Another look at Schadenfreude....in the Spring of 2025

Although the word is neither new nor frequently found in the public vernacular,

Schadenfreude warrants a revisit, or even an introduction both to this scribe and any interested readers.

Britannica.com reports:

Schadenfreude, the emotional experience of pleasure in response to another’s misfortune, a German word that combines Schaden (‘damage’) and Freud (‘joy’)….(S)ome psychologists describe three categories of context for schadenfreude: justice, rivalry, and aggression. These contexts correlate with three distinct motivations: social justice, self-evaluation, and social identity. In the context of justice, people feel pleasure when they observe punishment in which someone gets what they deserve. In the context of rivalry, people feel pleasure when they compare themselves to one who suffers a negative event. In the context of aggression, a person feels pleasure when a member of an out-group, such as a rival sports team or political party, suffers a negative event, which solidifies the in-group member’s social identity….Other psychologists have described (it) with four context categories: aversion, injustice, identification and compensation. With aversion there is a feeling of dislike toward another person, and when that person experiences misfortune, one feels pleasure. With injustice, a person feels pleasure when observing a deserved punishment. With identification, a rival’s loss boosts one’s social identity. With compensation, one’s own misfortune occurs first and when another person experiences the same misfortune, one feels pleasure.

The link between schadenfreude and empathy is an ongoing topic of study. Psychologists note that schadenfreude occurs when empathy is absent, such as when one can dehumanize the person experiencing misfortune. With empathy, we feel bad for this person, as we would feel with our own personal misfortune. However, with dehumanization, empathy erodes and schadenfreude can more easily occur.

Intensity of schadenfreude can become extreme and problematic in people with low empathy or those with the ability to dehumanize others, the latter of which is often associated with the Dark Triad conditions of psychopathy (lack of empathy and behaviour control), narcissism, (self-centredness and arrogant thinking) and Machiavellianism (power seeking through the use of cunning and manipulation).

In a recent conversation with my wife, she asked, what seemed like an innocuous question: “Why DO people gossip?” and one answer that blurted out was ‘schadenfreude’…without thought, reflection, pause, or even a needed breath. Without reflecting on the ‘appropriateness’ or accuracy, or application of that descriptive emotion, it nevertheless continued to linger, unanswered, pondered, tossed about in hypothetical situations, some personal experiences and other questions followed.

For example: Is it schadenfreude that lies behind the kind of scurrilous gossip that, like filings to a magnet, rushes in to shame a person for any one of many misjudgments, especially about what the group or culture considers ‘immorality’?

Do we all to varying degrees, ‘belong’ to a group, society, service club, church, political party, class, corporation, or regiment (military, law enforcement, national security, news media, medical) that wraps itself in a list of coded words and behaviours as ‘standards’ that must be upheld, lest either or both the high esteem of the group or the individual’s high status within the group, be damaged, sullied, alloyed, broken, diseased, or brought into public disrepute…as considered by those ‘within’ the group and those without?

The church has focused for centuries on human, original, inevitable and inescapable evil, sin, unworthiness, ungodliness, deviation from the will of God…and to the extent, both in depth and in reach, that archetype has infused itself into the psychic soul of the West….the Christian West…The Fall of Man, as Christians have interpreted, and then taught, and then upheld through sanctions, rituals, penitentials, retribution, and the grace of God’s forgiveness, stands as both a moral and an intellectual as well as an artistic and imaginative pillar of our culture. Everyone, whether they ever refer directly or indirectly to the myth, embodies, espouses, and ‘clings’ to that archetype….naturally with varying examples of what comprises the specific ‘evil’. No one is immune from the application of this lens of evil, sin, and the shame and guilt that, like a fungus, is inextricably attached to the specific ‘fall’. And along with the ‘fall’ has come the also inescapable, inexorable, inordinate, and for many, inexplicable fury of schadenfreude.

Currently, the American media is having a feeding frenzy on schadenfreude. Musk’s experience of a drop of some 71% in Tesla stock, has millions rubbing their hands in glee, prompting headlines, to which I also applaud and cheer, inwardly. Similarly, whenever a court decision that trumps Trump is reached, I join a chorus of millions who are also joined in triumphant schadenfreude. Whenever a Ukrainian drone strikes inside Russia, I feel a slight surge of schadenfreude, at the prospect that Russia will actually be ‘harmed’ for its illegal, unjust and unprovoked war against her neighbour. If and when I see a drop in the public opinion polls of the popularity of a political party to which I am opposed, I feel a small lift of schadenfreude at their expense. I recall, years back in another life, learning of the tragic serious injury of a son of a man whose public, yet secret, shaming of this scribe went unnoticed, a feeling of saddness and empathy, and also fist-bump-inducing sigh…’is this universal justice’?

Is schadenfreude an unwritten, undocumented, legal, social, politically correct and visceral human response for which none of us is or even can be held accountable? And is that response, justified on either or both social or person legitimacy, a ‘subversive’ and ‘mercurial’ and ‘illusive’ (like an underground fire) seismic and volcanic surge of energy that, outside of the normal ‘control’ and management structures, including the law, the medical fraternity, the political establishment, the church hierarchy, and even the local coffee shop, fueling our gestalt of both human relations (war, hunger, poverty, disease, and propaganda) on the world stage, as well as in the sanctity of our own hearts?

Pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and wrath….have been identified as the seven cardinal sins by the church. And, from this perch, it would seem that schadenfreude could very readily aned glibly and unconsciously be underneath many if not all of these. We are a competitive, somewhat aggressive, highly individualistic race striving toward some image of ‘success’ as individuals as well as nations or cultures or religions, or corporations….and we inculcate all manner of literal and metaphoric arrows into the slings of our youth, in order to ‘prepare’ them for the jungle out there.

Is schadenfreude one of the more ‘invisible’ of those arrows, that we can and do count on to ‘express’ our deepest resentments, in a pleasurable, and thereby justifiable and excusable manner, with our self-declared impunity? Furthermore, is the trump cult simply weaponizing schadenfreude, right before our eyes, as it/they both drink the kool-aid of schadenfreude and then ride the waves of its intensity with their own impunity?

It is not a taboo substance like fentanyl, or ketamine, LSD, magic mushrooms, ecstasy, methamphetamines, opioids, salvia, codeine….and for expressing it, there is or seems to be universal immunity, impunity, and social and political acceptance, even celebration of its ubiquity, especially the cover it gives to everyone. It is not a lethal, odorless, tasteless, imperceptible gas like carbon monoxide for which we have detectors, alarms and warnings. Nor is it being measured, as are carbon dioxide and methane, for their lethal infusion into the earth’s atmosphere, demonstrated in rising temperatures, rising oceanic water levels, dying species and global ‘accords’ attempting to combat their emission. Nor is it even being observed, documented and sanctioned by the very churches which have taken up inscribing and instruction and distribution of whatever moral code they deem relevant to their specific and unique deity.

Indeed, is there anyone who has ever dawned the door of a religious sanctuary who can say that s/he has never encountered a wave of schadenfreude, given the ‘fall’ of someone in their circle, a pregnant teen, a divorced wife, a fired or discontinued worker, a religious fallen on the sword of greed, or lust, or love, or envy or projected hatred? Are we living in a culture in which, finally, Pope Francis’ prayer ‘for me a sinner’ is perhaps actually being heard through ears that permit and even endorse a mirror-look into our own inner self? And does that mirror look perhaps  include the question of how we have, personally, morally, spiritually, intellectually, psychologically and especially religiously indulged in the waters of the warm pool of schadenfreude, without a single glimpse of self-criticism, knowing that such schadenfreude is such a universal experience, that no deity would deem it practical to include it in the list of cardinal sins?

So illusive and imperceptible and radioactive is this human ‘tendency’ as to be outside of the range of our capacity and our willingness even to acknowledge its hiding in the depth of our unconscious vocabulary, our attitudes, our perceptions and our conventional and normal way of living….and all of this is irrespective of our ethnicity, our education, our specific faith community, our nationality, our ideology or even our sense of our identity….No one is immune; no one has impunity, and no one can or will escape the shade that we cast upon whomever we ‘need’ (as we perceive it) to bury in our schadenfreude….and it comes in so many innocuous forms: shaming on social media, academic criticism, political campaign rhetoric, advertising verbiage, religious superiority and discipline, status claims or deficits, economic success and/or failure….and yet the outstanding feature of schadenfreude is not only it ubiquity but the impunity it brings to any and all who are ensconced in its propriety.

Really? 

Reflections on Thoreau's majority of one

 I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them.  I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbor constitutes a majority of one. (Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, Prospero Books ed., p. 288)

As a life-long progressive, sympathetic to the cause of social justice, unafraid of the ‘nanny state’ and more skeptical of the authoritarianism of the conservative right than of the argument against ‘big government,’, I open with words borrowed from Thoreau, that I, along with perhaps others, could do well to re-read, and to reflect upon. In a matter such as the abolition of slavery, even a single person who holds a position that opposes it and seeks to eliminate it, can, and even must, consider himself or herself a majority of one. And while Thoreau is a strong and authentic voice for limited government, and has, in many quarters, become a mentor for the many voices echoing the Federalist Papers, and thus not exactly a beacon for the ‘social justice side,’ nevertheless, there is something resoundingly inspiring in the disciplined discernment of ‘being more right than his neighbor’.

Of course, we all live between ethical and moral and religious opposites, the extremes of which, today, seem to be attempting, in a zero-sum game, to eliminate the other side on the political stage in America especially. Clearly in the ascendency currently, the millions of MAGA supporters believe that their leader has been ‘sent by God’ as a kind of messiah, to ‘bring about the kingdom of God here on earth now’ as they hubristically and naively and dangerously trumpet their conviction. Indeed, it is their very conviction, as an absolute imperative, in which they are impaled on their own petard. Starting on the level of attaching a religious conviction to a human being, as if he (or a ‘she’) were ‘sent by God’ is not merely inexcusable for rational and religious and historical and cognitive reasons; it betrays their very movement. And then, to pontificate that ‘others’ (whomever and whichever those may be at any given moment depending on the vagaries and whims of their messiah and his cult) must be eliminated, effectively excommunicated, to borrow a religious notion that attempts to make sacred their horrendous and heinous acts of deportation, incarceration, dismissal, firing, and the hubristic hymns of self-congratulations with every morbid headline and detail, not only sounds alarms around the globe, but also betrays their very justification. And it is not only a moral/ethical justification; it is also an economical, political, military, environmental and existential justification that they betray.

Dismissing the ‘others’ for whatever specious, distracting, irrelevant, superficial, reductionistic and unsustainable justification, displays the complete emptiness of their purpose…..it has not purpose or meaning except to justify the existence and empowerment, indeed the worship, of their “sacred” leader, who is, undoubtedly, merely a papier-mache projection of the summation of the fears, bigotries, prejudices and hatreds of the cult. Such a reiteration of the fateful and hateful river Styx, in modern face and voice, is so deeply recognized and hated by all of the ‘others’ including this scribe, as to render little to no ambiguity about what ‘side’ any ‘god’ in a religious sense, might be on.

And while there are a myriad of hurdles, obstacles, mountains and head-winds to see and walk through in order to neutralize this Stygian river of total blackness, the first step may well begin when each of us look in the mirror and utter, “I am and will continue to be a majority of ONE!” I do not have to withdraw my taxes from the national treasury, to sustain my ‘majority of one.’ It is enough to hold firm to my conviction that both the absoluteness and the tyranny of the men in charge of the hate-infested flow of this offal stench of a new Styx, render it and them, eventually, but not without serious and dangerous and existentially risky opposition, of which I and everyone else can and will be an integral part, not merely obscene, but obsolete.

A vision of death, like the vision of the one deep into the contemplation of suicide, seems, to the one holding it, to be the only option available. And a single option, for both the one contemplating suicide as well as for the MAGA cult, is life-threatening, indeed more threatening that whatever horrendous circumstances might have prompted the openness to the single option. It is not only that Putin is an existential crisis for  the Ukrainians as well as for the Europeans, (while he believes the inverse, that NATO and western security forces inside Ukraine pose an existential crisis to and for Russia; it is not only that Netanyahu considers Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and their founder and source of resources, Iran to be an existential threat to and for Israel, so too do Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah and the o consider Israel, with her nuclear weapons provided by the United States, an existential threat to their religion, and their way of life. Similarly, preying upon the exactly parallel template or archetype, the existential threat, as a raison d’etre, for political identity, has become the argument de jour on the political menu of the MAGA movement, given its beating of the drum of evil, hatred, bigotry and criminality identified with Biden, Obama, the fanatic-left judges, and anyone and everyone who opposes the presumed sanctity of the MAGA movement.

Hanging over this existentially-themed and obsessive-compulsive, political, military, economic and ethical-moral universal drama, is the one these high-decibel, lie-infested, and ego-dominated headlines and news stories ignore, fail to recognize and thereby declare immunity from, is the real existential crisis for which no one able to grab notice in the cacophony of all of these other ‘hubristic, heinous, bigoted, prejudiced and intransigent’ (and therefore absolute, in their own mind) voice). And that existential crisis is the rapidly evaporating, both literally and metaphorically, capacity of the planet to sustain life….human, animal, vegetable, oceanic, atmospheric and even potentially spiritual.

So long as we engage like drunken soldiers on the decks of a sinking ‘titanic’ in the also hubristically-founded, and metaphysically and empirically and philosophically insubstantial conviction that our ‘ship’ is unsinkable, like the men and women on the historical and literal Titanic, find ourselves hoisted on the petard of our own hubris. And while these current horrendous wars, and the rise of distrust in and respect for both individuals and institutions on which we must depend, not only for our survival but for our very healthy mental and emotional and spiritual state, swirl both about and within each of us, we fight in vain, for that touchstone that Thoreau confidently holds, as a majority of ONE…..

Even those men and women completely engrossed and even subsumed inside the debates within the various ‘opposing forces,’ state and non-state, legitimate and illegitimate, terrorist and non-terrorist, capitalist and non-capitalist, Christian and non-Christian, Muslim and non-Muslim, Jewish and non-Jewish, Western and non-Western, communist and non-communist, and thereby justifiying their work and their existence in holding fast to their respective ‘faith’…all of them remain faithless to the larger question of the fate of the planet.

And it is the question of being faithful or non-faithful that grips much of the rhetoric and much of the debate and the mind-set that is profiting the pharmaceuticals, the alcohol and tobacco companies, the weapon-producing oligopolies, the cyber-security behemoths, and the AI weaponization and monetizing of the oligarchs who are riding the current tide of cash….whose size and dimension, like another obliterating cloud, keeps us from seeing the underlying existential crisis again….

Like Leningin’s ants, we ‘herd’ ourselves on the right or the left, on the side of the muscular approach to Trump or the diplomatic, on the pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian, on the pro-Palestine or the pro-Israeli, on the Pro-Taiwan or the pro-China side of each of our perceived conflicts….and belonging, at whatever cost, is another of the driving imperatives for each of us….an imperative that brings with it another ‘faithlessness’ to our personal, majority of ONE….that sees the values and risks, the pro and the con arguments for each of the resolutions of our shared, and converging conflicts….and, we all have the obligation to recognize and respect, to realize and to accept our individual responsibility for, not a single conflict, or its resolution, but for a state of mind that embeds, and infests its collective  mind-set of hopelessness and despair that in the convergence of these horrendous crises, we will collectively be swallowed, like the co-ed on the beach of the Dominican by the cumulative and irresistible physical and inescapable force….

And fail to realize that it is the relinquishing of the force of our majority of one that enables and permits and even enhances the vehemence and the intractability of the forces of perceived existential crises…in the plural…when, we all know that keeping it simply stupid, is our own way to perceive and to participate in our lives.

I defer from obedient obsession to a singular person, any person fully conscious that no one person warrants such obeisance. I also defer from obsessive-compulsive adherence to a single religion, knowing that each has its merits and darknesses, its truths and its lies. I also defer from obsessive-compulsive conviction in my own and any other’s absolute access and consciousness of absolute “RIGHT” and am left in between the incompleteness and the ambiguities and the immoralities and blindnesses of each of the positions, especially those adopted as absolute  by any person, religion, political party, nation or ideology.

Let’s try to begin to defer from a public media, in any and all quarters, that espouses to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…in the full knowledge that no one, and no institution, and no politician and no clergy can or does tell the whole truth. We live in and with the shades of light and darkness that surround and accompany every single person and thing….and to live in a world that denies such a foundational cornerstone, is both foolhardy and unsustainable.

Thanks to Thoreau for introducing the majority of ONE….even to a sceptic of the right’s ideology of the small government….except when it comes to their apparent obsession to impose a hygienic and clinical sterility on the culture in which we are all attempting to continue to breathe.

 

Who's ready?

 There are some obvious parallels trumpeting their existence and their similar dangers among world powers. Russia has invaded Ukraine with the intent of bringing her to her knees, if not actually prostrate before the Great Russian Bear. And while none of us would ever have dreamt, and certainly not anticipated it, The United States is enviously, deviously and brazenly threatening to ‘invade’ Canada, first in and through economic and diplomatic threats and incursions, in order to bring her bowing and scraping and begging for annexation to the Great Behemoth of the plutocracy of unfettered capitalism. To the side of this stage, in North America, the American media has noted the president has directed the Pentagon to prepare all options for the take-over of Panama, whose two port cities have just been sold to the American corporation, BlackRock, in a move than irritates, at least, China. At the same time, Greenland, just having voted for independence from Denmark, although she was declared a protectorate of the U.S. after Denmark’s occupation by Nazi Germany, during World War II, in 1940, prior to the U.S. entering the war. Following the war, the pre-war arrangement was restored.

Imperialism, whether under the banner of Russia, Israel, or the United States, or even China, (think Hong Kong and Taiwan), is nevertheless imperialism. And, in the current context, despots are the primary agents of this now galloping thrust in geopolitics.

Imperialism, by any other name is still domination, and domination is not able to be restricted or constrained by national boundaries. Just ask the hundreds of thousands of American public service workers whose jobs have been eliminated, under the pretext of waste, fraud, and corruption. (Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!) Or ask the millions of American government employees who now work for Cabinet Secretaries who, by their public admission, are determined to eviscerate the very departments to which they have been appointed. Their professional and personal credentials, if they have any, notwithstanding, it appears that none of them would ever have been recruited by a self-respecting corporation, or organization.

So, just as in Moscow, so in Washington, where a cluster of oligarchs sycophanticly genuflect to the emperor (who has no clothes), in order to prop up these papier-mache governments, led by cardboard cut-outs of men, whose only claim to power is their mendacious rhetoric, in support of their private-fantastical visions of utopia, all of it at the expense and destruction of what the world considered the ‘liberal world order’ of the last three-quarters of a century.

Guns and cash, in humungus proportions, however, can seduce these tyrants of their invincibility, and also their claim to self-righteousness, in pursuit of their hollow and vacuous ambitions.

In 1848, Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay entitled, Civil Disobedience, in which we find words, ideas, perceptions and attitudes that seem to have some direct application to the world we are living in in 2025.

(But) the rich man…is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the ‘means’ are increased. The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor. (Thoreau, Walden and other Writings, Prospero Books, p. 291)

Of course, attempting to convince the despots and the oligarchs to read and to digest such thoughts, and to change their ways, would be analogous to strapping a single bed sheet to a mast and expecting to survive a tornado in the mid-Atlantic. Foolhardy and frivolous! It is to the rest of us, the millions of Americans, Canadians, Russians, and even Israelites, and perhaps to the people of all cultures, ethnicities, languages and religions, that the words and their import might have some chance to be considered. We live in a time when the question of money is not merely a method of keeping score, for a game of trading, exchange of baubles for furs; the archetypal god of the anima mundi is, Plutus, the personification of riches. And our herd-like adoration and adulation of any and all of his icons, has become the ‘food for which all of the Pavlovian dogs will do anything that imitates or replicates the bell, in order to grab, as greedily as possible, the money.

And, as one of the more obvious proofs that money has become our surrogate religion, we have no one, no organization, no court, and certainly no mosque, synagogue, cathedral or monastery sounding the alarm, and demanding the ‘turning of the tables’ that we so desperately need. Politics and governance, in North America, and around the world, is measured by how the government demonstrates stewardship of the public accounts. Transforming millions of individuals into entrepreneurs, via the internet, has the benefit of lifting many out of poverty, while enabling connections between consumer and artisan across the globe. Micro-loans, and the supporting tutelage to nurture the micro-businesses enhance the likelihood of their survival. It is at the ‘top end’ of the economic ladder that excessive wealth does what only excessive wealth can do, it corrupts absolutely (to borrow and amend Burke’s adage). If Thoreau’s observation that the only question the excessively rich man has to answer is how to spend it, and thus the moral ground has been taken from under his feet, it follows that we are increasingly under the thumb of precisely such men!

And as we watch their sycophantic, narcissistic, greed-based, moth-flutter to the bulb of the ‘top-dog,’ they take with them not only their insatiable appetite for more money, but also the determination to re-set the rules of the game of all political and economic ideologies, dispensing the capitalism and socialism and communism, and replacing all of them with oligarchism, a superficial mascara for tyranny.

These men care not a wit for other people; they care even less for the health of the planet and its environmental requisites for the sustaining of human life; they care not a wit for the poor and their right to public education, effective and accessible health care, the right to free speech, access to free and objective (not despotically controlled and manipulated) public information, and the personal and private security from the ‘state’ authorities all of whom answer and bow and scrape to the equivalent of the mob boss, now governing too many jurisdictions.

Like fiscal, physical, emotional, intellectual, political and power-obsessed clones, there is a new set of terrorist-gang leaders, under the guise of ‘phony’ elections and self-appointed perpetuity.

In in deep and graphic relief, are a few, count them on our fingers, rich men who, having attained considerable wealth, have at least read and reflected on Thoreau’s counsel: to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor. Names like Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros, (and doubtless others) shine like beacons, in an otherwise dark galaxy of men of excessive wealth. Indeed, there are also many, lesser known, and to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor perhaps with less money, who themselves are fully engaged in philanthropic ventures to help others.

Having collaborated, whether consciously or not, in the erection of this shrine to the economic gods, we are all now impaled in the implications of both its attempt to destroy what we naively considered established ‘law’ and tradition, and custom and ‘world order,’ as well as the civilizations’ need to direct its attention, ambition, vision, imagination and energy to the monumental job of turning this ‘ship’ of public convention, military nuclear subs, drones, missile, and nuclear bombs away from what appears to this scribe as a head-long addiction to ‘self-sabotage’. We can see that the moral found has been removed from under the feet of these despots leaving no hope of their metanoia away from the addiction to personal power at all costs, into some modicum of mercy, compassion and universal equality.

Trade wars, flying like drones in the shape of tariffs, are now circling the globe, with the elemental and juvenile ‘tit-for-tat’ that demonstrates the moral and political and ideational bankruptcy of these MEN. Real drones, too, are laying their devastation when and wherever they find their military target. Operated anonymously, from some computer screen, on the opposite side of the planet from their target, they provide a clinical detachment for the killers, as well as for those ordering their deployment. Save the Children, UNICEF, Doctors without Borders, War Child, Ukrainian Foundation, and the plethora of other agencies cannot and will not be able to keep pace with the human devastation, no matter now successful their fund-raising efforts turn out to be.

We are all complicit as child-killers, refugee-generators, agents of migrant-seeking desperate hordes and millions of men, women and children who are starving and dying right before our eyes, on our screens and in the depths of our hearts, whether seen or not. A headline in The Humanitarian, this week, reads:

“The data streams that underpin humanitarian response are about to collapse.” The story continues: The FEWS NET, (Famine Early Warning Systems Network is a website of information and analysis of food insecurity created in 1985 by USAID, and the US Department of State after famines in East and West Africa. This week’s story reads:

On 21 February, anyone trying to access FEWS NET found a dead webpage. The site is a critical early warning data resource, which for 40 years has informed humanitarian response to hunger crises before they escalate into famines. Now, it is an early casualty to the USAID defunding crisis and an alarming harbinger of the assault on the data infrastructure that underpins humanitarian action.

This kind of back story, naturally, will not, indeed cannot make headlines, given the cataract of bluster, blunder and bombast spewing from the MOUTH in the Oval Office. No news outlet, with the best intentions, can or will keep up with the ‘poisoning smog’ a gaseous stream of lies constructed, written and disseminated to inflate the egos of the oligarchs and to distract the millions of ‘mere minions’ all of them easily duped, as perceived, believed and enacted by the men at the top of the hierarchical pyramid.

“World War III” is a phrase being chanted both in Washington and in Moscow, almost as if the same song-and-play-book were being deployed in both capitals. And who can or will doubt it is? Just as we are all refugee-generators, and child-killers, we also have the potential and the opportunity to emulate men like Zelensky, Starmer, Macron, and hopefully Carney, the newly minted Prime Minister of Canada, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.

Divesting oligarchs of their wealth, while their perceived ‘idols’ willfully protect them and their power and wealth, so long as they remain loyal, and then eviscerate them at the first sign of disloyalty, is and will be a long-range project. Removing the despots, too, will require ‘acts of nature’ of which we are only groping for hints. It is the question of mounting determined, disciplined, convicted and courageous public opposition to the rape and pillage, not only of the ‘world order’ but of the lives of innocents, seemingly for the ‘fun-of-it,’ because ‘they can,’ that looms as the call to both action and to hope, if we are to have any.

Buying Canadian products, in the face of American illegitimate and illegal tariffs, while noble and honourable, will not dent the ego or the determination of the orange balloon in Washington. Even cutting off electricity to three American states, while it has been withdrawn, will replicate a fly on the lapel of the president, brushed off and dismissed summarily, in another act of contempt, disrespect and insulting patronizing.

Even marching to the embassies, and consulates, while honourable and noble, will never penetrated the Chuvalo-thick skulls of those in either the White House or the Kremlin. Recognizing the depth, the severity and the determination of those predators and perpretators of this scourge that stretches across oceans, continents, ideologies and ethnicities, and into the depths of the human psyche, means that we all are being conscripted, whether formally or informally or voluntarily, into action. Ou uniforms are our street clothes; our weapons are our words, our feet, our phones, our laptops and our neighbours. Our mission is to bring this (these) demoniacal monsters to heel and it will take ever last one of us, if we are to be even partially successful.

Those who have been calling us to join the fight to protect the environment, are the very ones for whom all of us must take up this ‘fight’….not with military arms, not with lies and propaganda, and not with the kind of personal pursuit of glory that motivates many of the heroes of history…but with a humility, and a determination, and a creativity that defies the thumb, the heel and the intransigent ego and vacuity of the villains.

As Prime Minister Carney asked rhetorically, ‘Who’s ready?’

The depth and breadth of the crisis Canada faces...

We are not only facing a global conflict between oligarchs/tyrants/despots and democracy.

We are not only facing a global conflict between globalization and internationalism, or between internationalism and nationalism.

We are not only facing a global conflict between environmental protectionists and environmental deniers and obstructionists.

We are not only facing a world-wide conflict between advocates for DEI and dogmatic absolutist opponents of all forms of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

We are not only facing a global conflict between healthy masculinity and toxic, to the point of cancerous, masculinity.

We are not only facing a global tension between macro-economics and micro-economics.

We are not only facing a global conflict between religions, primarily between Islam and Christianity and between Islam and Judaism.

We are also facing a political, economic, epistemological and philosophical and psychological and ethical conflict and profound confusion about how to imagine, design, devise and execute a transition from the ‘old world order’ to a ‘new world order.’

‘Who will have ‘power’ and how will that power be conceptualized, defined, deployed and restrained?’ is a question that underlies each and every single iteration of the conflicts going forward. Binary, zero-sum equations, while they may have applications in some specific situations, are difficult, if not impossible to transfer and transmit from personal, familial and small to medium business applications to the global theatre. In the ‘theatre’ as an archetype, the playwright deploys dialogue between the characters as the agents of his theme, to carry out a plot, to embody their respective characters and to impact the audience in any of several faces of catharsis.

If our planetary ‘theatre’ is to be imagined as one shared by each and every one extant, and also each and every one, for at least seven generations, as the indigenous cultures expects and imagines and take account for, and we are all, somehow in some way articulating a kind of script, seeking for similar and different scripts, the world stage could not be more divided into ‘camps’ or ‘battalions’ in which each of us ‘sees’ ourselves as embedded with the ‘good guys’ and in mortal and life-and-death conflict with the ‘bad guys’.

I grew up in a small town in which the protestant batallion quite literally hated and was contemptuous of the Roman Catholic battalion. Even the Northern Ireland evangelical clergy incarnated such hatred from the pulpit: ‘If you are Roman Catholic you are going to hell!” words uttered in such a bigoted and self-righteous and hubristic manner and tone that they continue to ‘ring’ in my memory six decades later.

A parallel “either-or” seems to not only cloud but actually obliterate most if not all potentially reasonable, debatable, relatable discussion of each and every issue. And, the male bullies have taken over the airwaves, while abandoning both intellect and integrity at least on the North American and European ‘sets’ of this theatre’s stage..

In the U.S. election in November 2024, the primary western bully eviscerated his female opponent with hateful, character assassinations unbecoming  even the guttural mind and tongue of the drug cartel leaders, or the mafia. Positioning rational, carefully considered platform positions, in a campaign style of uplifting, hopeful and inspiring psychology, as Kamala Harris did so eloquently, in the end bounced off the dismissive tongue and finger-tips of the orange megalomanic. And they also found no receptive soil in the hatred, vengeance, racism, misogyny, and thuggery of his cult. Indeed, his cult became empowered in their absolutism that the ’woke’ crowd have been and were continuing to destroy the nation.

Pouring all of their contempt, jealousy, bigotry, racism and anger into their self-righteous rebellion, the MAGA millions returned the orange monster to the Oval Office now surrounded and aided and abetted by an army of sycophantic bigots and thugs assigned various leadership and executive titles and role throughout the government. One man has effectively, at least for the time being, brought about a coup or overthrow of what had been the United States government for well over 200 years. He has also overthrown American friendships, alliances, treaties and commitments to the WHO, to NATO, to USAID, and to the millions of government workers serving in hundreds of departments and agencies.

That degree of devastation, however, is still not enough to satisfy his insatiable appetite for power. He seeks to invade, both economically, and if necessary militarily, Panama, Greenland, and, so far only economically, Canada. Lately there has been even talk of re-drawing the boundary between the U.S. and Canada.

At the same moment, Canada is fully engaged in a political debate, within the Liberal Party, for a new leader to replace Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and in the nation at large, over how to ‘cope’ with the ravings of this unleashed, green-broke monster of a U.S. president, along with most European nations, save and except those loyal to Putin, North Korea, Belarus….and perhaps???? The public debates of the candidates for the Liberal leadership have, very politely, rationally, calmly and credibly addressed various approaches to tariffs, sovereignty, economics, inter-provincial trade, and enhanced production capacity as well as enhanced alliances in both economic/trade matters as well as national security.

One candidate, Ms Freeland, has even gone so far as to publicly indicate an intention to invite the Secretary General of NATO to her proposed meetings on both enhanced trade and shared security arrangements with Europe. That recommendation is not only meritorious, it is singular in its taking the current situation so seriously as to invoke some anxiety among some.

From the perspective of this scribe, it is only a first step in addressing how existential to Canada, in the first instance, and to the rest of Europe and perhaps even Asia is and will continue to be this menace in the Oval Office. Catastrophizing, at this moment, is a word that needs to be erased from our public debate and perception of the situation. It is not to catastrophize to envisage a U.S. attempt to ‘take-over’ if not economically and politically, at least to continue to berate America’s closest neighbour and ally for over 200 years, (since the war of 1812) with insults to our leaders, insults to our policies (drugs pouring into the U.S. and excessive trade imbalances, as well as ‘cheating’ the U.S. by depending on national security protection).

The friendly tension between the two front-runners, Mr. Carney and Ms Freeland, over who can be, is and will be toughest in dealing with the occupant of the Oval Office, while it is the central question of the leadership vote, is hardly the principal question for the country. Liberals voting for a leader will most likely be pre-occupied with that question.

However, the context is far more complex, far more nuanced, and far more dangerous than a mere ‘personality’ or ‘character’ or resume-based assessment both of the need in a leader and for the nation to conceptualize its current reality and how to go forward. Trump reduces every issue to one of competing personalities, even Canada has been ‘unfair’ as if we were a cheater on the international stage….only a bully who does engage in and is permitted to engage in such infantile reductionisms, even uses words of such vacuity. The media, on both sides of the 49^th parallel, having never seen, contemplated or even imagined a political drama like this one to have to report on, is exaggeratedly complicit in both fawning over and headlining the trump vacuity, lies and deceptions, all of them generated as trumpet blasts to inflate his hollow ego and person….for the purpose of attaining and holding onto power. And Canadian politicians, both federal and provincial are falling over themselves either on their way to Washington or into the office of some ‘assistant to the assistant’ to the president to present a case for withdrawal of announced tariffs.

For the media, perhaps all of these ‘genuflectings’ invite support and perhaps even electoral support (last night Premier Ford of Ontario received a massive popular vote). However, taken as a scene in the larger drama, they are little more than entertaining ‘chorus’ of the potential Greek tragedy.

Hardly noticed in Canada, on the other hand, has been the quiet, serious, calm, self-possessed and confident voice of the leader of Mexico, a newly elected female who refuses to be ‘cowed’ by the orange inflated balloon. And, it is that model of counter-balancing, female leadership that Ms Freeland offers  to and for Canadians, who, perhaps for the first time since 1939, have to adopt a perspective that includes all of Europe, Ukraine especially, and our allies in the South Pacific, like Japan and South Korea.

The schmoozing of both Macron and Starmer in the Oval Office, cannot and will not be replicated by either Ms Caludia Sheinbaum, president of Mexico, a politician, scientist and academic, nor Ms Freeland, also a politician, journalist and academic. And it is not only their achievements that enables them to take a very different posture in dealing with their respective crises, while representing their nations; it is also their steel-spines that have supported and enabled them to make their way through a male-dominated political culture to their respective leadership posts.

Men, on the other hand, have operated in and with a very different masculine culture, one that has been deeply embedded in the psychic, political and social and intellectual culture for centuries. And that culture is one that the occupant of the Oval Office has and will continue to dominate through lies, deceptions, hugs, hand-shakes, smiles and bonhomie….the grease that he thinks (believes, or knows nothing else) enables him to ‘screw’ everyone he attempts to make a deal with. There will be no touching, charming, schmoozing, or de-stabilizing of Ms Freeland in the Oval Office, nor will there be with Ms Sheinbaum. And, instead of the ‘guest’ being dis-armed, it will be the host who will be dis-armed….and that needs to be the opening salvo of any healthy negotiations for Mexico and Canada, with this chauvinist pig.

Women, in general, have coped with such male bullshit for centuries….and both Ms Sheinbaum and Ms Freeland are unlikely exceptions to that coping. Furthermore, the aspirations, visions and inspirations of millions of young, middle-aged and even greying women can and will only be enhanced, for the benefit of everyone on the planet, with the accession to leadership, in Canada, of Ms Freeland.

We need a much broader, deeper, and more creative perception, attitude and discipline that is or will be embodied in re-treading male-leadership models at this time. Angela Merkel, former Chancellor of Germany, currently undergoing some public disrepute for her open-border policies, nevertheless, captained both the EU and Germany through her encounters with Putin, different from Shultz and Merz. It is not that women have exclusive access to creative imagination nor to steel spines; it is just in this case that Ms Freeland offers a unique combination of education, experience and gender that Canada and North America and the new world order can and will benefit from. She is much more than and different from a ‘ferocious mother’…..she is a highly educated, articulate, experienced and disciplined female, potentially facing a convicted sex abuser, liar, despot, tyrant and megalomaniac, aligned with at least one other clone in the Kremlin.

Everything has changed for Canada and the world...

 “Zelinskyy is a dictator without elections and Ukraine started the war,” words uttered both in writing and orally by the occupant of the Oval Office yesterday.

All the multiple threats of tariffs, trade war, take-overs in Greenland, Gaza and Panama, withdrawal from the Paris Environmental Accord and the WHO, the demolition of USAID, plus the evisceration of the federal government under the ruse of ‘eliminating waste, fraud and abuse,’ pale to the obvious obsequious pandering to Putin by the orange dictator of America.

For Canada, this marks a significant shift in focus from the need to address primarily, or exclusively economic and fiscal and trade issues, to a focus on geopolitics and this shift needs to be made urgently. No longer are the protocols, the language, the subtlety and the patience that characterize diplo-speak-and-act, adequate to meet the situation. World leaders are stunned and gob-smacked, off balance and nervous and they would be sleeping under a rock if they were not. Can the EU coalesce around the need to provide security troops in Ukraine, should a peace be arranged? Can the EU and Canada scramble fast enough to ramp up both security and trade agreements and deals that might give NATO some ‘oxygen’ as it gasps in the Emergency Room of geopolitics for its very existence? Can world leaders align with conviction and muscle and commitment, those who espouse, believe in and embody the basic tenets of democracy, including the right to vote, the right to free speech, the right to personal security from a malignant government/state, and resistance to the oligarchical, right-wing, white supremacist and nationalist winds that are sweeping across much of the globe?

We in Canada are in the midst of two elections, the first for the provincial government of Ontario, the nation’s most populous province, the second for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and Prime Minister. It is the national debate and discussion that seems most relevant and cogent here and now.

Two candidates, Marc Carney and Chrystia Freeland currently, according to polls and Elections Canada fundraising data, lead a pack of some 5 candidates. And both the prevailing theory, and public opinion hold that Mr. Carney, the former Governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, holds a significant lead over Ms Freeland. It is his ‘resume’ that has galvanized many members of the Liberal Party, those who will cast a vote for leader. Balancing the books, splitting the operating and the capital budget, in order to achieve ‘balance’ at least in one area, is an idea at the top of the Carney list of proposals. His primary focus, and expertise, it must be acknowledged, is economics, fiscal and monetary policy. And at a time when the cost of living is paramount in the minds and pocket-books of Canadians, the perception of any likelihood of a Liberal victory in the upcoming election seems to ride on the wave of both how to “deal” with the Trump threats against trade and Canadian sovereignty (he wants our natural resources, especially water and minerals and energy), and how to fix the Canadian economy. Canadians, too, especially Liberals, it must be acknowledged, really gravitate to a ‘winner’ a kind of projection of a leader to whom we can look up and admire, as if such a personage, whether the most appropriate or not, is our choice. And rising levels of anxiety foretell a return to ‘previous, reliable and dependable’ modes of both thought and behaviour. As pollster Nik Nanos puts it, “The race is Carney’s to lose!”

In this space, contrarian views seek revisiting, reflection, and uploading. And, based on the convergence of all the ‘dots’ on the radar screen of this scribe, especially given the global rise of a less than 1% of super-rich wannabe oligarchs, and the umbilical cord to power that leaders like Putin and Trump offer, their hooks are likely to remain firmly embedded in power for some time to come. And the relation between dictators and sycophants is based on more than money; those who write cheques are symbiotically enmeshed to their tyrants in and through their acts of adoring and adulating and flattering those tyrants. Who needs whom more is a question begging both untangling and doctoral research projects.

From the perspective of a low-middle-class octogenarian, this Canadian sees Mr. Carney, with respect, as a fitting image, if not actual mirror, of the elite mentality, ideation and imagination of the elites with whom he has worked his whole life. Some might call this reverse snobbery, the lower class being resentful of the upper class. I reject this judgement in this case simply because the future of Canada in a boiling global cauldron eclipses any notions of personal animus or prejudice based on this scribes resentment of the upper class.

What Canada needs is a Liberal leader and Prime Minister who has lived in  refugee camps and has lived with complex struggle from the beginning, as well as through the halls and libraries of various universities, and in the news rooms of multiple major news organizations. The perspective attitudes, imagination and resourcefulness that can really only come from such a broad, varied and challenging life story differ significantly from those bred in the board-rooms of national banks. It is not that those who have worked in national banks are less than, from the perspective of human dignity, personal worthiness or ethics. It is more that, in this case, the sensibilities of the board-room are not congruent with the nature of the exigencies that Canada and the world face. I know, personally, neither Mr. Carney nor Ms Freeland and I have no personal need to lean to one or the other.

It is simply and exclusively a deep-seated perception and attitude that keeps repeating the notion that a popular banker, although favoured by a majority of Cabinet and members of Parliament, and certainly in possession of vastly larger contributions from a considerably larger cadre of donors, is less fitted, and paradoxically less ‘complex’ and ‘subtle’ in imagination, in sensibility and in both compassion and empathy, a discernment that unsuccessfully begs empirical proof. Intuition is guiding and directing these keys, on this very cold February morning, only a couple of weeks prior to the March 9^th voting day for Liberal Party leader.

Amid all of the roiling geopolitical currents, at root, I want a government that puts the plight of the least among us (in our neighbourhood, province, nation and globe and that includes Ukraine and Palestine!) at the top of the decision-making totem of options…and keeps its eye on the victim. While the world is trumpeting extreme macho, alpha-male sexism, ageism, racism, and exclusion, I defer to a leader whose depth of experience and perception and attitudes slightly overshadows (perhaps by 51-49) those of the leading candidate. And Ms Freeland remains my choice as my reasons continue to become more clear.

Why I am even more enthusiastic in support of Chrystia Freeland on February 16, with a vote on March 9.

“The liberal leadership race is over-- Mr. Carney has it-- and no one is talking about either Chrystia Freeland or Karina Gould,” declares Bob Fife, Ottawa Bureau Chief for the Globe and Mail,  on CTV’s Question Period.

“The liberal leadership race is Mr. Carney’s to lose,” intones pollster Nik Nanos on the same program.

Rob Benzie, Queen’s Park Bureau Chief for the Toronto Star, reminds us that the Liberals are known for their preference for a 'winner'…. “and yet no one is talking these days about Michael Ignatieff nor Stephane Dion” both of whom were supposed to be saviours of the Liberal Party.

While Ms Gould repeatedly reminds Liberals ‘we do not want a coronation!’ the prospect of a coronation of a ‘governor’ of two central banks, in Canada and in Great Britain has taken much of the party by storm. As one male voter puts it, ‘I am voting on his resume as the best chance to win the next election.’ A female voter puts it this way, “I really want to vote for Chrystia Freeland, but I am afraid that the Liberals might not win the election, as compared with the chances offered by Mr. Carncy.”

Electoral victory, in the national election expected shortly after the leadership vote, seems very important to many, and a highly qualified male candidate seems to have garnered MP support, Cabinet support and many new memberships in the party…all of this highly commendable.

Canadian novelist and social critic, Margaret Atwood, reminds us in her pithy insight:

“We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.”

Chrystia Freeland is, we can all agree, a powerful woman. She has served as Deputy-Prime Minister in the Liberal government, served as international journalist and written a provocative work entitled, Plutocrats, the Rise of the New Global super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, is fluent in five languages, and brings her early childhood life on the prairies, parented by two lawyer parents who separated when she was nine. A graduate of more than a few colleges and universities, Ms Freeland brings a global perspective and experience, as well as a deeply intimate consciousness of the plight of the voiceless and the powerless. Her maternal grandparents fled Ukraine in 1939; her mother was born in an American Army-run refugee camp in Germany. Ms Freeland speaks fluent Ukrainian in addition to English, French, Russian and Italian. She and her family, parents and three sisters found refuge in Canada, like many other Ukrainians.

As a journalist, she worked for the Financial Times, the Economist, and the Washington Post, eventually heading the FT Moscow bureau. She was deputy editor of the Globe and Mail, and the Financial Times, and then managing editor of the Financial Times in 2010, when she returned to Thomson Reuters as managing editor and editor of consumer news. In 2013, Ms Freeland gave a Ted Talk on global income inequality.

She is definitely not an anomaly! And it is this stereotype, at least in part, that might be part of the cultural context of the public ‘adulation’ of the honourable and highly qualified Mr. Carney. However, it was former President Barack Obama who, in a conference in Singapore in 2019, made these comments:

“If women were put in charge of every country…there would be far less war, kids would be better taken care of and there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes.”

He continued, at the same conference; “If you look at the world and look at the problems, it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way. They cling to power, they are insecure, they have outdated ideas and the energy and fresh vision and new approaches are squashed. Now women, I just want you to know, you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you’re better than us men…What we need, in terms of global leadership, is people who are comfortable with and understand complexities…but that, of course,, requires citizens to be comfortable with complexity. Part of the challenge we have as humans is that when things get complicated and confusing we tend to want to block it out and look for simply answers, so we are oftentimes, getting the leadership reflects our own insecurities and problems.

No one can argue that things are not complicated, confusing and that we default to simply answers…..and compound the complexities and the confusion.

Canada, like much of the world, faces serious crises, of economic, geopolitical, military, environmental, jurisdictional, legal and democratic natures…not only separately but in a convergence that is new to all of us. It is the mind, courage, heart and discipline of a woman, in this case, Chrystia Freeland, who, in a straight-forward truth-telling, public speaking style, careful and sensitive to the much more than literal implications of her words, offers Canada a new vision, not only through her specific and detailed policies, but more importantly, in and through her very person, a formidable woman, a model for every young woman and girl in the world to emulate.

Sometimes leaders have to say things that people do not want to hear…and sometimes the politically correct constraints make such tellings less than sexy and palatable….and yet, they need to be said. With the cross-winds of tensions about the future of Ukraine, and thus the future of European security, the future of NATO, the WHO, the global environment, the rise of oligarchies of white nationalist supremacists, the ugliness of Israeli-Palestinian hatred and distrust, the proliferation of lies and disinformation and the need to reinforce international institutions….Canada’s future includes her vigorous, creative, courageous and principled participation on the world stage, while we also take care of business at home.

Chrystia Freeland is the candidate who offers the most comprehensive resume, the most varied experience and the demonstrated proof of her time in the trenches of politics as my choice for leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister. We need not only to be grateful for her contributions already delivered; we need to envision her voice, face, insightful mind and profound courage as our representative on a world stage that is fraught with complexities and confusion. She is the candidate who is most comfortable with and who understands complexities….and we need her now!

Why I am voting for Chrystia Freeland for Liberal Party Leader and Prime Minister

As an accomplished scholar, journalist, politician and social justice fighter, Ms Freeland offers the most profound and complete resume of the candidates in the field. A master of 5 languages, the daughter of a prairie family Ms Freeland, the author of Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, Ms Freeland is neither a rookie to government nor a new-comer to the issue of the divide between the have's and the have-not's. 

Her mind-set is not restricted to a specific academic discipline, nor a specific file; her focus encompases the panorama of issues, and gets to the core of each issue. She is the only candidate who, thus far, has asked the "less than 1% if they really want to live in a land where a young woman seeks an abortion because she does not have adequate funds for contraception'....She is also the only candidate so far who has dubbed the current crisis with the United States as an existential crisis, and has underscored the threat to the sovereignty of Canada as the core issue. She is also the only candidate so far who has publicly (on MSNBC) told the Americans Canada wants the Americans to attend to the flagrant issue of smuggled guns that are killing Canadians at an unacceptable rate.

No a 'johnny-come lately, ' Ms Freeland entered politics when the Liberal Party was on life-support, and served nearly a decade as minister responsible for several portfolios, including the NAFTA CAMUS (Nafta .2), as well as Finance and Deputy Prime Minister. Ms Freeland claims to be running as the ant-establishment candidate, referencing, we can infer, her split with the Prime Minister, and her further inference that the PMO prefers the candidacy of the former Governor of the Bank of Canada. 

Determined to broaden the influence of both parliamentarians and members of the Liberal Party of Canada, as well as to subject the future leader to regular party evalutaions and votes of confidence from the caucus, Ms Freeland advocates for accountability, transparency and a PMO that listens to both the Cabinet, the Caucus and the citizens. Trying to get a message to the Liberal PArty for the last several years, through the party website has been a nightmare for those of us who have tried.

Another honourable candidate, Ms Gould continues to remind party members that 'we do not need a coronation' as has been the preferred 'choice' and method of 'appointing' a new leader for too long. Ms Gould is right that a coronation is neither appropriate for the party nor for the country. And given that the first ballot is a preferential ballot, Ms Gould will be my second choice for leader. It is the question of depth and range of experience that qualifies Ms Freeland, over Ms Gould. My perception of the also honourable third candidate is that, coming from the theatre of central banks, both in Canada and in England, his perspective has been shaped and formed in the board rooms of both insitutions and, while it might bring the business community (and the largest number of cabinet ministers into his fold), I suspect the glow of another shiny object, another 'heroic' masculine alpha leader at a time when the feminine is so clearly needed here in Canada adn around the world. And this need is no better exemplified than in and through the current occupants of the Oval Office where the absolute worst features of toxic masculinity abound, and threaten the stability andf security of not only the United States by the global community.

States-man-ship, even the word demonstrates the implicit bias of the vernacular....Diplomacy, serious thought and analysis, a commoner's perspective, a biography that exudes both confidence and competence, and even a needed note of 'defiance' when necessary,  are just some of the exemplary traits Ms Freeland brings to the table. The inside popularity of the former Bank Governor, paradoxically, eschews the depth of unpopularity of the party over the last several months and a potential desperation to seek a hero or another messiah that can rescue both the party and the government.

There is no heroic messiah either inside Ms Freeland nor projected by her onto the Canadian landscape. She may not be the hail-farewell old-boy who covorts on John Stewart's television show; nor is she the push-over that secured the renewed trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico the last time around. She has demonstrated effective adn responsive relationships with the premiers of the provinces, as has neither of the other two primary candidates.

When I wrote to a friend to ask him to support Ms Freeland, he replied that, while he had listened and watched her interview with Fareed Zakaria on GPS on CNN, he thought she was 'wishy-washy'....that was his word...so he is voting for the former Bank Governor. My response to his 'critique' runs this way:

As a communicator, Ms Freeland has a very unique speaking pace, timbre and pacing. She speaks slowly, thoughfully, reservedly, and extremely precisely. I cannot recall her being caught out on an 'off-the-cuff' comment that seems to be a frequent faux pas of politicians. Her public presentations may, to some, seem somewhat pedantic, and perhaps even a little patronizing, as if she were carefully explaining a complex issue to a person or audience who might be unfamiliar with the nuances and the subtleties of the whole picture. Indeed, I think we can all agree that most of us fall into the category of being far less informed, familiar and steeped in the subtleties and complexes of almost all issues than she is, particularly on those issues on which she speaks publicly.

Care, not only in the details of policy, or the re-discovery and deployment of the party membership, including caucus and cabinet, extends for Ms Freeland to her very manner of delivering whatever it is that needs to be conveyed. This, rather than demonstrating a wishy-washy demeanour, demonstrates a sensitivity, an empathy and a degree of patience with both the subject and the listener that is so clearly missing from most person-to-person and politician-to-public comunications. Carefulness, attention to detail, and mastering of the various files that land on the desk of all chief executives....these are all part of the package that Ms Freeland brings to her candidacy and to the party and nation for their serious consideration.

(This is a wholly independent, unpaid, unsolicited, and private opinion of an absolute outsider.)