Category: Political Discourse
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Does Canada Have Any Military Credibility Left?
In 1971 I was in the process of considering my future. I had just graduated from High School and was in the process of considering a life in the Canadian military. For four years, from 1968 to 1971 I had served in the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve and was contemplating the Regular Officer Training Program…
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A Foreigner’s Admonition or Warning, Not an Indictment
This week I attended the movie, Civil War. I wasn’t caught up so much in the ‘making of the movie’ per se, but rather the ‘intent’ of those producing and directing it. It seemed to me that the movie’s focus was to provide a warning of what was coming, even though today, we are inundated…
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The Politics of Failure
The Vote Versus Action As a one-time student of politics, particularly of identity politics and strategy, it strikes me that Ian Bremmer’s comments of Jan. 2024 in Eurasiagroup ring true. He states, “Public trust in core institutions—such as Congress, the judiciary, and the media—is at historic lows; polarization and partisanship are at historic highs. Add…
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The Politics of Disaster and Contempt
The Literal Recipe for Disaster In Our Time Shortly, I will be dividing my blog/site into two completely different venues. One will be political, simply because it’s impossible to ignore the ignorance and stupidity being visited on all of us currently. The second reason is that to ignore politics is to be doomed to repeat…
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Dissolution or Destruction?
The Politics of Anarchy For the last seven years, I’ve attempted to gain some understanding of a bifurcated America. Partisanship has taken over, the parties are irreconcilable, and the capacity of government to make policy is diminishing. America’s divisions now define America. Whether North/South, Black/White, Educated/Uneducated, Christian/Other, Liberal/Conservative, Rich/Poor, Blue America/Red America. The hyperpartisan behavior…
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If You Could Go Back and Have a Talk With Your 18-year-old Self, what would you say?
As I am in, according to statistical data, the last quarter of my life, I often wonder what I would say to myself were it 54 years earlier? It isn’t a simple question to answer if one is honest. When young, we ignore time, we ignore risk and we ignore our health. Finding one’s feet,…
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An introduction to “The Next Civil War”, by Stephen Marche
Dispatches from the American Future Theories abound as to whether, or how the United States may come to war and/or dissolution. Stephen Marche’s book looks into the near future and envisions a scenario where American democracy implodes. He cites an interesting fact from the Study of Civil War at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo,…
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America’s Extrinsic Needs: Values vs Wants
Over the last eight years, I’ve tried to understand why Americans are so disenchanted with their lives and with their politics. It is not a simple answer, and so I’ve tried to look at the phenomenon of change in America with unjaundiced eyes. It hasn’t been completely successful and it hasn’t been without a continuous…
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The Age of the Sociopath
As I look around the political landscape, I can’t but help be shocked by the display of sociopathic behavior in our lives. We seem inured to the illogical, the irrational, the unreasonable, the unscientific. Instead, society has become a place where ‘getting even’ and ‘getting what’s owed me’ is the most important goal. All of…
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Denying Science: And the Illusion of Knowledge
Today, attempting to change the mind of someone who holds views that aren’t backed up by scientific evidence, is difficult, if not impossible. For someone to deny climate change, the value of vaccinations, evolution, or that the earth is indeed not flat, requires a basic level of knowledge in science itself. Lee McIntyre wrote a…