Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Romney: Trump a ‘phoney, a fraud’

Donald Trump’s unfiltered brand of brash neoconservatism has U.S. old-guard Republicans apoplectic – but not because of his right-wing extremist views and values but because he has the temerity to express them openly and without reservation. Republicanism is premised on the ‘great lie’ where soothing, beneficial outcomes are mouthed by business-savvy Republicans while doing the things that Trump talks openly about. What is further perplexing to them is that American Republicans are responding in droves to his carny pitch. We live in the age of reality TV and politics is not immune to the phenomenon. Trump’s popularity however, is a serious lesson in the deep racial, religious and economic divides that polarize America and indeed the world.

Trump has provided an unscripted, revealing window into the ugly reality of neoconservatism that most Americans rarely see, by pulling back the veil of carefully crafted political rhetoric employed by the traditional right to mask their underlying agenda and make their politics more palatable to the undiscerning public. Trump has broken the cardinal rule of the right – never tell the truth or let the public know what you really think and believe. Say one thing and do another or do nothing until you are in power and then do whatever you want. This shell-game politics of deception and polarization that has taken hold in America is what lies at the root of the groundswell of opposition being reflected in the Trump candidacy as well as the populist social democratic campaign of Bernie Sanders. The 99% are fed up with traditional corrupt two-party politics and politicians with their meaningless platitudes and do-nothing governing styles. They want fundamental, deep-seated change in the structure of democracies and the economics they are subject to.

Trump has revealed the ugly underbelly of rich, white, male, racist, sexist, homophobic, openly biased, boorish, aggressive, arbitrary and domination-based core of neoconservatism floated on a bed of economic neoliberalism and self-righteous right-wing evangelical Christianity. It is an ideology of selfish individualism, rabid exclusionism and extremism. It is the core of modern Regan/Thatcher conservatism taken to its ultimate extension and has become more and more unstable and unrestrained as the years have gone by. It was present in Canada in the politics of disdain practiced by Stephen Harper towards the Canadian public, aboriginal people, women and military veterans for a decade while in government; the economic myopia of the Trump pretender Doug Ford who wants to return to the unregulated Wild-West of the Robber Barons if elected as the leader of the Conservative party in Ontario. This followed the debacle of extreme right-wing leader Patrick Brown who similarly hijacked the Ontario Conservative party by appealing to traditionalist far-right factions in Ontario after Tim Hudak’s provincial election loss. What is truly frightening is the number of people in the U.S., in Canada, and around the world who ascribe to these views or sympathize with them. Extremism has not only come to the fore in ISIL but in global politics and local culture everywhere including the U.S. and Canada.

Trump is openly whipping up extremist hatred of minorities. The economic conditions of most Americans (and Canadians) are similarly distressed after the financial crisis of 2008 making them highly suggestible to the rantings of a billionaire megalomaniac in democratic clothing. America is ripe for dictatorship. While its form may not conform to those of the despots of history – it is dictatorship nonetheless. The last two years of his ‘business presidency’ has been a farce with those in the business community coming and going like shoppers at a mall. Trump is a presidency of one. The world should be afraid – be very afraid.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Is arming S. Korea the best way to contain Kim? October 2, 2017.

Thomas Walkom’s column lamenting the paucity of ideas around the globe related to the nuclear sabre rattling of North Korea and the U.S. adds little air to the vacuum. The real problem is how males handle conflict of all kinds employing the tunnel vision of confrontational adversarialism as their primary problem solving approach. Without this they seem lost for ideas. History is littered with examples of their misguided bloody, destructive and often lengthy misadventures that regularly decimated nations and civilizations around the world. Despite this we continue to draw our water from the same well.

Our modern dilemma resulting from this mindset is that the geopolitics that led to the First and Second World Wars never ended. Since the cessation of hostilities countries around the world have existed in a constant and growing state of war readiness and tension fuelled by various proxy wars and belief systems generating a global paranoia willingly encouraged by a now gargantuan military industrial complex that has made conflict a highly profitable business and a sizable part of global economies. The opiod addiction crisis pales in comparison to the military one. Despite this the world seems almost blasé and diffident about the immediate and real threat of nuclear war, demonstrating little urgency in their quest for a solution to this most recent looming disaster.The only real answer to conflict everywhere and for all time is one that is rarely pursued with any vigour by contemporary leaders is to employ comprehensive non-confrontational approaches and decisions of rational dialogue and consensus focussed on the full nuclear disarmament of all nations, the immediate destruction of weapons of all kinds, the use of stringent and not selective arms embargos and controls and taking immediate steps to dismantle the arms industry around the world. This strong passive leadership would be real leadership that the world desperately needs. We must beat our weapons into ploughshares and begin to demand leaders who will do this while sharing the peace dividend that ensues with the people of the world. Only these dramatic and pressing measures will avoid nuclear Armageddon and turn back the doomsday clock which is about to strike twelve.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Srar

Re: Peel wants province to cancel EQAO tests, October 12, 2017.

The request by the Peel District School Board to cancel the EQAO testing is highly ironic to those who worked in education during the “accountability” heydays of the 1990s when standardized testing was touted as the panacea for improve educational outcomes and those opposed to it (teachers and principals) were labelled obstructionist or worse and their professional concerns dismissed. Standardized testing was eagerly rammed down the throats of educators by then Premier Mike Harris as a political tool to drive votes by attacking teachers.  Parents, the media and others like the right-wing think tank The Fraser Institute were given an elegant weapon with which to bash educators using information that had no proven direct research link to student performance or teacher quality and inflicted enormous collateral damage in achieving its noble aims. Essentially teachers were being held accountable over issues which they often had little control. Ignored were cultural and socio-economic factors, social mobility, ESL issues and parenting factors in the obsession with ‘results.’ Student performance was initially low and so rather than add funding to education to improve outcomes the province decided to manipulate the testing by making it shorter and less rigorous until results began to climb to meet political targets. The entire exercise was a shell game intended to create the illusion of public accountability when the reality was that finding the cure for ignorance is as difficult as finding a cure for cancer.

Province-wide testing was yet another in a long list of educational bandwagons that various governments of all stripes have leaped on to further their political aspirations. Unlike other professions like law and medicine that are allowed to independently determine what will be done in particular cases and charge hefty fees for doing so, education has always been controlled by political forces and that is its Achilles heel. This leads to endless failed reforms and ongoing hostility between the consuming public and educators who are often required to implement strategies that they know don’t work.  After twenty years of wasted tax-payers money proving nothing the province is once again ready to toss in the towel on standardized testing and move on to the next panacea in waiting not because standardized testing doesn’t work but because it has outlived its usefulness to politicians.

In hindsight it seems that the minority critics of the 1990s have been proven roght. Until we allow educators and not politicians to independently and professionally make educational decisions after consultation we will never have an effective education system.

Unpublished letter sent to the Toronto Star

Re: Election results revive calls for change, June10, 2018.

Electoral reform is one of many changes that would enhance the voting process and engage voters but few are ever even considered, let alone implemented. The first-past-the-post antiquated system simply increases the frustration in an increasingly complex world.

The first change is proportional representation. The first-past-the-post system is an ancient British elitist system that wastes the votes of the losers. It was designed to present government as democratic while only rich, white, male, land-owning aristocrats were allowed to participate. The apathy of voters was built in. There was no point in voting even when they could when the elections were all a foregone conclusion. It was a two-party sham and we adopted it with gusto. We have been going through the motions for centuries. Proportional representation uses every vote to count towards parliamentary representation and as such is fundamentally democratic. It leads to no single party having a majority and all votes being counted. Multiple-party coalitions (a dirty word in first-past-the-post) are common.

The second is to reform the voting system. It is ironic that the most important function in society is stuck in the dark ages. Digital communication and use have revolutionized society, government and business yet there is little interest in implementing online voting. Concerns over the problems are overblown and an excuse for keeping us in the past. Trillions of dollars are moved around the world by secure, encrypted devices but we still resist allowing people to vote online. Voting should be web-based and electronic. You could log in with your social insurance number and verify your id with other personal pieces of information. A simple phone function could allow people to key in their choices. Such a move would save hundreds of millions of dollars, provide instantaneous data collection and provide anyone, anywhere and at any time the opportunity to vote. The fifty percent of people who mysteriously do not vote would be empowered. Similarly, Smarthones could be used for serious business rather than as a social distraction for humanity. Governments should be regularly posing questions on policies, legislation and items being discussed in the House of Commons to gain crucial and evidence-based information that would drive decisions. Technology has permeated every other part of society except government

Voting should be made mandatory. If it is such an important right of all citizens, it should be required of every citizen as in Australia. We are all required to keep our immunization up-to-date and our driver’s licences, why not our voting rights?

Finally, the Liberals and the NDP should merge the left. The first-past-the-post system is a two-party system. The two platforms are virtually identical anyway.

There is any app for virtually everything else but not voting. It’s time there was. These changes would transform our voting system and with it, society.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Dangerous mixed signals, July 18, 2018.

As a retired educator (teacher/principal) for more than 37 years in Ontario I thought I had seen it all but alas I was mistaken. Doug Ford’s rejection of the sex-ed curriculum (and the entire curriculum document) to replace it with  a twenty-year old one, reflects he and his party’s Neandertalic attitude towards the world and in this case educators and education.

On the basis of a miniscule minority of parents who believe in antiquated ideas about sex-ed he has trashed (literally) for simply ideological reasons an excellent up-to-date curriculum document that has been vetted with parents, experts, educators and the public at large for more than two years and implemented as best practice. The curriculum in Ontario already makes provisions for dissenting minorities while having a document that serves the vast majority of students appropriately.  Whining right-wing minorities now rule the day. Sexual education curriculum was developed because parents did not talk to their kids about this sensitive subject. Stick your heads in the sand and everything will be fine. The situation is absolutely ludicrous. The same approach will be taken with a variety of other issues including Hydro One, abortion. LGBTQ issues, immigration and privatizing healthcare to race, minimum wage and gender issues. Ford, like Trump, has a simplistic, limited business understanding that brings a wrecking ball to every problem. It is a disaster.

The really scary part is that in our first-past-the-post electoral system a tiny minority of people in Ontario voted for Doug Ford or abstained. The British electoral system is premised on people not voting so that upper class aristocrats can be elected. Most voters (and non-voters) made their decision often with little more than vague promises and often in absentia including teachers, police officers, government officials, doctors, nurses and education leaders. They and many others said that this is the kind of government they wanted with virtually no information to go on. What a deluded, irresponsible Luddite perspective.

Doug Ford’s election has reaffirmed my longstanding belief that teachers must demand full professional status (like doctor’s and lawyers) rather than labour associations that gives them independent, professional control over education. They need this designation to assert their expertise over curriculum decisions and preserve them from the constantly revolving door of ideas of various governments that regularly reverse or change quality practices. Respect for teachers will increase and decision making will be removed from the vagaries of government. Governments would have input but not control just like parents. Education would be delivered from minority control by a few angry parents or politicians who are dissatisfied with sex-ed or any other curriculum program or approach.  Saying teachers will have ‘flexibility’ doesn’t cut it. The only way to stop this destabilizing and destructive pattern is to make teachers fully professional and make education independent of the province. Teachers are the experts and like doctors and lawyers should make the decisions. Only this kind of power would stop Ford or any other government from reversing factually-based, quality education.

It is time for a people’s revolution. Down with Fordism, Trumpism, Ludditism and all other narrow and misguided forms of regressive, extremist, religious or political beliefs that would hold humanity hostage from sensible progress. Down with the antiquated first past-the-post system that wastes votes and allows this to happen. Apathy will get us despotism.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: School boards have two weeks to toe the line. August 1, 2018

Where are the leaders that are so often touted as the necessary, strong, assertive, vocal and capable individuals who are required to lead our modern institutions like education and forge the ‘just society.’ They are for the most part AWOL in the debate over the sex-ed curriculum changes and its cancellation. Leaders like this are good at ordering people around and organizing their school boards but not so good at following their moral and ethical conscience. These are not leaders – these are hirelings. If all they do is follow the directions of the elected government then it stands to reason they would serve a dictator much like the troops serving Bashar Al Assad in Syria. In every situation leaders must make moral judgments about what they are being asked to do and determine if those directions serve the needs of the vast majority of people in this province – whether they voted or not.

Instead of seeing a full-page ad in the Star with the names of Directors, organizations representing supervisory officers and trustees, the various executives of the teaching affiliates standing together decrying the tactics and policies of Doug Ford and his Neandertal government, we are greeted with silence. Showing collective leadership that actually means something rather than cowering in their offices waiting for the of consequences of Ford’s decision making. This is not to engender revolution but a firm resistance that will temper the measures and benefit everyone.

This is the endemic problem with the entire patriarchal leadership model of organizations everywhere. It is a model based on fear, intimidation and violence if necessary. It is a male model of power, hierarchy, prestige, deferential relationships and most of all obedience and authority. It is the same model that excuses domestic violence, male control of women, a vicious dog-eat-dog economic system, religious domination and a thousand other abuses in society. It is a model that no longer has relevance – if it ever did. The model is broken.

We need leaders who are kind, calm, compassionate, loving and understand the complexity and diversity of humanity without threats. To accomplish this we need to introduce transparency into all human interactions. Where are these leaders?

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

LRe: The real war on Christmas, Editorial, December 23, 2018.

The Star’s editorial would portray the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities as a war on the fundamental freedoms of capitalist democracy.  It implies that the celebration of Christmas with its nauseatingly excessive commercialization and excess is just all part of expressing religious traditions. If only it were that simple.

It would be good to remind them that religious persecution is the basis of most geopolitical hostility in the world today and has been ongoing since the beginning of time with periods of slaughter by Christians, Muslims and non-believers like the Chinese government that pale in comparison to what is occurring now. Their holier-than-thou editorial posture glosses over the previous history of egregious murder, rape, disease, sexual impropriety and brutality including slavery carried out by Christianity. Has the Star forgotten the vicious massive tragedies of the indigenous peoples of North and South America – all in the service of a Catholic god. The barbarity carried out by religion goes on today across the globe by all religions. Saudi Arabia beheads people in the streets for religious offences.

The imperialist Judeo-Christian message that faith is harmless and people just want to practice their religion in peace as an act of religious devotion is nothing more than simplistic piety.

Religion has always been heavily tied up with adversarial politics, economics and exclusion with each of the major religions claiming their faith as the one true belief and rejecting anyone who is a non-believer. Most countries orient their policies based on religion, including the west despite assertions to the contrary. Religion is a co-conspirator of capitalism and patriarchy and has taken a leading role throughout history in asserting that males are

superior and the wealthy are god’s children because they are smart enough to be rich. If only religion was non-political it would be bearable but it is the constant tunnel-vision moralizing of people of faith that is so intolerable. This is not religion, it is latent vigilantism.

Its not about eliminating one religion – its about eliminating all religion. Belief has been intentionally manipulated by men to do their bidding since time immemorial justifying their patriarchal universe. It has validated the subordination and degradation of women of all faiths. The wearing of the niqab is is a religious symbol of subordination to Mohammed and through him to all men. What we really need is for all religions to be replaced by a single humanitarian global belief that focuses on the quality of life of people around the world rather than mystical figures. That’s a religion that everyone can support without fear of persecution.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Violent 2018 sparks concern over what’s next, Headline, January 2, 2019.

What’s next – more violence of course. We know no other way in modern capitalist society and we fail to address the root causes of the problem – not gangs but the shutting down the arms industry. It is a massive, hugely profitable and powerful series of corporations that have some very serious political allies like the NRA in the United States. They dictate policy on guns and support the archaic 2^nd Amendment rights of Americans who have one of the most violent societies in the world. They sell to both sides making the world a polluted wasteland of weapons. If government’s really represented the people they would have gone to the source of the problem and banned all guns and made the manufacturing or the possession of guns a criminal offense punishable by life in prison without parole. The only exceptions would be production for a small military and police forces for public safety. As the gun ban settled in the need for military and police forces to have weapons would be reduced. Imagine for just a moment what could be done to poverty if the trillions of dollars currently spent on military and police expenditures around the world could be spent instead on debt reduction, social programs and poverty elimination. Economic problems would be solved. It’s all a matter of priorities. “The market” doesn’t always determine the correct priorities – that is a capitalist myth.  Governments would be shutting down the rich arm’s industry to stop all wars and  all violence. Long guns, short guns, machine guns or cannons – they are all weapons that kill people and animals. There is no justification for them and no other suse for them. Hunters are a dinosaur group that kill what few defenceless wild animals we have left under the auspices of “sport.” There is no sport in baiting traps and shooting animals in the wild with a high-powered rifle from five hundred yards away to mount its head on a wall in your den to satisfy men’s macho egos. The few wild animals that are left must be protected. Weapons are a patriarchal holdover that we must rid ourselves of if  we want to survive and evolve. It is also the right thing and the only thing to do.