All About Perspective

Yes, life is tough right now – lockdowns, US election tomfoolery, realizing you are living north of a country where a large portion of the population if not condone racism and misogyny, adultery and sexual assault, cowardice and sociopathy, turn a blind eye to it and elected a president who personifies these evils. Oh, make no mistake, I’ve always hated Trump; I remember his cons and the victims he left in his wake. Never once watched his absurd reality show; I found him to be repellant. His manner, his face…just, frankly, made me want to throw up.

We are relegated to our homes; shopping is a chore, visits with friends and family is forbidden. People are dying; front line workers are burning out, leaving their professions.

Depression is seeping into our lives, impacting our kids, ourselves.

We all need to take a step back, especially, during this month of remembrance. We need to step out of our bubbles of self-pity and remember, recall.

No, we can’t socialize but our loved ones, our friends are available to us – we can call, we can video-chat. We can do drive-by meet and greet. Imagine not being able to do have that contact, to be assured of the health, the safety of our near & dear. Imagine, (I find this almost impossible), knowing our spouse, our child is facing death, every second as multitudes of people are, actively, trying to kill them. Leave them to die, alone, in the mud, in the stench, in fear.

Perspective. We all need to get over ourselves. What we face is an inconvenience, that’s all. An inconvenience. Business owners howl. Put on your adult panties and be that entrepreneur, find a way to survive – use the tools at your disposal. You are alive, you don’t face a gun, bullets, gas – bombs. Use that and find a way around this.

If you live in North America, if you live in a land that was founded on immigration? Take a minute and remember the courage, the fortitude of your ancestors. They came to your country with nothing, and built a life. Far from what they knew, far from the comfort of familiarity. Some of them didn’t speak the language. They adapted. They moved forward and created a future. That’s something we all must do and in much more favourable circumstances than was faced by our grandparents, our great-grandparents.

We all need to grow up and pull on some of the courage of our ancestors. Perspective. Put your whines, your complaints, into perspective. Re-adjust your expectations.

I may well lose my job, probably within weeks. Okay, this is adversity, but nothing compared to what my forebearers faced. I will adjust my expectations. I’ll adapt. I will find a way to make this work, hopefully, to my advantage. My grandfather fought for my right to live in freedom. He lived in mud, death, disease; watched his friends die. He made this sacrifice for me. For you. I can’t let him down, I can’t let those who fought and died for my right to create an existence, to have done this for nothing.

If you are reading this and you support that draft dodging criminal, who managed to fool a lot of the people, a lot of the time? Remember, while he dodged the draft, some other young man had to take his place and could well have died or been maimed due to his cowardice. He and his family, do not, nor have they ever, represented the American spirit, the American integrity and pride.

Weinstein, Trump and Clinton

Unless you are living in a cave, the current uproar over Harvey Weinstein and his assaults on women, is making the news. The hypocrisy is almost, not quite but almost laughable. The president elect – Donald J. Trump has been accused and has paid off his victims, I would guess scaring others into silence. The Jeffrey Epstein connection is the most troubling of all, connecting Trump to the assault of a 13 year old girl. Clinton was accused, then there is Bill Cosby. Lou Pearlman, Jeffrey Epstein and the list goes on and on and on. Look to the glass towers and the boardrooms are, more than likely, filled with clones of these gropers and rapists.

If you are without power, looking for work or in fact, working? You are a potential victim – male as well as female but the odds of being molested and/or raped if you are a woman, are far higher.

You aren’t safe in the workplace, you aren’t safe in the streets and you aren’t safe in the religious building of your choice. Why? Nobody will believe you. Or, your career, your livelihood, your family will be punished for your audacity at standing up for your rights as a human being.

I’m sure there are millions upon millions of people with their own survivor story. More than likely, more than one instance, by more than one perpetrator. These people are innocent until proven guilty but their victims are guilty until proven even more guilty. These bottom feeders should no longer be protected by their toadies and sycophants – in fact, maybe the people who protect them should be charged as well. They are just as culpable, just as guilty.

The survivors of these file room gropes, hotel room assaults and frat-like party rapes make up a formidable army. It is time to bring these people down. Time to make them accountable for their actions. No more half-assed Ben Affleck style apologies; these acts are criminal acts and should be treated as such, regardless of who-is-who. Power and wealth is not license to molest. Regardless of what the “pussy grabber” in the White House opines.

Bosses, supervisors, colleagues need to be held accountable. Human Resource departments need to start doing their jobs and enforcing the law.

An example? After a particularly nasty assault in a copy room; I reported the individual and I was told to “Forget it. They will fire you before they will fire him. He’s a supervisor.” As a single mother, I was scared into…well, not exactly silence but I did let the assault drop. My boyfriend, at the time, luckily for me, worked in the same facility and made it quite clear to the supervisor that any further behaviour, of that nature, would not be a healthy choice.

Not the only example but in each case, I had to call on a male friend to obtain rough justice. There were no other options available. A victim is guilty until proven even more guilty.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/the-world-is-full-of-harvey-weinsteins

We Failed Them.

We failed our kids, we failed our grandkids. For all our rhetoric, demonstrations and even riots for change; we failed. Las Vegas, another example of our failure. Sandy Hook, Columbine, Orlando – all of them, glaring examples of our failure. The election of that giant Cheeto to the south of us. The election of that privileged Gen X-er in our parliament. Further examples of failure.

What happened? Did we get too busy trying to achieve that suburban dream? We wanted our kids to live in a world of peace, of brotherhood. Did we come to accept, albeit, bitterly, that this was an unattainable pie-in-the-sky ideal?

Why are we still fighting for equality of the genders, of race, of creed, of religion? Why are our veterans, our elderly suffering and dying due to lack of funding? Why are there aboriginals without access to clean water? Why are there children going to bed hungry in countries of such massive excess? Why is there a debate or even a question regarding equal taxation?

Because, we failed. We tried, we wandered off and ultimately failed. The United States, once the beacon for the world, has fallen, with lightspeed, into a global joke. Relegated by a giant Cheeto to the junk food aisle in the global marketplace.

Canada is lead by a pretty boy, with no notion of what Canadians want and need to move ahead. He’ll go, next election – with his million-dollar smile and vapid comments. Then what? Who is there with the economical and social savvy to govern? Insert the sound of crickets. There is no one. There are no more leaders of true social change; if there ever were. Time has a way of colouring memory.

Why do my children feel that they require firearms? What happened? When did it get this bad?

We failed, my friends. We became tired, we became preoccupied with attaining the media dream of that house with the fence. We fell for the image and we walked away. We failed and now, our kids are paying the price.

The Ukrainian 100

While Trump and the laughter from the Canadian Conservative party, at the working class (see: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/02/18/in-what-world-is-it-laughable-to-drive-a-bus-for-a-living-mallick.html ) make a mockery of democracy?

3 years ago, in Ukraine, people were fighting and dying for the concept. The late fall of 2013 to February 2014, the people of Ukraine – ordinary people, the you and me, the bus drivers, the store clerks, the office workers, took to the streets to protest the actions of the criminal Victor Yanukovych and his equally corrupt cronies.

In Kiev, at Independence Square, on February of 2014, they marched. They were demanding freedom, justice and to be treated with the dignity they deserved as citizens of Ukraine.

In Kiev, at Independence Square, against its own citizens – Yanukovych ordered the army to open fire on the demonstrators. The citizens of Ukraine.

Over 100 Ukrainian men and women were cut down and died. They sacrificed themselves in the fight against political corruption.

This Revolution of Dignity continues. Thousands of Ukrainians – men, women and little children are being maimed and dying as a result of Putin’s megalomaniacal clawing for the old Soviet. He wants what isn’t his and murders to attain it.

Ukraine is fighting for her sovereignty. History repeats itself.

A small musing: What will it take for North Americans to take back their dignity? Or has it been lost forever in the search for the next iPhone, the next video game, cardboard cupped coffee or the next overpriced, useless athlete?