Political Internet Addiction, Hockey Values, Social Contract

I must first acknowledge that politics is above my pay grade. I am a peasant.  As a middle class , even upper middle class, Canadian I really have very little influence on Canadian politics.  Around the world politics is a game played by a very very few.  I think the ‘club’ membership of those who actually are the real ‘players’ in the game is something like a billion. I used to think millionaires were allowed in the room to watch and maybe cheer and boo but I’m pretty jaded.  It might even be that you need 10 billion dollars to sit at the game tables or a hundred billion dollars.
When I have gone to a casino I’ve suffered losing $20 dollars so politics by contrast is really high stakes poker. It’s a war game between this one multi billionaire team and another multi billionaire team.
So why am I hooked on the internet media politics game show.  It’s pretty much the same for me as hockey.  I don’t play hockey today but I did as a kid.  I actually last played hockey on an “old timers league”.  But that was decades ago.
Politically, as a kid I was on my high school student council executive and president of a city religious youth organization. I was even a city representative to the youth parliament in the capital. At university I participated. I was editor of a unversity newspaper and wrote political articles. I’ve read countless books on politics, all the classics, and studied history extensively, at the post graduate level, and routinely discuss politics with professors in political science, economics, game theory, war college, social science, ecology,  or any of the areas politics might be relevant.
At the professional level I was on the executive of the specialists association and served on hospital committees and other work related committees. I’ve been on executives and even  board members of socially relevant organizations.  I’ve been a debater and public speaker and appeared on television and radio.   I’ve been to the business meetings and participated in the organizational meetings of the social and spiritual clubs I’ve belonged too. Most people would call me that often maligned word , “joiner”, when really I’m a hermit.  I’ve managed some form of business profitably for nearly half a century and employed dozens of people throughout that time. I’ve even managed major projects with an amazing number of moving parts and expertise and people involved to achieve world class results.
I’ve met and shook the hands of 4 prime ministers, spent a day with one, had dinner with another, met a much larger number of federal and provincial ministers, have had friends who are members of cabinet, congressmen and senators. I’ve been that close to the action.  I’ve actually voted in countless elections and participated in political parties most of my adult life, even to the point of giving thousands of dollars to the political parties, much like I’ve supported my church.  I often wonder what these ‘charitable contributions’ say about my sanity, or faith, since often I feel I’m supporting both sides of the equation. Politics seems to be paving the way to hell whereas Religion often points the way to heaven.  Not only that, they’re  often in bed with each other making it highly hypocritical when either talks about sex.
Still I’m at very most a bit player.  Canadians are little more than Jamaicans on the international scene. It’s not like we’re China, or Russia, or America or Britain or Saudi Arabia.  I’m in Vancouver and it’s not New York, Beijing, Moscow or Mexico City.  Our Capital City Ottawa barely recognizes Vancouver’s existence. And Victoria the capital city of our province often doesn’t acknowledge the existence of Vancouver.  I have long ago accepted my irrelevance to most everyone else but myself and my dog.
The point is though, politically,  I really do have ‘skin’ in the ‘game’.  Most people who talk or riot about politics in my opinion don’t. It’s  often very apparent to me from fatuous comments. Much like hearing a person pompously saying that the goalie wasn’t any good in last nights game because he let the football past him several times.  On the other hand curious children and those who are humble adults often have the most insightful comments such as ‘why is the woman shouting instead of using her microphone?’ Much like the child who says the goalie should have caught the puck with his glove rather trying to bat it with his stick.
At  the end of the day I’m really no more relevant to the grand political game than I am watching the Canucks win or lose in a hockey game.  I once said hello to, now memory may fail me, but I think it was Rocket Richard and I got his autograph on my hockey card. At that moment I really was important in the whole world of hockey and impressed all my little buddies no end.
I have always taught that in the grand scheme of things, I am “insignificantly significant” and “significantly insignificant’.
In politics and in hockey I am a ‘fan’.  I’m the fan base.  That’s what these ‘entertainment/marketting’ organizations want and depend upon.
Admittedly my “sports fan’ buddy puts more time and money into his ‘hobby’.  He spends literally days and weeks of hours of time watching the sports channel and has seasons tickets to sports events that cost thousands of dollars. He’s got the funny hats and funny numbered shirts and really does bore people much more than I do.
I’d argue my interest in politics is more relevant.  My participation in politics at the local level has kept the city or province or organization ticking along.  My friends wife believes that the sports associations of the world have all benefit from her husbands money supporting them more than they do her or her kids. A lot of people support casinos, liquor stores and marijuana outlet stores too so my friend has a relative superiority to those low lifes.  I personally accept that as he supports the Canucks among the many teams he follows he can’t be that ungodly.  I’m not sure his wife sees things as I do.
There are however decisions that need to be made to keep hospitals open or to fund emergency shelters and I’ve really helped in the lubrication of that process.  I’ve liked the voluntary aspect of it.
But increasingly politics as opposed to sports has been saying ‘if you don’t join me you will die’.  One of the reason’s I’ve liked hockey better than soccer is that hockey is generally more of a ‘gentleman’s sport’.  Soccer is so very low brow that they routinely have riots in the stands. Occasionally a couple of hockey players might have a go at it on the ice but it’s extremely rare for one teams fans to attack another teams fans.
The Vancouver hockey riots increased my interest in politics because nothing says more about the decline of Canadian civilization than hockey fans rioting.  I don’t think I even read an internet political post before the Vancouver Hockey Riots. Odd, looking back ,that that would be such an important night. I thought the police were great that night but had real mixed feelings about the politicians.   Canada used to be a civilized country.  Soccer fans have been rioting and killing each other forever but Canadians simply were above that sort of behaviour.  Canadians had a higher set of values. We were a cultured people. Hockey was a cultured sport.
But the worst was the realization that the Judges  and Politicians didn’t understand history, hockey, politics or Canada. The judges were the real disappointment.  Indeed if there had been riots when the judges light sentences were dispensed after they were  paid  millions for their political decision I would have been less concerned . These rioting  animals who claimed to be hockey fans got off with sentences that would only encourage future riots for any occasion. This ‘test riot’ in a major Canadian city must now be the beginning of riots and more riots.
Indeed my interest in internet politics followed the  violence among hockey fans.  It was apparent that rich and poor elements were  inciting  that violence. Low brow elements were paid for by the highest.  War was being encouraged and frankly I felt frightened after the judges decision because  I have come to realize I’m  bit old to fight. It really was decades ago that I played in the Old Timer’s Hockey League.  
I also feel there is no where to escape to.   I have visitted Cappadocia where Christians hid underground and built underground churches. I have visitted Meteora where Christians built monasteries on mountain peaks.  But there seems no place for a poor Christian to hide today.  The rich are building space ships.
Meanwhile the thugs are even soiling hockey and the judges and the politicians are encouraging them.  Older, I want law and order but am left with memories of hockey rioters breaking into jewelry stores and fur stores and stealing hoards.  In one night a group of young thugs took financially what it would take me a lifetime or two to earn by working. And frankly it looked easy and tempting. It looked even more tempting when  I saw that the judges only slapped the wrists of rioters.
I watched with interest as gangs of Islamic rapist sexually assaulted gorgeous young western women in Cologne and the Politicians and Judges of the EU first denied it then gave only light sentences to the offenders. . It looked so easy.  A gang of young men could surround a beautiful vulnerable young woman and rape her without any consequences to the offenders.
There is martial law in France, not because of Muslims but because of the gangs of young Islamic men that the government has let into the country whose violence their judges at first supported until now all the citizens of France have soldiers daily on their streets.
I don’t trust this government in Canada, let alone world governments.
 I’m not safe.   The Social Contract is broken in Canada.  The Social Contract I worked for and paid into all my life is no longer supported by my own government or the law courts.  I am losing faith that I will be cared for in my old age. I’m losing faith that there will be doctors or nurses or medicine for me when I’m sick and dying. I am seeing that there will be committee meetings and there will be politics and marketing and advertising people calling things what they are not.
But now that we have hockey riots and judges who support the destruction of the social contract I am more afraid.  Watching the political internet I’m like a gambling addict watching the dice roll on the casino table,  I am really hoping for snake eyes.  If the dice roll snake eyes maybe it will be safe for me to go outside. Right now as things are it’s not safe on Canadian streets.  Rioters are puffed up and swaggering, brown shirted and confident.  The young men go in groups.  I don’t know when they will snap.  They have tremendous encouragement to do so.  Just south of the border there are riots all the time now.  There it was supposedly for a police shooting or for an election. But everytime there are riots people seem to get away with stealing millions and millions of dollars worth of hard earned goods. They also destroy houses, police cars and ambulances and burn down buildings.
 On the street I’ve had groups of young men who appeared stoned  shove past me. They’ve shown me some deference because I’m old but rather big.  They have literally pushed littler people and women out of their way as they swaggered down the street knowing they are safe because the judges and politicians don’t do anything against them.  Indeed I’m more afraid of judges and politicians because they only seem interested in taking money from law abiding citizens with more and more ludicous taxation and regulations while criminals are the only ones who appear to be ‘free’ in Canada, once land of the ‘free’.
One group with their pit bulls attacked me and my dog and I faced them down to protect my dog but I don’t walk on those city trails any more.   I remember mothers used to push their babies along those trails and others with little dogs walked them but now only the young men and women with pit bulls walk those trails or the adults who are bicycling or running.  It doesn’t take more than one incident to make an old person scared. We don’t feel we have second chances.
I actually still feel I’d capably kill a young bully but I don’t think I’d survive the trial process which might well find me guilty despite even witnesses saying I acted in self defence.  There is so much hatred for the old in Canada.  One man in his 90’s who killed a drug crazed home invader spent the next six months of his life facing a murder charge despite all the evidence eventually proving him guilt free.  He was punished as an old man first by the homicial drug crazed maniac home invader interested in stealing his television and then by the legal system playing its game of timeless resources and endless money while he waited to learn whether he would die in jail or not.
 Indeed if I reported the incident of the young man whose dog almost killed my dog or I  hurt more than the  young man’s pride by picking up his pit bull and throwing it in his face I’d be considered the ‘bad’ man.   Thugs go in groups.  They have witnesses to lie for them  In Canadians courts today perjury has no consequence. We see it routinely in such important national trials such as the Gian Gomeshi case. Perjury was blatant to all and even the judge but there was no consequence as those who lie are not jailed or made to pay for the injury of ‘false testimony’.
When I was growing up in Canada, the Canadian Christian value of
"Thou shalt not bear false witness” prevailed in the courts. Bearing of false witness was akin to murder and once a person lied in their testimony, all else that followed was considered false because their character was now defined by their lying  I have spent a life time of truth telling and believed that in court I was required to ’tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ . However when they took the Bible out of the courts it appears the judges began to celebrate the liars more.    
I no longer feel safe in the city.  For months a man who threatened to kill me and my dog continues to email me threats despite my contacting the police and the attorney general and blocking him.  Every few weeks I am faced with a  new threat  email . When I talk to others, now hundreds, they tell me, mostly women but also  men that they’ve threatened too and that there was little consequence to those who uttered threats and terrorized them sometimes for years. At most the police have given ‘restraining orders’ which are routinely broken with little consequence.
It’s like the whole issue of gun laws. Law abiding citizens with guns have a 99.9% safety record yet the government keeps restricting and fining this group while all the guns used in crimes appear to be by criminals with illegal weapons. Further repeat offenders increasingly are out of the street despite their recidivism.  Law abiding citizens are punished while criminals are not.  
A day doesn’t go by that someone doesn’t tell me another story of the breakdown of the social contract. Old men and women are homeless. Old men and women are kicked out of hospitals with no where to go. Old men and women have had their savings stolen. Old men and women are being taxed into poverty. A couple of friends who worked hard all their lives are now going to food banks to survive.
More and more my old people are as likely to die on waitlists as they are to get the care they were promised when they were young and worked for Canada believing the Social Contract would be in tact.
I am simply afraid.  I know if I an upper middle class Canadian  afraid then really most Canadians must be terrified when they watch their government and see the decisions of judges and watch the scourge of drug addiction in the city and see that millions are unemployed and that no more money is going to health care orto  the old people but rather it is being spent on palaces and foreign country silliness.
I really don’t think the church has anything much to offer me either. Marx said ‘religion is the opiate of the masses’ and my church has been as lamed brained about distant ideological social constructs while ignoring the poverty among their old. Individually they help but the rhetoric from above is often as space stationed as the nonsense from the politicians.  Everyone who is wealthy and powerful like Bishops and Judges and Government Ministers, Criminals  and Billionaires think I’m silly to be afraid too.
All I have really is  prayer.   And I’m the lucky one.

Plane flights, Canadians, Envy and Ingratitude

There are some 8 billion people on the planet today.  7 billion are doing pretty well.  Apparently only a few hundred million are faced with daily uncertainty about food and life. The majority of us should be very thankful.  Never before have so many people lived in such security and well being for so long.  Only a hundred or two years ago there were relatively few people and most lived rather short lives in far worse conditions.
I loved learning that people thought at the time of Columbus, 1492, that Europe was overpopulated.  The scientific revolution,  advances in agriculture, scale and even politics have lead to quite miraculous possibilities. The potential  today for people as a whole and the planet in particular were unimaginable a generation or two ago.
Ownership of a bicycle alone can be critical to success in the Third World.  Such a simple piece of technology transforms the impoverished to relative wealth by extending their household ‘import/export’ radius.  In 1987 I  learned of the revolution in transport and what it meant to civilization when I watched the Checkoslovakian Pavillion panoramic movie exhibit at the World Exhibition in Vancouver Canada.  Recently this has been reviewed.   Ownership of a car alone moves a person from the lower classes to the middle classes.  The intermediary ‘stage’ between bicycle and car ownership was the ability to ‘rent’ a seat on a bus or car.  Indeed those who had even travelled by motorized vehicles were superior in wealth and education to others.  Some 7 billion had had access to bicycle and half that to cars and car ownership.  A billion or more had flown while only millions or less had relative ownership of plane transport.
Amazing! I’m like so many in the first world.  Ungrateful.  Here I am flying yet again, for the countless time, irritated that tele transportation hasn’t arrived to reduce my frustration with the minimal lineups and security checks.
My parents were wealthy by world standards. They owned a car and a truck.  We travelled back and forth across Canada as a family by train. My father who had been in the Royal Canadian Air Force made sure his sons had their first flight in the back seat of a Cub before they were even teens.  I remember complaining in the back seat of that Piper Cub that my brother sitting next to me had a ‘better’ seat.   Envy is a close second to Ingratitude among the rich and civilized.  I’ve met many who I went to school with and they actually complain that they were ‘poor’.  Some were definitely richer.  But the whole neighbourhood I grew up in was rich in peace and stability and education. Parents had autos and kids had bicycles.
By my twenties I was taking jet trips across Canada to visit family. In my early 20’s I’d even fly from Canada across the Atlantic.  I bought a  bicycle there and bicycled Europe and  bused  in Morocco, Northern Africa.  
Buckminister Fuller, the American genius,  invented of the Geodesic Dome.  I had seen this in 1967 at America's World Fair exhibit in Montreal.  The Russian Sputnik was there.  I grew up watching Star Trek on television. I witnessed the NASA space flights, the moon landing and the Soviet Space Station missions.  Now I take my iPhone GPS app essentially for granted..
I was a fly - in doctor in Northern Canada using De Havilland Beaver Bush Planes and Cessnas as my weekly taxi service.  Often I’d fly in a DC3 the great workhorse plane of WWII as well.  Naturally I just did these things. Didn’t everyone? I’m still a little surprised when I meet someone who hasn’t flown in a plane, especially if I’m in Canada.
We take so much for granted.  I so commonly live in pursuit of my next dream.  I’m fixated on the future with memories more often of failures and resentments than the honest recollection of the amazing successes I’ve known,  the extraordinary life so many Canadians have available to them..
I loved that Bill Gates, the American billionaire philanthropist, stated that his greatest fortune was being born in the Pacific Northwest.
Naturally I was equally blessed to be born in Canada to the parents I had with the incredibly brilliant older brother.  I grew up in a suburb by the university.  It was normal for my classmates to mostly want to go to university.  We were middle class by Canadian standards but by world standards privileged upper class in deed. I’m often amused that Canadian ’standards of poverty’ would be considered luxury in some of the countries and regions I’ve visited and worked.  My ‘homeless’ patients complain about the ’shelters’ they live in and the amazing meals that charity provides. When I’ve volunteered at church kitchens I’ve been glad to later eat the meals I was dishing out. Better than I often eat.  The ’shelters’ are lacking by Canadian standards but I’ve been where 20 people shared a room smaller than the bachelor I had for myself in medical school.  
Canadians as a class are the worst complainers.  It’s the consumer society for sure.  Television.  Greed. Envy.  The search for something outside to fullfil the inner lacking. The loss of community. The spiritual bankruptcy.  There’s never enough.
I’m driving a glorious Mazda Miata M5 sportscar. I love this car. It’s utterly perfect for me and the fulfillment of a lifetime of longing.  It’s the MG I couldn’t afford as a young medical student bought by the old man in his 60’s.  The television and internet ever shows me  more expensive sports cars. There’s a Corvette, a Porche, and a Aston Martin in the parking lot where I work.  There are Honda Civics there too but who looks at those.   By education, I’m in the top 1% of the world. The woman owning one of the faster more expensive cars I know is academically stupid by comparison.  She was ’smart’ in marriage.  I don’t compare myself to her by any more than her car . I am more likely to compare myself educationally with the fellow who is higher on the rung than me.  Indeed I feel stupid compared to my younger colleague, a behavioural neurologist. I don’t even know what car he drives.  I doubt he cares. Yet I know the other man who owns the richest fastest car in the parking lot is much older than me. He envies me my youth.
We all fly. We all talk about our trips across the country or overseas. Lots of friends fly to Vegas or Mexico without thinking it’s anything to write home about. They skip the air fliight and focus their sharing on the beach, museums or exotic restaurants.   I share in passing which countries I’ve been too. We compare the long lists we’ve ‘collected’ . Country comparing is a bit like  we compared the ’sports cards’ we collected as boys.
We haven’t a clue really about the Impoverished lives of others who grew up in crowded hungry homes not even fortunate enough to share a bicycle.
I just believe it’s hard for people who have flown to another country for vacation to realize that by world standards that makes them at very least upper middle class, especially if they’ve also ever owned a car.  Most all of the Canadians I know are ‘upper class’ by world standards. They don’t know it.  They’re too busy complaining.
Perhaps it’s this election year with it’s constant hyperbole and hypocrisy.  I can’t help but hear the song, “You don’t have to dress like a refugee!” going round in my head whenever I listen to the professional ‘victims’ .  CBC news is always there to help them hawk their wares. . They’re like the Canadian “beggars" who stand beside the street with dogs and Starbucks coffees ($5) and signs ‘begging’ for food.  I work in the the Downtown East Side of Vancouver.  The amount of food available for the poor at times appears like it would feed a small country.  The food waste in the cities of Canada could feed a nation.   Daily we disparage our lot and complain of our declining wages and increases costs.  It’s true. Inflation is a bitch. I once wrote a lament for the billionaire who had to come home and tell his wife they were millionaires because he’d lost their fortune in the recent deflation.
I don’t drive a Corvette.  My friend drives a BMW. She doesn’t eat out in restaurants. Everyone in Canada makes choices.  We have a potpourri of choices.  Even the immigrants who complain of not finding work in Vancouver or Toronto refuse to consider working in the north where Canadians such as myself did long  and cold harsh service.  When we moved south we  found there was no affordable housing.  Foreign speculators had stolen our heritage.   But owning a house is a ‘luxury’ for most in the world especially  those wanting a house in ‘prime’ locations.  I  simply can’t afford it and still have choice. My friends have become indentured servants (slaves) to their mortgages, praying their ‘investments’ hold.
When Canadians complain ad infinitum about their government, wanting to get rich quick and have Hollywood success,  I remember that most people’s success I know is tied to family. It’s especially a product of discipline and hard  long work.  Half my medical school class were the children of doctors.  So many of my friends, second and third generation immigrant, are a product of the sacrifice of the parents and  their deep sustaining family values. We only bought my first car at 25 years of age. I couldn’t afford it alone.  I didn’t buy my first ’new’ car till I was a doctor in my 30’s.
I spent altogether 24 years in education all the while having jobs to maintain my educational pursuit.  My first job at 12 was shovelling snow. My payment was 50 cents. I was doing well when I made a dollar an hour which was better than delivering papers which my friends did at the same age. Baby sitting was 50 cents an hour and poor pay for the difficulties containing the little beasts till their parents return.  Cutting lawns for an hour at 50 cents to a dollar was good child wage when minimum wage was $5/hour.
So I’m flying again across Canada. This will be bout the 10th time I’m accompanied by my Cockapoo Gilbert.  He’s a a  "Jet Cockapoo." Not a "jet setter". Even our dogs are rich by any standards.  Regardless of who has lead this country of Canada we’ve been a rich nation.  We’ll continue to be wealthy for  a good time to come thanks to our natural resources and the competence and diversity of Canadians.
I just wish I had more gratitude and less envy.  Ingratitude and envy are so intrinsically Canadian.  We take so much for granted.  People talk about Canadians as polite.  But mostly we’re envious and ungrateful.  We love to disparage Americans too.
I want to celebrate my country, celebrate this life and all the wonders and blessings I’ve known thanks in most part simply because I had the good fortune to be born in Canada.  It takes another plane flight to remind me that those who have been blessed to be able to have flown are the annointed, the blessed, the privileged, the success stories.
I know it’s not the space shuttle.  I don’t even own the plane.  But I’m a Canadian.  Poor me.