The Storm Before the Calm

Today's post is the first in a two-parter. The second half will follow later this week, but I felt the need to explain the genesis of part two in this introductory missive.

Our family has been coming down to the South Florida region for almost as long as I have walked the earth. This area plays prominently in my admittedly sepia-coloured childhood memories. When money was tight and family vacations were done on the cheap, it wasn't unusual for all of my parents to pile all of us kids into my mom's 70-something Ford station wagon and head south on I75. (My sister-in-law, keeper of the family archives, recently sent me several very embarrassing photos from that era. If you really need to see them, contact me offline.) As we grew older and my parents began wintering down here, visits with my kids became the norm, and now The Husband and I are fortunate enough to have our own winter misery-escape hatch in the North Miami area. In many ways, South Florida feels like a second home. Admittedly, there are some things about being here that I will never truly understand and will never fully reconcile, but I have been able to rationalize it as quirky variances in the Canadian/American dynamic. This is in no way America bashing, nor is it in any way a demonstration of our vaunted Canadian pomposity. It is simply a statement that while we live close to one another, we are different.

And...sad to say...my family has not been totally immune to the violence that seems to be more random here than at home. A dear friend of my parents was shot and killed as part of an aborted robbery while he parked his car at a neighbourhood restaurant. He had less than $50.00 cash in his wallet. His murderer was caught while shopping at Walmart with his bounty. A few years back, a Toronto couple, well-known in the Jewish community, was murdered while in their condo just down the street from us. Their killings remain unsolved.

And yet...we keep returning. The snowbird flight plan is deeply ingrained. Canadian winters are wretched and as we age, we tolerate them less well. And...we tend to view these incidents merely as random acts of violence.

But last Friday felt different. The killings at the Fort Lauderdale airport hit me right in my sweet spot.  It was oh so close and oh so personal. Every single day, we know people going through Terminal 2 at FLL. This is the terminal that services all of Air Canada's flights. Torontonians, Montrealers, and Ottawans fly in and out many times a day from this place. I have been there hundreds of times, both as a shuttle service and as a passenger. My children have stood in the exact spot where people died. A friend had exited the airport with her thirteen-year-old son a mere hour before the horror. My cousin's parents were in the upper concourse waiting for her aunt as the shots rang out. They are thankfully fine.

We count ourselves, all of us, amongst the fortunate. A different day, a different week, a different time.....

And while I am fully aware that these horrific events nauseatingly occur on a daily basis in the United States, I have never before experienced the kinship I felt Friday. I felt an even more intense loathing and disgust than I ever had before for those milquetoast politicians who offered thoughts and prayers on Twitter while having zero intention of dealing with a gun problem so cancerous and rampant that even those suffering from acute mental illness have access to them. I detected a bilious taste when I listened to loathsome shills for the NRA talk falsely about "good guys with guns." I vented on Facebook about the false stories about the murderer coming from Canada. I ridiculously felt a need to defend my country from the Pandora's box of absurdity that has been unleashed down here. And most of all, I was discomfited by how easily and how quickly people here moved on from the tragedy. The ordinariness of it was profoundly disturbing. There were questions about flights being delayed, luggage lost, traffic around the airport, and how all of it would impact the daily lives of citizens. I've been waiting for news of memorials. It hasn't come yet. I can tell you how to retrieve a lost cell phone, but not the location of a vigil. In short...I felt and still do feel miserably depressed. I am exhausted and I am sad. This place of interlude and respite has become like a dystopian teen novel, and the really really sad part of it all is that I see it getting worse, not better over the coming years.

Since Friday, I have needed to find a way to revive and renew. I have taken refuge in the arts. I have listened to music, watched some very fine films, read a terrific novel, and chatted with some amazing visual artists at a weekend show. There is healing in creativity and I have sought out the oasis.

There are days when it feels as though the world around us has simply imploded. How we cope with those times defines us and illuminates a path forward in a profoundly aberrant environment. It is my belief that we are living in an era that is deviant and extreme. But we can regain the upper hand on the chaos by reveling in the beauty and the imagination of our most creative souls. All of this will be further fleshed out in part two of this post.

Zichronam Livracha...May their memories always be for blessing.

America: May God Have Mercy on Your Soul

Here are some things that I absolutely will not miss from this year's clown car show south of the 49th.

• Memes on Facebook
• Any news story that leads with the word "email"
• False equivalencies of evil
• Discussions of penis size
• Use of the word "pussy"
• The need for fact checking
• Vladamir Putin's half-naked image on a horse
• Wikileaks
• Bernie Bros
• Pepe the frog
• The suspension of Godwin's Law
• Neo-Nazis
• The KKK and the reemergence of David Duke
• The word "rigged"
• Incuriosity
• Ignorance
• Bloviating
• Political surrogates from any party but in particular.....
• Rudy Guiliani and Newt Gingrich
• Pantsuits
• Telling a woman to smile more
• Irony-impairment
• Tic Tacs and Skittles
• Access Hollywood
• The Apprentice
• Bill Clinton's parade of women
• The FBI
• Hypocrites
• The Trump spawn
• "Locker Room Talk" used to explain sexual assault
• Chants of "Lock Her Up"
• Super PACs and their ads
• The need for distractions
• Stupid nicknames. Adios to Crooked Hillary, Lyin' Ted, Little Marco, and the rest
• DONALD TRUMP 

Feel free to add your own. Racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, and hate have no place in a civil society. Good luck America. May God have mercy on your soul.

No More Jokes. Trump Isn't Funny Any Longer

I have been down here in the Southern Home now for almost three months. The weather has been middling for a Miami winter and while the natives may enjoy it and don turtlenecks and Ugg boots for the season, the snowbirds and weekly visitors are less than enamoured. Outdoor activities have  been severely curtailed by rain and chill. F*** You El Niño!!

There have been far fewer Canadians in the region this year due in large part to the drastic drop in the Canadian dollar so that anybody visiting can't really shop or buy anything unless one is willing to sell the soul of their first born in order to make up for a 40% price difference. F*** You global economy!

So what is a winter resident in the United States of America to do to keep busy in the face of a shrinking tidepool of activities? Well, once I got past blogging, writing, exercising, reading, Words With Friends encounters, guitar playing, and Facebooking the only thing left was to glean entertainment from the inanity that is the presidential primary season.

Initially, it was easy to be amused by the clown car of candidates that were populating the airwaves and newspaper pages. I often felt as though each and every person running was campaigning to survive the tribal council and be the last individual left on the island. These assholes were more compelling as Bachelor candidates than they were as serious presidential material and believe me, arranging a shitach (match) for any of this women-hating bastards would be a tough sell, including Carly Fiorina! The debates made for some light titters and hefty guffaws, though. Rubio stuck in robot mode. Ted lying through his smarmy capped teeth. The Donald rolling his eyes at Jeb! We laughed. Long. Hard. Loudly. It was preposterous, outrageous, and non-sensical. But....and I can't say this strongly enough....it isn't funny any longer.

Here's the thing. This shit is real now. And it's about to get more real in the coming weeks.

Up until this week, I honestly thought that the Republican elites (translate that to the big money guys) would find any means, ethical or unethical, to derail the Trump Bump. I thought that we would see gargantuan sums flooding into the Rubio campaign and with it a shift in tone coming from Florida's junior senator. It was time to get down in the mud with the dirtiest pig in the race, and even if Marco wasn't entirely comfortable with it, he would be duly schooled in the art of character assassination by the party elders. It isn't that I am a fan of Marco Rubio, mind you. Quite the contrary, in fact. My analysis was based purely on what I saw as the primal, almost pathological need of Republicans for winning back the White House in November. Rubio seemed to be the last "non-crazy" standing.

I was wrong! Oh so very wrong.

This race is now the pompous, megalomaniac, demagogue, misogynist, racist, rampant xenophobe, birther, bullying reality star's to lose. And there doesn't seem to be a damn thing that the GOP establishment can do to stop him.

Today we were treated to the news that Trump leads Rubio down here in Florida by 16 points. 16 f***ing points....in his home state?!? Assemble the virgins, the apocalypse is upon us. It's all over but  the combover.

But...and it's a big honking but....herein are two words why the jokes need to stop and the serious work needs to begin.

Rob Ford.

Yes folks! (That was a deliberate Fordism) Take it from this live just outside Torontonian. Asshole extremist, unqualified, right-wing populists can and do get elected to office and it is a disaster waiting to happen. My beloved hometown is just now recovering from the collective nightmare that we venomously refer to as "The Ford Years". (Before you think that this is some liberal bitch spouting claptrap, understand that this is consensus from  both left and right.) Rob Ford took our wonderfully progressive, cosmopolitan, multicultural, liveable, forward-thinking city and stunted its growth by at least four years, if not more. Like other cities, we have serious problems that require serious attention. Poverty, homelessness, transit, infrastructure repairs....were all left on the back burner while the mayor spouted bullshit catchphrases, promised the moon with money that didn't exist, alienated everybody who wasn't like-minded, and all of this happened before the crack and public drunkenness. (Hey American friends...aside from the substance abuse, does any of this sound familiar?) Toronto became the international butt of a thousand jokes, and nothing of consequence got done during his mayoralty unless of course one counts the paperclip census done at city hall.

Late night comedians loved Rob. He was always good for a laugh, almost manna from heaven. Local TV networks followed him around like puppies searching for the teat. Rob was great for ratings. But most Torontonians tired of his antics quickly and completely. Yes, there is still a devoted following that would like to see him make a triumphant return to the mayor's chair, but thankfully that group is now the minority.

Donald Trump is Rob Ford in a better fitting suit. (And he isn't merely running for mayor. He is striving to become the most powerful man in the world.) He is a rich dude pretending that he understands the minimum wage worker. He panders to the worst instincts in society so that he can gin up great TV ratings and become the "breaking news" on every channel. He says outrageous things so that he can dominate the 24-hour news cycle. He is a master manipulator and a genius at self-promotion. And...he is the living embodiment of the "dumbing down of America." Trump is no longer a joke. He is inherently dangerous. He is now within sniffing distance of the Oval Office and that should scare the collective pants off of every American voter.

I realize that the options are limited. I realize that there is a battle raging on the Democrats' side of the ledger too. I get it. But the world can co-exist with either Bernie or Hillary. As much as we progressives might hate to admit it, the world could have also dealt with Rubio, Christie, Jeb!, or Kasich. But The Donald? HELL NO!!! Stop laughing America because the rest of the world ceased giggling a long time ago. The joke isn't on you. It IS you!

P.S...I didn't even address the lying sack of dog poo who was born in Calgary because in many ways he is even more dangerous than Trump. If he gets close, I will write about him too.