Oct. 19, as the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, came back from the political wilderness to oust the Harperite Conservatives from power, I switched on my ancient TV set and turned to CNN. I expected to observe at least a passing reference to the upset in Ottawa and perhaps hear a talking head say that Canadian Liberals and American Democrats are political cousins. Nothing. Not a bit of it, as the Brits say. The people at CNN were preoccupied with Lamar Odom, a superannuated basketball star who spent $76,000 US enjoying various entertainments at a Nevada brothel before lapsing into a drug-induced coma.
I am not an expert on illicit drugs, brothels or basketball, but I understand the significance of CNN’s choice of big news for Oct. 19. In the first place, it shows most Americans have little knowledge of, nor concern for, what happens in Canada. They should. What happens here has repercussions there. What happened to the goatish basketball veteran interests me not even a little bit. Nor, certainly, does it interest most of the population of Planet Earth. They have more important things to think about. Every human being needs food and water, clothing and shelter in a place free from violence and uncontrolled lethal diseases. They can get along without basketball players.
The demigods of the entertainment industry, which includes spectator sport, are overpaid and often under-talented. Philosophically, I am a fugitive from an earlier age. I remember when fiercely loyal fans watched amateurs on the playing fields and sang and danced to the tunes played by amateur musicians. Those who performed and those who watched and listened were taking precious time away from the never-ending work of providing the necessities of life for themselves and their families.
They lived in uninsulated houses, heated by wood and coal. They lived on what nearby farms produced – cattle, pigs, chickens and eggs, milk and butter, food grains. There were garden plots and root cellars. I remember coal oil lamps and nail heads in uninsulated walls glistening with frost. I remember steam locomotives hauling branch line trains that brought us things we could not produce for ourselves and took away to markets elsewhere what we sometimes produced in abundance.
It was a primitive lifestyle. Even so, what we had then is more than billions of people in the world have now.
The Liberal victory will bring to an end Canada’s full co-operation in the American-led armed intervention in the Middle East. It will mean Canada will not buy Lockheed-Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter. Canada will find a replacement for its aging CF-18 fighters in Europe, probably in Sweden or France. Money saved by not buying the F-35 will go towards the purchase of new frigates in Denmark. American industries will lose.
The result of the Canadian election will reinforce the growing trend in Washington to be critical of income disparity. In so doing it will benefit the Democrats in the coming presidential election.
All of these considerations are more important than overpaid basketball players and the sex lives of overpaid performers who sing through their noses.
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Copyright 2015
