Having difficulty celebrating Canada Day fully knowing only too well how the Harper Regime has embarrassed us around the world - most significantly on global warming and climate change and, most recently, on a reasonable effort to warn the world's potential users about the dangers of asbestos.
Learning today about creeping militarism now built prominently into immigration ceremonies is also very disturbing. Will there be a backlash against the military itself in addition to the Harperites, or will this political policy just sail on by as every other questionable policy change the Harperites make would seem to do? One or two days in the news and then that's it. We'll just wave at it as it recedes into custom.
And has the media - critical as they frequently are of the Harper government - or our exposure to it really changed anything? We read about this absurd issue, we watch the story on that ridiculous decision, and then slip resignedly right back into our daily lives. That's it. More comfortable to just hang out with friends and family. "What can we do about it anyway?" my partner keeps asking. And I keep saying, "start a revolution," and my partner says, "yeah, right, but no one would come. It would be like an early Woody Allen movie."
One could succumb to despondency if not outright despair quite easily on Canada Day were it not for the knowledge that nevertheless there are still many out there who have not yet and may never move into central Harperland but choose instead to remain in the hinterland of Canada practicing genuine equality, justice for all not just some, and reverence for the biosphere and planet earth. This is the place to be on Canada Day even if we can't get the revolution going. Yet!
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