by George Le Masurier | Feb 10, 2017
When civility in modern public discourse declines, it attempts to drag other forms of decent human interaction into the murky abyss of lost social conventions.
The genuine apology, for example, teeters dangerously close to collateral damage. In the Trump world, you never apologize. You just don’t “talk about it anymore.” In the new lexicon, “I’m sorry” are dirty words.
Have you offended the parents of a war hero, an honest judge or a whole race of people? Just announce that sometimes you say the wrong things, which you regret, but don’t be specific.
If you’re an Olympic swimmer who committed a crime in a foreign country and then committed other crimes and told lies to cover it up, obfuscate your apology with sad-sack whining about your personal trauma. Forget the part about pointing a loaded gun at less-privileged third-world people.
But don’t forget when an apology is required.
For example, after 35 years of shirking its legal obligations and moral duty to carry out the terms of Mack Laing’s Last Will, which it accepted along with valuable waterfront property, his personal possessions and his money, the Town of Comox has never officially apologized for its breach of trust.
I’m sure that Laing’s family in Manitoba and Oregon would appreciate the gesture.
The problem isn’t just that the apology has fallen out of vogue. People seem to have forgotten how to do it properly. Lesson number one: atonement isn’t about you.
After a well-known actor recently made some anti-gay statements, he said, “This is heartbreaking for me.” As a corporate CEO acknowledged environmental wrong-doing, he said, “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.”
Confronted with the past collective sins of the town, in respect to Mack Laing’s Last Will and trust, Mayor Paul Ives has said, “That was then, this is now.” And went on to justify tearing down what Heritage B.C. considers a significant landmark.
A genuine apology doesn’t hedge. It doesn’t include modifiers that dilute personal responsibility. It doesn’t impose limits on accountability or suggest a partial defense by casting some measure of blame on those offended. It promises to do better.
Canadians are good apologizers. We’ve apologized to Chinese Canadians for a 19th Century head tax; to Japanese Canadians for stealing their property and imprisoning them in internment camps; to Inuit peoples for relocating them to a harsh place without survival assistance; and, for turning away nearly 400 Sikh migrants on the vessel, Komagata Maru over a century ago, knowing they faced certain death.
And we do apologize right.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, addressing the abuse of Indigenous Canadians in the residential school systems, he said, “Our goal, as we move forward together, is clear: It is to lift this burden from your shoulders, from those of your families and communities … It is to accept fully our responsibilities, and our failings, as a government and as a country.”
A genuine apology is often uttered to relieve a person or an organization of its guilt and shame. But the refusal to apologize attempts to mask any feeling of guilt or shame that might make the person or organization look weak or vulnerable.
Most everyone has said or done something they regret. But in the absence of any reparation, these things can hover over our sense of well-being like storm clouds. A simple, heartfelt apology can clear the air.
So, let’s not be like Trump. Let’s not apologize for apologizing, where contrition is appropriate. Let’s embrace moments of introspection that manifest in words that heal and move us forward.
by George Le Masurier | Feb 9, 2017
America’s fast-food president likes it clean
Seventy-year-old U.S. President Donald Trump loves fast food. Big Macs. Buckets of KFC. Slices of pizza. And he hates exercise, which he doesn’t do often. America’s Fast-Food president isn’t setting a good example in the fight against childhood obesity and early onset diabetes.
Why does he eat so much fast food? In his own words:
“I’m a very clean person. I like cleanliness, and I think you’re better off going there (McDonald’s) than maybe someplace that you have no idea where the food’s coming from. It’s a certain standard,” he said.
Useless facts about electric cars B.C. will pay you to drive
The B.C. provincial government this week announced a $40 million investment to encourage people to drive electric cars. In addition, residents can save up to $11,000 if they trade their old car for an electric one.
The province’s Clean Energy Vehicles for B.C. program offers up to $5,000 for an electric vehicle purchase, and the non-profit B.C. Scrap-It offers and additional $6,000 dollars towards electric vehicles purchases. Vehicles priced above $77,000 are not eligible for purchase incentives.
Here are some electric car facts:
• The first cars ever made by Oldsmobile and Studebaker were electric.
• Electric cars outsold gas models by 10-to-1 in the 1890s.
• The world’s first automotive dealerships sold electric cars.
• Self-starters were introduced in electric cars 20 years before gas vehicles.
• The very first speeding ticket was given to the driver of an electric car.
Sarah Palin coming to Canada? We say (big gulp) No betcha!
There’s a rumor that President Trump might appoint the weird and absolutely nuts Sarah Palin as the U.S. ambassador to Canada. Aside from the fact that this makes many people want to throw up, she doesn’t speak Canadian or any of our other official languages.
Ottawa Citizen columnist Andrew Cohen wrote, “In Canada, Palin would have to learn to speak one of our official languages. She would have to live in a land of naïfs who favour immigrants, gay marriage, the United Nations and NATO.”
Let’s take a big gulp ourselves, and hope this is fake news, or an early April Fools joke.
Cumberland celebrates its heritage, while Comox destroys theirs
Heritage Week in British Columbia starts next Monday and runs through Sunday, Feb. 13 to Feb. 19. The Village of Cumberland will celebrate its history starting at 10 a.m. on Saturday, February 18th, with the 13th annual Heritage Faire at the Cumberland Recreation Institute Hall. The Faire revives the spirit of a folk festival in the 1950s focused on the diverse heritage of Cumberlanders.
The Town of Comox, on the other hand, doesn’t have any heritage events planned that we know about. They just have anti-heritage events. Like the Town Council’s recent unanimous decision to beg the B.C. Supreme Court to release the town from the obligations it agreed to 35 years ago in accepting famous naturalist Hamilton Mack Laing’s property, house and money.
In spite of pleas from Heritage B.C. — the sponsor of Heritage Week — the Town of Comox wants to tear down Laing’s house, Shakesides, and use his money for other purposes.
by George Le Masurier | Jan 21, 2017
For as far back as I can remember, people have warned me about the certain implosion of America. They made comparisons to fall of the Roman Empire and Sodom and Gomorrah. The unmistakable signs were everywhere, they said.
As a teenager coming of age in the midwest during the 1960s, it was the length of my hair and the music I listened to that apparently signaled the End of the World, or at least the fall of America. Trivial matters, but the top of a slippery slope, they said.
Sometime in 1965, I went to a music store in Willemar, Minnesota, with my rock and roll bandmates to find a 45 rpm copy of the Rolling Stones new hit song “Satisfaction.” When we enquired, the owner of the store physically chased us out while lecturing us on how filth, smut and evil music would damn our souls, and tear down the clean white fabric of American society.
That man was right, of course, because the America that existed in his mind was about to come crashing down.
Long hair, hippies, marijuana and rock music picked up the message of the Beat Generation and wallowed in its individual freedoms. Audacious people marched for civil rights and women’s rights. College campuses roiled in protests over an unjust war. Comedians publicly flouted four-letter words.
The collapse of America continued. Gay people started coming out. Same-sex couples demanded marriage equality. Environmentalists warned of climate change. The era of white European privilege started to fade into more diverse faces.
And, then, I’m sure the music store man would say, the final blow was delivered in 2008 when voters elected an African-American as the President of the United States. That was too much. It pushed the music store man, and millions of other people like him, over the edge, and into the waiting arms of Donald Trump.
And so, at the climax of his inauguration speech yesterday, the 45th president promised that the “American carnage stops now!”
Those “rusted-out factories” littering the landscape like “tombstones” over a post-Armageddon wasteland will be shined up and made new again. Factories will hum with workers loving their jobs. Climate change won’t exist. Men can freely assault women. Pesky journalists seeking truth will be discredited. We’ll bomb more of the people we don’t like.
We’ll chase all the bad Muslims and Mexicans out. No more racial unrest because, well, what did African-Americans have to lose, anyway?
And so, I have to admit, my music store man had a point back in 1965. My generation did take America on a slippery ride. But the tragic fall he envisioned wasn’t the expansion of human rights or a realization that the destruction of this planet might means the end of human existence. But it did, somehow, give us Trump.
The decline of America will not occur because of how America has changed over the last 50 years, and probably not at the hands of terrorists or a crazy dictator.
America is more likely to fall because a false Messiah does not understand his place, and his nation’s place, in this world. Because he sees permanence in the riches and comforts he enjoys today, and which he promises for tomorrow, not realizing they are only temporary and that he cannot turn back time.
