Left vs. Right and Polarisation

Over the last several years I have been following what happens in the US quite a bit, but not to divert my attentions from what goes on in my home country but to gain an outsiders perspective by looking for parallels, and there are a lot! And I try to find answers to local questions. Ever since Trump got elected the Democrats having been fighting him tooth and nail trying to void his election. The bureaucracy that is Washington (the "swamp") is trying its best to assist the Democrats in doing that. The irony here is that they are exercising their "democratic rights". The tool they wish to use is "impeachment" for "Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanours". This same tool has been tried during my life time also against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton and was successful against Clinton. In the history of the US there are only two Presidents that have been found guilty by Congress of the charge: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. And in both cases they were acquitted.

Why do I bring this up? Because the media have a grand old time, as does the party promoting it, the Democrats. Yet other than making the President that is targeted less effective it does nothing and proves nothing! On top of it neither party are populated with saints. For example the Democrats accused Trump of "colluding" with Russia with no supporting evidence having been found after almost a year and a half of investigation yet there is ample evidence that Hillary Clinton had "colluded" with the Russians when she was Secretary of State. So it is okay if one of your own does something that is not considered moral or ethical but if that charge can be applied against your political opponent then it has value? I don't get it.

Personally I find a lot of the charges that were levelled against Nixon, Clinton and Trump frivolous and far from being "high crimes". Clinton's infidelities while in office should have resulted in him being thrown out of office since anyone else who had been accused by so many and with so much supporting evidence, would have been definitely jailed! The real problem is that this is a classic example of a feud whereby the reason for continuing this nonsense is "well, he did it too" and "an eye for an eye". Revenge is petty at best. As I have stated before I abhor hypocrisy and in all 3 cases democracy has been bludgeoned badly by blatant hypocrisy. Elections are held with which to choose who will lead the electorate for a finite term and at the end of that term the electorate then have the opportunity to replace them with someone else. Yet too often now, and typically it is the left of centre, one group cannot accept the results nor wait until the next election and thus fight tooth and nail to get their way right now, to hell with everyone else.

Are we in Canada better off, the same, or worse? One obvious difference is there is no legislation that specifically covers the Prime Minister. But they are subject, or at least we are lead to believe, to the same laws and penalties as the rest of us. Other than that there certainly are similarities in that one party is more prone to inciting treason (disloyalty or treachery to one's country); in the US it is the Democrats and in recent years in Canada it is the Liberals and specifically our current Prime Minister.

The crux of the problem is the current state of Main Stream Media (MSM), primarily television and print media. They show a very strong left wing bias such that we do not get very little honest reporting. And that is a serious problem for us in Canada and for all other democracies; the MSM are supposed to be our cultural conscience and they are failing miserably!  How often in the past have we seen someone trying to deal with a moral or ethical issue and on one shoulder is a small devil and on the other a small angel? In order to make the best decision one needs to explore both sides of any issue and the MSM are supposed to be those two views and why a "free press" is crucial for we the people to make a well informed decision.

To illustrate what I mean remember the ruckus over Senator Mike Duffy. What he did with his expense account and what the Prime Ministers chief of staff, Nigel Wright, did to pay the disputed amount back resulted in a uproar across the country, aided and abetted hugely by the MSM, that continued, and had a major impact on the last Federal election here. Yet Trudeau does even worse and is convicted on 4 separate counts of conflict of interest and no charges from the RCMP, hardly a word from the opposition parties and barely a peep said by the same media! Another example over the previous decade was that the Conservatives "had a hidden agenda". I'm sorry but I do not recall a Carbon Tax being part of the Liberal platform during that same election. Yet soon after taking power Trudeau announced that a Carbon Tax was going to be implemented. Where was the media outrage over the fact it was a hidden agenda item? Has there even been a discussion on the pro's and con's? I have seen a few in favour by members of the MSM but not against as that would go against their bias.

But I am digressing from my main thesis; polarisation. The reason, as I see it, that we see so much polarisation both here and south of the border is due to a lack of dialogue between opposing voices. Rather than debating we see the left and the complicit MSM  shouting ill founded accusations with no solid evidence in support. Or taking a very important moral and ethical issue and twisting it and turning it against whoever they do not like. The worst tool used, and I am becoming far more aware of its prevalence, is "projection"; "the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects; especially : the externalization of blame, guilt, or responsibility as a defense against anxiety".

Far too often the liberal dominated media project the traits of the left onto the right. As I have previously written it is what is said of "ANTIFA", a group Fascist thugs, and accusing their victims of being the "Fascists".  The MSM have failed us and are blind to their failing; while readership drops they pander more and more to the left. They are oblivious to the fact that they keep alienating a significant proportion of their potential audience yet cannot see that the demographic they are reaching out to is over represented by their own competitors. Why would a Toronto Star subscriber also subscribe to the National Post which pretty much mimics what is published by the former? Our conscience has abandoned us. Will I live long enough to see it revive itself? I just don't know but I sure hope it does happen and the sooner the better!  

Plastic!

A very good friend of mine wrote me recently and posed the following:

"Regarding your blog - Victoria recently decided to ban the use of plastic bags.   I believe PEI recently did this as well. In my view, this is long overdue, given the very negative environmental impact of plastics. A friend of mine recently returned from Hawaii on a cruise ship - he said they passed through the edge of the great pacific plastic vortex - and that it was mind-boggling and frightening, not to mention ugly. I wonder if this might be a potential subject for your investigative and blogging skills.   I think plastic bottles are also a complete aberration with an immense environmental impact."

I agree with him 100% that this is a topic worth discussing! Unfortunately I have a much more jaded view. For example my wife once made "poofs" - a hollow fabric valance that went above the drapes in our living room. They are kept in shape by stuffing with something such as plastic bags. And that is what we stuffed ours with.  Several years later she wanted a change so we took them down. In removing the plastic bags they pretty much disintegrated into dust. Even though "protected" by the fabric enough radiation from sunlight and heat got to them and they decomposed.  The phenomenon experienced is "photo-degradation". It was then that I realized one of the worst things we can do with plastic in general is bury it in landfill where these natural forces cannot operate.

The Pacific Vortex is also known as the "Pacific Gyre". The National Geographic has posted a description of this natural phenomenon that is the product of circulating water and wind currents and even though also called the plastic vortex" includes all sorts of refuse that floats. Ironically this vortex is not the floating "garbage patch" it is described as. Even the pictures that typically are used to illustrate, especially last year, are not of the gyre but are masses of debris typically downwind of  areas devastated by recent hurricanes (watch for mountains in the back ground!).

So it is not the plastic bags per se, or plastic in general that should be the issue.  It is how we treat our waste. Banning something does nothing positive but give virtue signals. To illustrate, around where I now live you no longer can burn refuse, including plastic, even though it is made of "organic" natural materials - they are carbon based compounds. And many of our small dumps are being closed and rules added to what and how much can go to land fill. What has been the response? Because they no longer have a simple way of handling this waste and with no viable alternatives given they instead sneak out to seldom used rural areas and dump their unwanted waste. In countries that border oceans it is far too easy to just dump refuse overboard because of such "noble" rules such as banning plastic bags. Now think about this. Due to these "environmental" rules are we better off? Is the environment better off?

The real problem is not plastics and the imposition of new laws banning various plastic items, including bags and even straws. The problem is with our "environmentalists" in that they are great at identifying a problem but fail to provide rational solutions. And there are solutions! For example I came across a news item about how in India they use granulated plastic as aggregate for asphalt and thus pave roads with this material.

I for one have bought into the 3 R's - Recycle, Reuse or Repurpose. Why? Because it makes economic as well as environmental sense! It is not perfect as currently implemented, again as we are seeing in the news China is now refusing to take our plastic waste so it can be recycled. So what we have created by our efforts to "recycle" is to offload our problem to others! Another example was that Toronto used to do by shipping their garbage to Michigan! Why do this when there are technologies that could easily be implemented, such as high temperature incinerators with associated processing of the off gases? Because "environmentalists" refuse to support those technologies as they "pollute". Every time there is a viable means of controlling our solid waste issues, including plastics, "environmentalists" jump on the same tiresome band wagon and say "we can't do that!" and the politicians are cowed and fall back on the typical "solution" that does nothing to solve the problem - ban it or ship it somewhere else to be dealt with!

If "environmentalists" want to be taken seriously they need to start coming up with and strongly supporting viable solutions and stop putting up road blocks to solutions being proposed by others. Life is a compromise as there is no perfect solution. Face that fact head on and in doing so actually start making a difference!

"Plastics" are not the problem. It is the standard  response of "banning" things and the standard "not in my back yard" mentality to viable solutions that results in encouraging bad behaviour and in doing so make a bad situation worse.

We started by mentioning Victoria. Remember, this is one of the very few cities in Canada that still dumps untreated sewage directly into the Pacific Ocean. And they think they can make a difference by banning plastic bags? Typical of a place with a high proportion of "environmentalists" - to "solve" a "problem" ban plastic bags yet dump untreated crap into the ocean. Great way to set the moral bar as high as possible - not!