Post Election Feelings

It’s post election.  Justin Trudeau is the new Canadian Prime Minister.  Everyone is excited that he’s young and that the cabinet he will be picking is young.  There’s that Rock Star equation that’s reminiscent of his father.  I voted for Pierre. Met him even.  Admired the intellectualism.  But looking back, can’t say in the long run I was right.  The red flag with eastern Canada’s maple leaf and the extortion of Quebec Separatism, the colonialism of western Canada raped for it’s resources, the legal theocracy of Charter of Freedom and Rights: they’re just a few of things that seemed so right at the time but now looking back seem so wrong.  Communist Canada.
I was hopeful for a while.  We have three parties and each takes about a third of the vote.  Each also wants the whole of Canada to agree with it.  It’s a trinity and it’s an earthly one.  Father Son and Holy Spirit.  Conservative, Liberal and NDP.  But in heaven they live in love. In Canada they war and belittle and main each other.
That said, we muddle along.  I’ll put up a picture of Justin Trudeau in my office.  I don’t think it’s right to have a picture of another country’s monarch.  Justin is more my leader than the Queen though I do love the monarchy. It’s the blue taint in my red blood.  They called me a red tory and when I was a whig I was centre of left.
But this election has pained me.  I just said I chose one team. It was all like sports for intellectuals and I voted for my home team. But the anger and the malicious attacks on my character and sanity were rife.  I have seen the same in the ‘climate change’ debate.  To listen to the climate change catastrophizers they are the only ones that can be right. There’s this royal arrogance among the most vulgar and common.  It’s fueled by declining ethics and morality and loss of direction in a consumer society.  The seller is a predator and the buyer is a consumer.  The seller is the bourgeoisie and the buyer is the proletariat.  Everyone meanwhile is relatively poor in these immensely rich times.  All the third world wants parity with the first world while the billionaires and above are spread through the world loving most the places of greatest security. If you want a billionaire make that place safe. Meanwhile the tyrants of the old world are toppling.
I have been distracted.  None of these political platforms have benefited me.  Politics is about money.  All around me I see people on the gravy train.  I’ve gone to work for more than 30 years doing 120 hours of work or more a week.  I play hard.  My time off is a ‘change’ rather than a rest.  I do what I do to gather the state of mind to face the negativity that it is my life to face.  I am hopeful in face of disease.  But now with aging and dying I am burnt out and worn thin.  Even now I must explain a death to superiors who ask why a man who is multiply addicted with a myriad of diseases dies.  The demand for perfection from these back benchers who have long ago failed to face the front is painful to say the least.  I have thoughts of my own death, think of suicide whenever I am faced by these people because they seem so impossible incompetent and stupid as to be a certainty that the world does not deserve to exist.  I must learn to forgive them for they know not what they do.  Kafka and Camus painted their pictures better than I can.  But my grief is ruined by their arrogance and superiority. They are the cancerous waste on human creation. I laughed to watch Tomorrowland and realize that even a movie has been made to address the smegma of their existence.
Yet I’m merely afraid.  I have seen first hand the abuse of power of these diaper wearing tyrants who come in single coloured committees.  I have shown them the killers personally and watched them cover up and cover up. I know they can not have passion or know depth for their shallowness is deep.
And the election has like that interfered with my peace.  It’s phony. It’s a facade. The distance from the front to the back  lines is ever greater. The leadership is no longer in ivory towers but on space stations.  The money that goes to corruption is no longer millions but trillions.
And I wait for death.  I meditate to come back from the abyss.  I have wallowed in the human struggle. My team lost.  And even now they belittle and shame and blame and kick the man that is down.  And it’s all just Scapegoats and 4 years until we get to turn around and piss on our enemies and shame and blame and kill in effigy like the Golden Bow.
I long for the buddhist end to life cycles now. I pray for Christian salvation. I wonder if I should suicide myself now that the supreme court has warmed to thanatos and introduced ‘physician assisted suicide’ for the poor and difficult.  I feel the look these days.  I’ve only been tolerated but now I can be removed.  I have been too honest. Too outspoken. I’ve stood in the way of ‘progress’, they once called it. “Change” they call it now. I’m a dinosaur. I’m a dying breed.  I’m a has been.  I’m an old man in a youth culture.
All around me I see the men and women I most admired attacked by committees like hyaenas.  I read Psalms and nothing is new.  Politics is just another soccer game.  It’s war in symbolism.  The silliness of power.  It’s King Lear and the Glass Bead Game.
I’m tired.  I don’t know why I have spent a life time joining the losing cause.  I have served the billionaire and the poorest of poor and sickest of sick.  But there is no hope for the centre.  It’s in the dichotomy that riches are made.  I am afraid to ask my richest of neighbours how many people they killed indirectly to afford their house. They increasingly come from poor countries with obscene wealth.  I am a boy scout and there is no place for boy scouts in this world.
Self pity is always there like a great demon waiting to devour the joy of my life.  Defeat is irrelevant. Death is certain.  I believe in after life as only those who have done their duty and service can.  I resist hedonism and murder equally.  I know tears and think it’s just the beginning of the rainy season.  The season is depressing with rare moments of photographic beauty.  The world is crying with us.  A huge cleansing time. It is only in soul wracking tears that we can release the demons to the atmosphere and shed the sadness of the ages.  In our despair and laughter we are freed from the lifetime of mutual restraint. We hold ourselves in check.
But who am I to speak for other than myself. I hold myself in check. I don’t say what I think. I moderate myself to the nth degree yet try to find the source of sickness in the other. With emotion I probe the heart of sadness and laugh.  Halloween has gone. The chance to jump worlds has passed. We now move towards Remembrance days.  Red poppies like our red flag.  Dead leaves and dead flowers.  The Remembrance of the stupidity of government.  Large groups of people have stupidly killed each other with greater brutality and efficiency.

Today I’m not laughing. Praise and thanksgiving are hard for me today.  There is sickness close to home. My dog limps. His back is injured. I’m in constant pain myself from similar injuries. He’s young and I’m relatively so but we’re a couple of old warriors who have come back from the weekend in the mountains and woods worn out.  I feel terribly old. I was hardly able to climb the ravine let alone the mountain. I couldn’t lift a deer and it was short years ago I butchered and cleaned moose and elk alone pulling them from the woods by myself .  I feel frail.  Fat out of shape.  Chained to a desk fighting to my last breath.  I was cold in the north.  I was shivering. The rain was horrid. I wanted silk and incense and soft beds and movies where I could transport myself to another world without the harsh feelings of actually being there.  Everything was tough and rough.  Lifting gas and diesel cans onto the truck. Driving the ATV.  Constant vigilance. Shooting the cannon to sight. Everything dangerous.  Realizing one is hours from hospitals.  I’m back from the wilderness.  Humbled.  It’s always humbling to leave the inner hive of the city and get out there where all is dangerous.  Each trip is tougher.
This time we returned wounded. Even the dog was injured.  Equipment broken.  Cuts and bruise to body.  Ego deflated.
I pray a lot.  All day.  I meditate.  I want some peace. It was silly to engage in the debate. Nothing that was being promised affected me. I just didn’t want more government and more taxes.  I am a walking meritocracy and I have a life time of caring for the mediocrity, giving it blood and sweat.  I carry the world on my shoulders.
The self pity is an insect that creeps under the skin. The comparison is a boil.
I am blessed. I am alive. I have air and water. I have warmth right now. I have over coats and clean underwear. I have a shower. I am thankful for all these blessings. Praise and thanksgiving.  Forget about how high the peaks seem where you are going and look back at where you have been.  You were imprisoned.  You paid the ultimate price for truth.  You sacrificed your freedom for love.
So much of what you feel is loneliness.  Godlessness. Anxiety is a measure of our distance from God.
Self Pity masquerades as depression.  Sloth and gluttony and greed don’t bring joy.  Joy is a choice.  It’s an attitude. It’s a search for the good and avoidance of the bad.  Now it’s time to Thank God the elections are over.  Thank God you are focusing again on the spiritual and character development.  You did your time in the asylum. You came out of the place of hiding and joined the fray.  Arjuna said to Krishna that his family was on either side in the war.  And Krishna replied that is always so. The only question was whether you would participate or not.  And I participated.  Jesus said there would always be war.
It was Facebook that made this election so personal.  All the attacks and mean spirited ‘ad hominem’, the rage couched in caring. The people who had something actually to win and their rejoicing.  They won the lottery.  I lost.  Win or lose - does it matter when the game is played in back rooms and the table is rigged.  It’s better here than elsewhere.  But I’d say it was rigged if I won.  It’s a casino. A crapshoot.  I”m not negative about the game. The game is the game.  This world is a gambler’s paradise. I’ve played on all three teams.  I know the game.  It’s not the game that bothered me as much as the rage and threats.  I took it personally.  I must have loved. I must have been less aloof than I claimed because I didn’t like that when I said I was voting for the other guy I was maligned and threatened and hated and portrayed as un Canadian.
Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. I really thought I was Canadian but it appears a third of Canadians, the majority, see me as a scoundrel.  I understand why there is so much apathy here. I understand why people are afraid to vote or share their ideas.  There’s a viciousness that is Canadian.  We don’t discuss anymore. On the global stage we call each other names.  You’re a denier.  It’s not that we disagree but you are psychotic.  It’s not that we vote different but you are a fiend to vote that way.
I saw the 46 year wall in Belfast.  When the Berlin wall fell I rejoiced. But there are more walls today.  I actually live in a sort of gated community myself.  Trailer trash that I am.  Membranes not boundaries divide us.

Thank you God for this day. Thank you for all of life. Thank you for this election. I pray for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals that they may lead our country to greater prosperity and protect us from the uncivil civil wars that consume the world.