Sad Irony

You spend years telling your housemates that the metaphorical house is not built to withstand earthquakes. For years, you are ridiculed and left to fend for yourself because you are a "doom and gloom" sayer. Then the earthquake strikes. Many parts of this house fall apart. Yesterday's experts who ignored completely what you said are now using the identical words you used in previous years to say that the house is not built properly to withstand earthquakes.

What is happening after the earthquake is the attempt to place blame on someone, so for every room that has collapsed we attempt to find the carpenter who worked on that particular room and expect him to fix it to earthquake proof standards and we scrutinize his very tools and his methodology. When the carpenter takes his 3 day long lunch break (which he always took before the earthquake struck), the experts who were responsible for allowing this 3 day long break to happen in the first place begin pulling their hair and are ready to lynch this particular carpenter. Other unrelated carpenters wisely hide in the woodwork so as to not be the next targets of lynch mobs. What the mobs don't seem to know is that they are being guided by the same experts who allowed this disaster to happen. The experts received money from the carpenters to pronounce publicly that the house was safe, the experts negotiated contracts that allowed the carpenters to have 3 day long lunch breaks.... Its only after the earthquake hit the house did the experts smoothly became the housemate's best defender against the carpenter.... after all the experts don't want to be targetedby the mob so they concentrate on assigning blame on the carpenter who was unlucky enough to have worked on the collapsed room.

So here we have it, our economy has gone poof, the unlucky corporations/industrialists who were following the accepted procedures of how our society is run are now being grilled by our politicians who never did anything about this economy until after it went poof. The politicians are trying to take responsibility now and are seeking someone to blame for this disaster. Are things going to change for the better? Here is what will happen, the rooms which have collapsed will be rebuilt using earthquake proof methods, the carpenters who have been unlucky enough to be behind these rooms will be forced to reduce their 3 day lunch breaks to a mere 6 hour lunch break. Other carpenters who were lucky enough not to be in the spotlight will volunteer to fix up their assigned rooms to make it more earthquake proof but in reality it will be mere cosmetic changes. The experts will then be bought off as before to say that the house is now earthquake proof. In the end, the house will be in worse shape and everyone will congratulate themselves at having averted the last disaster and prevented the next one..... until the next earthquake strikes.

What happens to the people who warned everyone that the house was not earthquake proof in the first place before the disaster struck? Well they are still ignored as doom and gloom sayers even though once again history has proven them correct. They will only be accepted as experts if they accept to be bought off and say that the Emperor is wearing the latest fashion. Seems like the Emperor is still naked after all of this. When do we truly change our carpenters and experts and replace them with hard-workers and wise individuals? Why are we still accepting lazy rich people as our CEOs who would get fired after the second week of a real job for being lazy? Why are we still accepting politicians who before the earthquake, said that everything was built properly and then poof after the house collapses they act as if they are outraged at having been duped.... yet decide to let the same people dupe them again?

Sad irony, the house will receive some overhaul but in the end will still not be earthquake proof because to truly do that we would have to rebuild it from scratch and no one is ready to do that. And the solution offered is still to try to get the citizenry to become avid consumers to restart the economy which is exactly what brought us to where we are today..... Sad irony.

Canadian Elections

Well apparently we are in election panic. Since today, I have not thought about something useful for society, I may as well join in the fun of the election stampede. Looking over some blogs written by others about the listeriosis issue, I saw how some are turning the deaths of these victims as a political issue and blaming the current government in charge. Think about it for 3 seconds.... our country is like a ship at sea and we have traditions that have been implemented for cleaning and repairing the engine while out at sea. Over the generations, we have gone from cleaning and repairing the engine on a daily basis to cleaning and repairing on a weekly basis. Why? Well because we can put the cleaners/repairers to better use and we play the odds that the engine will not need to be cleaned or repaired daily. The typical capitalist mindset: do more with less: you know what I mean, give half the daily food required to the Olympic athlete so that he can outperform last year's results.

This metaphorical ship goes out and changes captains on a monthly basis, we call this elections. The engine goes kaboom and we want to blame the current captain? Foolishness! It doesn't matter who would have been at the helm of this ship, since the underlying tradition was not changed. The captain still follows the traditions set out by the culture of the ship, otherwise he wouldn't be captain. I blame the culture of moving without thinking, the "lets not take the time to do the job correct but lets get the job done fast, irrelevant of the quality" way. Blaming the current government for listeriosis is playing childish games of "my daddy wouldn't allow his car to get wet while it rained if he drove outside!" (variation of "my daddy is bigger than your daddy").

This election stampede is enough to get any thinker angry. We keep hearing foolishness coming out of the mouths of those who wish to be elected.... I guess its the nature of the beast to use rhetoric and sound like you are speaking truthfully by playing with the emotional assumptions of people.

Case#1-->Harper takes accurate quotes from Dion and pokes fun at them. Dion says he is misquoted but never explains his thoughts, he never corrects the quotes. He just tries to deny his own message. Dion takes a misspelled word in one of Harper's messages and gleefully points out that we should not trust someone who is bad at spelling. Harper apologizes for bad grammar and admits his fault, Dion claims to accept the apology, but still insists on pointing out the admitted gaffe.

Case#2-->A one issue party claims that other leaders are afraid to have a televised debate with her which is why they refuse to have her in the debate.... no one ever bothers to think for 3 seconds to see how the system really works as to why a one issue party may be vetoed (right or wrong reasons is not the point, rather what the actual reason may be, is the point).... If anything, this one issue party will only take away votes from other like-minded parties.... to the benefit of the Conservatives.

Case#3-->Duceppe is treating Harper like he is a Dion. Dion had used the baseball bat against Quebec complaints: "If you dare talk about seperation, we will use this bat against you." Harper, on the other hand was conciliatory: "How do we work together as Canadians to solve your complaints?". Duceppe can no longer talk credibly about Canada being a bully against Quebec, yet he still tries. Duceppe is now trying the strategy of "because we are different, we must refuse to work on a consensus with others" (which will not work well). Before the strategy was: "we are different and they don't want to have any type of consensus with us", this worked because Dion so beautifully reminded everyone of his "baseball bat".

Case#4-->NDP using fear tactics to try to link Harper with soft-core fascism?!

From the perspective of someone just watching the news as an outsider, ignoring the often foolish advice given by the experts, I would say that the Conservatives will win with a very small majority. The Liberals will lose seats. The Bloc will lose seats. The NDP will gain seats and may even surpass the Liberals. The Green will have about 3 seats but not for the leader.

Well that's my perspective from the first week of election's stampede.