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WE the people – LOST IN TRANSLATION

Tuesday, August 4, 2020
 
 
Remember WE day?
 
A charity lifted by the collective WE zeal of Canadian youth.
 
Kids got it, and corporate Canada got it, everyone got it – youth, good work, integrity, transparency.
 
Perhaps we were all misled by WE.
 
Now, we are supposed to believe the Prime Minister, his key people, and his finance minister that they were as clean-handed as the WE founders say they were in all of this? Pish-tosh I say. Fiz-fuzz and fuddle-duddle terms come to mind.
 
Wake up calls rely upon three combined ingredients: whether we want an awakening at a particular time, some form of real or surrogate rooster, and the act of rising in response to that noise
 
Now, if Nero had a fire brigade, would Rome have burned anyway?
 
WE will never know.
 
Roosters, alarm bells, headlines, economists, and medical experts are pressing every button they have to wake us up.
 
Our country, Canada, and many others are mired in domestic political turmoil right now. Not, as you might expect, over COVID-19 ‘protect citizens’ and/or ‘protect our economy’ issues – but over stupid scandal-crap.
 
It’s as if they thought WE would not notice or ignore the conflicts of interest and ethics violations because we are in the limbo between shutdown-reopen-shutdown again fears.
 
It’s not just guys like Trudeau or Trump, it’s not new, and it’s found the world over in countries with every kind of political regime on the spectrum: people in power think people they govern are stupid and suffer from short term memory loss. They aren’t stupid, they don’t forget, and the technology-media-social media machine won’t forget.
 
Much of what gets spread around is out of context, out of proportion, and doesn’t tell the story with the essential ingredients ~ full, true, and plain disclosure.
 
Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Morneau should fall on their metaphorical swords and resign, but they won’t do that principled thing. They’ll continue to hide, deny, obfuscate, and mislead the tax-paying and voting citizens who put them in office. Shame on them. If re-elected, then shame on those voters who chose to ignore those who feel rules of law, dignity, and integrity don’t apply.
 
In the U.S., the situation is a medical, fiscal, and political mess. Can Trump clean it up? I doubt that he can. Can Biden do better? That’s no simple question. Voters will decide who they’ll trust (yes, I was laughing when I typed that).
 
When it is convenient to do so, we rail against governments which oppress their people, who disregard rights and freedoms while hiding-out in silos of power - Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Brazil, The Philippines, Myanmar, ‘pick your African country,’ and middle eastern regimes.
 
WE used to be a common word, one of collectively you and me and some others, or perhaps ‘all of us’ but now that term has a new definition in Canada – it’s a stain upon the trust of the citizens in a celebrated charity, now a stain on the government of the country and its governing political party, the Liberals as led by Justin Trudeau. Maybe we should re-name him, Teflon Trudeau, because he behaves as though nothing will ever stick to him.
 
Another term might also deserve re-definition.
 
Follow the leader, a term that now lacks the cache it once held.
 
Are we not hearing the wake-up call?
 
WE will never know – because they claim ‘they didn’t know’, and Trudeau claims ‘I didn’t know’, as if they think that ‘we’, the people, cannot think for ourselves or understand a massive hoax-show when we see it. Hooray for our free and proud traditional media who continue to cover the WE and Trudeau controversy. It is, in my mind, a symptom not unlike the Watergate break-in – a pustule waiting to burst to reveal far worse things inside a government.
 
One might hope, in a free and democratic country, at difficult times like these that we deserve so much better.
 
One day soon I hope have a post-COVIC, post-Trudeau, and post WE, DAY.
 

 
Reader feedback:
NEED TO BE SPONGES, AGAIN
Mark, agree completely, lifelong learning. I’m guessing all of us can think of at least one thing we learned too late or wish we had learned earlier. LH, Lethbridge, AB

Very good, hits close to home 👊 , KK2, Calgary, AB

Simple truth, keep going forward..adjust as needed :), AG, Cancun, Mex.




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