To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
18
Dec
2016
Apparently, we have entered a “post-fact world”. A couple of news stories used that term this past week.
Post fact. Not just post truth. Post truth simply implies that there is no absolute truth anymore. All truths are relative. Your truth was shaped by your society, your education, your life experience – it was, therefore, just as true for you as my truth was for me.
But those relative truths were always tempered by reality.
That’s not how it works in a post-fact world. The new criteria become – Who says it? How often? How loudly?
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: reality, Trump
11
A week ago, outside the Alberta legislature in Edmonton, we had a rather un-Canadian event, eh?
A crowd had rallied to protest Premier Rachel Notley’s proposed carbon tax. As former federal minister Chris Alexander spoke from the steps of the legislature building, the crowd – many of them bused in from Red Deer and Calgary for the occasion – began chanting, “Lock her up! Lock her up!”
Clearly, they were mimicking the “Lock her up” chants against Hillary Clinton in the Trump presidential campaign.
That’s just not what Canadians do. Eh?
Tags: politics, courtesy
4
Newspaper journalists are supposed to be dispassionate observers of the subjects they write about. They’re not supposed to have feelings themselves.
Stan Chung flips that dictum upside down. In the columns he writes for the Kelowna Courier, he’s more than just personal. He spills his guts. And then he lays his guts out on the operating table and dissects them. Stan bares his soul to grab us by the heart.
He describes his writing technique as “creative non-fiction.” It’s real. It’s fact. But it’s dramatized for impact.
Most of us – and I include myself in this generalization – tend to sandpaper smooth the raw edges of our psyches. We find rationalizations for our actions. We shift some of the blame to someone else.
Stan refuses to buy into that pattern. He’s ruthlessly honest with the feelings most of us try to forget. Or to bury. He writes a biography of pain that is also a celebration of survival.
Tags: stories, immigrants, bullying
27
Nov
Why do we blandly tolerate government foot-dragging on the 700 drug overdose deaths that will happen in B.C. before the end of this year? As of October, the province had 622 deaths. Two more months will push the toll over 700. And not one of those deaths resulted from drugs administered at a safe injection site. Not one.
Tags: Fentanyl, Drugs
20
In the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, everyone seems to agree that democracy is broken and needs to be fixed.
The system is broken, yes. But what I see people doing to fix it isn’t fixing it.
Democracy does not consist of removing unpopular politicians by mass protests. Nor is democracy a succession of referenda, on everything from declaring war to naming a ship.
Tags: democracy