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I’d prayed we were done with the embarrassment of the Fords in Canada

We seem to be drowning in anger, war and disdain for the plight of our fellow man.
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I am stewing in a period of misanthropic gloom. ‘Big, bad stuff’ is happening in our world and it seems to me vast segments of the world’s population are committed to sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling, “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you!”

Misanthropy, the dislike of humanity, isn’t a particularly constructive attitude. In fact it is decidedly unhelpful, but wow, our madness does seem to pile up until we look pretty bad compared to the animal kingdom.

So, what’s got me so grumpy about humanity?

Well, the 45th President of the U.S. and his federal band of appointees have been busy over the past year extinguishing any trace of reason instituted by the Obama administration. That’s tough, because in reality, Obama wasn’t able to do very much, but, Trump and his band of boys and girls have embraced the task of undoing whatever they can with glee.

They even have killed a limited ban on dumping coal mining waste into waterways, and most recently, have quashed a number of environmental and safety regulations affecting offshore oil and natural gas drilling and extraction, many of which were put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Then, we have the resurgence of the “strongman in the world”, men who are cementing their dominance in their countries: Vladimir Putin (Russia), Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey), Nicolas Maduro (Venezuela), Victor Orban (Hungary), Xi Jinping (China), Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines) and, Donald John Trump who has expressed admiration for the strongman antics of both Xi Jinping and Duterte.

We have witnessed the disastrous results of the Arab Spring’s quest for democracy and the bold rise of far right and far left movements in the world.

We seem to be drowning in anger, war and disdain for the plight of our fellow man.

We are allowing business and government to use technology to strip away our personal freedoms with nary a squeak of protest. Workers are now able to be tracked at work where badges collect every second of their work lives and every word they speak is being analyzed.

We are followed by CCTV cameras in the streets, while credit and bank cards allow retailers to build profiles of us that detail our every need, want and like.

We leave a trail of digital crumbs everywhere we go on the internet and businesses regularly buy and sell our personal information and data without so much as a ‘by your leave’.

And, if that weren’t enough we constantly and willingly give away personal information with very few qualms. It’s to the point where traversing security at airports often takes longer than the flight we are taking.

“It’s for our own protection,” we’re told. Really? How naïve. And then someone says, “I don’t care, I don’t have anything to hide,” and I know there is no hope for freedom.

Of course, after pretty much giving away the farm on personal information we suddenly get shirty because we are asked to register a gun or fill out a census form (that does provide useful data and really is confidential).

We, at least a lot of us, choose to fight for our personal freedoms in the wrong arenas, with the wrong methods and with little attention to either logic or reason.

And, there are both the ‘politically correct’ and the ‘anti-politically correct’ movements. It seems we have alternatively either lost our collective sense of humour or have become knuckle dragging louts.

Regardless, these two schisms desperately need to find some common ground because together they are making the world crazy. Enough said.

Finally, we see the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party elect Doug Ford to leadership. Well, if that doesn’t pull out another stopper and release a flood of dumb and dumber, I don’t know what does?

Really, Doug Ford and the Etobicoke gang? When the man couldn’t get elected mayor, I’d prayed we were done with the embarrassment of the Fords in Canada. But, no, I was unlucky enough to find out about his election in The Guardian, meaning we are once again the laughing stock of the world.

In case you think I’m kidding or you somehow missed the last round of the Ford Family Follies, toddle over to the Globe and Mail and dig out an article by Greg McArthur and Shannon Kari, titled Globe Investigation: The Ford family’s history with drug dealing, published on May 25, 2013. It should leave you wondering exactly what are those good old Ontario PC family values. I despair.

So, there we have it. Of course there are thousands of greater and lesser human failings I could go on about in this missive, but these were the items bouncing around at the front of my old cerebellum and as such were ripe for writing.

Trotting them out for public view also is cathartic and decidedly refreshing. Still, I’ll try hard to be a tad less misanthropic next time, [sigh].