Category: History

If You Remember the Sixties…

If you’ve got some time to waste and want a few serious grins, invite a bunch of old people over for a wine and cheese.  It might not be all that much fun at first (everybody griping about their various ailments) but invariably those old folks are going to get around to gabbing about the 60s.  It’s unavoidable.  There’s even an unwritten rule somewhere that says whenever you talk to people from the 60s, you have to talk about the 60s.  It’s like dating a vegan: you’re going to hear about it — long before you ever decide to sleep with them.

Old people love to rattle on about back in the day, and with a couple of Pinot Noirs under their belt, there’ll be no stopping them.  In fact, if you don’t set some strict limits, they’ll be hauling out the hookahs in fond remembrance.  The neat thing is, though, you’ll get to hear some of the most outrageous lies ever told west of Paul Bunyan.  Edith Hamilton on her best day couldn’t write them any better.  Plus, old people are cunning.  To cover their ass, in a kind of an all-purpose pre-fabrication, they’ve come up with this amazing disclaimer: “If you remember the 60s, you weren’t there.”  With that adage tie-dyed into the conversation, the sky’s the limit.  The highs become the highest, the sex becomes the sexiest, the music becomes the musiciest, and everybody went to Woodstock — except the ones who were at Glastonbury, Altamont and the Isle of Wight.  (Just for the record, I only got as far as Strawberry Mountain — and that’s only because my sister covered for me.)

I understand these are subjective truths.  When one is young and immortal, everything is bigger, brighter and better.  I have no problem with that; we all do it.  For example, when I was a kid, I heard World War II veterans talk about the woods outside of Bastogne as if it were a Boys Only Christmas Party — with Nazis.  The problem I have is when the love-in gets rolling and people start filling in the details, they go from fanciful to false without missing a beat.  Suddenly, Uncle Fred (who’s been selling mattresses since forever) claims he spent his college years smoking peyote with Don Juan Matus and Janet (the secretary at the Auto Claim Centre) is talking about riding with Sonny Barger to Morningstar Ranch — and beyond.  Most of this stuff just didn’t happen.  Even though I’ve never been known to let the truth get in the way of a good story, I have a serious problem when these old buggers start chopping the tall-tale timber.  Why?  I’m old, bitter and twisted, that’s why.

Here’s the real deal (and I don’t care what these Johnny-Come-Latelys have to say about it.)  Back in the day, the shorthairs outnumbered the longhairs by at least 20 to 1, and they used their vast majority like an exclusive club.  Yeah, yeah, yeah!  We all listened to the music, spouted the anti-war propaganda, and groped around looking for free love, but when push came to shove, way more kids spent their evenings studying for Mr. McLellan’s Biology exam than ever sparked up in the dark and listened to Grace Slick.  The counterculture gap then, was a lot bigger than it is now, and the dividing lines were very clear.  As Ken Kesey once said, “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.”  The truth is most of the people claiming retroactive relevance these days were never on the bus.  Not only that, but at the time, they looked very much askance at anybody who was.  Later on, when the 60s became the darling decade, they rewrote their personal history to mitigate their circumstances and claim part of the cool.

I’ve got nothing against charlatans as such, but I hate like hell seeing the dork who worked on the yearbook claiming to be the king of counterculture when he and his football friends used to think it was hilarious to chase my friends with his dad’s Buick.  Actually, I’m not that bitter.  I’ve long since given up trashing these gasbags, it just irks me that they continue to dine out on a decade they were never part of.

Paris: The Streets

Today, we’re going to the graveyard to pay our respects to Baudelaire.  It’s a long way from the river, but we’re going to walk.  The best way to see any city — especially Paris — is to hoof it.  For one thing you’re never too far from a friendly bistro and medicinal wine.  For another, unlike North American towns, Paris is an outdoor kinda place.  Parisians take to the streets at any provocation.  They’ve been doing it for years, and they’re good at it.  Civil disobedience has been a Parisian pastime since Marie Antoinette decided to introduce the peasants to Betty Crocker.  In fact, the reason Paris has such wide beautiful boulevards is Napoleon III (the real Napoleon’s nephew) didn’t want to find out how good Parisians were at controlling the streets.  Napoleon hired a guy named Haussmann (BTW, he was never actually a baron) who redesigned most of Paris so a paranoid Emperor could get his troops from one neighbourhood to another faster than the locals could shout “Aux barricades!”  Monsieur Haussmann succeeded beyond anybody’s wildest expectations.  In the 1860s, he pulled down half the city.  This was before urban development had a name, so the only pause in Haussmann’s destruction/construction plan was the time it took for him to tell the residents to move.  Literally thousands of families were turned out into the streets which Haussmann immediately demolished.   In a few years, Paris, the medieval market town, was gone, and Paris the modern European capital you see today, had been built.  You can still get a feel for the old Paris, though, on the Left Bank close to the river in the Latin Quarter.  The streets there are still narrow, dark and winding.  There are even a few places where you can find the old cobblestones.

Ironically, Napoleon III never got to enjoy the city he created.  He was deposed when the citizens of Paris decided their Emperor had lost one too many wars and took to the streets in 1870.  Apparently, broad boulevards work just a well for angry mobs as they do for soldiers.

Taxation: The First 10,000 Years — Part 3

Although it’s relatively new and still not universally accepted, you don’t need a PhD in political science to understand the concept of taxation without representation.  It’s quite simple, really.  All you have to do is remember taxpayers are people.  Yes, corporations pay taxes, but that’s a whole different bunny rabbit.  Believe me; the corporate world is well represented in government circles.  I’m talking about the fundamental building blocks of democracy – ordinary people.  To understand taxation without representation, you find an average person, and as Deep Throat said to Woodward and Bernstein, “Follow the money.”  Here’s how it works.

Jane is an ordinary person.  She works for an ordinary company and earns pretty good money.  She has a car, lives in a tidy one bedroom apartment and has a boyfriend named Joe.  She takes the bus to work because gas and parking are expensive, and she’s trying her best to be green.  Jane is not particularly political or socially active, but she votes, knows the issues, did the Find A Cure Fun Run and volunteers Thursday night at her mother’s After School Drop-in Centre.  You could pass Jane on the street forty times and never know she was there.  Jane pays her taxes.  Actually, aside from income tax once a year and big item sales tax, Jane isn’t even aware she’s paying taxes; she just does it.  It’s part of Jane’s ordinary life.

The reason Jane gives the government her money is to provide for the common good.  However, should Jane desire a few things from her government — like more buses in the rain or perhaps a streetlight or two, so she doesn’t break her neck walking in the dark — chances are good she won’t get them.  Why?  Nobody’s on her side.  If she was an endangered goat, she’d have at least twelve different environmental lobby groups working for her.  If she was a rubbish disposal technician (or whatever garbage men are calling themselves these days) she’d have a powerful Public Service Union to rely on.  If she were a cultural event, she could get public funding, etc. etc.  Unfortunately, since Jane is none of the above, she’s on her own.  Jane has been abandoned by the people who are supposed to serve her.

The bottom line is Jane can’t hurt her government and powerful activist group can.  Social and political activists are no longer a bunch of like-minded citizens who have temporarily banded together to get their message out.  They are now permanent.  They have bricks and mortar office buildings, high octane lawyers and tons of money to throw around.  They don`t necessarily buy politicians; they don`t have to.  They can produce opinion polls, social and scientific research papers, press releases and enough media time to browbeat the politicos into line.  Meanwhile, all Jane has at her disposal is a nasty email or telephone call.  Furthermore, many activist groups are nonprofit and not only pay little or no actual tax but are also in line to receive government funding (which, by the way, is Jane’s money.)

It’s the same with Public Service Unions.  Over the years, they have been able to negotiate some pretty healthy contracts with the various levels of government.  In general, Public Service workers earn higher wages, receive more benefits and have better pension plans than the average private sector worker, and the gap is increasing.  This is because Public Service Workers control services essential to a modern society.  Even a minor disruption in garbage collection, transit service, education or health inspection can have disastrous results.  Politicians know this, so it’s better to throw money at union problems than risk angering its membership.  Union displeasure wields power far beyond its sheer numbers.  Once again, this special interest group has a lot more influence on government than Jane does, even though Jane is paying the bill.  It’s more than ironic that in many cases, Jane’s public service employees are earning more money than she is and certainly have a better pension plan.

Our democracy faces a unique situation.  Ordinary people are becoming disconnected from the government that is supposed to serve them because their voices are a mere whisper compared to the noise that 24/7 special interest groups can generate.  Jane’s problem is that streetlights aren’t sexy.  They don’t produce headlines; social questions and moral dilemmas do.  As activists push politicians further and further away from the nuts and bolts of government, ordinary people find their needs going begging.  Yet they are increasingly being asked to foot the bill.

In a nutshell, representation without taxation is no different from its colonial counterpoint, taxation without representation.  It just doesn’t have a revolution – yet.