January 31, 2022 #3

Last night was kind of difficult.

I made the dire mistake of once again partaking in social media.  I'm discovering more and more that social media and me don't get along too well.  Lots gets lost in translation, coupled with the fact that people tend to feel emboldened by their anonymity and/or physical distance.  I can be prone to doing this as much as anyone else.  It's the biggest shortcoming of taking part.

I'd rather not get into interpersonal details.  I either got hurt or allowed myself to get hurt once again by several - I say 'allowed myself to get hurt' because I subject myself to the situations in the first place.  Sometimes my honesty is brutal, and I try to temper it with a balance to some degree of love, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.  I'll wager that 'not' applies more often than I even realize.  This is to my discredit.

This whole mess with the truckers convoy situation in Ottawa has stirred up a whole lot of emotions, and everyone seems to have something to say about it.  I won't mince words with what I think about it.  I'm all for peace, and protesting is fine as long as they adhere to it.  Except protests rarely stay peaceful.  I'll grant that a large number of the protestors in Ottawa were peaceful.  But with American confederate flags flying, swastikas, the defacing of the beloved Terry Fox statue all happening with the "peaceful" protestors not stopping them... I read something this morning that struck me:  In a room full of ten people coexisting with one Nazi among them, you have ten Nazis.  The word 'tolerance' is thrown around a lot and misused.  I don't know if letting unsavory individuals mingle around you exempts you from being one yourself.  I know I wouldn't allow them in my presence.  I don't "tolerate" gay people, for example... I accept them, as I would hope they would accept me.  That's what peace is.  Acceptance.  Not tolerance.

To deny that there is a vast ugly presence in Ottawa with a minority of Canada's truckers protesting that they shouldn't have to get vaccinated, where health care workers risk their lives every goddamned day to look after people like anti-vaxers themselves when they do wind up sick, is remarkably hypocritical to me.  I don't think people should be taxed for not getting vaccinated, like they are in Quebec... but I do think the government should have offered a tax break for those who choose to get it, rather than throw million dollar lottery prizes out there for people who hold out.  I think now it's too late for that, because enough money has been wasted on stupid, selfish "lotteries" like that at various places in North America.  I think it's quite disgusting if you're only going to consider getting a vaccine to protect others and yourself only if you have a shot at getting rich from it.

Whether you support this minority of truckers or not is up to each individual.  And I won't hate you for it or something like that.  But I will be disappointed in you, as will the majority of us.  The fact is, the majority of Canadians do not support it.  The numbers say so, and they don't lie.  The vast majority, more often than not, is normally in the right.  

So I'm disappointed in a number of individuals I know that are defending the atrocities that are happening in Ottawa, like those I mentioned above.  When I see something very wrong that my friends are supporting, I will call them out on it.  And I won't back down on what I know is right.  I may, however, back down on what I only feel is right.  But facts are non-negotiable. 

All this bullshit has made for a stressful weekend for me, because I thought friends of mine would know better.  That said, I've done lots of shit myself where I should have known better.  None of us are infallible.  In other words, it's forgivable... unless, however, I catch you taking part in something like supporting wannabe autocratic tyrants like the Trump family.  And that kind of tyranny is heading straight into Canada via the likes of hard-right Harperites like Pierre Polievre.  It's been a while since I've seen a politician revel in stirring up hatred as much as that guy.  And there are more like him.

What happened to the Progressive Conservatives anyway?  Stephen Harper came along and erased the "Progressive" out of the title, and he's taken the baton from the U.S.'s Newt Gingrich and sown hatred and divisiveness into Canadian politics.  Once you've adopted that style of politicking, it's hard to get rid of it.  And I fear we're on a very dark road with no chance to u-turn.  Politics is more tribal than ever.  I didn't like Brian Mulroney much, but at least the guy had a sense of civility and class.  Exit "Progressive", however, and enter anti-science hateful rhetoric thru the likes of Harper.  Remember, Harper personally visited Trump at the White House shortly after the Donald took power, while the Liberals in Canada were in power.  Make of that what you will.

Therefore, I can't understand people who support that style of politics.  I have friends who are conservatives.  One in particular who I call a non maternal brother.  He's open to reason and recognizes bullshit when he sees it, most of the time.  I miss those types of conservatives.  I just always felt that with multiple parties in a political landscape, their job as elected by the people is supposed to be to find common ground and get things done.  That just doesn't happen anymore; now we have gridlock.  But thank God Liberals like Justin Trudeau only have power via a minority.  It's baffling how a guy like that is accepted by his peers, just as much as someone like Harper is accepted by his.  And yeah, I said it:  Trudeau is the Harper of the Liberal Party.

Anyway, all this is neither here nor there.  What we ultimately have to do is buckle down and see if we can all coexist while we search for the home stretch of this covid mess.  If we don't accept vaccines as the answer, then I want those who oppose them to tell me what the way out of this is.  ANYTIME.  Let us all know what your big secret is.  The sooner the better!  If some other idea will work and you can get apolitical science on your side, please bless us with this information.  Otherwise, all these good apples in this giant bin of them will become spoiled by those few rotten ones.

These are strong opinions of mine, but it's part and parcel of what I said above... I feel like bullshit needs to be called out when I encounter it.  If this were 40 years ago, pre-internet, everyone would be onside with the vaccines and we'd have been out of this mess months ago.  But even some of the best of us can be seduced by the dark side, for various reasons.  THAT is why I choose to call it out.

But I have to face it - I'm mentally ill.  In a bad way.  Considering suicide too may times over the course of '21, in part because of the stress brought on by all of this nonsense.  Should I just shut up and keep these opinions to myself?  That'll make me even MORE sick.  When extreme right and left politics becomes the norm in the news cycles, whether you watch news or not (which I've actually chosen to avoid lately, to be honest; because there are NO "new channels", only "political commentary channels" certainly at least in the U.S.), we will all wind up hating each other inevitably.  And that, dear friends, is what makes me really, really depressed.  It should for you, too.  

However, and I've said this more times than I care to admit... I will try to resolve to stay away from facebook and its evil algorithms that are designed solely to pit us against one another and divide us.  Maybe politics isn't the source of all this division after all.  Social media is lurking in the shadows pulling all the strings of the division among us, and not enough is being done about it.

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And we all need to be careful how we communicate with one another.  If we have something to speak out about, it must absolutely be tempered with love and understanding of one another.  "What would so and so think if they heard/read/saw this?"  Especially... ESPECIALLY if you know for a fact that the person you're about to address has mental fucking illness.  ESPECIALLY if you're a friend or relative.  I can be harsh, too, when I feel strongly about something.  But I will make clear that I still love whoever is on the other end.

In lieu of my absence from facebook, I'll still be on Instagram.... I probably shouldn't be, because it's the same dreadful company.... and if any of what I post there has someone arguing that I'm wrong, I have the option to block said person.  And I will.  And have.  At least the comments.

But even better, I have this blog, which doesn't have an approval rating by the reader, and no one can publicly comment on my blogs hatefully if I choose not to publish them.  

On a lighter note, I'm creating another blog page I'll call "Picture This", where I'll post old pictures with accompanying stories attached.  I'll take a picture down if someone in them is in it and wants it removed, but I'll be quite scrutinizing what I post ahead of that.  I hope to stir up fond memories and inject some happiness and love, and laughs, into today's downcast atmosphere.  The majority of these pictures I speak of are before the internet age, when we all got along and loved each other.

Because God knows, I'm not feeling the love around me, beyond my wife, that I used to.  And last night dragged me down into the dungeons of depression that I don't want to revisit anytime soon.

I'm sorry, once again, to my wife for having to endure my uncontrollable reactions to things I partook in on this day.  Though I didn't have any kind of "attack", I was on my way there.  And she is my safety net before I get to that point.  I wish she didn't have to be.  I'm a handful.

May whatever deity you believe in bless you and steer you with love.

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