I Saw The Best Whines Of My Generation...

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!
      --- Howard Beale (Peter Finch) in Network (1976)

      Sick as many of you (us) may be with the Liberal sponsorship scandal, I'd ask any of you reading this blog to give this article by Rick Salutin. It's an excellent encapsulation of the very human contexts to the scandal-- not just the typical political dimensions (Martin, Chretien), but also, and more significantly, about the conditions of public response to it. It's insightful, and, I think, exactly right, especially in its identification of the dysfunctional, and increasingly cynical, relationship between politicians and the public. We've been living now for so long in a mood of disaffection and disconnection that an entire generation has now passed without even an idea of socially-concerned politics or genuinely-idealistic beliefs. We're a far cry from the ages of Tommy Douglas' vision of national health-care (which is defended, more often than not now out of self-interest rather than the principle that everyone should be assured medical attention), from the wisdom or the error of the Pierre Trudeau vision of a 'just society,' from the Lester Pearson vision of Canada as an international conscience and peacekeeper. We expect, we whine, we do very little, and imagine even less. We bitch and we bitch and we bitch, but what do we really do? We settle, resign, we let our imaginations dry up like used tea bags. We do everything but dream.

      This, of course, isn't a strictly Canadian thing, but it seems we've now raised at least one generation that's never truly had a sense of social vision, at least one generation that was already middle-aged in its attitudes and perspectives by the time it finished high-school. And that's sad, very sad indeed. Maybe that's why as a country right now we're so hungry for a symbol at the moment, even if it's a symbol most wish to pillory. Maybe, more than we'd care to admit, we're tiring of our cynicism. Or maybe we just want, however biliously, to be able to say, publicly and without cynicism, that, damn it, it does matter what we do after all, even if, that spleen discharged, many will return to their cultural somnambulism. Shades of Howard Beale, coming to Doctor J's mind twice in the past week? Hmmm. Maybe all this griping and prognosticating about a scandal is really twenty-years of stony sleep vexed to anger to declare that we're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore. And maybe it's about damned time.

      Venting that, though, is the easy part. The hard part will be getting us to look around us and into the future, rather than merely rolling our eyes.