The gloves are off
I like to joke that there’s only one man I put a helmet on for, and that’s true enough. I don’t do any ring fighting anyone, except with one friend who’s earned the privilege through grit, discipline and good cheer.
In 2015 I was a second-degree black belt in karate who fought competently but nothing more. By 2017 I’d earned a third dan and was world champion in fighting, a title I won again in 2018. I didn’t do this alone. I had experienced and dedicated trainers. They taught me a lot. But the discipline to learn and train and learn some more? That was mine.
Still is.
I’m going to bring this energy and determination to the public square. Because it’s time to fight. Not with gloves or helmets or feet or mouth guards. With words, ideas, kindness and love.
I am angry. Angry that so many white women voted for this… [gestures wildly] this creep who is the embodiment of every single thing that’s wrong with toxic men. Not that there’s anything right about them either. I refuse to dehumanize him. He is a man. A terrible man. Gross and incompetent and criminal and also disgusting in his instincts, his speech, his actions and just about everything else. Every single wholesome value that Americans cherish, he systematically skewers.
AND PEOPLE VOTE FOR THAT! On purpose, I mean. That’s how alienated they feel from their institutions of governance. Oh sure, some of Trump’s supporters are stupid. Others are evil. Many are selfish. Most, I would guess, feel like the current system fucks them over and don’t think they have anything to lose by voting Trump.
For all his faults, and there are many, he has managed to connect at an intimate level with voters who don’t think the institutions of governance are working for them. They’re not necessarily wrong about that part, to be fair. Governments are run by people who don’t know what it’s like to not have privilege. They don’t know what it’s like to live in your car. To have no health insurance. To live with chronic pain or daily trauma.
Believing Donald Trump can fix any of it is highly delusional at best. But here’s the thing: Kamala Harris couldn’t make a convincing case that she could either.
This brings me to my anger with the Democrats and others on the progressive side, very much including the Liberals here, for their abject failure to propose something to make the lives or normal people better in a way said normal people can relate to and believe. I’m angry at progressives for making the institutions of governance seem irrelevant to most people outside the Washington or Ottawa bubbles.
To be clear, I don’t think either country is broken. I also know both federal governments are providing their constituents with incalculable benefits. How much is it worth it to live in a country where your freedom of speech is constitutionally protected? Where food is inspected for safety? Where coasts are patrolled? Where contractual laws exist at all? Where the water is safe to drink? Where you can choose where to live, study or work? Where you can love who you want?
In this American election the Democrats were facing a felon and a man found liable for sexual assault, among many other moral flaws. And they couldn’t beat him. That is an abject failure on their part and to say we need to do better is such a colossal understatement I’m afraid my dictionary will faint if I use that word.
Progressives, grown-up centrists and right-wingers are incapable of telling stories that connect with voters who feel no government ever works for them. This needs to change.
We can’t just keep talking among ourselves. I’m likely as guilty of ignoring readers who are harder to reach as the next woke. I pledge to work differently and to speak differently and reach out to people who don’t think I have anything to say to them. And speak with my heart — and brain — more.
What we’ve been doing for the last 8-10 years isn’t working. Worse, it’s working against decency, empathy, community, public health and trust in our shared institutions of governance. Clearly we have to work differently, and fight like hell against our old reflexes to find new ways of talking with people and to them, not at them.
On a more hopeful note, my Ottawa Citizen column this week talks about JASMA planters and the benefits of nature in health care. I interviewed the President of the not-for-profit distributing planters in health care institutions – in French and English because why not – and I encourage you to visit their website and consider chipping in if you agree theirs is a project worth supporting.
