Nick, Barack and The World Stage

Congratulations, Nicky!  You did it!  There were a couple of times there I didn’t think you’d make it, but you worked long and hard, you stuck to your guns — literally — and in the end, you did it.  Personally, I think you deserve it, so, once again, congratulations.

For those of you who haven’t been watching, let me be the first to inform you that President Nicholas Sarkozy of France is now the Leader of the Western World.  It probably won’t be formally announced for a hundred years or so, but when history gets around to looking at the early 21st century, believe me, it will be confirmed.  Of course, nobody’s really saying anything out loud right now; that would be rude.  After all, the other guy’s still kicking around in Washington; nevertheless, it’s all true.

The story’s almost Shakespearean in its simplicity.  Barack Obama is pretty much everybody’s Hamlet — long on talk and short on action.  While he’s been sitting around the Oval Office, trying to decide which wall to hang his Nobel Prize on, everybody in Congress — from Nancy Pelosi to that cry-baby Boehner — has been kicking sand in his face.  The bills are piling up, nobody’s coming home from Afghanistan anytime soon, half the citizens in California and Arizona are illegal and the American economy is folding up faster than a cheap lawn chair.

People see this stuff!  It’s noticeable!

Meanwhile, Nicky Sarkozy’s been scurrying around, doing things.  He’s impetuous and ill-advised and sometimes dead wrong, but at least he’s doing something.  A perfect example of this is the Arab Spring.  Our world is in the midst of a major political upheaval right now, and it’s rippin’ and rollin’ across half a continent.  The American State Department’s response since Christmas has been an emphatic, “Yes, no, maybe so” to everybody who isn’t listening.  That was old when the Egyptians were trying to float Mubarak down the Nile, and it got downright ancient a couple of weeks later when events and unrest overran Libya.   The Europeans need Libyan oil, and they made it plain they weren’t going to sit around forever, wringing their hands, waiting for it.  Besides, most of them wanted a whack at Gaddafi anyway: he’s been a permanent pain in the ass since the 60s.  Unfortunately, without any clear direction from America, they listened to Sarkozy, who stepped into the breach with the simple solution: “Let’s bomb them!”  The French opened fire before the ink was dry on the UN resolution, and here we are.  At this point, nobody knows what’s going on in the desert west of Benghazi — or even if we’re shooting at the right people.  However, everybody does know that the plan was approved in the US by Samantha Powers, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton, the Weird Sisters of American Foreign Policy.  And it doesn’t take Lady Macbeth to figure out that these days, if you want something done, you’re just as far ahead to go to Paris as Washington.

Look at the Ivory Coast.  This is how realpolitik works.  After years of international dickin’ around, Sarkozy grabbed the initiative and manipulated a UN Resolution on March 30th, 2011.  This gave French troops (boots on the ground) the legal right (and a UN cover story) to take over the country, get rid of President Laurent Gbagbo and install French-friendly Alassane Ouattara.  They did this in less than three weeks!  There’s a lot of posing for the cameras and high-minded rhetoric, but behind the United Nations are a bunch of tough looking soldiers who aren’t wearing powder blue helmets; they’ve got the French tri-colour patched on their shoulders.  This is the first unpalatable dictator thrown out of office by the Western Democracies since George Bush’s boys dragged Saddam Hussein out of his hole in Tikrit in 2003.

Sarkozy’s leadership in the West isn’t a recent phenomenon, either.  In December, 2008, when President Sarkozy was taking his turn as boss of the European Union, he went out of his way to meet with the Dalai Lama.  This is a move that’s guaranteed to provoke an angry response from the Chinese.  It did, and for a time it even threatened some very serious trade negotiations between China and the entire European Union.

Contrast this to President Obama’s approach to the Dalai Lama.  In July, 2008, during the presidential election, Obama sent him a blow-you-off letter full of regret that Barack’s travel arrangements and campaign schedule dictated they would have to get together another time.  (Oddly, John McCain found a couple of minutes to grab a coffee with His Holiness.)  Then in October, 2009, when the Dalai Lama came to Washington, President Obama discovered some subsequent engagements that prevented him — once again – from meeting with one of the world’s foremost religious leaders.  In actual fact Obama was busy packing for a trip to – you guess it! — China.  The two leaders did finally meet — in February, 2010 — with so little fanfare it looked like the Secret Service shuffled the Dalai Lama into of the White House through the back door.

This stuff goes on and on.  Sarkozy has been diplomatically outgunning Obama for the last two years. 

At the end of the day, it isn’t that economic, political and military power is seeping away from America; it isn’t – at least, not yet.  It’s the will to use that power to everybody’s best advantage that has left the White House.  For the last two years, American foreign policy has consisted of “I’m not George Bush.”   That isn’t good enough.  It’s no wonder Nicholas Sarkozy has stepped up to fill the vacuum left by America’s absence from the world stage.

Canadian Election: A Family Affair

Last week, the State Legislature of Maine passed a law that made it legal for one-armed people (amputees etc.) to possess and use switchblade knives.  I suspect this is a good law, given the situation, but why under the sun and moon would anybody think about it in the first place?  I’m not even going to go there because it just turns into mean-spirited comedy.  You’ll have to fill in the blanks yourself — in your own head.  However, remember that somebody had to believe the state of Maine needed a law for these special circumstances.  They had to actively convince somebody in the Legislature this was a good deal, and that person, in turn had to convince everybody else.  I don’t know the final vote count, for and against, but obviously the majority of lawmakers in the state of Maine thought the people would be best served by a law governing switchblade knives.

It’s important to note that it takes a lot of time and effort to get a bill passed into law.  It’s not something you do one day after lunch.  The paperwork alone would make an environmentalist weep.  It’s a serious business.

This is where the whole law-making apparatus falls apart.  Those who govern us do not take their occupations seriously.  If they did, it would have been generally agreed, long since, that amputees in Maine — who needed to — could carry switchblades, and everybody would just shut up about it.  Honestly, how many times does it come up, anyway?  This isolated incident demonstrates that there’s a general theatre of the absurd attached to every government in North America.  The politicians we elect do the most ridiculous things — without a murmur of apology.  And then they try their damndest to make us believe it’s all so extremely important.

Just look at this current crop in Canada, trying to convince us that individually one of them is more vote-worthy than the other one.  Please!  Despite what the diehards say, Stephen Harper does not eat babies, Michael Ignatieff isn’t an American buffoon and Jack Layton doesn’t want to give all our money to homeless drug dealers.  They’re just not that evil!  Our politicos aren’t roaring radicals, bent on changing the world, and throughout our history, they never have been.  They’re uniformly bland.  In fact, Canada has actually suffered because our political leaders have always been cut from the same cloth.  As a nation, we don’t go in for revolutionary big ideas.  In the last 150 some odd years, Trudeaumania was the best we could do, and look where that got us.  Canadians like the status quo.  We’re like a Mom and Pop grocery store; nobody goes there for caviar or clutted cream but when you’re in a hurry, and you need a loaf of bread or a litre of milk… well, that’s a different story.

Think of it this way.  Our wannabe leaders are all from the same family.  They’re the children of the Mom and Pop store – kinda like a really, really cold Brady Bunch.  They have every one of the traits and idiosyncrasies that drives us crazy in our own families but we keep in touch — simply because they are family.  If you look at them this way, this unnecessary election makes a whole lot more sense.  Stephen is the oldest brother.  He thinks he’s been slaving away for years, without any recognition.  He’s arrogant and bossy and thinks he knows it all.  He’s been trying to run the show his way for so long he doesn’t think anybody else in the family knows what they’re doing.   Michael is the middle brother who got this cool job out of town.  He hasn’t been around for all the family problems over the years.  He didn’t have to drive Dad to the chiropractor, for example, or go to the funerals, or deal with all the other various problems.  Now, he’s come back home with some high-brow ideas, and he thinks he should have a say in the family business.  Jack is the youngest brother, and nobody takes him seriously.  He’s always been a little bit off the wall.  He gets to do the jerk jobs that don’t matter — like cutting the grass — but when it comes time to make the big decisions, nobody listens to him.  Elizabeth May is everybody’s little sister.  They pat her on the head and say things like “Good idea!” but she’s generally ignored.  At family gatherings, if there’s room, she gets to sit at the adult’s table, but if there isn’t, she has to go sit with the kids.  And Gilles is that somewhere-in-middle brother who wants to change everything around and open up a cafe inside the grocery store.  He doesn’t want to pay any rent — because he’s part of the family — but he wants to keep the profits of his little enterprise all to himself.  The rest of the family wants to keep him happy, but they think his idea is stupid.

Here on Day whatever the hell it is, that’s what this election is all about — one little family arguing with each other — after lunch on Boxing Day or Easter (or whenever.)  Nobody’s really serious, nobody’s going to get hurt and the family business will keep chugging along.

You can decide for yourself: how much of this is silly and how much of it is true?

Rick, Yoga and Free Speech

I had a friend who once told me there are no such things as bad days.   He wasn’t one of these terminally chirper individuals you want to shake ‘til their eyes pop.  He was a regular guy, and he practiced what he preached.  Rick (not his real name) saw the world as a wonderfully written comedy, loaded with pathos and suspense, and he saw life as a poker game where you have to play the cards you’re dealt.  His point was that instead of lamenting the fact that you have no shoes, you should find the guy who has no feet.  Then, by purchase or guile, you should get your mitts on his shoes because he’s obviously not going to be needing them.   Rick would have loved the 21st century.

Every time I run into a day like today, when it looks, for all the world, like the world is doomed, I think of Rick and wonder what he’d make of it all.  Not the big things like another earthquake in Japan or the United States 24 hours away from bankruptcy — but the little things — the quirks and pops that define us, as a society.

For example, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association is all upset that a woman was tossed from public transit for wearing a button that the Transit Authority thought was offensive.  You can read about it here.  What happened was the transit cops were checking for unpaid fares (Vancouver and environs has an honour system for the part of public transit called Skytrain) when they found a female dishonouring the system.  According to various news sources, they wrote her a ticket for $175.00.  She, then did the honourable thing, bought a ticket and wanted to ride.  However, the cops asked her to either remove an offensive button she was wearing or remove herself from public transit.  She refused to do either one and so was forcibly removed — button and all.

Our girl decided not to just go quietly into that good night, shake herself off and ride for free another day.  Instead, she decided that this was no less than a police state challenge to the very core of our democracy – freedom of speech.  She embarked on a province wide “I’m a Victim” tour of various venues.   It seems most people blew her off — including the Police Complaint Commissioner.  However, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association had enough time, money and resources to not only hear her tale of woe but they also had enough time, money and resources left over to act upon it.  The BCCLA, as they’re affectionately called, has now asked the transit police to “clarify and revise their policy on free speech” without delay (Tracy Sherlock, The Vancouver Sun, 4.7.2011., A4.)  Such is the dire nature of this attack on Canadian values and liberty.  Of course, the BCCLA doesn’t blow their nose without alerting the media, so Vancouver’s answer to Joan of Arc found her way into the on-line pages of both The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail.  The story includes a picture of the offending woman with the offending button.  However, possibly at the request of the photographer (although I have no evidence of that) our heroine’s fingers are strategically covering the offending word — one assumes, so as not to offend.

There you have it.  That’s what darkened my mood today.  At a time when half the world is starving, the other half is trying to butcher each other and the rest of us are trying to cope with the insanity of it all, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is spending a wad of cash — protecting me from the transit police who were protecting me from nasty little girls who think the rules of common courtesy should not, or do not, apply to them.

So, what would Rick think about all this?  Let me just stop for a minute and explain something.  Although this ignorant waste of time and money upsets me, I do not have a public opinion about it.  I’m a coward.  The B.C. Civil Liberties Association scares the bejesus out of me, and when they’re around, I keep my opinions to myself.  The only thing that scares me worse is their mutant parent, the Human Rights Commission.  Make no mistake: when the Nazis come, I’m the guy hiding in the basement, reading novels – just so you know.  So, anyway, what would Rick think about all this?

Rick would find it absolutely hilarious that the B.C. Transit Police actually expect people to pay $175.00 fines when they didn’t spring for bus fare, in the first place.  He’d laugh himself stupid that this somehow passes for injustice.  And he’d be rolling on the floor, peeing his pants, to hear that the people’s champion of Canadian values didn’t have the integrity to contribute $2.50 worth of social responsibility to public transit!

I guess it’s not such a bad day after all, when I think about it.  Normally, I’d have to pay a cover charge for this kind of comedy.  Thanks, Rick!