Slippery slope time - again

confluence/divergence

Feelings of frustration happen when circumstances block people’s ways to whatever goals they’d imagined. That many people should be living with mounting frustration at this time is not surprising, given the economic uncertainties. Prolonged frustration is like a cancer that eats away at the human spirit and when fed with a diet of bad news and very little prospect of change over time, it’s not surprising that frustration turns into rage. If frustration is the kitten, then rage is the tiger.



Frustration and rage can only live in a free-floating state for so long before they need to find some island on which to settle. In economically depressed, post WWI Germany, one island on which rage settled was Jewry, and we all know the end of that story. Once the cause of the frustration has been named and endorsed by a critical mass of others similarly frustrated, the running shoes are on and the stampede begins.


There’s plenty of frustration in the news these days. In North America (and to varying degrees, the rest of the world), a scary economic collapse in 2008 was bad enough, but followed by a period when little was heard except the good news of the recovery, the stagnation that turned out to be the fact pushed many people from frustration to rage. Demonstrations against government cuts to curb deficits got downright ugly in France and Greece particularly, and made us wonder if they were precursors to something really dangerous over here. 


Most of the media commentary on the economic situation here in Canada has been pretty cool and sane to this point. But there are signs that ideologues are working hard to point the rage of the masses toward certain targets. John Gormley is known for his right-wing views and in a recent column commenting on airport security, he couldn’t resist: Many of the people griping loudest about the imaging scanners and searches come from the new class of the special — those pampered, cherished, “ all about me” narcissists who continually star in their own movie and cling to the illusion that life really is all about them. (Saskatoon StarPhoenix, November 19, 2010, p.3) The labelling is clearly evident here; it points people toward a target against whom their rage would appropriately be directed.


In the USA, right-wing radio and television, the Tea Party phenomenon and all that goes with that have been much more clear about which targets people ought to blame for their frustrations. It’s the philosophical liberals in the country, represented by a) the Democrats, b) people who tolerate abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage and c) Muslims and anyone whose name sounds kind of Islamic. The fact that this is still a pretty big pond only means that the rhetoric is still waiting to find a clear focus. In a diatribe circulated on email networks called “I’m 63 and I’m Tired,” former contender for the Republican presidential nomination and a former district attorney on CSI Miami, Robert A. Hall names some of the islands on which the vultures of rage are invited to land. Here’s a sampling:


I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.

 I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.


I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I’m not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military.... Those are the citizens we need.


Again, the pond is still pretty big, and as much as Hall may protest that, for instance, he is “not against Hispanics,” just being mentioned in this vitriolic dissertation is signal enough for some people.


I guess there is such a thing as being angry at oneself, but we don’t readily raise our hands and admit that, “I’m sorry; I did it.” Seems to me the economic morass is a direct consequence of far too many people - right, left, gay, straight, liberal, conservative - giving basic greed free rein for too long.


Be wary of people who name an enemy that doesn’t include themselves; we’re on a slippery slope here, folks.

Madly Off

I dreamed last night that I—a 67 year-old retiree—walked into a Grade 12 Social Studies class as a substitute teacher. I had a lesson in mind; I would engage them in an exciting discussion of the dynamics, the losses and gains particularly, that characterize social transactions. I would start with a simple example: you hire on with a contractor and you lose your freedom for the day, but you gain a paycheck. In my dream this was all tremendously significant stuff; I thought I might move on to choices of a weightier nature, like sex, marriage, etc.

But first one must take attendance: I couldn’t find the register, couldn’t find any list of names, couldn’t find a paper and pencil on which to write it down. I knew an attendance record was an important part of my job on this day. Solving that dilemma took half the time for the class and—if this had been a hockey game—put me down three or four goals in the “keeping order” department, the most significant aspect of any substitute teacher’s task.

I finally got to my lesson, but by then I hardly had an audience. The class had disintegrated into clatches here and there, talking and laughing, and there was no obvious way to get them involved in any discussion short of offering them each an iphone if they would shut up and listen. (Is this the nature of the real loss/gain bargain in the education transaction?)

And then a few at the back drifted away; the rest of the class, assuming they had been dismissed, followed them out without a backward glance. They sealed their victory by scoring into my empty net.

Jump to the second dream of the night, as did I: I’m looking for a certain building on the campus of the University of Alberta. I’m like Leacock’s Lord Ronald who “flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.” I go north, south, east, west, but can’t find anything I recognize. Finally I enter a building where I’m accosted by, apparently, a teacher from the school of my first dream; he’s going to report me, he says, to the higher authorities for my debacle in the Social Studies classroom. I assure him that I’m aware of my failure, that I used to be a relatively competent teacher but am old and grey now, that there’s no liklihood of my showing up there again . . . ever, and we part amicably.

Interpretation: Frustration during the day leads to dreams of frustration. We’ve just moved and things are not as rosy as we’d dreamed; basement still not finished, boxes everywhere, I’m having no end of challenges laying a floor. On Friday, I went to a meeting in the Education Building at the University of Saskatchewan. I drove around trying to find it for a time; ergo, my second nightmare. Search combined with frustration. The events of the days rearing up their heads in the random richocheting of electrical firings through the synapses of my mind, passing through a museum of memories and impressions and creating a story with the remnants they pick up there.

I wish you all sweet dreams.