On the Canadian Election Results

It is typical that the media are playing the just-finished Canadian election as a striking defeat and rebuff for Poilievre and the Conservatives. Warren Kinsella has a column out urging the Tories to get a new leader. Poilievre has failed.

Never take advice from your enemies.

It is sad that the Conservatives did not achieve power. It is sadder that Poilievre lost his own seat. But actually, the Conservative vote was at a near-all-time high. They missed the brass ring only because of the collapse of the NDP.

Carney could have an awkward time of it. The NDP ought to take the lesson that they lose by propping up the Liberals: doing so last time cut them down to below party status. To have any chance at a future, they must now distinguish themselves sharpy from the Liberals. 

At the same time, the Liberals will likely pay a price in the rest of Canada for making any deals with the BQ, an avowedly separatist party. And there is nothing in such cooperation for the Bloc either. The Liberals are their main opponents in Quebec. Strategically, they hardly want to make the Rouge look good by forcing them into new programs popular in Quebec. The credit in the popular mind is liable to go to Carney, not Blanchet and the Bloc.

So I see a good chance that Carney will soon be unable to command the support of the House. Meantime, the Liberals’ environment policies seem bound to alienate Aberta into at least talk of separation. And some economist has argued that whoever wins this time is unlucky, because the tariffs and trade war are going to lead to hard times soon. They will be blamed. Or they are going to have to cut a deal with Trump, and they will be tarred with inconsistency if not duplicity.

There will be good incentive soon enough among the other parties to bring down the government, and not be seen to prop them up. This may only be the first round.

Canadian Leaders and the Oncoming Election

 R

RB Bennett: the risks of winning the wrong election.

The talking heads at CBC’s At Issue think Pierre Poilievre, Yves-Francois Blanchet, and Jagmeet Singh all face likely loss of their party leadership after Monday’s election.

I believe only Singh is in trouble. Singh’s caucus will probably be cut in half; Singh will lose his own seat; and it will be his own fault—for backing the unpopular Liberals until they themselves pulled the plug. According to the polls, by stalling, he lost a chance for the NDP to form the Official Opposition. The latest polling has them down to eight seats, losing party status. He should have known, historically, that third parties are always punished for entering a coalition. And such a coalition, with an already unpopular prime minister! He really seems to have intentionally destroyed the NDP.

But Blanchet will surely not be blamed if the BQ loses seats. He is brilliant; the BQ cannot do better. It is circumstances--the tariff scare, and the fear of Canada breaking up--that have caused Quebec voters to rally, temporarily, around the Canadian flag and the obvious federalist alternative in Quebec, the Rouge. I expect BQ regulars to understand that, and see Blanchet as their best option going forward.

And about the same is true of Poilievre. He has run a flawless campaign; he is a brilliant rhetorician, a brilliant tactician. He was poised, six months ago, to crush the Liberals. That big win slipped away due to circumstances beyond his control: Trudeau’s resignation, Trump’s tariffs, Carney’s coronation and adoption of key elements of the Conservative platform. These show, if anything, just how effective a politician he has been. He forced his opponent to resign. He managed to kill the carbon tax, without even being in power. Nobody else in the Tory party is likely to do better. And, if in opposition, nobody else in the Tory party is likely to be a more effective opposition leader.

True, the Tories have dumped their last two leaders after only one election loss. But neither Scheer nor O’Toole had Poilievre’s legitimacy. 

Scheer’s leadership was tainted by scandal. First, he snuck past Bernier, the front runner in his leadership bid, by making a backroom deal with the dairy lobby. That left a lot of bad feeling in the party. Second, since he won in this way, he did not have a strong personal following; he was second choice for most who supported him. Third, he had falsified his job history and concealed his dual citizenship. Fourth, he lost his ideological cred by waffling on the abortion question. It is not that he was either pro or con: it was that he seemed to change his position for the sake of power. So he did not come across as a man of principle.

O’Toole ran for and won the leadership as a “True Blue” Tory; then campaigned in the election as “Liberal lite.” There is a saying in politics: if you abandon your principles for power, you’d better deliver power. Otherwise, you’ll have no nothing to fall back on. Ask Tom Mulcair. 

But Poilievre, like Harper, has ideological cred to sustain him through a season of want. He inspires loyalty; he won the Tory leadership by a wide margin on the first ballot. 

I have no special insights, and therefore no ability to predict the outcome of the election. I can only look at the polls. As of this morning, 338 Canada predicts a Liberal majority government at 186 seats. With the NDP at just 8 seats.

But there is a trend towards the Conservatives in recent days. So I’m hoping for a Liberal minority. Then perhaps, we may get a chance to remove them in a year or two.

I expect the Liberals’ policy of fighting a trade war with the US will prove disastrous. Their “green” agenda will provoke a national unity crisis. Even without this, one pundit says whoever wins this current election is likely to rue the day, since bad times are coming, and they will be blamed. 

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Let’s hope he still likes Canada, despite our arrogance.

Is Pope Francis Really Dead? Is Anyone?

 

It seems to me there is no valid distinction between mind and soul. These are both terms for the perceiving consciousness plus the will. People tend to use “soul” if they are arguing that the mind is immortal.

I hold to this, firstly, by Occam’s Razor: there is no reason to multiply entities. Secondly, if the soul is not the perceiving consciousness, the “I,” it does not matter whether it is immortal. And if it is to be judged based on our acts of will, as all major religions affirm, it must include the will.

Now, does the perceiving consciousness survive the death of the body? Is it dependent on the physical brain?

Friend Xerxes write, “no one has ever come back from the other side to tell us what goes on there.”

This is not obviously true. As Xerxes himself notes, people have indeed revived after being declared dead; and they have reported experiences of the hereafter.

Granted, we call them “near-death experiences” rather than “after-life experiences.”

But there is a tautology here: “brain death” is actually defined as an “irreversible” loss of brain function. In other words, if anyone comes back from death, they were by definition not dead.

Are their experiences legitimate evidence for an afterlife?

Xerxes laments, “there is no way of testing the validity of their memories.”

But there is. Those returning to life have reported hearing and seeing things during the period when they were supposedly dead; and their accounts are confirmed by others present. So the consciousness survives the absence of all activity in the brain, at a minimum. And the claims of out of body experiences have also been confirmed: they were able to accurately report things they could not have seen from their body. So the consciousness is not tied to the body.

We cannot similarly independently confirm their reports of a world apart from the physical world, to which they journey. But we can confirm it by the fact that those experiences tend broadly to tally among different reports. As Xerxes notes: “Often they report seeing bright lights, moving down some kind of tunnel, being welcomed into a new world of peace and calm.”

It is on the same basis that most of us confirmed the existence and nature of Timbuctu, in the days before Google maps. The fact that those who had not actually been there cannot verify reports is immaterial.

Then there is the witness of Jesus. Xerxes laments that, having been resurrected, he said “not one word about the far side of death.”

He actually said a lot. This was all that “kingdom of heaven” stuff. He said after death would come a judgment, and that the good and just would enter paradise, while the evil and iniquitous would enter eternal flames. And that there was no passage between the two. More detail is given, albeit not by Jesus in the flesh, in the Book of Revelations and elsewhere in the Bible.

I imagine Xerxes means Jesus did not say any of this this after the resurrection. But, having already said it, what would have been the reason to repeat it now, or for the gospels to record it? Only if, based on his more recent experiences in the underworld, harrowing hell, his understanding had somehow changed. Presupposing, as well, that he was not omniscient, was not God, so that he could have misunderstood previously.

And then, as Xerxes reports from his own experience, there is the evidence of “ghosts.” People actually seem able to communicate with us, every now and then, after physical death. While I have not personally had such unambiguous experiences, many others have, including Xerxes, who has distinctly heard his deceased wife speak to him in the night, or felt her presence as she rose from the bed to use the facilities. Such stories are common.

There are other sources of evidence. While anything physical is transitory, appears and disappears, anything mental or spiritual is immortal, endures. The cat runs into the bushes and disappears. Yet the memory of the cat running into the bushes remains in my mind’s eye indefinitely; if it fades, it can be reinvoked. The mental cat is immortal.

You will say memories fade. But they do not die. We may have greater or lesser difficulty summoning them to consciousness, as time wears on, but they are there forever somewhere, and can resurface. A certain smell, a certain song, the taste of a madeleine…

Try that with the actual cat Sniffles you had as a child.

So it is of the essential nature of the mind to be immortal.

This is not yet to get into the medical reports of those with virtually no physical brain sometimes nevertheless demonstrating normal intelligence. This is not to get into the reported miracles of the saints or Indian yogis, like levitation, bilocation, praeternatural knowledge, and so forth; which broadly suggest mind can exist and act without dependence on the physical body. Given, of course, that such reports can be false.

The rational conclusion, therefore, based on the evidence, is that the mind or soul is immortal; that there is life beyond the life in the body. It is merely a materialistic prejudice to balk at the idea.

William Blake, or Bishop Berkeley, or Plato, would argue that the body and the physical world are the epiphenomenon. Only the mind is real. Blake wrote “the body is that portion of the soul visible to the five senses.”

Berkeley has never been disproven on this. People just don’t want to hear it.

On Judging a Book by Its Cover

 

Watching a YouTube of RFK Jr. banning some food dyes. Why do I feel such spontaneous support for RFK Jr.? Why do I want to cheer him on, and go along for the ride? It is not ideology; RFK is broadly on the left, a big-government guy, and we probably disagree on much.

Is it family loyalty to the Kennedys? I am, after all, an Irish Catholic, and JFK was important to North American Irish Catholics in his day. 

No; I never liked Ted Kennedy, and did not trust or support RFK Sr. in his day. 

But there are certain politicians that seem to me to radiate good faith. They have a spiritual glow. Tulsi Gabbard gives me that same feeling. JD Vance gives me the same feeling. Look at his eyes. Pierre Poilievre gives me the same feeling, to a lesser degree. Nicole Shanahan gives me the same feeling. Ben Carson gives me that feeling. Eugene McCarthy gave me that feeling way back when. Jerry Brown did. 

By contrast, Vivek Ramaswamy makes me uneasy. Bernie Sanders does not give me the creeps, but Elizabeth Warren does. Trump does not give me the creeps, but also does not give me the warm fuzzies. Clearly, this is not related to ideology.

Joe Biden always gave me the creeps. Justin Trudeau maxes out on raw creepiness. Richard Nixon gave me the creeps to an extreme degree. Erin O’Toole powerfully repels me. Doug Ford repels me.

The sense is stronger when I am in the person’s physical presence. I once met Hun Sen, the Cambodian dictator. I could sense a great darkness. To a lesser extent, I felt a darkness meeting Sheila Copps, and, surprisingly, because I did not detect it at distance, Jean Chretien. But when I met John Diefenbaker, it was light. Intense light when I met John Paul II.

The issue seems clear: some politicians give me the impression they are in it for principle, and others that they are in it for power. What particular principle they embrace is less important. And the impression is somehow instinctive. You can see it in their faces; you can feel it. Not always; not consistently; but often.

Or I think I can.

RIP Francis

 

Pope Francis has died. 

No good honest Catholic should mourn.

Not because he was a bad pope. Because he lived 88 years. If he was a good man, he now has his reward. He is to be congratulated on the promotion. If he was a bad man, he had opportunity enough to repent if he were going to. Either way, time to move on.

Some are accusing JD Vance of killing the pope. I think there may be some truth to that. Francis was obliged to allow Vance an audience, since he had just granted one to the King of England. It would have been scandal had he not. But I imagine it was uncomfortable for him, as they had publicly clashed in the recent past. And I think Francis had reason to feel guilty about it: not only was it not his place to interfere in US politics, but I believe Vance’s position was sounder on Catholic doctrine than his own. He was playing politics at the expense of the faith.

In the video of their meeting, Francis seems to have difficulty looking Vance in the eye.

He died the next morning of a stroke and a heart attack. 

Commonly the result of stress or sudden shock.

According to one journalist who interviewed him. Francis did not believe in hell. He thought that, if one did not deserve heaven, the soul simply evaporated. He may find out now if he was right. Or rather, if he was wrong. If he was right, he may never know.

Francis was a bad pope. The whole job of a pope is to give clear guidance: to lead the faithful like a shepherd. Pope Benedict was magnificent on this; Pope John Paul II was great on this. Francis failed on this, as did, by and large, Pope Paul VI. His pronouncements were relentlessly ambiguous. The result is always discord in the church; and in individual souls. Sheep stray, confused.

It is folly to predict who will next be pope. It is usually a surprise, and there is a rush to figure out who this guy is.

But there are general trends. The decisive John XXIII was followed by the over-cautious, ambiguous Paul VI, who seemed mostly a manager. The prevaricating Paul was followed by John Paul I, but for only a month; then by John Paul II. JPII was decisive, to balance Paul, and young and full of energy, to balance the frail JPI. 

JPII’s pontificate was successful enough that Benedict was named—a rare case when the successor was obvious; the effective second in command. 

However, returning to form, the decisive Benedict was followed by the managerial and prevaricating Francis.

It follows that we can have some hope that the cardinals will settle now on someone strong on doctrinal clarity; and not, as many fear, a “Francis 2.0.”

Here’s praying.

Reactions to the Debate

 

Watching the English-language debate last night, I thought it was a draw. I thought Poilievre did a fine job, but Carney did not mess up, and I thought seemed likeable. Blanchet was really good; but it didn’t matter, because he was not speaking to his constituency. I thought Jagmeet Singh, with his constant interruptions, was intolerably obnoxious; of no relevance, but preventing viewers from hearing the contenders. It also seemed to me obviously bad strategy for Singh to keep interrupting Poilievre more than Carney, the frontrunner and his obvious competitor for votes. It was almost as if he was there to sabotage his own party. Given how far he was prepared to go against his party’s interests to secure his pension, I do wonder if he has been bought by the Liberals.

Accordingly, I was surprised and pleased to hear the immediate reaction from the CBC At Issue panel, partisan and pro-Liberal. To them, the big story was not the self-immolation of the NDP. It was that Poilievre won the debate, and probably gained ground.

They argue that he came across as reasonable and not scary. Meanwhile, Poilievre and Blanchet heaved some bombshells at him that he did not parry. He simply changed the subject; perhaps leaving them there, unexploded ordinance.

And the truly historic moment may have been when Carney got a free question, and chose to ask Poilievre: Why did he refuse to get security clearance? 

Dumb idea. Surely he should have known Poilievre had a ready answer, that took away this favoured Liberal talking point. And he was giving Poilievre a perfect opportunity to bring up Chinese interference.

Maybe they are right. Maybe Carney lost the election last night.

The State of the Race

 

I am profoundly depressed by the state of the polls in the Canadian election. Careny and the Liberals are projected to win a majority government, and I believe this will be the end of democracy in Canada; even the end of Canada. See my last post.

It would be divine justice for the arrogance of so many Canadians: thinking they are better than Americans, and better that Albertans and Saskatchewanians, and those guys had better just give us what we want, or else…

Narcissistic thinking.

Too many Conservative commentators are relying on the polls being wrong. That is an irrational, delusional, thought. That too is narcissistic thinking: as though the world is obliged to conform to my desires.

I think it is rational, at least, to hold out some hope for the upcoming debates. Because he is leading in the polls, all the other parties will be attacking Carney. And leaving each other alone. Blanchet is masterful in debate; and his party's current situation gives him every reason to go for broke and try for the knockout. Poilievre is masterful. Singh is desperate. Carney’s French is limited. And he has little experience in debate. He was not challenged in the Liberal leadership debate. He has been prickly even taking questions from essentially friendly reporters. He is not good at taking criticism. He is liable to blow his cool, or look a fool, or be caught lying.

I think the drip, drip, drip of scandals may also catch up with him. I overheard on the bus a few days ago one guy trying to convince others that Carney’s ties to the CCP are too sinister. Now there is the scandal of dirty tricks at a Conservative event. There is the issue of using tax havens. There is the issue of lying about moving his corporate headquarters to the States. There is the issue of possible conflicts of interest, and lack of transparency on what he owns. There has to be a tipping point.

We can pray and hope.

Reasons Not to Vote Carney

 

As a public service, here are a few reasons not to vote Carney and Liberal in the upcoming Canadian election:

Carney, like Trudeau, seems to be run by China. He seems to be cooperating with Beijing, naming candidates with known connections to the CCP; and refusing to remove candidates known to have such ties. We know the CCP is backing him on social media. His hostility to the US looks like China’s bidding. He looks, in short, like a Manchurian candidate.

We know there is foreign interference in our electoral process. We know there is foreign interference from China specifically. We must know what candidates are compromised. The Liberals have been doing whatever they can to suppress this information, and Carney seems even worse on this than Trudeau. 

In order to find out what is going on, and ensure the security and legitimacy of elections, we must get the Liberals out of power now so we can have an open investigation. 

We seem to be entering a new Cold War, between China and the United States. Carney seems to side with China against the USA. He has declared the US a “national security threat.” Do we really want to side with China in this global conflict? Leaving aside the obvious rights and wrongs of this, we are too vulnerable to attack from the US to contemplate turning on them. It would be fatally arrogant.

Carney has said he will impose even stricter censorship in Canada—making it more like China. “We announced a series of measures with respect to online harm… a sea of misogyny, anti-Semitism, hatred, conspiracy theories—the sort of pollution that's online that washes over our virtual borders from the United States. My government, if we are elected, will be taking action on those American giants who come across [our] border.” Under Trudeau, we have already largely lost freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and a free press. Carney plans to push further down this road. He must admire China’s “basic dictatorship.”

Carney says he will not repeal the “no new pipelines” bill. He says he will not force a pipeline on Quebec. He and his cabinet want to hobble the oil and gas industry, with their “net zero carbon” program. He has made this a cornerstone of his personal philosophy, in his book “Values.” 

This, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith warns, will trigger a “national unity crisis.” Scott Moe in Saskatchewan is also threatening action. The mechanism to separate is available to them, established through the Quebec referenda. They can vote to leave, and if to their advantage to join the United States. Doing so, they avoid both tariffs and equalization payments. If Alberta merely pulls out of the Canada Pension Plan, they theoretically have the right to take half the fund with them. Canada may be split in two, and without Alberta shovelling cash eastward, much poorer. It is suicidally arrogant for voters in eastern Canada to ignore Alberta’s concerns and vote Carney.

Justin Trudeau, having declared the Emergency Act and frozen bank accounts without legal justification, needed to be so utterly rebuked no future government would ever again try such a thing. Unfortunately, Trudeau resigned without facing a vote. Therefore, we must rebuke his successor Carney, his party, and the cabinet and caucus who supported Trudeau in his actions. Under Carney they remain in power. For the sake of Canadian democracy, they must be thrown out. Every Liberal vote is an act of treason.

While both Carney and Poilievre are foolishly (or cynically) calling for a trade war against the US, this is suicide for Canada. But now that Trump has delayed most tariffs until after the election, in order to negotiate with a new government, Poilievre is at least better placed to negotiate that new trade deal. A new government can more easily reset the relationship and avoid responsibility for the belligerence of the past. It helps that Poilievre is broadly aligned politically with Danielle Smith and Doug Ford, the two premiers who have been most active and most flexible in talks with the Americans. It helps that Poilievre is, like the Republicans in power in the States, a conservative.  Ford, for all his initial bellicosity, has already proposed the obvious solution, reciprocal complete free trade and a shared defense perimeter.

Carney is the perfect globalist. He holds three passports. He has lived and held high government positions abroad. He has declared himself a European. He moved his businesses offshore. There is no reason to believe he holds any great allegiance to Canada. His allegiance is to the globalist elites and their agenda. This may not be in our interests. We need someone who will speak for us to international fora, not speak to us for international fora.

As a high-level investment banker at Brookfield and manager of investment funds, Carney has huge possible conflicts of interest. He is dodging questions about this. He seems even to have suspended his campaign or a few days to avoid questions about this. At a minimum, we must get a good look at the books, his tax returns, and his Cayman Islands and Bermuda addresses before we give him the PM chair for four years. 

He has, he says, put everything in a blind trust. But can he really remain blind to what, for example, Brookfield is invested in day by day? It’s probably in the papers. And in his memory. And, assuming he stays honest, what good is a Prime Minister who must recuse himself from most government decisions?

In modern times, democracies are gradually being taken over by the bureaucracy, the “Deep State,” the “blob.” This becomes an unaccountable ruling class. To forestall this, we must insist always on civilian oversight, on final power remaining always with out elected representatives.

Carney, unfortunately, is the personification of the bureaucratic mind. Voting in a bureaucrat to oversee bureaucrats is surrendering our democracy.

Over the past ten years, under Liberal stewardship, Canada’s GDP per capita has stagnated. Government debt has skyrocketed. The loonie is at a 50-year low against the dollar. We are slipping into the Third World. Carney was economic advisor during half of that time. We already know his policies are a disastrous failure. We must pull out of this nose dive.

Over the past ten years of Liberal leadership, mass migration and multiculturalism have badly damaged Canada’s social fabric, and produced shortages in housing and health care—essentials for life. At the same time, we are being warned that many low-skilled jobs will soon be obsolete due to automation, and a UBI may be needed. Meaning all these new immigrants are likely to be a growing burden to the taxpayer. 

Carney is committed to continuing these policies: mass migration and multiculturalism.

I discover that a Parliamentary committee has, with full support from both the Liberals and the NDP, called for withdrawing tax-exempt status from religious charities. This will further erode our social fabric, and withdraw the most effective support for the poor. 

Carney has been caught lying to the public repeatedly. He plagiarized his doctoral thesis. He has promised new laws that are already on the books. Would you buy a used car from this man?

Would you buy a used government?

When a Man Loves a Woman

 

“A Complete Unknown,” the Dylan biopic, has reinforced my belief that men love at a deeper level than women do. Men love in technicolour. Women love in black and white, on a flickering cathode tube. 

A man will, in principle and often enough in practice, lose everything for a women. He will give her everything he has. He will die for a woman. 

For women, on the other hand, a relationship is transactional. What is she getting out of it? Can she do better elsewhere?

Ann Landers’ test when a letter writer asked whether they should leave their marriage was: “Are you better off with him or without him?” 

In other words, never mind him, or the kids, what’s in it for you?

This was even pre-feminism. Or at least, Landers was not considered a feminist.

This is shown also by the fact that 70% of divorces are initiated by women. Men will stick it out, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health. The reason women usually give for leaving is that they felt unfulfilled; that they felt the relationship was holding them back in some way.

Ask Betty Freidan.

The feminist movement said out loud that for a woman a man is only a means to an end, like a bicycle. Does a fish need one? Do you need one? What’s love got to do with it?

Since the increased home automation of the 1950s, if men applied the same test, the answer would have always been no. But for men it is not transactional. They fall in love.

For men, it is about love. For women, it is about being loved. Or as someone once said to me, for women it is just business.

If if you are a man’s first love, or their special love, you are forever the world to them. It is not whether you are the prettiest they ever met. You are all women. You are really the only woman.

I note that male poets and artists invariably have a muse—some idolized women they are creating for. Beatrice, Maryanne Ihlen, Suze Rotolo, Maude Gonne, Lucy, Annabelle Lee, the dark-haired lady of the sonnets … someone. I discover on asking that female poets and artists never do. They write for themselves.

It is a tragedy that women and men are different in this way.

The matter used to be balanced by making divorce difficult, and more difficult for the woman. And by the social expectation that the woman, in exchange for the love and support the man was giving, would show gratitude, respect, and at least public deference.

Sadly, that has been lost, and many lives lost and destroyed as a result.

A Complete Unknown

I’ve just finished watching “A Complete Unknown.” I think it is a brilliant movie. There were so many things going on, so many telling details. I think it needs watching again and again. Which is what we need in movies now: because we no longer see them in theatres, a one-shot thing, but buy them, as we used to buy records, to play over again.

And what is in effect a musical is ideal for this.

The casting for Dylan was incredibly good. Timothée Chalamet really gets Dylan down pat, reminiscent of Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison. Hard to do, with someone so famous and still living. Definitely earned an Oscar. 

Ed Norton as Pete Seeger is also brilliant. A little easier, since Seeger is somewhat less famous. But he really does seem to be Seeger himself.

Joan Baez is not as good. Not Monica Barbaro’s fault. She does a fine job with the role, but nobody could imitate Baez’s unique and uniquely good voice.

And Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash is a fail. Unlike enough that it is distracting, and interferes with the willing suspension of disbelief. Again, the problem is the voice. You needed an actor with a deep baritone. Without it, Holbrook just comes across as a generic greaser, a Fonzie.

Seeger’s “parable of the teaspoon brigade” looks at first like a fail by the scriptwriter. Because it does not work. The obvious way to balance the imaginary seesaw was of course not to fill the leaky bucket of sand with teaspoons, but to take some rocks out of the other one.

Or perhaps this was an intentional parody of Seeger’s political views.

I think the latter. I hear Dylan himself annotated the script. Dylan likes to subtly send people up. He does it to Seeger in his autobiography by lamenting how unjust it is that Seeger was set upon by the government, he being descended from people coming over on the Mayflower and all. 

In other words, Seeger was a poseur who never really risked anything with all his leftist politics, and had no rapport with the actual working class. All a sham. He was really a card-carrying member of the old rich. Went to private school, parents were prominent academics and bureaucrats.

There are other lines and opinions in the movie that I feel certain are Dylan himself speaking: “Picasso is overrated.” 

Yep.

“Bette Davis was not trying to find herself.”

Yep. The task of the artist is not to find himself, but to lose himself. As Keats said, “the poet is the most unpoetical thing in existence.” The “chameleon poet” disappears into the work through “negative capability.” Bobby Zimmerman disappears. Irving Layton referred to his poems as “my dead selves.” 

Baez’s songwriting is lousy.

Yep. It seems obvious to me why their relationship was doomed. Baez was not at Dylan’s intellectual level. But she was too successful and ambitious to live in his shadow. She would have been a millstone around his neck. He would crush her ego.

I’m a dedicated folkie, and also a dedicated rocker. I love them both. But I do find it heartbreaking that Dylan abandoned the folk movement; that pretty much killed it, and it was so beautiful. 

Why did he do it?

The reason the movie suggests and the one Dylan himself suggests, is that everyone was trying to own him. He felt trapped by the expectations of the movement. He needed to break free to be his own man.

But I think that is kind of a cover story. It is not Dylan who felt trapped. Dylan was not real; the self was gone, and there was only the music. It was the voice in his head, the place the songs come from, that felt trapped. It could no longer speak in the folk idiom. 

People imagine authors, poets, and songwriters have command of their material. The best ones don’t.

Someone once asked Stephen King why he only wrote horror.

“Do you think I have a choice?” he answered.

So Dylan could not stay in folk. He had no more folk songs. He would only let them down.

But why did he have to confront the Newport Folk Festival with the fact? Didn’t he owe something to that paying audience? Wasn’t he deliberately insulting their taste? Couldn’t he have sung some of the old songs, just one more time?

I believe the key to that is Suze Rotolo—Sylvie in the film. 

I think Dylan was truly and completely in love with her. She was his first love. And I think she was the one who left him. Probably, as the film suggests, because his brilliance and success crushed her ego. I think she was his muse. For the folk and protest period, he was speaking for her. His voice was trying to please her.

And when she was gone, I suspect it is not just that the folk songs no longer came. It was also that they suddenly became too emotional for him, with too many memories.

I often fear as I read my poetry in public that I might break down. Leonard Cohen needed to get drunk before a performance; when he began, he considered wearing a mask. Dylan went through a period of performing in whiteface.

Dylan’s early folk lyrics are very intimate.

He had to create a new hard-edged persona to protect himself. So, edgy rock. Sunglasses.

And the new songs spoke out of a bitterness. He was badly hurt.

Even today, a Dylan concert is disappointing. Because he won’t play his own songs straight. When he plays his own stuff, he always plays it in a weird bouncy tempo. I’m not sure what it is musically; I think it is 3/3. Happy happy joy joy. The effect, I think, is to take the emotional edge off it, to distance himself from it. Otherwise he may still fear breaking down in public.

Perhaps still for Suze. Perhaps for other heartbreaks since. Everything beautiful comes from pain.

I think there is a similar thing with Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen. 

Men do not easily get over their first true love. We are not meant to.

The Trade Wars

 

I cannot vouch for its accuracy, but I hear reports that, in response to Trump’s new “reciprocal” tariffs, at least seventy nations have offered to cut their own tariffs and restrictions in order to have them removed or reduced. And only two nations have responded so far with retaliatory tariffs: China and Canada.

Until now, the US has looked on Canada, if they thought of us at all, as their best friends. Cousins across the border.

I’m afraid we are revealing ourselves as secret enemies.

Shame on us.

Rotary's Fourfold Test

 

Friend Xerxes laments the “mob mentality,” and advocates Rotary’s fourfold test as the antidote.

Before saying anything, according to that fraternal organization, you must consider:

1. Is it the truth?

2. Is it fair to all?

3. Will it build goodwill?

4. Will it be beneficial to all?

This is, however, I submit, itself an example of the “mob mentality.” Or, as I prefer to call it, the herd instinct.

Whenever you create a formal group or organization, you are creating a herd. Anyone outside of the herd is “other.” You are violating, of necessity, the universal brotherhood of man. 

This is not blameworthy so long as there is an honourable reason for the group. 

What is the reason for Rotary?

The official reason is to do community service. 

But the real and original reason is to bring businessmen together for mutual support. “A way for professionals to connect, exchange ideas, and form meaningful, lifelong friendships.” Fraternal brothers will favour one another in business; a little cartel against competitors, by extension against the public interest. The community service bit serves for legitimization.

The problem with belonging to any herd is that in doing so, one may easily surrender one’s conscience to the group. One ceases to act morally, but just goes along. 

The Bible makes plain in many places that this is a bad idea. Most directly, in Jesus’s warning:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

This is also the story of all the prophets, up to and including John the Baptist: they are solitary figures, “voices crying in the wilderness.”

It is the story of Noah and the ark; of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah; of Moses in Egypt; of Job and his comforters; of Eve persuading Adam to bite the apple. And it is the story of the mob who condemned Jesus to death.

Whether or not, under the influence of the herd, one goes on to do something else immoral, simply going along with the herd without making your own choices is immoral.

The proper Christian test of speech is not fourfold. It is simply 1: Is it the truth? 

For the truth shall set you free.

The rest of Rotary’s four tests are there to enforce the herd mentality.

If you believe in God, the Christian God, you also believe that the truth and only the truth is fair to all. You believe that the truth and only the truth is ultimately of benefit to all; a lie never is. Adding these additional two tests seem only to subvert the truth.

And Rotary’s test 3 is most troublesome. Of course the truth does not always lead to good will. That is the usual excuse for a lie: to go along with the herd. To preserve “social harmony.”

In doing so, you may be required to condone sin, to condone evil. And this is as evil as doing the evil yourself. “All that is required for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.” If good men stood up to resist, evil would be gone tomorrow.

The Rotary test advocates that you keep silent.

The Church has always been suspicious of Rotary; priests were once banned from joining ot attending meetings.

I feel there is good reason.

The Blob Attacks

 

The powers that be are going to alarming lengths. The latest is the disqualification of Marine LePen from the next French presidential election, and the arraignment of Russell Brand on rape accusations over 20 years old.

And we saw the attempt to use the legal system to take out Trump and his associates; not to mention the assassination attempts. We saw the Canadian government blatantly freezing the bank accounts of dissidents.

And almost at the surface now is the realization that there is a system which deliberately compromises prominent people, so that they can be controlled by the group—a group that stays in the shadows. So long as the target toes the line, they are allowed to get away with anything. They can have their fun. Show independence, and charges surface.

Remaining innocent is no sure protection either; the blob can fabricate something. It is especially easy, in the modern climate, to get some woman to testify that you raped or molested her. Or standard business practices can be declared criminal. The general public will not know any better; it’s too complicated. 

Nobody is safe.

It seems to me that by now, the blob must be going too far. It is too obvious. The thing is about to crack and collapse. They are acting desperate.

But, alarmingly, they are prepared to take down all the elements of a stable civil society with them. They have undermined public trust in the press. They have undermined public trust in the police. They have undermined public trust in the banking system. They have trashed our shared history. They have undermined public trust in the justice system. They have undermined public trust in academia. They have undermined public trust in science. They have undermined public trust in the voting system. They have weaponized everything.

It's a hard rain that’s going to fall.

So Long, Canada. We Hardly Knew You

 

Big Pink

The world is mad. It has always been mad, but something snapped around 2020.

Canadians are in terminal Trump Derangement. They are prepared to burn down the country out of spite.

Trump and the USA of course have every sovereign right to impose tariffs at their border. This is not a hostile act. 

Trump is not threatening to annex Canada. That is paranoid fantasy.

It is insane for Canada to impose retaliatory tariffs. We cannot win a trade war with the USA. The sane course is to negotiate 100% free trade instead. But no Canadian politician dares say this. Instead, we will just stand there and pour gasoline all over ourselves, then light a match.

Unless things change dramatically in three weeks, Canada is about to re-elect the Liberals under Carney; with a majority government. 

Right-wing commentators are as delusional as everyone else, insisting that the polls must be wrong.

With the Liberals’ environmentalist agenda blocking the development and transport of Alberta’s energy resources, Alberta is then planning to hold a referendum on secession. 

It is likely to pass, with the Liberals in power. But Easterners all still insist on voting Liberal.

If Alberta separates, Saskatchewan is likely to follow. BC will probably need to go too.

If this happens, Eastern Canada will be left an impoverished rump. 

Trump gets his best case scenario: he can admit the resource-rich West to statehood, and get full access to their resources. He need not let in all those left-leaning voters in the East.

Congratulations, Canada. Darwin would be proud.

The Real Schoolyard Bullies

 

Childhood's end: Saint John, NB, March, 2025

A couple of days ago, someone set fire to our local playground. It was a beautiful playground, including a water park, in one of the poorer parts of town. Now it will be closed at least for months, if the city can afford to reconstruct, just as the summer is about to begin.

Why would somebody do this?

The answer is only too obvious; but it is one we do not want to accept.

I become increasingly convinced that there is a war against children. Many people hate children. They increasingly feel they have license to act on their desires.

Why do people hate children? Primarily, perhaps, because a child is a reminder of one’s own mortality. One day you will be gone, and they will inherit the earth. An intolerable thought to a true narcissist.

Also perhaps because the evil will resent innocence. It is an unpleasant reminder of what they have themselves lost.

Also perhaps because children, by being conceived, complicate the animal enjoyment of unrestricted sex. Then, for a moment’s pleasure, you have to support them for eighteen or twenty-four years.

Surely, you might object, everyone instinctively loves children?

Maternal instinct often does its work. But demonstrably not in many cases. Apparently one in four women alive in the USA today has had at least one abortion. Infanticide was a common practice throughout the ancient world, among the Romans, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Canaanites; until quite recently in the Far East.  Judaism and Christianity stood apart in prohibiting the practice. 

It seems that once unrestricted abortion was again okay, the ancient floodgates opened. Encouraged, no doubt, by the “population bomb” notion that there were already too many people in the world.  

No-fault divorce and almost automatically giving custody to the mother pretends to take the children’s interests into account, but only a little research proves it is disastrous to children. If it is not done from malice, it is certainly at least done because we do not care. 

We knew from the kibbutz experience in Israel well before daycare became standard practice and publicly funded, that raising children in daycare was harmful. At best, we did not care.

While pretending to be “helping” or “reconciling with” First Nations, we are now systematically sacrificing untold numbers of aboriginal children by closing down the residential schools, shutting down the adoption option, shutting down the orphanages. Missing and murdered aboriginal women? Teens on reservations forming suicide pacts? Rampant fetal alcohol syndrome? Gee, I wonder why? Yet we do everything possible to avoid addressing the obvious cause, aboriginal family life. We do everything possible to avoid helping them. If a teenaged aboriginal girl escapes her abusive family and makes it to the city streets, she is arrested by the authorities, assigned the blame, and forced back home. 

Minimum wage laws and child labour laws seem calculated to trap the young in abusive situations, denying them the right to make a living. 

For that matter, the demands for unnecessary academic qualifications for almost any paying occupation are abusive to the young. 

Heck, the modern school and college is abusive to the young. They are ordered around like cattle, their time wasted on things of no value to them, and the teacher holds dictatorial powers. It is always up to the student to learn, not to the teacher to teach.

For a while—it now seems long ago--we pretended to be horrified by pedophilia. But that was only so long as we could pretend it was only happening among Catholic clergy. What this actually was about was cutting away one more escape route for abused kids: the local church and pastor; the local religious-run orphanage or residential school.

Now we increasingly discover child trafficking and pedophilia is widely practiced, in the public schools, in the public libraries, and especially among the rich. And here is no public outcry; instead, the outcry is against anyone objecting, or wanting to hold anyone accountable.

It is getting too obvious.