Much of social history of Western world, over past 3 decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.—Thomas Sowell

If you’re just waking up to our little psycho-drama, U.S. president Donald Trump is alternatively a Nazi, a covert KGB agent, a serial sexual abuser, a corrupt businessman, mentally unstable or a guy who wears his ties too long.

Perhaps it’s time for a new awards show for political theatre. David Duke getting best adaptation of a very old script. Mark Ruffalo copping best agitator in a supporting role. Maxine Watters receiving a lifetime achievement award. 

The day following his team’s dramatic 2017 Super Bowl win over the Atlanta, New England Patriots QB Tom Brady tweeted about Falcons’ quarterback Matt Ryan: “What a loser. Anyone could beat him. The failing Falcons are morons.”

A camel is a horse designed by a committee. And a four-person cluster to replace Peter Mansbridge as the face of CBC’s The National is committee work at its most tortured.

The regrettable public re-emergence of O.J. Simpson the past fortnight is a reminder of a truism that emerged from his 1994 trial (and acquittal) for murdering his wife and a friend. 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So goes the timeworn expression. But the cynical wisdom of that phrase endures.

Liberals have a standard line to end debates on their pet projects:  “In a country as rich as Canada/ USA/ Britain, shouldn’t we make sure everyone has (insert your cause)?” The cause may be health care, clean water, low infant mortality, no gun problems, housing, good working wage, winning hockey. 

Since his election in 2015, people have sought to define Justin Trudeau’s leadership. There were the selfies, the slavish media coverage from American liberals suffering from Trump derangement and the philosophy of trying to please everyone using public money.

Back in the innocent 1970s, Coca Cola made uplifting commercials in which their sugary carbonated beverage would “Like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony”. The commercials ended with the full rainbow of humanity join hands on a hillside in mutual acceptance. 

Once again, Democrats chose the tuna with good taste over the tuna that tastes good. Chic filmmaker Jon Ossoff, buttressed by $ 25 million in mostly out-of-state money, went down in flames in Georgia against a modest Republican named Karen Handel on Tuesday. With revenge oozing from every pore after last November’s Clinton debacle, Dems burned through their stack of cash to no avail.

The motivation for the shooting of Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice Wednesday remains unclear as yet. Eyewitnesses suggest it could be an escalation of the political conflict going on in the U.S. since Democrats decided Donald Trump was unfit to be president. A gunmen (now deceased) shot up to 100 rounds, wounding, among others, GOP whip Steve Scalise. Early reports indicate a political motive, but details are still developing as the shooter is identified.

Last weekend I was at a book talk with Tom Nichols, author of The Death of Expertise (about the decline in expertise, education and learning). In the process of the session, the moderator, an official with the Literary Review of Canada, tried to explain the issue of appropriation to him. 

In the film Something Wicked This Way Comes, a charismatic man comes to town to grant wishes— for a price. The movie title is from Macbeth: "By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes." 

“It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true.”— Oscar Wilde

This thought from the great Wilde seems particularly apt watching a vanquished Hillary Clinton put on the political foil once more, announcing herself a part of the “Resistance”. 

An appeaser, wrote Winston Churchill, is someone who chooses to feed a crocodile in hopes that it eats him last.

In the case of the arts industry in Canada—which has been slavish in its devotion to even the most unhinged fringe groups—  the appeasers have provided a very tasty dish for the culture crocodiles the past few weeks. Here’s a brief summary on the appropriation fiasco now devouring several dedicated editors.

This week on my podcast The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin, my guest is the eminent British mental-health expert and social critic Theodore Dalrymple. (https://goo.gl/WlB4Cm) To say he has a few inflammatory opinions in this age of moral relativism would be an understatement. Among the issues we discussed was Prince Harry’s public admission that he’d sought help in coping with the death of his mother.

History has seen the Bronze Age. And the Pleistocene Age. And the Stone Age.

Now welcome to The Nice Age. Humanity— alright, humanity in the western world— has entered into a time when the tender sensibilities of humans have become the organizing principle of society. Be Nice, clean your ice. And what’s wrong with people being nicer to each others? A little civility, giving the other person alittle space, a smiley face. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with reminding others that they’re not the only ones on the planet. 

There was never a bigger fan of Bruce Springsteen. It was a revelation when The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle first dropped on my turntable in 1974. Springsteen’s tales of Asbury Park’s street people, reprobates and the desperate ones breathed originality into a rock-and-roll form gone stale and self serious.

The news that Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Despond, are set to visit Canada this summer was greeted with something less than rapture from his subjects here. Indifference probably best describes the reaction to the sort of Royal news that, in the past, might have set off excitement from coast to coast to coast.

The verdict on the U.S. president seems conclusive. The Republican dashes from “one thing to another with amazing dispatch… each act of his, and each opinion expressed likely to abolish or contravene some previous act or expressed opinion.” Consistency is a word he abhors, reversing himself on foreign war, the Mexican issue and the role of Congress in his agenda.