Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Theory, perceptions, truths.....have they morphed into "whatever" and "who cares"?


“This is no longer theory,” were the words tumbling from the mouth of another talking head this morning on television following yesterday’s guilty plea to 8 counts of Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort’s guilty verdict on 8 counts.

It is as if truth as a core value in the centre of concentric circles is surrounded, before its firm establishment and after its clarity, in order to forge a path forward, by “theory” or speculation, or intuition or extrapolation or assumption, or presumption or fantasizing or terror.

And before truth can take its rightful place as “established” and “agreed upon” and “beyond dispute” and worthy of validation and respect by a significant body of reasonable people, there are a plethora of explanations for how long this process might take, in each situation. One of the more impactful forces impeding the establishment of public confidence on a piece of information is the weight and the depth of “push-back” from interests threatened by the final victory of truth over speculation.

Take tobacco: for decades, the tobacco companies making these ‘cancer sticks’ denied their impact on human health, in spite of the mountains of evidence filling both cancer wards and graveyards that their products were killing thousands. And even within the last month, the British Columbia government secured a court ruling that prevents tobacco companies from accessing the health records of cancer patients, in their pursuit of damages for costs of health care in the treatment of thousands of smokers. The battle for “truth” including final exposure of the tobacco companies’s pursuit of profit at the expense of individual lives continues, long after the scientific evidence has been proven beyond doubt.

Similarly, on global warning and climate change, the scientific evidence, first postulated by a Swedish scientist in 1896, that human activity is contributing significantly to the rise in global temperatures continues to be denied by many, and disputed by many others. Naturally, those denying and disputing the science are really arguing for their own “special interest” in things like the profits available from mining and selling and burning coal, or from fracking, or from extracting, selling and burning other fossil fuels. And given the large number of factors that play into the gestalt of rising global temperatures, the issue of isolating a single factor seems tremulous at best, and foggy at worst. Nevertheless, as the evidence mounts so too does the sophistication of the instruments available to measure the emission of carbon dioxide and methane, two of the most toxic pollutants.

Nevertheless, because the generally agreed “apocalyptic” year of doom in approximately 2100, most adults now living will no longer be alive when the “sword of Damacles” falls. Consequently, it is very easy for many to put off any urgency on the issue, given that it will fall to generations even beyond their own grandchildren to face the ultimate peril.

And so the “theoretical” debate continues, as protagonists and antagonists pour millions into propagating their unique perspectives. And of course, the “advantage” goes to the corporate interests and their political puppets, whose pockets and whose “advantage” is seen as embedded in “jobs today” and “wages today” and “economic pressures today” as compared with a far-off mirage of devastation that no one really wants to contemplate. Deniers and disputers of global warming and climate change have both money and time on their side, two of the most potent forces driving our contemporary culture. We live in the “moment” and we have injected the lethal steroid of narcissism into our personal demands for instant gratification, in all we do. This further distances us from any foresight into even the next month or year, never mind the next century.

We mud-wrestle then in theory, speculation, hypotheses, while pitch-forking extreme threats and counter-threats in an epic yet hollow drama of the deaf and dumb, both of those in their literal meaning. And as this kerfuffle plays out, no really serious and substantial steps are taken by either governments or corporations to help to slow the rise in temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Theory versus anti-theory has so far not resulted in an agreed synthesis. Scientific fact versus corporate greed has so far not resulted in a synthesis of an equation that respects both in some meaningful manner, given our “binary” universe that simply does not tolerate collaboration, compromise and the rough patches needed to achieve that synthesis. (The Trudeau government is talking the balanced respect for the economy and the environment so far without many serious partners.)

On the future side of fact we find more theoretical witnesses, many of them exploring the new evidence emerging from space, about millions of galaxies like our own, and the potential of “life” having existed or even currently existing on any other planet. There is also the “future” theoretical basis of artificial intelligence having a much greater role in the functions currently conducted by humans, including vehicles, medical diagnoses,  medical treatment and the future of what today we call “work” and the implications of a potential guaranteed income for all.

Experiments, like the one in California, where a select group of low-income citizens are being “given” a specified dollar income for the purpose of discerning how they will use that money, are significant attempts to validate the theory that an guaranteed annual income is not wasteful of public monies. Of course, the political “right” will scream long and loud that this is a waste of “hard-earned taxpayer money” and fight the proposition with all the energy, and distortion of whatever the facts prove to be, they can muster, with large loads of cash from their bankers.

We, the people of the world generally, and certainly in North America and particularly in the United States, have been watching another political/legal/ethical drama unfold. That is the narrative that is, and continues to be the story of the presidential election and administration of mr trump. For many months, speculation ran rampant that this man was unfit for the office. And while Hillary Clinton voiced that view during the campaign, her words were dismissed as mere campaign rhetoric. As the election ended, and the evidence of Russian interference in the campaign became public, (and perhaps even continued to grow) in spite of all efforts by the election “winner” to frustrate the attempt, a Special Prosecutor was appointed to look at whether or not there was any connection (collusion, conspiracy) between the trump campaign and the Russian hackers.

Depending on which side of the political divide one occupies, the theories of what actually happened ebbed and flowed, capturing headlines, tweets, and talk-show airtime for the last eighteen months take on their own colour and shading and leaning and relative impact on others. And the “theories” are also hatched out of the depth of emotions that events and personalities generate.

Theories that trump is not to be trusted, for example, spawned multiple critical exposes in various publications, while theories that Hillary Clinton was not to be trusted also led to multiple “theories” some of which generated action and serious harm.
In our personal encounters, too, we have ‘theories’ about how the world works and how other people think and act. Often, too, we simply our perceptions into those things and people, foods, movies and music, activities and travel destinations that we “like” or “dislike” depending on what is usually highly superficial and often anecdotal perceptions (theories) of others. An d depending on whether or not we “trust” those sources, we “germinate” our own theories (calling them perceptions, attitudes, feelings and impressions. And while they are unique to each of us, they are not intended to approximate a truth that can be said to be universal, or even wide spread. Between partners, too, for example, select questions like “Does this make me look fat?” asked by the female in a relationship evoke a highly nuanced reply, if the male intends to retain the respect of his inquirer. “You look very nice!” suffices in almost all instances. Similarly, if a man asks his partner if he is looking “old” or “haggard” or “too heavy” he is likely expecting (and certainly hoping) to hear, “Not to me!” or some other equally ambiguous non-answer.

We do like to think our “feelings” are absolute truths, worthy of the utmost respect and honour from our colleagues, as if our sensibilities could generate only “true” emotions. And, of course, our memories are also “infallible” in that they generate only “true” dissertations of events from our past. Truth be told, our feelings, fleeting and changeable as they are, and memories, tepid and “impressionist” as they have to be, have a ‘ring’ of truth, but leave out and exaggerate elements depending on our “emotional memory” of the incident, whether or not it was a personal direct experience, or second hand, as from a book, or from a repeated story by another.

Medical diagnoses, while sometimes highly accurate and ‘truthful,’ also tend to be speculative, as they must be, depending on the incisive analysis of the presiding doctor or nurse. Certainly any prediction about a firm prognosis, for example, is highly speculative and usually acknowledged as such. Weather forecasts, although much more “accurate” than in decades past, are so fluid and dependent on extremely fast-moving air currents, temperature variations and atmospheric stability. Nevertheless, many of us speak of them as “true” unless and until there are several days in a row when the “weatherman” was wrong. And then we flip into a dismissive and derisive attitude, reducing all weather reports to “flim-flam”.

If we are willing to face the core truths of our lives, we spend a large amount of our “awake” time in speculation, theorizing, offering opinions and skirting direct questions, preferring the oblique, or as some would have it, obtuse, to the straight-forward and basic truth.

Much of our “social” behaviour, reputation and public respect depends on our “nice” and non-confrontational responses to most conversations, demonstrating what T.S. Eliot told us long ago, that humans cannot deal with too much reality (including truth). Much even of pastoral care is, or has been, couched in terms that can be described as “gentle, tepid, unoffensive, supportive and indirect.” Just this week I listened to a person deride the medical profession for telling a family member with a fatal illness, that she was near death. Thinking it was a cruel comment, he might have preferred a less direct exchange. As I listened, and gave some credence and support to the professionals, he did agree that the person and her family were quite deep in denial and probably warranted a clear assessment of the prognosis.

Several years ago, the medical profession was in the habit of telling patients at the time of a first diagnosis with cancer, that they were going to die, only to learn that such “information” exacerbated their cancer, leading to an even earlier demise than might have been expected. The practice was then discontinued and perhaps discretion and judgement of the whole situation, including the readiness of the patient and family for the whole truth, plays a more significant part in the decision to disclose with compassion.

Yesterday, in two court rooms, two men’s lives were changed, with the prospective implications for others, including the president of the United States. His proclivity to trumpet his own version of the truth, whether or not it conforms to the perceptions of even one other person, has brought to the front of our minds the question of what truth is, where we can find, where it decidedly is not, and how reliant on its steady resonance each of us really is.

The human capacity to dissemble, prevaricate, mislead, distort and confuse, both deliberately and unconsciously, is so prevalent in our contemporary culture, not only from individual political leaders, and from corporations and from many sources that our collective trust and confidence has been shattered. And so has the stability and trust in our institutions, including something we call democracy.

Judging by the cries of “Lock her up!” at last night’s political rally in West Virginia, the people in the trump-cult have a very different real on the legal events from those two courtrooms than that talking head on television. For them the “guilt” does not matter, is theoretical at best, irrelevant or worse, proof that the “establishment” is their’s and trump’s worst nightmare.

Monday, August 20, 2018

More than "will" needed to heal trauma


The Kelly Clarkson song Stronger (What doesn’t kill you) is the story of a woman left by some man “she” thinks has had the last laugh. The song demonstrates the folly of that mistake.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Footsteps even lighter

And while the song is another of many hymns to feminist strength, it has many other applications. Demonstrating forebearance under the weight of the inevitable, predictable and often deeply penetrating wounds that “life” dishes out is something we all have an opportunity to nurture.

As a psychic antidote to emotional pain and a testament to emotional strength, the meme has some legitimacy. As a permission “ticket” to hurt others, however, it is reprehensible and intolerable. The question underlying the meme is which insults, wounds, character assassinations and betrayals are to be withstood as “growing” experiences, and which are to be challenged, rejected and considered legitimate cause for withdrawal or worse? And the question haunts each of us every day. Through the lens of this question we view the outside world, the workplace, the community in which we live, and the nation we call home.

Our personal biographical experience, in our childhood and adolescence, plays a significant role in shaping, colouring, and even in fogging the lens through which we continue to perceive “the world”….forming our “world view”. If we have been abused (and who has not been abused somewhat) that abuse informs our “sense” of how the world works. If the abuse is perpetrated by a family member, our capacity to trust the “outside” world is weakened, if not actually depleted. If our early pain comes from a serious illness, through the fault of no person, including the patient, the world will be seen as caring, supportive, mostly kind and populated by reasonable admirable people.

If our teachers demonstrate a kind of fear in the manner of their “relationships” with their students, those students will assimilate a perception, along with an attitude, that adults are not role models to whom to look  and to emulate. If the principals in our schools, themselves, are primarily politically motivated and career-resume-building, their “interest” (or the lack thereof) in their students and teachers will be part of the atmosphere and ethos in which we are “learning” more than what is contained in the text books. Discipline, detentions, and the reasons for them, personal greetings, and the kind of  extra-curricular activities ‘licensed’  as well as how free those activities are permitted to operate….these are the kind of cultural signals that almost imperceptibly and unconsciously contribute to a sense of ‘safety’ and security and trust that deepens one’s perception of “authority” for many years. Discipline, (read punishment) that clearly does not ‘fit’ the offence, is a red flag in the interior “justice” system that dwells inside each of us. Naturally, adolescents are hard-wired to challenge whatever authority they face, including their parents; however, in that challenge, including their legitimate need to establish boundaries, identity, and perspective, they also know, without having read it in a book, which persons in their circle are trustworthy, which are not and which simply do not warrant their time and rating.

Hopefully, some reasonable balance of perspective, including a mature “take” on what constitutes the reasonable, fair, just and measured dispensation of power/authority emerges and the end of some eighteen or nineteen years of home and school environments. Mistakes, in the administration of “punishment” will have been made at both levels, and the degree to which each of us is able and willing to tolerate, forgive and learn from those misjudgements is also an significant ingredient in our unique “cake” of character.

One of the important “gaps” in understanding and thereby tolerance and forgiveness, however, is the child and adolescent’s depth of learning about motivation of the adult role models in their circle. If they see power being “delivered” in a wanton display of hurtfulness, vindictiveness, mean-spiritedness and in the exclusive pursuit of narcissistic needs or private unreasonable fears, even if they do not comprehend why that dynamic is on display, they grow wary and sceptical of how trustworthy those “power brokers:” really are. If young people witness a “talking through” of tensions, compromise, and relatively equal respect among the adults in the room, they will quickly learn to emulate that behaviour; the reverse is also true: constant bullying and open verbal warfare and character assassination will be their “model” for their own disputes. And there seems to be a natural inclination to lean in the direction of the former, over the latter, if that option is available in their experience.

The tension, however, between the two “extremes,” one easily dubbed “collaborative” with the other being dubbed “confrontative” will be options with varying “value” in their future. At the core of this tension, too, will be their “sense of self” or “their self-respect” or their self-confidence and capacity to be assertive, aggressive, passive aggressive or worse, self-sabotaging. Is there anyone who has not vacillated between trying collaboration and falling into the trap of aggression, anger, revenge, or passive aggression.

Cognitive behaviour therapy posits the notion that if our “thinking” is healthy, unencumbered by distortions, catastrophizing, projections, and unwarranted premises, we are more likely to inhabit a place where assertiveness is plausible, feasible and generating its own rewards. If the CBT intervention takes place early in a traumatized life, there is a greater likelihood that the thoughts, beliefs and perceptions that sabotage the self (and often relationships with others as well) can be replaced with “assertive” propositions.

However, deeply embedded insecurities, wounds, and the concomitant beliefs and perceptions are more difficult to erase and replace. The Clarkson song is an exemplary social comment to summon a hidden courage, strength and determination to come up “stronger” than before the betrayal. If, however, the single betrayal, about which the song ‘sings’ is part of a series of betrayals, abandonments, alienations, separations and deep and profound losses, then the proposition of “making one stronger” while still appropriate, may take a lot longer.

And while there is an agreed linkage between how we “think” (cognition) and how we behave, there is another significant component to the equation: our unique character, and our adaptability and openness to change. And to the extent that we pull the strings on our own development, depending on the influences, persons, beliefs, and cultural traditions of our family, community, formal learning and occupational background, we are never really beyond some degree of transformation. (Research is still inconclusive about some kinds of sociopaths, psychopaths and sex offenders.)

For example, if we hold (as many writers like Thomas Hardy) do that happiness is a brief relief in the general drama of pain, then we have already imposed a limit on what we expect, in the form of happiness. On the other hand, if we hold, (as Joel Osteen and others) do that God wants everyone to be rich, then we have a “sacred” option to put our hands, and minds and hearts and relationships to the “plow” of making that “richness” become a reality, regardless of the means necessary for that outcome. If we hold, (as Shakespeare has been noted to) that character is destiny, then our dominant traits will have a significant role to play in the drama that details our biography. Strong dominant characteristics like hubris, for example, or greed, or altruism, or ambition or  revenge will inevitably play an important role in the resolving equation of the narrative of our life.
 
And then there is the unstoppable force of the unconscious, the Shadow, from Jung’s perspective, that sack of memories, traumas, and painful experiences literally too “painful” to absorb and to countenance at the time of their occurrence, that will have an impact on how we feel, think and act. Another question waiting in the wings of our beings, inviting our exploration is how deep and penetrating is our own consciousness of who we are, including how we are “seen” be others. If, as is quite likely in contemporary culture, we have been “reduced” to a short list of adjectives, a caricature or Matisse line drawing, and have hung some “tapestry” of a “personality” on that “objective co-relative” then, although the carpet is unfinished, it will take on a kind of “stability” in our mind-perception that seeks, unconsciously, to repeat and duplicate itself. The source of these ‘line drawings’ too will be important in our self-definition given a parent’s import as compared to a storekeeper’s pleasantries, or a doctor’s assessment as compared with a peer’s.

And if all of this “psychobabble” is off limits given how profoundly occupied we are at “making a living” and making the decisions around that “task” and objective, then our conscious awareness of how we think and feel and act will be so limited and defined by those acts that require unambiguous decisions on our part. And by those decisions we are writing our signature in the sands of the consciousnesses of those in our circle, by which we will come to be defined, without much regard for the nuances in different situations that would clearly elicit very different decisions on our part.

So, we are complex to ourselves, and to some of our intimates, while being at the same time, reduced to something much more simple, predictable and eminently controllable (especially from the perspective of a parent, teacher, doctor, lawyer, and law enforcement). In most cases, the picture that we leave in the minds of others will come out of some one or two encounters, neither of which will adequately portray who we are.

And so, our response(s) to trauma, depending on our history, our character and our self-concept, will vary. At times we will withdraw, cocoon, and take a period to reflect, and to recoup both strength and perspective. At other times, we will be tempted, (both ‘successfully’ and not so much) to retaliate,  if we have been unduly and unjustly injured. And, while the song hints that our “will” will eventually and inevitably triumph, no matter the blow we have suffered, and the strength of our will is a factor in our recovery, willing ourselves to health, recovery, well-being and  a new kind of strength is certainly not guaranteed.

One of the most glaring examples of “willing” a recovery (in this case from a lethal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer) came in a conversation with a colleague, on a waterfront a few years back. “I am going to beat this thing!” he declared, and then added, ‘The doctor was extremely insensitive and debilitating in the way he treated me when he told me of the diagnosis and that makes me even more determined to beat this thing!” Sadly, he died within a few months of this conversation. Similarly, we all know of people who have been abandoned by others, including parents, spouses, children and close friends, who have really never fully recovered from their loss.

And their lives have been a heroic and monumental effort to get back to what they considered their “equilibrium” from the time prior to the trauma.

And perhaps in an archetypal way, we have all been traumatized through deep and  profound loss, and are deeply engaged in a life-long commitment to “return” to the “garden of our soul” where we can breathe deeply again, and love and be loved deeply again.

And that return, notwithstanding all of the honourable work of therapists in CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) will need more than a shift in our thought patterns, and a commitment to behave differently. It will entail a radical transformation in how we accept what is really our identity.

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Being 18 and a freshman in university....then (1960) and now (2018)


It is virtually impossible to imagine what it must be like to be eighteen today, for this septaguinarian. And yet, the stretch it takes is more than worth the time and effort. The differences between arriving at this age in 1960 and in 2018 are, at the same time, momentous and miniscule.

The obvious momentous differences focus on technology, the world wide web, the instant real time 24-7-365 news coverage from every corner of the globe. In 1960, we wrote letters home from college, or phoned occasionally but not too often, just to avoid the long-distance charges. We went to listen to Lester Pearson and John Diefenbaker debate the relevance and danger of harbouring U.S. missiles on Canadian soil, while the American hands were on the trigger. The missiles, it was alleged, were to protect Canada from invasion through the Arctic by the dreaded Soviet Union. We had just acquired our first “credit card” booklet, a series of coupons we submitted to the British-American oil company if and when we bought gas for our vehicles.
We watched John F. Kennedy debate Richard Nixon, in the first televised political debate in history and could not help comment on the “dark shadows” crawling across Nixon’s face, with his “afternoon shadow” and his obvious need for a shave. Kennedy, on the other hand, looked actually  youthful, in his early forties, well quaffed and Churchillian in his delivery and McLuhanesque in his charismatic “cool”.

We visited our first radio station, after midnight, courtesy of the all-night host on CKSL Radio 1290 in London ( I think it was, and the disc-jockey’s on-air name was Stephens). The trip was organized by a freshman from Windsor named Bogle who, himself was a radio-fanatic, and his enthusiasm was catching. The “morning man” was a fellow named Bill Brady, whose friendly, cheerful chatter wakened us each morning before class at Western. (Incidentally, Brady later moved to a major station in Toronto, as his career found an even wider audience.) We took buses, dozens of them, to the frosh dance party at Port Stanley where Johnny Downs’ orchestra provided the dance music. We had “left home” from “small town Ontario” (dozens of those towns) to step into another world of a “city” and something called a university.

Most of us were the first in our family to enrol in “higher learning” and while we were proud and honoured to be there, we were also more than a little over-awed at the sheer dimension of the numbers, the alacrity of the movement of people, ideas, musical trends, fashion trends like dessert boots, cords, paisley shirts and crew cuts. I recall thinking I had found a real bargain when, in Simpson’s at the corner of Dundas and Richmond, I found a burgundy corduroy jacket for $11. Of course, the new “college jacket” in royal purple and white, with “WESTERN’ emblazoned on the back, and “63” on the arm held the top rung in the wardrobe, at least for this very green freshman.

It all sounds corny and folksy and quaint and quite embarrassing now; yet at the time, it seemed very important and exhilarating. We had never heard of karaoke, cell phones, laptops, facebook, twitter, Utube, or any of the dozens, or hundreds of platforms that populate the software’s access to the internet. Nothing, literally nothing, was “wireless”….even our phones were still connected to the wall, and we certainly did not have one in our cars.

Our movies and pop tunes were clustered in tightly conforming categories like westerns, romances, thrillers and the occasional horror. Songs were mostly by single artists, with Elvis and Pat Boone, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, The Everley Brothers, Patti Page, Rosemary Clooney. And the lyrics were primarily simple love ditties, held together by an easily remembered melody, and a simple rhythm. A few larger orchestras like Les and Larry Elgart, Les Brown, Glen Miller, Billy Vaughan, and Ray Conniff were touring and entertaining a select campus formal dances. The Brothers Fours, the Lettermen, The Kingston Trio were giving voice to the folk tunes like Greensleeves, and their songs were recorded on the “new” 33rpm albums. Singles were still recorded on 78’s and a few made it onto what were dubbed “45’s. All of these were “plastic” and were easily scratched or broken.

North America had emerged from the darkness of the Second War, and had moved through what was primarily an decade of economic prosperity, simple expectations and dreams, quiet confidence and what felt like a secure hope, potentially threatened by events like the the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs debacle and Nikita Khrushchev’s banging his shoe on the podium at the U.N. the Korean War was a distant memory if at all, for Canadian college kids and there was no imminent military conflict on the horizon. Civil rights, Martin Luther King and Jimmy Hoffa of Teamsters fame were dominant in the “appointment” nightly newscast from the three American networks, and from the CBC with historic names like Larry Henderson, Earl Cameron.

It was a much “smaller” world in the sense that there were far fewer external stimuli and few less information pouring out of a plethora of “sources” that remained in the TV room, not in our hands or ear-buds.

This year, in less than a month, “freshmen” will pour into university cities and towns across Ontario, and the world. Eager to learn, much less “wet behind the ears” in terms of their consciousness of the chaos in the world, clutching their cell phones, backpacking their tablets and laptops, they will hang posters of their “favourite” icon on their dorm room walls, try to find faces and eyes to welcome and be welcomed by.
 They will scan campus maps for the names of buildings they have never heard of, looking for classrooms and labs they will frequent over the next four years. Women will have their eyes peeled for the latest “hunk” a new class of male undergrads some of whose names and characters will become familiar, many of whom will remain anonymous, as will these women. The men will gravitate to some watering hole new and unfamiliar to them, with brands both familiar and foreign.

The more assertive will exhibit exuberance for every single “frosh” activity, while the shy ones will slink into the back of most group settings hoping whatever they are asked to do will be comfortable, not too embarrassing and potentially enabling the development of new friendships.

And then there will be that first day in class, where names from around the world (very different from 1960) and faces from many cultures and ethnicities, and technologies of various brand names and colours will greet them. Their professors will be more casually attired than were our’s, and the details of their unique scholarship will be so diverse, based on research from so many more easily accessible sources, comparisons and foundational premises.

Student clubs, hobbies, sports and other activities will have an opportunity to ‘sign up’ new recruits, for radio stations, political clubs, chess, and debating societies, hiking and personal training groups (never even though of in 1960). And the subject of “food” and where to get it, how much it will cost, whether or not a meal-plan makes sense (not even on the horizon in 1960) and where the best fast food outlets are located in relation to campus.

There will be orientation sessions for lab students, for library and internet access, for security protocols (not even contemplated in 1960) and dorm expectations.
 And while all of this hubbub is going on, the search for time and place for sleep, for relaxation and ‘down time’ will impact some more than others. Text messages will be sent back home (never even dreamt possible in 1960) and with previous classmates (now at other universities and colleges) as well as new names and contacts for each private list will be added. Bank accounts, now portable and accessible from ATM’s (another new wrinkle) will be checked, and new pin numbers acquired and entered into both memories (personal and digital).

And all the while parents back home, now many of whom will already have had their own “freshman” year, and long since graduated, will be reflecting back on their own experiences, drawing on them if and when asked by their freshly scrubbed and launched kids, who only recently graduated from their local high school.

No bifocal look at being eighteen and entering first year of university (1960 and 2018) would be remotely adequate without reference to the upcoming legalization of marijuana in October this fall. In 1960, it was only upon a rare occasion that we might witness an inebriated freshman, sometimes at the occasional football game and infrequently, late at night, after a night of pub-crawling, when someone would stagger up the stairs into the exclusively men’s residence. Being away from home is always an invitation to step out from behind (under) parental supervision and close scrutiny. That was true in 1960, as it will be next month.

However, we were never accosted by drug dealers trying to hook us into trying non-prescription drugs. And we certainly were not exposed to an invitation, whether in person or from some advertising, to experiment with “pot” whether in liquid, candy or joint format. Not only are today’s frosh living in a world fraught with geo-political tensions, trade tariffs, nuclear proliferation, global warming and climate change, for which little if anything is being done to counter-act these threats, they are also living in a culture in which character assassination can be routine, with impunity, on social media, photos posted without consent, and the pressure to conform, and to fit in is inordinate.

It is not surprising to hear of, or even to know, a seventeen-or-something adolescent who sees the whole panorama as existentially flawed, purposeless, and thereby hopeless. Research from many U.S. campuses demonstrates that undergrads are experiencing depression and mental anxiety at an alarming rate. And although the situation in Canada is not as extreme, (so far as we know) frosh here will be asking many of the same questions, faced as they are by a cultural template that stresses, if not idolizes “transactional” relationships…..”what have you done for me lately?” Our class in 1960 were almost silent about the political issues of the day; today we all hope that, in addition to the high school students from Florida who have made gun control legislation their shared mission (after the mass shooting of their classmate), groups of university students from the developed world will summon the courage, the energy and the determination to speak out, in any of the many “forums” available to them. We need your strident and optimistic voices to penetrate the corridors of political power to save the planet, and the people….quite literally, from ourselves and our insouciance.

Wishing you a very happy 18th, and an exciting and challenging first year, Jane!

Monday, August 13, 2018

No, mr trump....we do not want space turned into another battlefield by your whim!!


Let Mike Do It!

Send Vice-president Mike Pence out to the microphone to tell the world that you intend to “birth” a new arm to the already bloated Pentagon, The Space Force, to be operational by 2020, presumably just in time for your re-election in January 2021.

As if you haven’t already done enough damage to planet earth, with your rescinding of Obama’s environmental protections, your lifting of the gas-guzzling limits on autos, “so drivers will buy more oil,” your arming any country in the market for American-made military materiel, and your total disregard for anything that looks like an institution dedicated to world peace, economic stability and collaborating on world problems.

And now you intend to declare space another potential battlefield where you and your perverted country (perverted by your leadership) can wage war on whomever has the inclination to take on America. Apparently, there are a few high ranking military leader in that very Pentagon willing to bring truth to power and resist your proposal. There are likely more than a few, and hopefully there will be more, members of Congress willing to refuse to pass the necessary legislation providing funding for such a proposal.

Let’s waste a few more words here, by proposing a different path on this issue: the future of Space.

Currently, there are devices from a number of different countries floating, flying spinning, and even treading atmosphere up there. Their respective “lives” vary, and their potential date for falling back to earth ranges into the foreseeable and perhaps non-foreseeable future. So, with those nations, and the several privately funded entrepreneurs who have already successfully fired rockets and supply ships to the space station, where research is currently being conducted by an international crew, why not pursue the obvious opportunity. Granted, such an opportunity is completely outside both your comfort zone and your intellectual capacity, but why not seek consensus among all the nations of the world to preserve space as a shared, non-violent, non-competitive and unarmed region for as long as the human imagination and the legal accords will embrace.

Peace, even if it were barely visible, except through special lenses, dramatically deploying the latest technology, would be an inspiration to all future leaders that, this generation of leaders could claim for their legacy. If we could postulate a peace accord for space, then, just possibly we might stretch our minds and hearts into such a proposal for this planet.

The heart of this argument is the centrality of the premise: that all “territory” must be a battlefield for which arms and the military establishment are the only or primary deterrence. Not only is this premise unbalanced, it is also unsupported by the evidence of history. While it is true that wars and civil conflicts have been a significant component of human history, it is also true that many counter proposals and steps have been theorized, researched, documented and implemented. It is also true that the United States has, if not the most conflict-centric history, certainly one of the histories more dependent on military conflict. The country was conceived in war, delivered in war, raised on war and has now come to the unenviable place where it has to face the reality that war is not a solution, given the experiences in Korea, Viet Nam and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The cultural and mind-set that military answers are optimal, or even predictable, has been exposed in the latest evidence around the cyber hacking of election systems in some 20 states during the 2016 federal elections in the U.S. Certainly, the United States has “enemies” in other nations attempting to undercut their superiority, their dominance of world diplomacy, their dominance of world trade parameters, issues and disputes, and their unilateral “me first” attitude under the current administration.

Exacerbating the risk, as trump is doing and will continue to do, may feed his argument about militarizing space; it does not, however, justify the proposition.
If one grows up with the notion that the whole world is “enemy” then one is imbued with a notion that is unsustainable, untethered to reality, and also disengaged from all other world view premises. Nature, for example, while engaging in conflict in order to survive, is highly sophisticated in its deployment of force. The falcon’s snatching of smaller animals or other birds, for example, is tethered to the notion of basic survival. And while we have to be conscious of protecting ourselves, and keeping a vigilant eye out for danger, our identity is much more complex and nuanced than one based primarily or exclusively on the notion of personal, economic, psychological, political and/or military defence.

Such a premise would, for example, militate against budgets for education, health care, social assistance, libraries, schools, colleges and services like transportation, communication and marketplace structures and systems. All of these “systems” have built into their design some from of mutuality, some formal and informal expression of their social value, their moral value, their economic value, and their sustainability, given the basic needs of the society. In fact, one of the central tensions in any democracy is how the various “goods” will be balanced without tilting too far in any one direction. Already increasing the military budget by from some $72 billion, when former Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, argued for reductions in the Pentagon budget, is nothing short of morally, politically, ethically corrupt.

Ironically, this Space Force proposal comes at the moment in which the trump administration, with the support of the Republican Congress, has turned down a modest expenditure to “protect” the security, reliability and trustworthiness of the upcoming November election against cyber attacks already proven to be happening. This paradox is not merely laughable; it is also indefensible and demonstrates such extreme imbalance in the “thinking” of the White House that it merits investigation for incompetence, if not for failure to perform the duties to which the president was elected.

Sometimes, it is more appropriate to examine critically those things NOT DONE, as opposed to those things that ARE done. Failures of omission, while not nearly as visible, but certainly often more penetrating and hurtful, do not attract the same kind of critical intelligence. Ask the people of Puerto Rico! Their plight before and certainly after the latest hurricane was, is and will continue to be deplorable. Last week, the island government reported that the death toll from the hurricane is well over 1000, while official federal government reports have the total under 100. Do we think there might be some agencies and some personnel covering their backsides?

And then there is the failure to re-connect over 500 children with the parents, at the southern border, after the government separated them, “to deliver a message not to come to the U.S. Once again, prevention of the migrant tide would necessarily have to begin with foreign aid, social assistance, and intelligence in the elimination of violent gangs in Central America. Another failure by omission.

One of the first lessons an artist learns is that “light” on the canvas requires “negative” or dark areas in order to be a complete work. Similarly, in poetry and drama, in music and dance, focussing on the light, while essential for young people’s literature and theatre, leaves the canvas without a coherence. Artists deploy positive and negative space, in their work, as a way of creating the necessary tension that engages the characters who read/view/study and the characters within. Unfortunately, trump's universe has only his massive self, everything that cheer leads him in the shining light, and everything that opposes, quite literally trashed. And both the predictability and the downward spiral of this dynamic is dangerous for his administration and his country.

This president wants to build walls, built nuclear arsenals, block trade with tariffs, and then he complains when he sees NATO member “failing” to pay their fair share. When is he going to acknowledge the multiple, serious, and even potentially lethal failures of omission his administration is inflicting on the American nation, its democracy, its social institutions and its system of justice?

So long as he can, like some awkward illusionist, keep throwing “mirages” of his own imagination to feed his hollow and insatiable ego, perhaps he believes that his trickery will continue to deceive his base, long enough for him to be re-elected.

His Space Force, like other fantasies, is another force-feeding for his starved core, another display of bravado, exaggerated promises for the purpose of generating more fog, in the personal war he is “using” the office to wage for his own personal needs.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Are "we" enabling these unworthy leaders to prey upon us?


Did this “hard-ass” period of cultural history creep up on us, or did we naively pave the way for its slippery arrival? And while there is no absolute or indisputable answer, pondering the question may have some value. It may actually provide some clues about things we don’t spend a significant amount of time cogitating.

Example: our “silver bullet” approach to every ache and pain, to every social and political confrontation renders each of us both an implicit and an explicit target, as well as a “ready-fire-aim-think” shooter. We have weaponized our irritations, our insults, our affronts and our indecencies, and even our dis-courtesies. Being “pissed off” is no longer an exception to our day; it has become a “normal” occurrence because we have allowed it to become normalized. And in the process, we have assumed the mantel of the critical parent, in situations over which we have no parental interest, never mind duty or responsibility.

In terms of our looking after our health, we have devised, distributed, marketed and sold, and of course, bought a “thing” for whatever happens to be ailing us. Different kinds of headache, different kinds of skin rashes, different kinds of abdominal discomfort, different kind of foot pain and a variety of eye fatigues depending on the time spent peering into the new tech devices. In the latest DSM, we have morphed grief and loss into a psychiatric illness and while listing the symptoms we have also listed approaches to “treatment”.

Linked to the silver bullet, especially metaphorically, is our “nano-second” time frame for our concentration, for our need for a “high,” for need for a “thrill,” for a special effect and thereby generated a series of new “industries” like extreme sports, extreme movie adventures and thrillers, extreme “super-heroes,” and “stars” of all kinds who can populate our personal world creating the illusion that we are part of their lives, at least digitally.

Linked to this “nano-second” universe, we have ditched any hint of time for reflection, as if that were so boring that it belongs only to a generation long since buried. And we have replaced that “reflection” with action: e.g. how many times are we asked, during an appointment or a conversation in a business, “What plans do you have for the weekend?” This conversation was once considered a reasonable inquiry to and from friends, neighbours and even co-workers. Now, it has become part of the “paint-by-number” approach to customer/client relations, as if we might expect the person asking to give a rat’s ass what we had planned for the weekend. If we are not “doing” something, we are instantly bored, and likely verging on some mild form of anxiety, depression or worse.

Our chores are micro-managed into numbers of minutes, kilometers, kilograms, while our weather reports are now graphically displayed on our personal “radar” the laptop or tablet. Our nerves send us to our cell phones, (according to recent research in the UK) every twelve minutes, and the same report reveals a weekly time total on digital media of twelve hours. We also have a “prescription” from our employers about how to do every task in our job description, the primary purpose of such “oversight” being to minimize the insurance and legal bills to the accounting departments. Lists have become the “vernacular” of commerce, because if we do not “have” and adhere to a list, we are not being productive, or worse, we are not “easily” managed and supervised.

We have removed the expression of affect from the “professional” workplace, presumably on the assumption that emotion distracts from our capacity to work, to think clearly, to avoid entanglements and to prevent unwanted personnel problems like human relationships in the workplace. Another sanitary aspect of this approach is that it vacuums out any hint of anger, frustration, disagreement and disillusion, thereby assuring management that superficiality, efficiency and productivity reign supreme. And after all, what is business about if not time and money, and the obsessive pursuit of saving in both categories.

Along with his sanitization, and sacralising of efficiency, objectivity, productivity and “calm” goes the reduction or even elimination of the need for middle managers to have to deal with complex and ambiguous and multi-layered situations. That premise also reduces and even eliminates the need to train those managers (used to be leaders) in the complexity of human relations, thereby rendering the whole process one of mere numbers, without faces, personalities or characters.

Five and six second loops garner millions of views on U-tube; animals have become spokes-“persons” (referring agents) for products or services, generating a lucrative business for operators dependent on maximizing those u-tube “views” and “likes”. Stars are also born of a U-tube upload of a single piece of music, or a single video of some unique and captivating mini-loop. And even a single tweet now has the impact of generating a volcanic diplomatic upheaval, witness the Saudi-Canadian uproar over “the immediate release” phrase interfering in the internal affairs of the Saudi’s.

The short-term, instant gratification mind-set also has serious implications for the planet. If each of us grabs whatever we can, moment by moment, without a thought or care about the long-term impact of our individual actions, how can we expect the profit-driven behemoth corporations to give a “fig” about how they are poisoning the atmosphere, the land and the oceans and lakes? After all, they are merely operating in the same manner, with the same modus operandi, as individuals fixated on self-interest.

And when these micro-managing, nano-second-parametered, narcissism-generated actions are aggregated, we have what we have, a angry, immature, self-gratifying, tyrannical monster “leading” the way in endorsing, nurturing, modelling and signalling his approbation of this manner of being….applied to what used to be the most admired nation on the planet.

Hammering away at how we got here does little, if anything, to map a path out of the swamp of our own making. It does, however, paint a picture of some of the most obvious, most simple and most clear evidence of a culture that has replaced “the social good” for “what I want now”!

A recent conversation about a grievance expressed by the forty-fifty generation about the public pension of a retired teacher demonstrates some of my meaning. Time was when those planning public schools, hospitals, libraries, and civil service bureaucracies deemed it both reasonable and foresighted to build into the benefit package a reasonable pension plan, to which both employer and employee would contribute. Even large companies adopted the strategy, as a way of expressing confidence in, appreciation for, and honour in their workers. It was, agreed, at a time after the Second War, when productivity was trending upwards, disposable income was rising, the housing market was growing and hope and optimism were in the air.

And out of the perspective of that optimism and hope came a number of long-range, lift-all-boats, “brother’s-keeper” notions that said unequivocally that “we are all in this together”….Social cohesion, stability, trust and mutual interdependence were hallmarks of the period of history in which many of us grew up. Sharing, collaboration, mutual support and balancing disparate needs were some of the light-houses guiding the ship of state through the night and the inevitable storms.

Contrary to many, that was not a “nanny state” but rather a considerate, compassionate and caring state, whose leaders accepted a fair share of social responsibility, for their workers, and for the culture generally. And when things changed, and economic forecasts became less predictable and less secure, then those with power and money jumped on the bandwagon to argue that such “largesse” was no longer “affordable”. 

Labour unions, which had waged long battles for fair wages, safe workplaces, week-end breaks from the job, health benefits and company pensions, all of them reasonable, affordable and within the range of “feasible” and moderate, began to be gutted by new regulations and rules.. that have so withered the vine of labour membership, even the word “union” is now a blasphemy to most.

A return to such times is neither likely nor necessary. However, the current income disparity, levels of poverty, economic divide that taken together confront towns and cities, provinces and states, nations and even the world community is neither sustainable nor desireable. Roads destroy private vehicles, as well as those purchased by public dollars; patients rest in corridors in urban and rural hospitals; nursing staffs are depleted, as are long-term care facility’s staffs, schools are in disrepair, public confidence in both private corporations and in public institutions has flat-lined and the income gap between rich and poor (whose numbers grow exponentially everywhere) widens by the hour, right before our eyes.

Have we gone blind to our own reality?

Or, are we so conscious of how desperate our situation is that we have lost hope in our ability and power to make the changes needed?

“A buck-a-beer” may be a good slogan for a cynical politician like Doug Ford, newly elected premier of Ontario, along with a 10-cent lowering in the price of a litre of gas. Neither qualify as steps in the direction of long-term, sustainable and responsible governance. In fact, both are analogous to the “bread and circuses” offered by the Roman Senate to the masses, after they had surrendered to the lowest common denominator of the society: entertainment at the cheapest cost possible. The only purpose served by such simplistic political “tricks” is to seduce the voting public into supporting this government, because he knows us and cares for us…right now!!!
And right now all we are interested in because who knows what the future holds!

Enabling simple-minded, goal-focused and egocentric politicians to develop policy around such simple “objectives” in a short-sighted manner makes us all responsible for what kind of menu we are offered. We have already established cash as the prime requisite for political campaigns, and as policy emerges from the vortex of the forces of reductionism, we are all victim to that vortex, in which creation we have all participated.

This is not an argument against social programs, real social programs, that will help those in need, like affordable rental housing, pharmacare, dentacare, and pre-natal orientation. Cheaper gas and cheaper beer really do not qualify as legitimate social programs, especially as reasonable people seek to save the planet.

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Arne Duncan: bringing truth about U.S. education out of the closet



The former Secretary of Education in the Obama administration, Arne Duncan has written a new book in which he exposes three basic “lies” (that’s his word) that confound the American education system.

Lie number 1: Americans care about education.
Lie number 2: Americans care about teachers.
Lie number 3: Americans care about children.

Having lived in that country for some four years in the late 90’s, I could not agree more with the former secretary.  Buying things for kids as is the American penchant or perhaps addiction, is not a sign of caring, but rather a sign of guilt for not really knowing or caring about their children. In this male-dominated culture, kids like wives are more like trophies on the mantel of the male husband-father in the household. If and when the kid scores a touchdown, wins a medal at State wrestling championships, or receives a scholarship from a “reputable” university, then fathers will broadcast their pride in their offspring to the “world” of their associates.

The basic structure of governance that leaves education to the states as a purview, of course, makes national standards, including curricula, teacher certification and supervision, and the physical condition of the plants themselves, extremely uneven, unbalanced, and spotty. Who puts his or her name forward for election to the boards of education is relatively unimportant compared with “county commissioner” or judge, (elected in each county, not appointed as in Canada). The budgets of school boards, therefore, get barely a glance from the state legislatures, unless and until the buildings’ roof leaks, or someone falls on a broken concrete step. Insurance claims prove instrumental in shining the public spotlight on deteriorating schools, and even then, there is no public outcry worthy of the deplorable situation.

Teachers salaries, along with the meagre degree of respect and status they occupy in the community, are deplorable, and show little sign of changing so long as the public continues to wage heated battles over wedge issues like a woman’s right to choose whether or not to abort with her doctor, or whether gun control legislation is warranted. 
Buried in the political flatulence of such hot-button issues, fueled by religious and public organizations like the NRA  respectively, the local issues of schools barely finds space in local dailies, or on television screens, unless and until a mass shooting kills dozens of the “innocent” children and their teachers. (Can you believe there have been 154 school mass shootings in the United States in the last year?)

And of course, the president’s preference to “arm” the teachers epitomizes, at the highest level, a vacuity of insight, knowledge, concern and compassion for the safety and security of school personnel and their students. By himself, the president demonstrates Duncan’s case that the nation cares not a whit about their kids or their schools.

When Duncan was asked on MSNBC on Monday, if, during his tenure as Secretary, he found examples of schools that were different from the norm, and he slid past the question with “there are a few exceptions”.

Duncan’s book hits bookstores at a time when the current Secretary Betsy Devos, almost single-handedly is gutting the public school system by throwing billions of public dollars into charter schools. Parents, too, are opting for a home-schooling model that will further desecrate the potentially vibrant school population of a complete range of academic abilities, interests and aspirations. The very fact that Devos has been charged with such a mandate also proves conclusively the administration’s short-sighted, and potentially devastating approach to putting the public school system into mothballs. And the fact that there is little if any public concern about this secretive and dangerous policy and approach is further proof that trump’s antics provide a fog of cover to such creeping erosion, and that the public is otherwise engaged or, more specifically disengaged from the school process in their respective child’s life.

Ghettoizing schools, is a requisite first step in their ultimate demise. It has a racist dimension, and class dimension and is based on a fundamentally flawed philosophy of the role of the state in the growth and nurture of the body politic’s culture. (Culture here includes all of the many features that comprise a society’s health and well-being, not merely “haute couture” of classical music, dance, art and the like.)

Duncan was the longest serving Secretary of Education in the nation’s history. Could it be possible that he could be the second last Secretary. If Devos succeeds in her scorched earth approach to public schools, there will be no need even for a federal department of Education, something that right-wing demagogues have been advocating for some years now.

And if we think the American culture is slipping into the trash-heap of history, the final nail in the coffin of the public school system will seal the fate of all that is honourable, worthy of emulation and worthy of sustaining the democracy that birthed America over two hundred years ago.

Would 16,000 Saudi grads from Canadian universities not signal greater change at home than this tweet?


If I were a registrar at a Canadian university this morning, I would be calculating the drop in revenues (some $15 billion in total to all) to my institution from the Saudi Arabian decision to withdraw all 16,000 Saudi students currently enrolled in Canadian universities and enrol them in either British or American schools. These students are enrolled with the support of Saudi scholarships and those dollars will no longer be flowing into the Canadian university coffers.

International students pay a significantly higher tuition (4 times higher) than do Canadian students. And after I had made those preliminary calculations, I would be wondering how to approach the Foreign Affairs department in Ottawa, to ascertain their “read” on the likely outcome of this spat.

It seems that a tweet, (who knew that tweets were now the currency of diplomacy?) asking for the “immediate release” of human rights activists by the Saudi’s so offended the Saudi government (Canada is interfering in the internal affairs of our country) that they have withdrawn their ambassador from Ottawa and frozen all trade and commercial transactions with the Canadian government. Whether or not the sale/purchase of those light armored vehicles from Canada to the Saudi’s will be consummated is an open question this morning.

According to the National Post, the young Saudi prince “has already started a war with Yemen, isolated Qatar, and picked fights with Sweden and Germany when those countries questioned his country’s commitment to human rights.” The point being that the Foreign Affairs minister Chrystia Freeland might have known that a spat like this one was imminent if Canada “intervened” in the Saudi reputation on human rights.

Already announced by the Saudi’s is the sale of a portion of the massive oil company owned by that state, dangling business opportunities for countries like Canada in the sale of fossil fuel equipment and expertise, all of which could now be in jeopardy. Given the already instability injected into the world trade picture by the American president, Canada once saw the opportunity to diversify our trade, in part, by increased trade with Saudi Arabia. That prospect today seems a little doubtful, if not off the table.

The complex interwoven relationship, heretofore, between trade and human rights, has often resulted in countries like Canada that pride themselves in our human rights record (excepting the nation’s history with indigenous peoples) holding back on public criticism of the human rights record of their trading partners, for example, like China. Is that previous stance now outdated by the recent surge of “retaliatory” moves like this current one from the Saudi’s? Is the former “world order” on trade now being undercut by repressive regimes’ feeling emboldened to strike back if and when challenged? Could this new abrasive approach, (even confrontational) be partially a consequence of the arrival on the world stage of the U.S. president, apparently a sycophantic friend of the Saudi’s, who recently sold a considerable supply of military equipment to them over the next decade? Was that sale, for example, another of trump’s multilayered chicanery tactics to stick his thumb in the eye of Iran, the opponent of Saudi Arabia specifically in Yemen? Is it too much of a stretch to wonder out loud if the Saudi’s are not playing into (if not actually playing the hand of) trump’s deviousness? Could NAFTA negotiations be one of the ‘hidden’ impacts of this Saudi move, even though no one, including the officials in Foreign Affairs, will likely be able to prove any connection?

And will the universities in Canada, in whose financial liquidity the federal government has a direct role, petition Ottawa to replace the funds removed by this extraction of Saudi students currently enrolled in Canadian universities?

The Saudi’s are complaining that they are making progress towards women’s equality, with their “right to drive” shift in the last few weeks. They resent any public scorn of their right as a nation to make the kind of changes at the pace of their own choosing and clearly women’s rights rank much higher in North America than they do in the Middle East, at least in some countries.

Is Freeland on solid ground in her vigorous advocacy of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia? Perhaps, yet I wonder if she might have had leverage to curtail or actually to cancel that sale of light armoured vehicles to the Saudi’s, if she wanted to make a statement about how this government is going to behave on the world stage. That might not have had the direct “in-your-face” quality of the latest tweet, but would have staked out a Canadian position that we are not in the business of supporting increased military war in the Middle East, even through the sale and eventual deployment of our vehicles. And that, in itself, would have indirectly made a statement that she and all of Canada knows would be welcomed by the majority of Canadian women, and women around the world.

Diplomacy, if and when it becomes little more than a few angry tweets, devolves into the kind of world trump seems more than capable and desirous of generating, Tweeting, therefore, is a means of communicating that our nation ought to be avoiding at all cost. To enter that fray is to prop up the trump model of engagement on the world stage.

Can Canadians hope that whoever “penned” that tweet is disciplined inside the Foreign Affairs department? Doubtful. Can Canadians expect that Freeland, who has served in an exemplary manner as our representative on the world stage since 2015, will soften her approach to the Saudi’s, and re-integrate the Saudi ambassador into the diplomatic community in Ottawa, and reverse the removal of those 16,000 Saudi students from Canadian universities. After all, their very presence in those institutions, followed by their return to their homeland following graduation, is another inevitable if glacial step in the transformation of the Saudi culture, and indeed of the culture of the Middle East. That observation is hardly “rocket science” and surely it is not outside the purview of the Foreign Affairs minister.

One tweet, even one so offensive to the Saudi’s, ought not to be a pivotal turning point in a relationship that could with increased discretion, diplomacy and mutual respect be mutually beneficial for many decades.

Reports later in the day indicate Minister Freeland is “sticking to her position” on the tweet, while the U.S. and the EU are both seeking further clarification from Saudi Arabia. The Canadian Minister of Finance tells the world, We are standing up for what we believe in!” standing firmly behind Freeland. The Europeans tell us that the Saudi’s will not longer accept shipments of Canadian wheat, deepening the ditch, or perhaps hole, that this dispute is fostering.

We all expect that the Prime Minister will endorse Freeland and Morneau’s position on this one, given his commitment to the cause of feminism here and around the world. It seems, however, that feminism is an extremely worthy public issue warranting the persistent and consistent support of all developed countries. Yet, one wonders if this spat has the potential to set back the Saudi’s commitment to full and equal rights for the women living in their kingdom. If that turns out to be part of the fallout, then the Canadian government will have sabotaged the very cause to which they are so deeply and authentically committed.