the most materialistic generation of humanity ever in history.

     Given all that, is there any relevance left to consider, if not for the Hippies, at least for the Luddites? I think: yes. I don’t think I am alone in this. Many people are concerned about the quality of our technological life and the associated problems of meaning. Many are disturbed and frightened by what we are doing to the planet and our fellow species with our uncontrolled spewing of fossil-fuel emissions. Many are simply dissatisfied with the state of things: the bombardment of twenty-four-hour-a-day marketing and the ever-titillating yet desolate wasteland of most television, the phones, screens, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok.

     In a sign of cultural health, some groups of teenagers have emerged, in more places than one, who are rejecting the smart-phone lifestyle for something more substantive, including sketching together, discussing Dostoevsky or Kerouac, or simply listening to nature in a park. “Social media and phones are not real life,” one said, correctly. (4) Further, educators are – surprise! – discovering that children learn better on paper than on screens (5) and that banning cell phone use in school improves concentration and outcomes. (6) Who’da thunk?

     I think, when remembering the Luddites, that the story of their struggle challenges us to ask: must we accept every technological invention, every change, even when there is a chance it will degrade or debase us? Short of that, must we necessarily accept something new when it will result in our losing something old that we love? The answer is no, of course. The continuing popularity of physical books over electronic readers shows that many are willing to make such a choice. Computer word processing programs are wonderful tools, without a doubt, but is there not something satisfying about starting in writing on a yellow legal pad with a freshly sharpened pencil? Is not selecting, then taking an record album out of its sleeve, and stopping to read the liner notes, a greater pleasure than catching half a song in your Spotify stream as you go about your other business? Of course, these are trivial and we are merely talking about preferring an earlier technology to a newer one, which is a common leaning, especially for those of us with more than a few miles on us.

     But what about more profound and far-reaching change? What about genetic editing or artificial intelligence? What about a million of us living on Mars, in SpaceX City, as Elon Musk would have it? What about living in a Meta-verse designed by a Zuckerberg?

     One can say that it is futile to resist technological change: after all if we choose not to do something, someone else will do it. We might not want to select our children, through gene-editing, to become blond, blue-eyed Aryan ideals, but someone will. We may not want Musk’s chip planted in our brain so that the internet can be directly connected to our precious consciousness, but some will pay for that. We may prefer to read and research the history of Western Civilization for ourselves, but others will prefer a summary generated by AI. We may find pleasure in producing a poem or other piece of writing, a song, a painting, a photograph – but there will be others that would rather have AI do that for them, and they will see it as the same thing.

 

It is hard not to observe that we have become slaves to our technology. We, in our fun-land Western Civilization live a life of unbelievable wealth, health, and comfort, without a doubt due to our technology. There is a lot to be said for light bulbs, television, and central heating on a cold winter’s night. And yet…personally, I cannot help but feel sad when I see a group of adolescents sitting on a stoop, each one of them a gorgeous bundle of vibrating life, yet all of them with faces buried in phones, while the sun shines, and the street flows by. The birds that are still left sing directly to them, but they do not hear.

     Convenient technology can become our master. Mary Shelley, writing about science and technology, saw that likelihood. Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, his creation, says, near the end of the story: “You are my creator, but I am your master;- obey!” (7) In this, do we not hear the ghostly and premonitory whisper of artificial intelligence?

     The lesson of the Luddites is to question. They challenge us to discern and to resist if we do not like what we see, and to opt for the richness of authentic experience. As Marguerite Duras put it, “Everything seems to be done in order to spare man the effort of living, both in his work and his daily living. It’s terrible.” (8) Or, as Lao-tze said, centuries earlier: “Let there be labour-saving devices that are not used.” He was speaking, even back then, to the tendency of technology to distract us, even to alienate us, from the natural flow of life, from that the directness of experience that is our birthright. (9)

     Even if Luddite resistance is futile in the big picture, is such resistance not fundamental to who we are? Do we not have a right to say no? Is there not nobility, dignity, in refusal?

     I think so. I believe we should take courage from our Luddite brothers and sisters and resist, where and whenever we feel it, whether such resistance is futile or not in the bigger picture. Eschew the electric scooter, and take a slow walk along a city street on a sunny day. If you do see an Amazon robot, try not to get arrested, but you will have my blessing if you knock it off the sidewalk. Close the Facebook page, and call up the real friend whom you actually care about. Turn off your TikTok feed and dance a little jig yourself. The effort of being a living, breathing human animal is worth it.

_____________________________________

1. Sale, Kirkpatrick. Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution. Persus Books Group, 1995.

2. Greenhouse, Steven. Major US corporations threaten to return labor to ‘law of the jungle:’ Trader Joe’s and SpaceX are among businesses challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. The Guardian, March 10, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/starbucks-trader-joes-spacex-challenge-labor-board. 

3. Engles, Frederick. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Translated by Florence Kelley Wishnewzky. Information Age Publishing, 2010. See particularly pages 29-40.

4. Vadukul, Alex. ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes: When the only thing better than a flip phone is no phone at all. New York Times, December 15, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html?searchResultPosition=1. 

5. MacArthur, John R. A groundbreaking study shows kids learn better on paper, not screens. Now what? The Guardian, January17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/kids-reading-better-paper-vs-screen.

6. Root, Tik. What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation. The Guardian, January 17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/cellphone-smartphone-bans-schools. 

7. Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein (1818 text). Oxford Wold’s Classics, 1994, p. 140.

8. Duras, Marguerite. Me & Other Writing. Dorothy, A Publishing Project, 2019, p. 82. 

9. Cathart, Thomas, and Daniel Klein. I Think, Therefore I Draw: Understanding Philosophy Through Cartoons. Penguin Books, 2018, p. 86.