Young Fascist Idealists

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“I know something about Brexit because for a long time, every single day, before checking the exchange rate for pound sterling, I would click on British politics.”

Sean Crawford

Hello Reader,

Got rosy cheeked fascists?

Young fascists in Britain

Old bullies in parliament

Two philosophies

Young fascists in Britain

I was reading a news story out of Britain, that land of frequent rain, good skin and rosy cheeks, when I was struck by the fascism of the young and innocent.

No, I’m not thinking about the leader of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, who despite losing a referendum on independence a few years ago (Fall of 2014) is talking about reviving the idea, of independence through a referendum, using “Brexit” as an excuse. (Britain exiting the European Union)

Historical note: Of course, once you say referendums don’t count, are NOT to be grave and respected like the Charter, but instead, for Brexit and Scottish independence, can be re-done, can be taken as lightly as a changeable set of by-laws, then: (besides making referendum voters cynical) What’s to keep politicians from having a referendum every few years, until they get their sought-for result, and then having a “one-way valve” where no referendum on reversing independence is allowed? In Canada, certain Quebecers were all set to pull such a trick, while in the US, to make the full nation gravely respected, the pledge of allegiance says the republic is “indivisible.”

End of note.

Rather, I am thinking about something First Minister Sturgeon said, in relation to her ideas. She referred to what Abraham Lincoln said: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.” What Lincoln said next, less often quoted, was, “Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.”

It was to mold public opinion that Greenpeace, over here in Canada, unfurled banners down the parliament buildings. (In December of 2009, according to Google)

As for sentiment, I know what President Roosevelt would say. Because he said it—not to Greenpeace, of course—to people of an earlier generation who went to see him during the Great Depression, advocating for some legislation. “OK, you’ve convinced me. Now go out there and bring pressure on me.” 

I have an idea as to why Roosevelt said that: While big business saw him as a communist, a marxist, a bolshevik, and a “red” devil with horns, and while the president could live with their hateful opinion, as he was enacting his New Deal to help the public… he had no desire for that same public to see him as a fascist, a dictator, a king, doing something that he, and only he, sincerely thought was right. (Here are (link) some cartoons about him)

Historical note: Fascism was invented in Italy by Benito Mussolini, although by WWII—according to the writings of George Orwell in London during the blitz—just like some word out of the double-speak of  Nineteen Eighty-Four, “fascism” merely meant something “bad.”  … Even today, with our higher rates of education and our World Wide Web, most people, even idealistic Greenpeace-types, still cannot define fascism beyond “bad.” (I have trouble myself, although the word is in the dictionary)

End of note. 

In the British Isles, recently, idealistic youth were having school walkouts against climate change. I find that charming, since my long haired generation did the same thing, the year Greenpeace was first invented: We, and Greenpeace, protested the atomic testing over in Alaska. In Surrey Canada, as I recall, about half our student body skipped school one day, and of those, half went down a trail to a culvert, while half went off to formally protest. Back then, as in ancient Rome, we students were less like responsible citizens and more like the classic illiterate mob. For the mob to mobilize, issues must be presented as very simple, and action-to-be-taken must be very simple as well. No complexity, no nuance and absolutely no requirement for reading.

What I find less charming, more fascist, is when the young people seem to think they need to go demonstrate to change the minds of parliament. I think I know what Roosevelt and Lincoln would say: Why aren’t these young fascists trying to change the public sentiment?

If I was in conversation with a few young students, then, knowing how they like Star Wars and Star Trek, I would refer to one of the episodes of the original Star Trek. You may recall the Enterprise transporting a tired old man, secretly Kodos the Executioner, hiding among a traveling troupe of players. A player quotes the bard: “The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch, The conscience of the king.” (episode title) I wish here on earth, Sol III, those rosy cheeked children wouldn’t treat parliament as being a bunch of kings; instead, I wish they’d  try to catch the conscience of the public. But that would take time and effort, two things kids have trouble with, as we all know. But still. 

Couldn’t the kids aim at both parliament and the democratic masses? In fact, I think an effort for marketing, for interpreting to the public, would develop, for the students, excellent “project skills.”(Hint to teachers)

As for my Canadians readers, can you recall why those Greenpeace grownups unfurled banners down the roof of parliament; or remember whether they followed up with more education for us? No? Then I guess, public-wise, their project failed.

So Many Fascists are bullies, aren’t they?

Old bullies in Parliament

Or

With MPs like this,  we sure do need citizen involvement

As you may recall, the Brexit agreement-deal with the European Union was last year. It was this year that, among the many groan-worthy things that many Members of Parliament have said, it was an MP from Northern Ireland who announced the prime minister should go back and “renegotiate, hard.” I groan, because, well, call me a typical North American capitalist, but I will surely tell you this: If someone tries to renegotiate with me after a deal is done, then the HARD negotiation will be from my side, “serving the deal-breaker right.” Of course, as you know, the 27 other members of the EU have already said the deal is not to be re-written, not after taking so long in such good faith to accomplish it.

For many weeks the bullies, with hateful intensity, have demanded that Mrs Teresa May step down as prime minister. So this week she has resigned as leader of her party (her PM role to follow). For my part, I am as egotistical as the next man, but for this? No, no, no, I must humbly confess, I myself could not have done any better than Mrs May. (news story with video speech)

The bullying seems so strange, since May is the only one who has kept her eye on the ball all this time. Stranger still is the MPs believing that if someone else were leader, then that someone would somehow be able to speak better than Mrs May, listen better than her and persuade other MPs better. 

Not to mention persuade the EU to re-negotiate, starting from scratch, expecting 27 EU leaders to pretend they hadn’t already thought long and hard about the issue of Brexit.  And furthermore, the MPs believe a new leader would come up with new ideas that no other MP has during the years since the Brexit referendum in the summer of 2016. I disagree with them, myself; I am merely repeating what so many MP’s have said, time and again. The MPs wouldn’t allow Mrs May any middle way, AND they even formally voted (non binding) against allowing a no-deal Brexit, tying her hands even though such a black-and-white resolution matches the referendum ideal that “Brexit means Brexit.”

I groan. But hey, what do I know, living way over here, on this topping day, simply top hat, on the far side of the ocean on the further side of the American continent, eh wot?—Oh I say, there’s a ripping bridge on the closer side of America. I would surely tell those MPs something: “Pip pip! If you believe what you say you believe, then I own a bridge in Brooklyn, which I am willing to sell to you, real cheap.”

Two Philosophies

Philosophy of Brexit failure: I see on the Canadian evening news that Mrs May has “failed,” and that her predecessor David Cameron had “failed” around Brexit too. Both resigned. 

Memory pops in: I am reminded of something business guru Peter Drucker said in regards to the failure of two top executives in a row. Drucker wrote of great commercial clipper ships: If a ship failed (had accidents) twice then, rather than try a third captain, the ship was labeled a “widow maker” and broken up into pieces.

Similarly, Drucker wrote: (link)

Whenever a job defeats two people in a row, who in their earlier assignments had performed well, a company has a widow maker on its hands. When this happens, a responsible executive should not ask the head-hunter for a universal genius. Instead abolish the job. Any job that ordinarily competent people cannot perform is a job that cannot be staffed. Unless changed, it will predictably defeat the third incumbent the way it defeated the first two.

I dare say history will judge Mrs May was in a widow maker job.

Philosophy 101: The above mentioned Star Trek episode, The Conscience of the King, was a perfect example of  the philosophies of Emanuel Kant versus John Stuart Mill. 

In a recent writer’s circle at the Alexandra Writers Centre, local science fiction author Ron Friedman contrasted Kant and Mill. As best I understand it: Kant believed that if something was wrong, such as killing, then it was always wrong, for one should always do right without sacrificing ones values. 

In contrast, Mill believed in practical utilitarianism, that results are what counts, for one should judge by the greatest good for the greatest number. In this camp would be Kodos the Executioner, long wanted for crimes against humanity, after his thousands of executions on Tarsus IV had saved so many lives from famine, so long ago.

Sean Crawford

May,

Calgary,

2019

Footnote on Brexit: I’ve just updated my March essay on Teresa May to explain: Part of the problem, after the referendum was supposed to be a “done deal” is that a desire to act on “remaining” has changed to be no longer a secret vice, but instead, during the agony of a drawn-out Brexit, something to openly declare, although at least until this very month they still wouldn’t openly say that a “confirmatory second referendum” is secretly intended to torpedo Brexit. 

To me all this is is too much like fearfully advancing in a line over “no man’s land” while many of the lads at your shoulders are saying they want to “remain” back in the trenches. Advancing to Brexit would already be very hard, even without the unbelievable folly of "the trumpet giving an uncertain call. " (Corinthians, in the Holy Bible)

To Camrose from Gotham

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got New York eyes?

“Sometimes, due to the publishing houses being in New York City, and hence many writers being glued to New York, I think we readers may absorb a biased New York person’s view of the world.”

Sean Crawford

Note: Camrose is legally a city to me, with over 10,000 people. But to New Yorkers? Especially when looking down several blocks of Main Street, sans traffic lights? It’s a town.

Forget concrete canyons cramped between cold skyscrapers… Via the vast open road grid of the singing plains I returned to the big town of Camrose. Being further from any big city, Camrose is bigger than other towns, big enough to have it’s own comic book store on Main Street, big enough to have a Japanese (anime and manga) youth-culture store sharing floorspace with a maternity store: This was over in the industrial-retail area of quonset huts and flat-roofed warehouses, just a couple blocks off Main.

This time, instead of a day visit, I decided to “overnight,”—for two nights, in fact— staying at the foot of Main Street in one those big old hotels with toilets-down-the-hall: My usual hotel preference, being a frugal fellow. This time I had a plan, as I told the locals: “Something I’ve never done in my life, anywhere, is spend the day going down Main Street, stopping at one coffee shop after another, reading good books.” I still haven’t done so, my plan failed, as adventure called. What might amuse you, dear reader, is not my private adventure, but seeing Camrose through the eyes of a stereotype New Yorker. Hence this essay.

I have gleaned that in New York City, partly for historical “concrete jungle” reasons, 

(where City Hall wouldn’t help you unless you were part of a group having “some pull,” with the classic question being, “Who is your rabbi?”) 

“everybody and their dog” is part of an ethnic group. Not here. In Camrose folks are just regular. A highway history sign explains that immigration began with a pastor back in Norway sending people on over, but today you wouldn’t know a Norwegian from a Scandinavian from a European in general. 

A New Yorker might wonder: Are the townsfolk insular, are their clothing stores only for working on farms and ranches? No. Some folks here holiday far south to Mexico, while their computers reach across the world. (As farmers check commodity prices) I was talking with a young man at Walrus clothing: The store had no stiff jeans or plaid, only cool, hip stuff. I walked around the racks thinking, “Wow.” He had no single ethnic background, his father from Britain; but he had relatives all over Europe, and had traveled, or meant to travel, to a lot of places on the continent, but not to Germany. “Not Germany? That’s the country I know best, as I was stationed there.”

I related how at college, which draws students from prairie towns, in September we went around the class saying our heritage: something we saw as being in our dim past, not our present. When we got to me I said, “Heritage? Well, I guess I’m a mongrel.” Laughter. (Having ancestors from three kingdoms and the republic of Yankeeland)  I wonder what would a New Yorker think, hearing us in that prairie store, without ethnicity, conversing about the wide world? 

The young man was going to London soon, but only for a week. “Only a week?”

“A busy family,” he explained. 

“I get it. The family store? (Nods) Let’s hope you can get a tax write-off or something—you deserve it, for having your own business.”

“My dad’s an accountant.” We smiled. He wanted to know where to go in London, so I tried to think of things. He already knew to avoid the giant ferris wheel. (Because of line ups, as he had found at the Eiffel Tower, and really, who wants to “take in the view” for a whole 40 minutes?) When I went back later, I only found his sister. She was going to London too, she said, so I could safely leave him a message with her. 

“I forgot to say he could try the Imperial War Museum, after a nice walk from the tube station. It has a V-1 and a V-2 rocket suspended from the ceiling.” I don’t  know if it was from her youth, or from being a nonreader, but surely it wasn’t from being a small-towner: She didn’t know what a V-2 was! I kept a straight face: “It’s a guy thing, your brother will know.”  

A few doors down, again going against the small town “dowdy matron” stereotype, was a ladies clothing store called Fun Fashion. I just had to walk in, right to the back, squeezing past all the lady shoppers, and then out again, thinking, “wow,” because everything in there was fun. In New York they respect, “Bad ass.” At Fun Fashion was sign saying, “big ass woman” next to a sign saying, “Raised on love, sustained on lipstick.” I tell you, “big ass town” does not mean “boring.” 

If towns are less insular these days it’s partly because of economics. I stood chatting in a store selling art, furniture and handicrafts, all locally made, as children, while their artist mother knelt to assemble her merchandise rack, played on the floor. The counter clerk rattled off for me a number of local ethnic restaurants, up and down the street, which I could try. Yes, townsfolk are more broad minded these days, but then again, society is more affluent these days. People here can have exotic palates because they can afford to dine out more than back in my boyhood. Plus, now they can truly afford to eat.

At Fiona's coffee shop I talked to a granddaughter of starving pioneers. Call her “Sue.” Sometimes, as a young mother, Sue had almost no food for her kids. “You can’t make food out of dust bunnies,” she said. Now over 80 years old, younger than my parents had been, she was quite talkative, no doubt as she had talked during her many years as a waitress. Sue told of spending her tip money on the way home to buy a scanty bit of food. I nodded, saying, “My mum had nothing to feed us but jam and rice.” You do what you can, of course; Sue took her husband back three times before telling him to “take a hike,” after he could afford to take his girlfriend skiing, but not give Sue any food money. 

Along the prairie road grid, with relatives and children in all sorts of small towns—isn’t that nice?— Sue would happily drive, but not as much now because, although in good health, she had a spell of  “road hypnotism”—the roads are so straight!—driving miles past her intended stop for coffee. And Sue recently told her daughter she won’t drive into the big city anymore, “you can come and get me,” because Edmonton has all changed.

Her grandparents came from Dakota with 200 head of cattle, but they lost all but two: one of which, thank God, was a milk cow. They had to keep that cow alive at all costs. Some aboriginals collected long grass from sloughs, while other natives brought the parents food. An indigenous man carried a pot bellied stove for them all the way from town. So Sue has no patience for anybody believing in racism against Indians. I didn’t say so, as conversation flowed so fast, but I was reminded of novelist Pat Conroy’s family: While his dad, The Great Santini, was usually stationed in the American south, Pat and his siblings were forbidden to soak up the surrounding white racism: His dear mother’s family, back in the hills, had survived only because good black people brought them food.

I don’t suppose Sue had ever heard of the “hash tag MeToo” movement, but she told me of her sister and her becoming tough fighters so that word would get around amongst the workers to leave them alone. One night they piled too-many-in-the cab of a Peterbilt truck to go to a dance. That dark night the sisters—you never went to the outhouse alone—jumped up onto the truck bed to fight thieves trying to steal some truck chains and stuff. The heroic girls prevailed, partly because the dance emptied out to the excited of calls of “Fight! Fight!”

We talked of dogs, and of her grandpa’s half-wolf dog being nice to her. I spoke of staying with folks in the bush and a visitor bringing a wolf-dog who would do big half circles around us. I joked that we should put a shark fin on that dog. He didn’t like it when I started half circling him!  

Sue and I had a good time… I wondered what a cold New Yorker would have thought, of us talking of old bush life, along with a perfect stranger saying hello to me as she passed my table.

Speaking of friendly, and of me staying two nights: On Day One I spotted a sandwich board inscribed, “The buddha bowl is back!” So I turned on in and asked. A tall man with a wispy goatee explained how they start with a bed of rice and build up shredded veggie layers, with black beans or chick peas, hot or cold sauce. We discussed how early I could arrive and still get fresh-cooked-that-day rice. On Day Two a young lady at the counter said she had heard I was coming in for a buddha bowl. More friendliness: A young man with gentle blue eyes and a plain white Sikh turban was bustling around the back and out near the counter. I asked, “Are you a Khalsa?” That was indeed his brand of Sikhism, and his brand, he told me, was big on yoga. I said, “My roommate was a Khalsa, would invite me to temple on Sunday for free vegetarian food… I met his mother; she was a Roman Catholic.”

I learned that the structure of Catholicism is compatible with the structure of Sikhism, and as we talked I couldn’t help wondering if New Yorkers would be surprised: Of course we out west have converted Sikhs, and Muslims too: There’s a CBC television comedy series called Little Mosque On the Prairie.

Another surprise might be walk-in gender neutral washrooms—in a cafe-store for gamers. And for book lovers. There, besides buying new games and new books, you could play used games and borrow used books. And have coffee. And beer. I asked, “Eh? With minors in here?” Turns out they have a licence like a restaurant would, even with minors present. So I had a craft beer from Turner Valley, South of Calgary, using a Germany recipe, for “Fahr,” a sort of wheat grass beer. Very smooth, I really recommend it. 

I related how the first man to sell investors on drilling for natural gas in the valley took a couple financiers walking in an open field, then suddenly said, “Let’s cook lunch” and knelt to set a match to a puddle on the ground. Cooked a whole meal. Sold!

Good thing I and the youthful owner, father of a two-year-old, had a nice conversation before I ordered my beer: So he cheerfully didn’t hold it against me when I couldn’t stay awake at my table. At least I snoozed sitting up. I truly hadn’t known that my body, after my private adventures, was so marginal a single beer could do me in.

Getting back to racism again, he had a special section for selling new anti-racism books by and about Indians and Metis. (And one was by a US black about whites being silly) That’s because, he explained, if he didn’t offer the books, then where else would you find them? I said I had just learned how the French, through a concerted effort, assimilated the Occitan in the early 20th century. “Alsace-Lorraine?” No, the Occitan were all through southern France. …Incidentally, during my two days in town I saw only two young “persons of colour” (Blacks) together. Perhaps I saw indigenous too, but if so I have forgotten, as I wouldn’t have thought to take note. And of course in a Chinese restaurant I saw a family, “Asians” to us, who, down in the States might have been, according to my reading, self-described as being “persons of colour.”

As I’ve noted on my blog before, I have a knack for talking to strangers; meanwhile, they say visitors to New York are told to avoid even making eye contact—yet, I received one or more stranger’s “hello” on the Camrose sidewalk. I am amused to think that in a single day I had talked cosmopolitan travel, life in the bush, Sikhism and assimilation. I guess I’ve had a well rounded life… even if I never care to visit the “Writer’s Mecca” of New York City.

Sean Crawford

On the Great Plains

April 

2019

Footnote: 

This blog is less journalism, and more what I’d tell you in a bar, but the dialogue is not so much what I would tell you in person, as what fits the printed page. “Less journalism” means I won’t torture myself with lengthy qualifiers, nuance, and excruciating correctness, while if I was a journalist then I would have collected names and proper spelling.

Resources:

~For assimilating the Occitan into French, see a lengthy BBC -Travel- quote at the end of my essay Assimilation, archived January 2019.

   

~For my previous day trip to Camrose, about six months back, see Road Trip Reflections, archived October 2018.

~For talking to strangers, tourism style, see A Tourist Making Conversation With Locals, and Meeting the Locals, archived July 2017 and February 2018.

~For authentic hotels see Cheap Hotels are Fun, and Cheap Hotels I Have Known, archived November 2017 and January 2018.

~For a day of NOT talking to strangers, on a really bad hair day, see Say Hello to Strangers, archived March 2014.

~And lastly, regarding (by hit count) one of my ten most popular essays of all time, regarding why I do refer my readers to look in the archives, and don’t serve to my readers “links on a silver platter,” see No Links is Good Links, archived July 2012. (The blog started in 2009)

Human Warmth and the War of the Worlds

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Hello Read—

I know, yes, I was supposed to post today’s piece last week, when instead I did a piece on bullying, but the cost of bullying was too much to ignore. Not for certain “others,” obviously, but for me. Here’s a news quote about a parent who would not keep quiet like “the others”: (from the BBC May 10)

QUOTE

Months before a fatal school shooting this week in Colorado, a parent warned that student violence and bullying could cause "a repeat of Columbine".

The parent also alleged "an extremely high drug culture" on the campus in suburban Denver, warning it was "the perfect storm".

The call was made five months before the attack.

One student died and eight others were injured on Tuesday in the gunfire at STEM School Highlands Ranch.

The unnamed parent called a school district official, who detailed the claims in a letter to the school's director.

UNQUOTE

So, dear reader, what do you think happened next?

QUOTE

STEM school officials filed a lawsuit in January against the anonymous parent for spreading "defamatory statements" about the school, reports CBS News.

The BBC contacted the school for comment, but did not receive an immediate reply.

UNQUOTE

I wonder if the teachers at STEM were as much in denial as the teachers the students reported about in Ontario. (February 2019 essay) It’s hard to grasp evil, I know. It’s reasonable that journalist Edward Murrow, back during my father’s war, was surprised to come across death camps. But today? There’s no excuse to be surprised by death from bullying.  

Those teachers at STEM remind me of what someone told Murrow, and I paraphrase: All that is necessary for denial to triumph is for good people to do nothing. 

So I’m not apologizing for inserting a piece on bullying. 

… “We now return to our regularly scheduled blog.” …

Hello Reader,

Got warmth in your life?

While last week’s post was about being isolated mentally, I wonder: What about those hermits who are isolated not just physically, but, even if among others, emotionally?  I’m no expert, but it seems to me warmth is a human need, and would remain so even unto an apocalypse. 

Gordon R. Dickson, a humane writer, had a short story where a man, in a post-apocalypse devastation, is losing his meaning to live, even though he does have a brother, vaguely somewhere far away, to maybe, hypothetically, perhaps try to meet up with. Then he meets a big dog. Friends! The story ends with him having a restored will to survive, and setting off with the dog to find his brother.

Amongst the horror of The War of the Worlds, in my poetry, I wanted to suggest human warmth.

Seeking My Sisters

The sun was Mars red, 

the sky was ocean grey.

Particles in the air grabbed droplets.

Somewhere fires were raging.

On a moist silent morning

crows hopped in a calm back alley.

I counted four of them.

Out on the ocean particles of water 

don’t travel.

Each molecule bobs up, 

and down,

staying in place,

as a wave front,

uncaring, 

moves on past.

I didn’t know if a wave of plague 

was passing through us.

In the empty back lanes how could I know?

People stayed indoors 

to live 

or die.

I avoided the motorways 

and the Martians 

by moving across the backways.

I left the crows tugging at some crust of bread,

lugging my own loaf and tins and a bottle of water,

impelled to find my sisters,

hoping we three might become a molecule, 

H2O, but knowing the cold mathematical odds

of them being alive were very slim.

In my dreams my sisters were not there. 

I must remain a particle.

At best I would give the girls a proper burial.

If they survived, 

they too would have walked the byways,

moving ever towards the old farmhouse.

At Cartford I crossed an empty motorway.

I had been thinking I was hearing dim engines, 

but no.

Maybe there were still crowds

out of sight, down the road, blocked by the Martians.

Towards evening,

as my heart sank with the falling temperature,

under a red sun,

I approached the old family home.

Silence.

Leaves had blown in the window, no sign of Janet or Susan.

I would have to see them in the next world.

I felt as dry as the seas of the moon, 

no tears. Then—

voices from around the back.

I ran.

There they were, 

hobbling to see me.

How strange that after all this time I could still cry.

And strangest of all was to hug them so warmly 

after I had counted them,

and they had counted me,

among the dead.

If you have read the book, you may recognize a line I cribbed from H.G. Wells. 

This piece below is from the section in my poetry manuscript for after the martians have passed on, but the survivors must tarry.

Changes

Once I wanted my home to have the latest features,

and my shoes to have cool fashionable long toes.

My car had to be shiny-new and loud.

Nobody that I knew,

traveled simply to “Mexico.”

They all named a fine resort on a good coast.

And now I wear galoshes around a cold farmhouse.

My travels are walks along rutted roads for supplies.

Janet and Susan smile at my salvaged flannel shirt.

“You look so healthy.”

Sean Crawford 

Calgary, May, 2019