You may be right but you may be wrong

Remember, Billy Joel singing, ‘We were only having fun. Never hurting anyone. And we all enjoyed some madness for awhile?’ That kind of summarizes what many of us thought when we were in our 20s.

Oh, sure, some were responsible. Some didn’t even drink and, if they did, it was in moderation but they were in the minority. We called them nerds. Boring. The last thing most of us wanted to be. Well, how’s that looking for us now?

What I recall of my 20s is that there were often times that I couldn’t recall much of anything. Friday and Saturday nights were occasionally a blur. But, unless something heinous happened, it didn’t matter. We were bulletproof. No, I don’t do that stuff. Well, I guess it can’t kill me. Drunk driving? Nah, I’ve only had a few and I’m going straight home. Condoms? Yep, no exceptions. Well, maybe just this one time. I mean, the odds are huge …

When you were in our 20s, the world was your oyster. If you weren’t in college or university, you were making good money. You played sports (usually followed by a few beers). You had lots of crazy friends. You travelled and went to hockey games and concerts. You celebrated a post-secondary graduation. Now try and imagine the 20-something you in this coronavirus world.

Yee-ah.

I am not saying the kids should be given a pass, but let’s not judge them too harshly when it is so much easier for us middle-agers to kick back, read a book, watch TV, or go for a walk, than it is for them.

And, to be fair, the rules have been a little misleading. Restaurants, bars and clubs are open but you still have to keep your distance? And how much of this is the lack of diligence on the part of staff at these places? The mask message has been fairly casual and we’ll soon be sending our kids back to school.

What I’m saying is, let’s try a little empathy before finger-waving, stern glares and harsh words. They are losing a lot. And it doesn’t help to tell them it’s “just a ceremony,” or “just a game,” or “just a trip” and “you’ll have other opportunities to (fill in the blank),” because we don’t really know if they will, do we? It’s just like how we shouldn’t tell kids who scrape their knees or lose a toy that it’s “not a big deal.” It is to them, and that’s what matters.

So, yeah, let’s tell our 20-somethings to be more careful, to abide by the regulations, to think about who it could really affect (specifically, the elderly, their grandparents).

But let’s also tell them that we understand their frustration, that we know the regulations leash feels tighter on them than it does on anyone else because we were 20-somethings once and, uh … had some good times but, uh, well, if we had this happen back then, we would have totally followed the guidelines. To a “T.” Absolutely.

And remember that the first two suggestions in Dr. Henry’s catchphrase are just as important as the third (being safe): be kind and be calm.

Our reach should exceed our grasp

Extreme ways are back again,

Extreme places I didn’t know,

I broke everything new again, Everything I had owned,

I threw it out the window, came long,

Extreme ways I know move apart the colors of my sea …

- Moby

Extreme ways are indeed back again and, as awful as it has been in some respects, it is necessary if we are going to see change for the better. Revolution is upon us and the U.S. of A, the “greatest country in the world,” is the appropriate epicentre.

I’m not just talking about the huge protests that have taken a confrontational, chaotic turn in Portland (and coming soon to other cities that President Trump has deemed in need of federal soldiers’ intervention). That storm, arising from systemic racism and violence, is just one face of a two-headed monster.

The other extreme ways that are back again also deals with racism, at least partly, in that it speaks to systemic inequality. But it also speaks to the larger issues of global warming and the environment. That’s right, I’m talking about (cue the cool 70s TV cop show music) … The Squad!

The Squad is the nickname for a group of four Democrat U.S. congress representatives, all women, who have simultaneously excited and pissed off a lot of people. You may have heard about a recent incident where one of them, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka, AOC) was accosted in the halls of congress by Republican congressman, Ted Yoho, and called disgusting and a “f-king bitch” because of her opinion on crime and policing.

AOC is noted for her eloquence and she was in top form in reviewing the disrespect that women regularly endure from men and responding to Yoho’s non-apology, in which he didn’t even admit to what he said. He didn’t even mention her by name, and then added that he wouldn’t apologize for his love of “my God, my family, and my country.”

I know. Don’t bother trying to make sense of it that last part, a limp-wristed red herring. Yoho also offered the fact that he had a wife and daughter as proof that he respects women. For good measure, he might as well have added that he has dark-skinned friends.

I’m sure that there were male Democrats who have said much worse things than AOC said, that pissed Yoho off, but he didn’t feel compelled to accost them in the hallway and call them assholes. It was sexist at the least. I suspect racism factored in as well. After all, his boss, Trump, previously said that AOC and her fellow Squad members should “go back to where they came from,” even though all but one was born in the U.S. And it’s not just vitriol they face but death threats as well.

The other Squad members are Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. And they don’t just stand for women. They stand for social justice and equality. They call for changes to a capitalist system that has created a massive wealth gap, where you have a few super wealthy vs widespread poverty in the richest nation in the world.

The Squad has made a bold proposal, a “Green New Deal” that calls for big changes that spook even members of their own party because it has tenets of (quickly glancing both ways, and in a hushed voice) socialism. I’ll let you Google it for more info, but the basics of the Green New Deal are: renewable energy, believing in and reacting to climate change, making buildings, infrastructure, and transportation systems more energy efficient, guaranteed work, some public ownership, free higher education for all, honoring treaties and requiring consent from indigenous people, and Medicare for all.

Absolutely bonkers, right?

The Green New Deal is radical. A friend of mine on Facebook called it “stupid” and “out to lunch.” Well … for the U.S., yes, it is extreme, but some of the Deal’s proposals are being suggested or have already taken hold in many developed countries.

Virtually all Scandinavian countries, led by Social Democratic governments, have strong economies while consistently placing at the top of Standard of Living/Best Countries to Live In lists. But not business-friendly, right? Guess again. Forbes Magazine ranked Denmark as the top country for business in the world for the second straight year.

Canada’s system falls somewhere between Denmark and the U.S. It has many social programs and our most famous socialist, Tommy Douglas (voted top Canadian of all time in a CBC poll), is responsible for us having national Medicare and the charter of rights. You can still get rich in these places. They just take better care of those who aren’t – and they care more about the environment.

Many are portraying the Green New Deal as a bogeyman agenda that will bring ruin and communism to America. Let’s be serious. This is the U.S. we’re talking about, the world flag-bearer of capitalism. It fought a cold war against communists and demonized socialism to the point where there is no way all of the Green New Deal gets accepted. Anyone who thinks that is the true goal of the Deal’s advocates, haven’t written a proposal or negotiated before. I have written proposals, and I always added some goodies that the funder I was applying to could reject.

And the Democrats are capitalists too. For the same reason that there was no need to fear a Bernie Sanders presidency because his plans would all be watered down, Americans shouldn’t lose sleep thinking that a Biden win will mean the Squad and their followers will get carte blanche.

People should be thankful for the Squad, and groups like them. Without them and those that came before them, our world would be an even bigger shit show. Extreme ways have always been needed to stop us from destroying ourselves. Unions. Human rights activists. Greenpeace. PETA. They have all done some “crazy” things and, as a result, they got our attention and at least some good things got done.

If the Squad just asked for universal health care and free post-secondary education, it probably wouldn’t happen. But, by swinging for the fences, they can settle for a double and still improve life for a lot of people and make the U.S. a more responsible world citizen. That would be quite an achievement.

And the fact that it is a group of women leading the cause makes it that much better. The time is long overdue for men to move over, to share the reins, and stop reacting angrily to strong women who assert themselves. I mean, really, it’s hard to imagine women screwing things up more.

When asked about the "team," member Ayanna Presley said that “anyone who is dedicated to building a more equitable and just world is a member of The Squad.” Sounds like a pretty cool club to me.

When idols fall, history still exists and change becomes more likely

There is a saying about being careful of meeting your idols. Chances are, you’ll be disappointed, that when you look beyond the things you love them for, you’ll find warts of character and actions.

Usually, when we’re confronted with criticisms of our idols, we react angrily, unreasonably. Oh, I don’t mind being wrong about a policy or who said what to whom, but tell me that one of my idols was a jerk? Dem’s fightin’ words!

We are an idol society. We love to put people on pedestals. Oprah is the wisest woman in the world. She gets me. Donald Trump loves America, shoots from the hip and tells it like it is. Ken Dryden is one of the best goalies ever, brilliant, and a wonderful human being! (okay, that last one is me saying it but, damn it, he’s a great guy!)

The choice with some monuments are obvious.

Pulling down Saddam Hussein’s statue after the Iraq war? Sure. He was a brutal dictator who gassed his own citizens.

In the U.S., confederate leaders were fighting to keep slavery, that is what the civil war was about, so taking down those memorials should be a no-brainer. It isn’t though. A considerable segment of people in the U.S. south still laments the defeat and considers black people to be inferior and dangerous.

Here in Canada, we have calls for some of our monuments to come down, the most contentious, of course, being statues of our first and long-time Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald. Macdonald is considered the “father of our country” for getting all of the colonies/provinces on board and being the architect of the national railway that secured our coast to coast territory that might have otherwise been split up.

Unfortunately, Macdonald’s tactics in building the railway and his treatment of the country’s indigenous people were ghastly. According to a recent article in the National Post, even in the context of the time, Macdonald “pursued an indigenous policy so draconian that even his contemporaries accused him of going beyond the pale.” Macdonald’s edicts included a campaign of starvation and attrition, the public hangings of the Red River Rebellion, and the creation of residential schools.

It should be noted that Macdonald’s racist policies were not confined to Indigenous people. He also imposed a head tax on Chinese immigrants and once told the Commons that the Chinese should not be given a vote because Canada’s “Aryan nature” could be upset by a “mongrel race” formed by the breeding of whites and Asians.

Still, despite all that, I have mixed emotions on the matter.

Generally, I believe that monuments of evil people, people who did or advocated for horrible things, crimes against humanity, should be brought down. I don’t buy the argument that this would be “destroying history” because a monument is just a speck of history. History is spoken, told by people. It’s in books and on film. Nobody gets a better understanding of history by looking at a statue that paints the figure in the noblest light.

This all said, is it fair to judge Macdonald on his indigenous policies when it was essentially the same everywhere, where colonizers were seizing lands and racism was the norm? Is it fair to single him out since whoever was PM at the time would have likely done the same?

Ultimately, I think we must fall back on the wishes of those who were hurt and who are offended. Macdonald was the main architect of the decimation of indigenous tribes and the abusive residential school system that stripped a people of their culture and dignity. If paying homage to him is an affront to those people, their wishes should be honored. Their pain is real. The offense they take is real. It’s the same as someone who has worn an Indian costume or used the term “Jew’d me down in price.” Many people who did that did not hate indigenous people or Jews, and now that they know better, they don’t do it.

The push-back on this idea is coming mostly from white, “old stock” Canadians, who are always fearful of dramatic changes, particularly anything that threatens the power structures that they have benefited from for centuries. Most of Canada’s statues, monuments and buildings are not just reminders of white Canada and its dominance, but tributes to it.

What it comes down to is the truth, and does it matter to us? I think it should.

If Canadians are serious about reconciliation, they should be taking more concrete steps to “indigenize” our cities, the way Vancouver is with the renaming of places and buildings, and remodeling places to recognize the area’s first inhabitants. Literal changes, ones you can see and touch every day, really do help advance systemic changes.

We cannot be patient. We have been patient enough. We need to strike while the iron is hot and keep pushing for these changes, or the movement becomes just another passing fad, a flare-up, and we slide back to where we were … again. And we may find ourselves in a similar situation to what is happening in the States, where its old guard and a resurgent army of racists has become energized and is pushing back to the point where violence seems inevitable.