Who Are You Calling “Woke!?”

Posted on May 17, 2024May 18, 2024 by Peter Scott Cameron

Them’s fightin’ words.

At least some people, particularly politicians, appear to think so. Lianne Rood, a Conservative Member of Parliament for Lambton, Ontario, has been railing against “woke” coffee lids, of all things. She is complaining about the Canadian coffee and doughnut chain, Tim Hortons, that in an effort to become more planet-friendly, is changing from plastic to fibre lids for its take-out coffee. She has Xed (1) about “woke paper lids that dissolve in your mouth” (2) – which does beg the question of what kind of person eats coffee cup lids, but we will leave that for now. “Until Tim Hortons gets rid of this paper lid, I’m done with Tim Hortons,” she has said.

The lawmaker’s pronouncements make one wonder what has happened to us. How is it that our politicians have ditched the concern that generations of parliamentarians have had for the Canadian value of good governance, and instead have elevated warring about cultural leanings to prominence – along with dissing those who care about the planet and social issues?

Another Conservative anti-woke warrior, Saskatchewan MP Corey Tochor introduced a private member’s bill in February that would reverse the federal government’s single use plastic ban. He is most concerned about the loss of plastic straws, and in a moment of cleverness, he said: “Soggy, limp, wet and utterly useless: we are not talking about the Liberals. We are talking about paper straws.” Heh, heh, witty that. I hope it got recorded in Hansard, the official parliamentary record, for posterity. It’s a keeper.

There are many entangled issues here, such as: what is “woke” anyway, what is the job of Members of Parliament, how should they spend their time (should they be eating coffee lids, for example, while on the country’s payroll), and what about the importance of cultural symbols, the environmental crisis, and bad grammar? However, we can only deal with a few of these.

First, for our American readers, some background on Tim Hortons, since there is no U.S. equivalent. Comparison to Dunkin’ Donuts falls flat (it is now called Dunkin’ in a radical re-branding effort, given that in the age of social media, remembering two words in a row taxes the attention span). Not even close. There is nothing similar in American culture, not even the family bonding ritual of consuming a six-pack of Bud Light while watching football on Thanksgiving day. Tim Hortons is sacred, representing a trinity that includes sacramental doughnuts, coffee, and a deceased hockey hero all in one. At the heart of it – other than a great Canuck staple, doughnuts (its stature matched in Canadian cuisine only by Kraft Dinner) – is the beloved Maple Leaf (and later, Buffalo Sabres) hockey hero, Tim Horton. He died on the Queen Elizabeth Way in February 1974, on his way home from Buffalo, heading to Toronto.

Tim was driving his exotic De Tomasa Pantera, going so fast that the cop he passed could not be sure of the colour. Rumours at the time were that he had been with a mistress, but no! Not Tim, don’t even say that! In any case, no Canadian hockey heroes ever had mistresses. No, instead he was having a business conference at one a.m. in Hamilton. Perhaps there was consumption of salutary social lubricants at the business meeting. After that, he took to the road, and sadly lost control at well over one hundred miles an hour, was ejected from the car, not wearing a seatbelt. (Hey, it was 1974!) It was too sad and the whole country grieved. (3) Tim was a good guy and we all loved him.

There you have it, the Canadian Holy Trinity: a dead hockey hero, coffee, and most important, doughnuts, preferably chocolate-glazed. I offer a warning about this. For generations, the U.S. has had, and still has, standing plans for an invasion of Canada (4) – and in fact, during the pandemic, Candace Owens, a supporter of Trump right-wing rowdies, called for the invasion of Canada to stop Prime Minister Trudeau from cracking down on “Convoy” hooligans. (5) But given the importance of doughnuts, I have a warning for the Marines: Don’t get between Canadians and their Timbits. You will regret it, profoundly so. The hand-to-hand combat will be vicious.

So, then! We have to admit that Ms. Rood exhibits some substantial cojones. To attack Tim’s because of its apparent wokeness, and to say she is done with the brand is unprecedented, radical. It may even be against Canadian law, violating hate-speech statutes. I’m not sure of this, but it is just possible.

But just what is a “woke” coffee lid, anyway?

Webster’s, at least the online version, defines woke as: “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” (6) “Stay woke” has been in use since the nineteen-thirties in the African-American community, and the blues singer Lead Belly is reputed to have used the term as early as last mid-century. The word was used to refer to awareness of structural racism that goes beyond individual prejudice, especially in the American South during the Jim Crow era. Use of the term became more common after 2010, particularly within the Black Lives Matter movement. Since then its meaning has widened to include injustice in many forms: to be aware of not only racism, but prejudice and discrimination aimed at many groups, including women, gay people, and people who do not conform to gender expectations, as well as advocates for environmental and climate concerns. Quite simply, although expressed in dodgy grammar, the word refers to consciousness of important societal and civic issues, particularly those of injustice.

Rapidly there was a backlash, as there always is, when the status of the privileged is challenged. The word quickly became a pejorative. This transformation was an extension of a tactic that the right has been enormously successful in carrying out; that is, co-optation of positive words that call for social change and progress. Now, even hard-core Liberals can be heard denigrating wokeness, as though it implied someone who is fey, superior in attitude, someone who is ridicules, but who nevertheless fascistically wants to impose thinking and beliefs on others. This disdain for woke has spread to Canada and many other countries. A good deal of this has been orchestrated by entrenched powers: for example, fossil fuel interests manufactured a deliberate war on “wokeness” in order to undermine environmentalists. (7) More on that it a bit, but first…

It is not that “woke” is without problems: questionable grammar, for one. My inner- grammar-child recoils at “woke.” I can feel Miss Scott’s ruler, my second grade teacher at King George School, rapping my knuckles as I say the word. Ouch. “Awakened,” would be more correct in terms of the English language, but it implies that the individual is in a state of Buddhist enlightenment, so that is not quite right. “Awake” would be correct – as in, “she is awake to the reality of structural racism.” But I have to grant that the inventors of the term wanted something unique, something that would stand out, hence: woke. This is similar to the adoption of the term “gay,” by gender-script non-conformists. Although I miss the old usage of gay, I have to accede to them the right to take the term, given how much mistreatment they have had to endure.

Of course there is another tangential English problem associated with this discussion: namely, Tim “Hortons.” It should be Tim Horton’s, of course, unless there were several hockey players who started different restaurants and who were all called Tim Horton. I don’t understand why we accept this travesty so passively. They could call it Tim Horton, as in Walmart, but since they chose the possessive, there should be an apostrophe, and we ought not tolerate its absence without a fight. It is the same for Lands End and Starbucks, which should be Land’s End (or less sensible, but still correct, Lands’ End) and Starbuck’s. I wrote to Lands End about the issue and received a jokey reply intended to humour me. I was not amused. Even more egregious, from a few years back, was Apple and “Think Different.” Outrageous. Of course, despite the catastrophic loss of the adverb in North American culture, it should have been “Think Differently.” Or, if the monsters at the helm of Apple did want people to think the word “different,” then it would have been “Think: Different.” A simple colon would take care of the problem. But no – the cads said to hell with the decline of civilization – we don’t care! Low.

The other problem is that woke people can appear superior, intolerant, and downright annoying. What comes to mind is the unfair treatment of J. K. Rowling, who, without rancour or prejudice against trans people, put forth a not-unreasonable position on sex vs. gender. (8) Another example concerns the invented concept of “cultural appropriation.” For instance, there was the cancellation of yoga classes at the University of Ottawa a number of years back. Some students complained of discomfort due to North American people engaging in a practice that is originally part of the culture of India. Yoga was being “appropriated” by Canadians, the woke students kvetched. (9) What nonsense. There can be misappropriation, as when a fashion house, in a massive exhibition of crass insensitivity, used faux North American Indigenous headdresses in a show. Ugh – tacky and disrespectful. Still, there is really no such thing as cultural appropriation.

Cultures are not things; nobody owns them. Culture is a process, a way of living, and elements of culture spread or diffuse to other people all the time and there is nothing wrong with that. It would be silly of me to be upset, for example, if a Sherpa mountaineer wore a kilt in the traditional way, without undershorts, during an ascent of Everest, nor should I be perturbed with a Japanese teenager playing the bagpipes, nor an Iranian who chose to wear a Montréal Canadiens’ hockey sweater. So woke people: enough with self-righteous posturing, already.

But back to the organized war on wokeness. In addition to the think-tank inspired campaigns, such as that noted of the fossil-fuel industry, commercial entities and politicians are jumping on the ant-woke honey wagon. Not for comedic effect, although it would appear that way, there are retail marketers that cater to the denigration of social consciousness. Right wing outlets, such as The Daily Wire, have launched lines of anti-woke products, including vitamins to “reclaim masculinity,” called “Manly Green Vitamin Capsules.” Jeremy’s Razors, Black Rifle Coffee, Ultra Right Beer all follow this line, promoting themselves as antidotes to the “woke mind virus.” The working class staple, Bud Light, almost tanked after using a transgender person in an advert. The Daily Wire advocates that people not “buy your men’s health products from a company that partners with drag queens and supports radical organizations that push gender procedures on children.” (10)

The cynics of the political world have seized the opportunity also: the aforementioned Ms. Rood, and the Canadian Conservative populist wanna-be, Pierre Poilievre are two. But most notable is the self-declared leader of the anti-woke Brownshirts, Ron DeSantis in the U.S. “Florida is where woke goes to die,” he has famously declared. (11) It would be tempting to ridicule this statement and this man, were the consequences of this not so disheartening and harmful. For example, under his approval, the Florida middle school social studies curriculum and texts discuss how African slaves benefited from slavery by learning new skills! The curriculum makes no mention of who it was that did the enslaving, or slavery’s horrors. Despicable, that.

But this tells us what is at the root of the antipathy. The most fundamental basis is racism. The foundation of anti-woke is simply good old-fashioned racism dressed up in a brand new suit. We can add to that broader feelings of fear, hate and prejudice toward people who do not conform to society’s gender scripts, toward those who advocate for fairness and justice, and those who care about our fellow creatures and the planet. Couple all that to greed – that is, protection of wealth, especially fossil-fuel wealth – and there you have it.

So there it is; now we understand what Ms. Rood is getting at. God forbid that Tim Hortons joins the attempt to take on the monstrous problem of plastic pollution, and thus take away our plastic lids and straws. What is next? Giving up incandescent light bulbs, having to drive electrical vehicles, and being forced to see wind turbines on the horizon? Equal and just treatment of all people, regardless of skin colour, or ethnicity, gender, or gender behaviour? Ensuring that all eligible citizens get to vote? Children free of gunfire in their classrooms, safe, happy, and learning in their schools? Living wages? Access to health care? Where will it all end?

It probably would end in that great dream of the Enlightenment: democracy and decency – things we should be willing to fight for. I hereby declare that I, for one, am willing to fight. In that spirit, keeping in mind our rich and exemplary role-models Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who challenged each other to an ultimate fighting contest, I demand satisfaction from DeSantis and Poilievre, as a tag-team, to a fight in the octagon. Once I was a martial artist who could kick seven feet in the air (in case I was attacked by a seven-foot opponent, I suppose). Now, at 77, the best I can do is aim for the ankles, but still, I would take them. That famous arc of history that bends toward justice is definitely on my side. And by all means, Lianne Rood can join them: they will still go down. I will wear a robe with a Black Lives Matter flag on the back, Pride flags imprinted on my gloves, an Extinction Rebellion baseball cap, and my trunks will have WOKE! printed on my arse.

I urge every Liberal and other people, including true small-c conservatives, to embrace the term and use it with pride. I consider that every college and university sophomore, if not woke, should consider themselves as failing in their work. Let there be Woke Pride.

After all, who would not want to live with compassion, with understanding of structural injustice, a concern for our planet, and its well-being, with a desire to defend the decency and the dignity of all people and other creatures? Count me in. Please, call me woke!

_____________

There is uncertainty as to what to call “tweets,” now that the company is X. Musk as suggested “X’s,” and a completed X would then be “X’ed,” including the incorrect apostrophes. One wag suggested they be called “2 cents,” since that is what the company is worth, post the Musk takeover. Retrieved from: https://mashable.com/article/twitter-x-what-are-tweets-called.
Major, Darren. Are Tim Hortons’ new lids ‘woke’? One Conservative MP thinks so. CBC News, May 8, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative- mp-tim-hortons-fibre-lids-1.7199306.
50 years after Tim Horton’s deadly car crash, we clear up one lingering mystery. The Toronto Star, February 17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/50-years-after- tim-hortons-deadly-car-crash-we-clear-up-one-lingering-mystery/article_079468f2-c9d1-11ee-a912-97985739c8f3.html.
For example: Lewis, Dan. The 1927 U.S. Plan to Invade Canada. August 26, 2012. Retrieved from: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12366/1927-us-plan-invade-canada.
Porter, Tom. Candace Owens called for the US to invade Canada to stop Justin Trudeau cracking down on trucker protests. Business Insider, February 21, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.com/candace-owens-wants-us-invade-canada-defend-truckers-trudeau-2022-2?op=1.
Merriam-Webster. Retrieved from: https://merriam-webster.com/wordplay/woke-meaning-origin. My old Webster print version, copyright from 1955, simply defines it as the alternative past tense of wake.
Noor, Dharna. Rightwing war on ‘woke capitalism’ partly driven by fossil fuel interests and allies: Report shows connections of business and rightwing thinktanks to laws aimed at environmental, social and corporate governance. The Guardian, June 22, 2023. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/22/rightwing-war-on-woke-capitalism-industry- interests.
Petter, Olivia. JK Rowling criticised over ‘transphobic’ tweet about menstruation. Independent, June 15, 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/jk- rowling-tweet-women-menstruate-people-transphobia-twitter-a9552866.html.
Foote, Andrew. Yoga class cancelled at University of Ottawa over ‘cultural issues’: “There were some cultural sensitivity issues and people were offended,” says instructor. CBC News, November 22, 2015, Retrieved from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/university- ottawa-yoga-cultural-sensitivity-1.3330441.
Gabbatt, Adam. Poor reviews, missing product: firms’ anti-woke offerings soak consumers: A thriving retail niche caters to the performative masculinity of the right wing, oftentimes bilking its chauvinistic client base. The Guardian, May 11, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/11/anti-woke-vitamin-economy.
Czachor, Emily Mae. “Florida is where woke goes to die,” Gov. Ron DeSantis says after reelection victory. CBS News, November 9, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.cbsnews.com/ news/ron-desantis-florida-where-woke-goes-to-die-midterm-election-win/.

The Malarkey Scale

Posted on January 28, 2024January 30, 2024 by Peter Scott Cameron

Malarkey (mel-ŏr´kē) n. Slang. Exaggerated or foolish talk, usu. intended to deceive. (1)

Picture Joe Biden’s big blue 2019 campaign bus: NO MALARKEY! Mostly the slogan was derided, seen as antiquated, out of touch, and reflective of Joe’s advanced age. (2) However, many of us, usually oldsters, enjoyed it and understood it immediately, having endured the four chaotic years of the previous scurrilous occupant of the White House. There is some truth to the charge that it was antiquated, but that makes it even better! It is exactly the word we need to describe what we are all wading in, in our so-called “information” age. (3)

Let me challenge, right here, those younger who would mock the word. I would say, if we old-timers have been expected to learn strange terms in our old age such as what gnarly means to a skateboarder, what gaslighting, ghosting, doxxing and catfishing mean to social media addicts, to understand what fetch means when uttered by a mean girl, or even that a really hot girl is one who wears no undergarments so as to better display her attributes – well, then, younger people should be expected to understand and use English.

Hearken, kids: you should know what it means to peregrinate, what it is to be purblind, what chicanery involves, what sort of raiment a person is wearing, what it is to twattle, and how it is to feel crapulous after over-indulgence the night before. You should know the difference between someone being indefatigable as opposed to indomitable; they are similar, but not the same, certainly. And, for good measure, speaking as a retired professor who has graded too many papers, you should know where apostrophes go, rather than just sprinkling them on the page like confetti.

Thus I think we owe Joe Biden kudos for his effort to revive this wonderful and useful word. In this age of distorted public discourse, social media prevarication. marketing nonsense, public relations impression management, public figure pontificating, not to mention outright lying and disinformation, we need a good word to describe it all. That word is malarkey.

Of course, there are other words for it, as the Princeton University philosopher, Harry G. Frankfurt (1929 – 2023) described earlier. (4) Uncle Joe, though, is too circumspect and civil to have used NO BULLSHIT! on the side of his bus. The other guy, who is a much cruder and more primitive fellow, might do such, although he would be lying, of course. There are other terms; one might use “humbug” for example. Malarkey is richer, however, because it includes considerations of degree – quantity and quality – as well as consciousness vs. unconsciousness, and matters of intent. Humbug is a much simpler concept. It is mere humbug to say that the country is under the guidance of divine providence, for example, but if this is taken further, it becomes malarkey. An example would be to claim that the aforementioned providence entitles citizens to believe that they are especially selected, and have the right to exceptional privilege, usually at the expense of others.

There are many kinds of malarkey (also spelled malarky – feel free) and the concept has important dimensions that are worth considering. Doing so leads inevitably to a Malarkey Scale: a rough measurement of the size, the qualities, and the impact of a particular piece of malarkey. Is it a little fib or a whopper? Is the intention relatively harmless, or does it seek to rob others of their well-being? Is its impact negligible or does it cause untold damage in a number of areas of civil life? That is, is it only an unconsciously believed small bit of nonsense that does little harm, or is it a monstrous lie, deliberately crafted, that harms many powerless people or helpless creatures?

For example, it could be as harmless as the idea that not wearing your rubbers in the rain will give you a cold. Or it could be as malevolent – albeit comically preposterous, of course – as Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim that the California wildfires of a couple of seasons ago were caused by Jews firing lasers from outer space (in order to clear the way for a Jewish-financed high-speed rail project). You see the difference: we are talking about the size, the intention, and the consequences – each of which exist in degrees on a scale. Based on these dimensions, a piece of malarkey may qualify for one M, or it may deserve two (M M), three (M M M) or even four (M M M M) Malarkeys.

The first component is of course, size: how much actual balderdash there is in a particular manifestation of malarkey? Is it a tiny bit of nonsensicality, say, such as the idea that dreams predict the future? (More on this later.) If so, it probably will qualify for just one M. In many cases, although consequences are a separate consideration (see below), these tend to do little harm, and may even do a bit of good. I should mention that these constitute much of what we consider as “common sense,” which is to say, shared cultural understandings, accepted at face value, but that have no inherent relationship to reality. Some of these could just as easily be referred to as humbug.

A good example of this would be the pronouncement, most often made to teenagers, that “you can be whatever you want to be.” It is part of the constellation of common-sense American mythology and is a satisfying bit of folderol that can even be quite useful. It can be used, for example, to inspire Junior to stop watching TicTok videos of partly-clad young girls dancing, and instead get up off the couch and do something meaningful like studying mathematics or trying out for the hockey team. But it is not exactly correct, of course. True, with a reasonable I. Q., a bit of luck, a good education, and if one did the requisite ten thousand hours of study and work, one could accomplish a lot in almost any field. Nevertheless, you may not become the next Marie Curie, Max Weber, or Eric Clapton. You may just end up being an social media influencer. Still, you are a better person for having tried.

So, the above, even if it is a bit of hooey, has a grain of useful inspirational legitimacy in it. But the idea can be inverted and used to do damage, thereby qualifying for more than one M. An inversion can be, and is often, used to shame and unjustly blame people for their predicament. For example, there is an entire ideology that has been created that condemns the poor for their plight, thereby justifying stultifying inequality and rationalizing a half-hearted social safety net. It denies the reality of the structural nature of mass poverty, both domestic and colonial, in our consumer-capitalist society. (5) We say that the poor are poor because it is their fault; they’re lazy etc. True in some cases, of course, but it is mostly poppycock that makes us feel better about ourselves when we have more wealth. I would point out just one fact and then let it go at that. The large majority of poor families in North America have at least one member working full-time, full-year, often more than one job. (6) That is a structural problem, not a failure of the person.

This brings us to the second dimension then: intention of the malarkey-spreader. Is the person intending to deceive and thereby to harm others? Is he or she benefiting, consciously or not, from promulgating the malarkey? Is the intention to benefit, psychologically, socially, or materially usually at some cost to others? Again, it is a matter of degree. We oldsters might criticize the music of younger people because it makes us feel better while we are dealing with our arthritis or musing about our youthful hotness that has gone AWOL. This is minor: there is no harm done and their music isn’t that bad. We really don’t mean to hurt them and the young people certainly don’t feel hurt. After all, they don’t really care about our musical opinions.

On the other hand, the malarkey could be the malicious work of, say, an Andrew Tate, the purveyor of toxic masculinity, deliberately propagating hateful ideas to a large Internet following. He provides poisonous ideology to impressionable young men, amplifying their ignorance and feeding their misogyny so that…well, so that he can be somebody. And so that he can abuse vulnerable women. And so that he can drive expensive, fast cars. Pathetic really, but there it is: a developmentally delayed boy-man, propagating harmful claptrap with the full-on intention to harm others for personal gain. This makes his malarkey monstrous.

Finally, the third dimension is: consequences. Does spreading the malarkey do no, or little harm? Belief that the world is flat, for example, does no harm. Nobody cares, and usually the belief has no effect – and if it does have an upshot, it is positive: that is, providing beneficial amusement to others.

But the consequences of some malarkey can be catastrophic. Think blaming immigrants for crime as Trump did when he entered office and is doing so again this year (in fact, crime rates among immigrants are consistently lower than in the host population). (7) Trumpery, indeed. Think of (Trump again) the failure to condemn white supremacists after the Charlottesville demonstration and the murder-by-car of Heather Heyer, and later, in 2020, of his message to the Proud Boys, to “stand down and stand by.” It was an endorsement of the group and their cause, and they were thrilled and encouraged. (8) Think of Hitler blaming Jews for the political and economic woes of Weimar Republic. Enough said.

There you have it in assessing malarkey: the size or scale or degree of the lie, the intention, and the consequences. This leads quite naturally to the Malarkey Scale, as follows:

1. Minor Malarkey M:

This involves a smaller lie, just some flapdoodle made usually without intention to harm others, and the consequences are quite minor. I was, for example, in teaching about the sleep and dreaming cycle in psychology, surprised at how many students claimed not only that dreams predicted the future, but that they, themselves, had experienced such a prognosticating function resulting from the activation of random neurons in the brain stem during rapid-eye-movement sleep. It is untrue, of course, but there is no intention to harm another, and the effects, other than the believer sounding a bit silly, are inconsequential: just one M.

2. Moderate Malarkey M M:

This level of malarkey involves a greater degree of fibbing, possibly in more that one direction. The intention may not necessarily involve directly harming others, but there is definitely some intention to get something from or put something over on someone, for personal gain. One common example is the claim to psychic powers. One of our regional newspapers used to feature a column by someone claiming to be a pet psychic. She would tell you what your pet was thinking and even could tell you how Fido was doing beyond the grave. She could gather these “insights” just from the letter you sent her – no need to meet Buddy or hold a seance in person! A clever bit of gimcrackery, of course. Often the proponents of this kind of malarkey claim no intention to deceive and may even believe their own flim-flam. But deceive they do, with the benefit of either appearing more special than the next person, or having gainful employment (such as a clairvoyant column-writer) or both. The consequences are usually light: not much harm is done most of the time. I enjoy a good astrology column myself, and I make sure to get fortune cookies with my Chinese take-out, though I would not want to become delusional and start thinking there was anything to these things.

3. Major Malarkey M M M:

This involves a bigger lie, sometimes even a whopper, and the intention is usually to harm others, or at least separate people from their autonomy, power, and/or money. Most advertising is this: the major lie is the claim that this product will somehow magically make one happy. Research clearly shows that this is never really the case once you are above a basic level of material well-being. But the sleight of hand connecting greater material possession with happiness is accomplished masterfully; your fundamental human emotions, and your desires for experiences like relationship, love and sensuality are cleverly linked, that is, psychologically associated with material objects though a vicarious conditioning process. The intention is to rob you of your money, of course. The consequences of this marketing ballyhoo can be quite serious: the dead-end pursuit of endless material satisfaction, slavery to a paycheque, resulting over-consumption of resources and production of waste, and even, for some, an emptiness in living, that is, the old ennui. Three Malarkeys for this existential lie: M M M !

Some codswallop might otherwise qualify for four Malarkeys because of its maliciousness, but the fabrication is so outlandish, unbelievable, and moronic as to make it otherwise completely laughable. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s previously noted claim of Jewish outer space lasers is such an example, as well as the entire Q-Anon conspiracy theory, to which the congresswoman also adheres, by the way. (9) The scale of the bunkum would ordinarily lead them to be considered as M M M M. However, these theories are so outlandish that the harm to public discourse is somewhat curtailed in that nobody in their right mind would believe them, which leads to, of course, the non compos mentis factor – the dispensers of this baloney have lost contact with reality, and therefore most likely do not understand what they are doing and what the consequences are. Some allowance must be made here, although certainly these people should not be elected to positions of public responsibility or leadership.

4. Monstrous Malarkey M M M M:

This is the worst level of tommyrot. Racism is M M M M. Misogyny is M M M M. The lies are huge, the intention is to exploit, disempower and oppress others, or worse, and the consequences are very damaging, if not catastrophic. In addition, the charlatan is of a sane state of mind: that is, not delusional, although usually psychopathic, like Steve Bannon or Roger Stone, both sycophants of Donald Trump. Trump’s “stolen election” bunkum qualifies as Monstrous Malarkey on all fronts: degree of nonsense, intention and state of mind, with tremendous consequences. The twaddle that the election was stolen is entirely untrue – so outlandish, with all the investigations, evidence, court cases and the like as to no longer require refutation, if it ever did. The intention is absolutely clear: to seize power, not only undeservedly, not only illegally, but immorally. The state of mind of the perp is clear: he is a psychopath, without conscience. The consequences for America are catastrophic: the undermining, and if successful in this return election engagement of 2024, even the unwinding of the two-century-plus experiment in civil democracy. M M M M !

Monstrous Malarkey is so nefarious, so odious, that one might think that another, more dramatic word is called for, but at the bottom of it is classic malarkey. And so, I stick with the term.

America is in its long, tortuous election year and so we have to expect to be eyeball-deep in malarkey this year. There will be plenty of malarkey in Canada, too, which will have an election in 2025, if not before. Consider: Canada’s banking system is considered one of the best, most stable in the entire world. (There was no melt-down in 2008; the Canadian banks did not participate in the mortgage follies that preceded the crash.) However, the leading opposition candidate, Pierre Poilievre, who is likely to be the next prime minister, has proposed getting rid of the Bank of Canada and that the country go big into cryptocurrency. Go figure. And the current premiere of the oil province of Alberta, Danielle Smith, after the past year when Canada pretty much went up in smoke as a result of cumulative climate change problems, has implemented a moratorium on the development of…wait for it…renewable energy! Ah…well, go figure.

Still, the situation is less dangerous there right now than it is immediately in the U. S. In this country, the very democracy is at stake; at the same time, we are drowning in hogwash, disinformation, law-breaking, and fraud in the political sphere. It will get worse with the use of artificial intelligence, which will make dupery much easier to carry off, and much more difficult to discern.

Overall, “only” one-third of Americans believe the 2020 the fraud perpetrated by Trump, that the election was stolen; however that translates to close to seventy percent of Republicans who believe this hokum. (10) It also leads, incredibly, to a sizeable proportion of the population who intend to vote for the fraudster who inspires unbelievable loyalty, like a Mafia Don, and who aspires to dictatorship. The danger is grave, indeed.

My hope is that the Malarkey Scale presented here is helpful in identifying and assessing what we are facing – and ultimately in overcoming it. One hopes that intelligence, rationality, and sanity will prevail over the dark forces, and that in the long run, good will prevail. In the meantime, what specifically can we do? The simplest and most direct thing, when we hear, read, or see something, is to ask: is it true? Is it true, for example, that immigrants have a higher crime rate than native people? Then we dig in and find out from real, objective sources.

And finally, we all must thank Joe Biden for reminding us about the power and menace of malarkey – and for the need to be straight and true, to the best of our abilities. I, for one, would like to see the slogan go back on the bus.

____________________________

1. ITP Nelson Canadian Dictionary of the English Language: An Encyclopedic Reference. Thompson Canada Limited, 1997.

2. Yglesias, Matthew. “No Malarkey,” Joe Biden’s unabashedly lame new slogan, explained. Vox, December 3, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/3/20991841/joe-biden-no-malarkey. Accessed January 26, 2023.

3. An equally or possibly more legitimate term would be the “disinformation age.”

4. Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press, 2005.

5. Desmond, Mathew. Poverty, By America. Random House, 2023.

6. Carl, John, and Marc Bélanger. Think Sociology. 2nd Canadian ed., Pearson, 2013.

7. Fact check: Immigration doesn’t bring crime into U.S., data say. PBS News Hour, February. 3, 2017, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fact-check-immigration-doesnt-bring-crime-u-s-data-say. Accessed January 23, 2024.

8. Subramanian, Courtney, and Jordan Culver. Donald Trump sidesteps call to condemn white supremacists — and the Proud Boys were ‘extremely excited’ about it. USA Today. September 29, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/29/trump-debate-white-supremacists-stand-back-stand-by/3583339001/. Accessed January 23, 2024.

9. Begs the question: how did this person ever get elected to Congress?

10. Kamisar, Ben. Almost a third of Americans still believe the 2020 election result was fraudulent. NBC News, Meet the Press Blog, June 20, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/almost-third-americans-still-believe-2020-election-result-was-fraudule-rcna90145. Accessed January 24, 2024.

Good News 2: Climate Change

Posted on January 15, 2024January 16, 2024 by Peter Scott Cameron

Good news! No, sorry, it is not that Elon Musk has blasted off on a one-way rocket to Mars, or that Taylor Swift has laryngitis – even better news than that! We have made progress on the climate front.

Good news cannot help but be most welcome after an anxiety-provoking year with record heat, Canadian fires, and a final COPS 28 document, that like Bob Dole in his last years, suffered from erectile dysfunction. The COPS document should have been no surprise, given that the conference president was Sultan al-Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, who was also chair of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. This (having an oil executive in charge of the world conference on climate change) was such a good idea that we have already decided to replicate it. Mukhtar Babayev, former executive of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan for twenty-six years, has been named as president of COPS 29.(1) Talk about foxes guarding the hen-house, or I would say, hiring wolves to tend the sheep. No wonder the COPS outcomes tend to be, as the wise-beyond-her-years Greta Thunberg would put it: “blah, blah, blah.”

Sorry! Back to the good news:

The price of renewable energy is coming down exponentially. This is affecting fossil fuel use to such a degree that we likely have reached a positive tipping point. That is, fossil fuel use may peak as early as 2030. All forms of renewable energy are surging and by 2027, solar is expected to become the cheapest source of energy, period. There are strong indications that we are at peak electric power emissions right now – such emissions are expected to decline in 2024.

Our awareness of the poison of plastics is rising. With varying degrees of success, countries such as India, Canada, and the U.K. are fighting to ban single-use plastic, despite stiff opposition from the likes of DOW Chemical and Exxon. Canada developed a plan in 2023 for a plastics registry that includes manufacturers, which would gather and use evidence in the effort to reduce and even prevent plastic pollution. The goal is zero plastic waste by 2030. Meanwhile numerous lawsuits are underway in several countries against high plastic users such as Pepsi and Evian etc.

In the past year, oil companies such as BP, Exxon and Saudi Aramco pledged to reduce methane emissions by at least 80% by 2030. This is completely achievable. Oil companies, of course, are notoriously unreliable partners in efforts to improve public well-being, but we can hold their feet to their methane flares, so to speak.

COPS 28 did establish a fund provided by wealthy, high-emissions countries to help development of poorer countries without adding to fossil fuel emissions, as well as to address problems caused by climate change in these countries. This is a big deal; it will help huge swaths of the world to avoid following our path toward high fossil-fuel development.

Deforestation in the Amazon in Brazil is plummeting under President Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva, exactly as he promised, after the previous populist bad guy, Jair Bolsonaro, was turfed from office (good news all by itself, that).

“Kids” are not waiting for their parents to get with it. Not only are they changing their consumption patterns, but they are filing lawsuits, making the claim that they deserve, of all things, a liveable world. Young people, for example, won a suit in Montana (Held vs. Montana). The state trial judge ruled that the Montana government violated the plaintiffs’ right to a “clean and healthful environment” by failing to consider the harms of fossil fuels.

States and localities are taking the initiative ahead of national governments (although there is progress by nations there, too: Switzerland, for example, has made a legislative commitment to get to net-zero by 2050). But even small cities, where you might not think it would happen, are making efforts to go green: think Greensburg, Kansas (conservation rebuilding), Georgetown, Texas (wind and solar in the heart of oil country), and Juneau, Alaska (developing electric vehicles infrastructure). In Canada, cities like Vancouver, Edmonton, Halifax and Montreal are tackling the problem with retrofits, clean energy projects, road pricing and carbon accounting. And many Canadian indigenous communities are leading in fighting fossil fuel expansion as well as the development of renewable energy projects.

A piece of great news and a tremendous victory for people and the planet: The Green Belt has been preserved in Ontario. It was intended to protect environmentally important land from unfettered urban sprawl in a large area around Toronto, from Oshawa to Hamilton, referred to as the “Golden Horseshoe.” The Horseshoe has been the fastest growing area in North America for years and is expected to approach twelve million people by around 2031. Within and around the Horseshoe, the Green Belt is a swath of two million acres of land, including agricultural, forest, and wetlands that was established in 2005 under the Liberal premier at the time: a brilliant idea.

But alas, as Cameron’s Fifth Law states: “no idea is so great that some dunderhead will do all that can be done to take it down.” Enter Doug Ford. Americans might not know Doug Ford, but will remember his younger brother Rob Ford, the former crack-smoking mayor of Toronto, perhaps best known for showing up inebriated at Tim Horton Doughnut shops in the middle of the night, spouting gibberish in an ersatz Jamaican patois, and for his campaign promises to “tear up” the newly installed bike lanes in the city.(2) If Rob was a drunken Chewbacca figure, then his older brother is more like Darth Vader, only more devious but not that smart.(3)

The election of Doug Ford in 2018 was not a happy moment for the climate movement. The former provincial premiere, Kathleen Wynne, a good climate warrior who introduced a cap-and-trade program, was thoroughly trounced at the polls. She was a highly intelligent woman who also happened to be a lesbian. She lost the election because she was: a) highly intelligent, b) a woman, and c) a lesbian. This hat-trick of threats was too much for the fragile male egos of the province, so they tossed her out on her green lesbian bum. Sad.

Ford, on the other hand, touted prosperity through burning lots of fossil fuel, which is always a good selling point for a sizeable percentage of any electorate. One of his potential cabinet ministers promised to “tear out wind generators by the roots,” if elected. Not good, though a somewhat comical image: perhaps she was confusing wind mills with sunflowers. When Ontarians woke up the day after the election and realized what they had done, they were like black-out drunks in the morning, saying, “no, wait, I did what last night?” But then, brains addled by Long Covid, the good people of Ontario elected him again in 2022. Goes to show you.

A Digression.

If you want, you can skip this section – it is off topic. But if you do that, you will regret it. It will enrich your life, so I recommend you stay with me.

Americans should know that – and it may come as a surprise to those who see Canada as a more civilized (true) and more peaceful nation (true) but similar to their own – Canada has a long tradition of tolerating and electing politicians…let’s say, without all their oars in the water. Canadians don’t seem to expect that their politicians to be any less or more bonkers (4) than the general population.(5) So leaders with quirks or issues are not unusual. None of this should come as a surprise, when you realize that among the greatest exports from Canada to the U. S. have been William Shatner, Norm MacDonald, John Candy, and Jim Carrey.

One mayor (Mel Lastman) of Toronto who preceded Rob Ford by a decade or so, was an appliance hawker who went by the name of “Bad Boy” and who appeared in those goofy television commercials wearing a striped prison outfit – you know the kind of ad I am talking about. He was a Liberal Party member, but claimed that fact was a result of a “misunderstanding” although the nature of the misunderstanding was never explained. Bad Boy is remembered best for exclaiming, before a diplomatic trip to Africa, that he didn’t really want to go because, and I quote: “I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.”

Completely without charisma, the highly intelligent William Lyon Mackenzie King (fondly known as “Weird Willie” by the populace), was elected as prime minister three non-consecutive times and led Canada during WWII. By all accounts, he was an excellent prime minister. He was also a spiritualist and held seances while in office in order to consult with his dead mother, his deceased dogs, and Leonardo da Vinci, among others, about public policy. No doubt his full formal moniker was a big part of his problem. He was a bachelor, it probably goes without saying.

W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett was a leader of the Social Credit Party in Western Canada and served as the premiere of British Columbia for – count ’em – seven consecutive terms, beginning in the early nineteen-fifties and stretching until the end of the sixties. Wacky was…well, you figure it out. The Social Credit Party itself was founded in the nineteen-thirties by a radio evangelist, “Bible Bill” Aberhart who mixed fundamentalist Christianity and a dash of anti-Semitism with the dubious economic theories of an engineer by the name of C. H. Douglas. Douglas sought to apply engineering theories to rationalize economics. His theory was that…oh, well, never mind. In any case, in the first campaign for the Social Credit Party in the Great Depression in Alberta in 1935, I understand that the party promised to hand out $100 cash to every citizen if elected. Bible Bill and the Social Credit won, and the day after the election people are said to have lined up outside the legislature waiting for their money, but were surprised to find the doors locked.

Even the (arguably) greatest Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, the cultured intellectual, told his fellow parliamentarians, right in session, to “fuddle duddle.”(6)

So there, you see.

End of digression: Back to Doug Ford and Saving the Green Belt:

Ford had promised to develop housing on the beloved Green Belt, but Ontarians had elected him anyway. Sure enough, a few years later, he made crooked deals with developers and announced plans. The electorate was surprised and outraged, which begs the question…well, it is hard to think what the right question is in this situation. In any case, the population rose up in opposition and protest, which demonstrates that some of the time, people actually understand things. Not only that, but the dealings were entirely shady and have caught the attention of both ethics watchdogs and the Provincial Police. The plan was hastily withdrawn. Even though Ford has hinted that he has not given up, this is a victory of inestimable value in the climate fight.

Plus everyone knows that the solution to twenty-first-century exploding-population housing crisis in urban areas is to build vertically, not horizontally – condos and apartments, not sprawling housing developments. Anyway, let’s hear it for the people of Ontario, who it appears, might have come to their senses!

There is more good news, and it is possible I’ve saved the best for last:

Joe Biden’s efforts and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act have had a profound effect already. The U.S. is pivoting away rapidly from gas, oil and coal toward wind, solar and other renewables. Progress resulting from the Act is happening faster than expected. Emissions from electricity in the U.S. is on track to be reduced by 83% by 2030. A bonus, but predicted and promised: job generation was been huge. At the same time, China has sped up also, and is expected to double its solar and wind energy in just the next two years. Further, in the face of the Russian war against Ukraine, European countries are weaning themselves off Russian oil and accelerating toward renewables. Overall, the momentum is tremendous.

Notably, India’s emissions have dropped by thirty-three percent in the last fourteen years. This has been accomplished mainly by increasing both renewable energy and government-initiated reforestation. India is clearly on track to meet its commitment to reduce emissions from 2005 levels; the country is expected to show a reduction of 45% by 2030. This is a demonstrative case: given India’s overpopulated society and rather messy economy, it shows us that it can be done, no matter what the conditions.

The U.S. and China agreement, from late 2023, to ramp up renewables and phase out of fossil fuels, even if modest, will have huge effects since these two countries are the biggest producers overall, and China is big producer of methane. It also portends well for further cooperation, despite the otherwise combative stance that these two countries take in relation to one another.

U.S. emissions fell a tad – about two percent – in 2023, despite an apparent frenzy to fly in aeroplanes after the pandemic, as well as a neurotic compulsion to drive all over the damn place in gargantuan pickup trucks and gigantic SUVs. Overall American emissions have declined just over seventeen percent since 2005. Mostly this is due to an ongoing decline in coal burning resulting in the lowest level of coal emissions since the early 1970s.

Clearly, given climate events of 2023, this latter is not enough, but – it is something. It is progress. And since we are fossil fuel addicts, I think it is appropriate to borrow a phrase I have heard from members of Alcoholics Anonymous, to the effect that they seek “progress, not perfection.” 2023 was not good, but there was progress, so let us not be disheartened.

Let us instead, embrace this progress and promise to ourselves, to each other, and to the creatures of the planet, that we will do more in 2024.

Notes:

1. I am going to eschew my usual practice of providing bibliographic references this time. There would be no end to them. But you can DuckDuckGo the points and find supporting references easily if you wish. Also, in this piece, I am returning to my practice of preferring Canadian English spellings whenever I can remember to do them.

2. It is not my intention to speak poorly of the dead. Rob died of cancer a couple of years after leaving office and I am sorry about that. I am only making fun of him while he was alive, which is fair enough. And I would note that he had a heart and was personally generous to a fault; we can use more people with those qualities. If he met someone without money on the street, he would hand them $20 from his pocket.

3. As executor of his brother Rob’s will, Doug Ford was accused of mishandling and possibly embezzling money intended for his brother’s widow.

4. As a long-time community mental health worker, I use these terms as in common vernacular, referring to defects of character and maladies of impoverished and distorted thinking – not in reference to actual serious mental illnesses. People who suffer from these real illnesses deserve our empathy, our help, and our respect.

5. Americans elect just as many, if not more, politicians who are not firing on all cylinders, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz. The difference seems to be that the news media and the American people appear feel compelled to pretend that these people represent normal and legitimate ideas, which makes them more dangerous and leads to some dissociated public discourse, to say the least.

6. Pierre told them to “fuck off.” At first he said, when asked, that he was merely moving his lips, and challenged them, demanding to know whether they were lip readers. Asked about it later, he said it was “fuddle duddle.” This became the big Fuddle Duddle Incident of 1971, a landmark event in Canadian politics, challenging even the Mange de la Merde episode Trudeau had with union workers in Montréal a year earlier.