Author: wdfyfe

Before WD called himself a writer, he worked at a number of different jobs from stacking lumber to interior design. He studied English at UBC and creative writing at ASU where one of his teachers, Rita Dove, taught him the importance of the tale. He has written for radio, magazines and newspapers, but never television. He’s published both fiction and nonfiction in Great Britain and the US. He reads French passably and speaks enough Spanish to get from A to B and find the toilet. He has interviewed John Cleese, Peter Ustinov, Margaret Drabble, Kenneth Branagh and enough other famous people to make him a hopeless name dropper. His not-so-secret passions are history and trivia, and he has never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit — although he did come 4th one drunken Quiz Night at the Uxbridge in Notting Hill. He lives on the Pacific Ocean, although, not close enough to see, so he spends his days looking at a computer screen. It’s a wonderful life and he has only one regret: he can’t type faster.

Merely the Facts are Missing

It’s now blatantly obvious that the majority of contemporary North American were raised by wolves.  I have nothing against wolves per se or their interspecies parenting skills (they did a decent job with Romulus and Remus) but their grasp of the complex social, economic and political structures of the 21st century is limited.  As cultural teachers, Canus lupus is not your ideal choice — unless you’re another wolf.  I’m not saying that everybody is walking around Darwin Award stupid, but there is now a noticeable understanding gap in our society, and like the financial equity gap, it’s widening.  Here are a couple of examples.

As the protest season comes to a halt, right on schedule, due to inclement weather, and the Occupy Whatever! Movement goes into hibernation until the sunny summer returns, there are still people around who believe those donuts were a positive force for change.  They’ve been favourably compared to Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi.  As the risk of sugar coating it, that’s crap.  The Occupy Whatever! Movement hasn’t done a thing but prove that our society is so wealthy we can afford to have some people make a career out of being a pain in the ass.  Their only achievement was to inconvenience the very people they claimed to represent.  Their only accomplishment was to force our cities to spend a lot of extra dollars that should have been used someplace else.  And their only legacy is that money is gone.  However, there’s a ton of rhetoric out there that says the exact opposite.  The apologists maintain the Occupiers were noble crusaders, keeping the beacons of freedom burning in a time of darkness.  Go figure!  The only thing I see changed is a lot of trampled grass and an extra couple of tons of garbage headed to the landfill.

Meanwhile, in another part of the crisis, our collective debt is climbing.  We owe so much money even King Midas is worried.  Yet, as our ability to pay for our wastrel ways steadily declines, a whole segment of our society wants to borrow even more money.  I’m not an economist, but it strikes me that when you’ve just gotten the foreclosure notice from Standard and Poor, the last thing you want to do is buy recreational property on the No Money Down plan.  It’s a good thing the American government doesn’t know there’s a number after trillion, or they’d be funding billion dollar programs to find out what it is.

Apparently, a whole pile of people have never had a household budget.  They seem to think that money, although it doesn’t grow on trees, comes from a magical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or something.  They simply don’t understand that debt works the same for everybody: you have to pay it back!  Nobody — not you, nor I, nor the US government, nor even Sauron’s evil land of Mordor can borrow itself out of debt.  It’s fiscally impossible but there are still people around recommending it.

These are just two examples of how people simply don’t understand how the world works.  There are hundreds more.  And the real problem is this isn’t a distortion of the facts; it’s a dismissal of them.  We have now traveled beyond the realm of spin doctors shaping the facts to suit their argument.  These days, facts don’t even matter.  People are jumping on the bandwagon of outrageous nonsense and acting as though it deserves serious consideration.  Then, when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they simply disagree.

It’s absurd, but it’s true.

The European Crisis Just Went from Bad … to Better

Just as we see the Arab Spring turning  brown in the Moslem Autumn, brace yourself because we’re about to experience a cold, hard European Winter.  In the last couple of weeks, our friends, the Euro spenders, have finally woken up to their financial debacle, and nobody’s made the coffee.  Austerity is the watchword, and there’s about to be enough tough love around to make everybody south of the Alps think they’re in rehab – and, to a certain extent, they will be.  There’ll be the usual demonstrations and condemnations, but march and chant all you want, people: the party’s over.  Let the hangover begin!  That’s the bad news.

The good news is for the first time since the EU bailiffs threatened to put a lien on the Acropolis there is actually some light at the end of the tunnel.

A couple of weeks ago, the Greek Tragedy took a definite turn for the better when Papendreou, the Prime Minister, decided to step down and collect his pension — before it disappeared entirely.   Remember, this is the guy who was going to hold a referendum to see if his fellow citizens, rioting in Athens, would vote yes to a couple more brutal kicks in the financial groin.  Not the sharpest skewer in the souvlaki, he was replaced by Lucas Papademos, who — believe it or not — is actually an economist.  Fancy that!  Hiring an economist to deal with a financial meltdown!  Who says the Greeks haven’t done dick since Pericles?

Around about the same time, over in Rome, class clown Silvio Berlusconi was given his walking papers, complete with dancing in the streets.  Apparently, somebody took time away from eyeballing Ruby Rubacuori and took a gander at the books.  As of this morning, Italy is a little over two trillion dollars short of a down payment on a cappuccino.  In other words, they’re up to their Armanis in debt, and this time, bread and circuses aren’t going to save them.  “Bunga, Bunga” retired gracefully, rather than be thrown to the lions, and he was replaced by Mario Monti.  Once again — wonder upon wonders — the guy’s an economist!  He better be a good one.

The third domino to fall happened in Spain on Sunday, November 20th, when Spanish voters returned the right-of-centre Partido Popular to power after a seven year absence.  As you recall (or maybe you don’t) the Spanish electorate tossed the PP out of power in 2004 when the Jihadists made it clear which way they wanted the vote to go — with a couple of commuter train bombings in Madrid.  For the last seven years, Jose Luis Zapatero and The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party have been running the show with (to be fair) mixed results.  Unfortunately for the socialists, the only results the Spanish are hearing these days are 20% unemployment and a national debt big enough to choke an Andalusian stallion.  Zapatero saw the escritura on the wall and retired from politics.  Mariano Rajoy is in charge now, with a majority in the Cortes Generales and a mandate to clean up the mess.

Suddenly, all of Europe has turned a conservative blue.  (Just a note to my American friends.  The traditional political designations around the world have always been conservative blue and liberal red — just as they used to be in the United States.  It’s only the recent media manipulation of the colour wheel on election night maps that has changed the colours to Red states Republican, Blue states Democrat.  Coincidence? I think not, but that’s fodder for another blog.)

Anyway, as of last Monday morning, every government west of the Volga (with the exception of Slovakia – don’t ask) is either centre-right or out and out right of centre – in a word, fiscally conservative.  Granted, in European politics, right wing doesn’t mean much until you get to the nutsy fringe, but at least these folks understand that if you have two Euros, you don’t spend twelve.  Obviously, the European crisis is so massive even the most conservative government is going to have to tax and spend more than they want, just to keep the wheels rolling.  However, by understanding the simple accounting principle that the books have to balance eventually they may be able to stop the deficit haemorrhage.  More importantly, during the heated discussions between north and south that are about to ensue, with any luck at all, nobody will be throwing their political monkey wrench into the economic machinery.   It helps that, even though these Euro zone leaders aren’t necessarily all on the same page, at least they’re all finally reading from the same book.

Like it or not, if these new governments do it right, it’s going to be a hard, cold European winter. Unfortunately, there isn’t any second choice.  It would be a fatal mistake to think there is.

Open Your Eyes Before You Open Your Mouth

I grow weary of constantly being told how screwed up my world is.  I realize it’s a long way from this place to Nirvana, but by the same token, this isn’t the worst of all possible venues west of Lucifer’s back porch.  In all truth, we live in a kind of run-down suburb of Disneyland, where most of life’s rougher edges are smoothed over.  I had a friend once who said, “If you want reality, go to Biafra.”  Biafra isn’t in the headlines anymore; the updated version is Somalia.  That’s where the real world lives.  What you see out your front window is a man made amusement park, put there for your comfort and entertainment.  Personally, I don’t mind people complaining, but there is a limit.  There’s a lot of stuff around here that I like, and I don’t appreciate every jerk with an attitude calling it down.  I’m not talking about the sentimental slobber promoted by nitwits and Playmates of the Month – rainbows, hugs, hoarfrost on kittens.  I’m talking about the stuff that says my world is made of sterner material than what reality has to offer; the stuff that’s always out there but nobody mentions; the things I like about the world as I know it.

I like libraries.  I think they’re cool.  I can walk in, take a book (any book) off the shelf, sit in a warm, semi-comfortable chair and read it.  And if that isn’t good enough for me, I can take that book home.  All the library wants is my word that I’ll bring it back.  I don’t even have to leave a deposit.  They trust me.  The only requirement is — I want to.  And it’s free.  It’s part of what I get just because I live here.

I like buses, too.  In my city, for $2.50, I get a vehicle and a driver, who will take me within two or three blocks of anywhere I want to go, anytime I want to go there.  I don’t have to ask or even show up on time.  Those buses regularly travel around my town just on the off chance that I might want to go somewhere — and that’s 365 days a year.

I like grocery stores, too — big ones, small ones, all around the town ones.  I’m never more than a kilometre away from food.   It’s not just any food either; it’s all kinds of food.  It’s food from all over the world in what looks like nearly infinite varieties.  If I want to, I can buy vegetables with names I can’t even pronounce.  I can buy food that other people have already cooked for me.  In some places, I can buy fish so fresh it’s still alive when I buy it.  I’ve never been to a grocery store that doesn’t have some kinda crap you don’t even need like pickles and parsley.  They’re a garnish, for God’s sake, and we still have tons of it.  And here’s what I like the most about grocery stores – they never run out.

I like the cops.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re always showing up after the fact, and there are quite a few nasty ones out there, but so what?  I like being a mere three digits away from specially trained people whose sole purpose on earth is to keep me from getting my ass kicked or run over by a drunk.  I might not see a cop from one week to the next — or until I blow through some red light — but they’re around.  They’re like spare tires; you never have to think of them until you need one.  Yet, it’s their very presence that guarantees I don’t have to worry that much about involuntarily donating money to every crack addict with a kitchen knife – in my backyard.

I like space.  One of the neatest things my world has to offer is space.  I’m not talking about the great outdoor wilderness somewhere north of Rubberboot, Alberta.  I’m talking about urban space that makes certain I’m not haunch to paunch with my fellow citizens every minute of every day.  On some of the busiest streets in my city, there are benches; places to stop, sit down, take three deep ones and look at the world.   As long as I don’t bother anybody I can sit there as long as I like.  Or if I don’t like traffic, I have parks – lots of them — green spaces where somebody else cuts the lawn, trims the bushes and plants the flowers — just so I can look at them.

But the best thing I like about my world is, it’s not every man for himself.  I’m not on my own against the world.  I literally have armies of people who want to help me — all the way from the kid under the information sign, who gives me directions to the surgeon who could perform open heart surgery to save my life — if I need it.  It might take a while; it might be so frustrating I could scream, and I might not get the exact result I sincerely hoped for, but at the end of the day, if I’ve got a problem, my world is willing to help me.  All I have to do is ask and meet it halfway.  If this is a dog eat dog existence, my world is one dog short.

There are a lot of things wrong with the world we live in, a lot of inequities, a lot of solvable problems, but there is definitely an upper end to what we have to complain about.  We need to complain, long and loud.  It seems to be the only way we can get things done anymore.  I’m just saying, we need to open our eyes a little bit wider before we do it.