Tag: politics

Beyond Innocence and Blame

I want to talk about innocence and blame. I think both are fundamentally flawed and our belief in them compounds rather than lessens our miseries, especially in how they leave us susceptible to the politics of alienation and retribution, resulting in terrible justice policies, among other things.

People routinely say “everything happens for a reason,”1 seemingly asserting that there’s something special about this arrangement of things.2 That’s as it may be. Here I take the standpoint that “everything happens for a cause”. Hop on board the things-have-causes axiomatic train and let’s explore some of the implications for how we think about innocence and exoneration, blame and retribution.

This song played on the radio all the time when I was in Grade 9 and I thought of the girl I loved3 at the time and how after something happened to her we could lay on a grassy field and hold hands. It even got to the point where I wished something would happen to her, so this could happen. Though I’d probably be no more likely to show my feelings then than normally, so if my wish had come true because I made it, it would have been both wretched and futile.

For a while after this, being the concrete sort of thinker I was4, I wanted to think of innocence as something real. Maybe it was something I still had, but that I’d lose later.5

What is innocence? A state where you should not be blamed for something. Okay, but why not?

You couldn’t have understood.

Couldn’t have? That’s quite an assertion. How do you know that? I’ll agree that it’s more likely that a kid doesn’t understand x, but you have to test it. Saying that the kid can’t understand x is demeaning. (Okay, it’s probably not demeaning to babies to say they can’t understand nuclear physics, but you can still ‘test’ this: knowing that you haven’t seen them reading or mathing much yet, you can be nigh-absolutely confident that they can’t, or at least that all the babies you’ve ever met can’t.) Anyway, here’s the story of a Korean fellow who was solving differential equations at age seven.

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  1. Everything?! ↩

  2. Yes, the exact past that we had is the only way to this exact present. But what’s special about this present, aside from its being the one drawn from the Universe Machine? ↩

  3. At a distance, unfortunately. I was afraid of being outed as liking girls and I went out of my way to avoid her. ↩

  4. Or cement-head, if you’re less charitable. ↩

  5. If you mean that kind of “innocence”, much later. ↩

Writer’s Guide: Know Your Audience

A basic piece of advice for all writers is to know their audience. In order to reach someone, you need to have a conception of their interests, their motivations, their knowledge, and their prejudices. Whether it’s writing a note to your friend, or writing for a workshop class, or writing a text message that your mobile carrier will copy into a law enforcement database, the same principles apply.

Starbucks Coffee

Starbucks Coffee (Rudolf Schuba, Flickr)

It’s good to have a routine for writing. Sit somewhere where all you do is write, buy your favourite cup of coffee, and turn the wi-fi off on your laptop so that the hidden keyloggers don’t transmit all those aborted sentences to government keyword-monitoring servers. If there’s one thing worse than a publisher not understanding your vision, it’s a counter-terrorism unit paying you a visit at 3am! Ha-ha!

Once you get in the habit of writing for a particular audience, it becomes effortless. When you write a heartfelt message to your loved ones, you’ll automatically consider the effect your word and phrase choices will have on you, your spouse, your children, and the RCMP officers assigned to your file.

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An open letter to Michel Samson and Jason Kenney on access to income and employment

An open letter to

Michel Samson
Member of the Nova Scotia Legislative Assembly for Cape Breton-Richmond
Minister of Economic and Rural Development and Tourism

(response, from Kelly Regan, below)

and

Jason Kenney
Member of Parliament for Calgary Southeast
Minister of Employment and Social Development:

Greetings,

I am presently residing in Sherbrooke, part of Very Rural Nova Scotia. Of course, I don’t have to stay here, and I didn’t even have to come here. But it works very well for me, except for the tricky problem of income.

Sherbrooke Village recently posted an advertisement on the Service Canada Job Bank seeking an archival assistant. I would have applied for this position, even though it’s temporary – the work seems interesting, it would leverage my IT skills, I’d learn something, and it would be a pickup of both money and experience. And it’s local.

But the position requires people to have received EI in past 3 years, so I’m ineligible. It’s maddening; it just seems arbitrary and unfair. I’m no longer a student, so I don’t qualify for the student positions (with the Village or, for example, the Eastern Counties Regional Library) that come across my radar either. When I was a student, I thought jobs reserved for students were great things. Now the shoe’s on the other foot and it hurts like heck.

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An open letter to Peter MacKay regarding his proposed restrictions on prostitution

An open letter to Peter MacKay, Member of Parliament for Central Nova:

(“response” below)

I am alarmed by Bill C-36, your proposed prostitution legislation, and would encourage you to scrap it and start over. “Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons”, an act keeping with this government’s convention of naming acts by what people want rather than what they do, is a laudable objective, but you can reduce human enslavement and trafficking without effectively prohibiting prostitution1, which you are in fact doing, given that you would have communication, advertising, and purchasing all banned.

With regards to prostitution, you use the word ‘inherent’ frequently, saying things like “inherent harms of prostitution.” Inasmuch as inherent means “existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute”, what, exactly, are these? I am especially eager for you to enumerate dangers related to prostitution itself that are indivisible from prostitution, not just ones that stem from the legal climate that has held sway until now.

Instead of ‘inherent’, it would be nice if you would use the more precise words ‘innate’ or ‘intrinsic’ because then we would know you’re talking about attributes indivisible from the thing itself. For example, if we’re talking about alcohol prohibition, a hangover is an innate and intrinsic harm, while getting gunned down by the mob is an extrinsic harm – though, in the wrong legal regime, perhaps a ‘characteristic’ one.2

I believe sexual rights are far more important than alcohol rights – sexuality is baked into us and our countless predecessors, while alcohol is a relatively recent discovery and can be lived without, which is not to say it should be prohibited. Yet comparing our attitudes to sex and alcohol may help expose the inconsistencies in our thinking.

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  1. I’ve decided that I’m not going to use the word “prostitute” very often. It makes as much sense as calling a gay man a “sodomist”. But I enjoyed using the word unflinchingly and unabashedly. I’d do it again if it serves the purpose of provoking bullies like Peter MacKay.

    Lezlie Lowe, Chronicle-Herald – “Defusing the landmines of language”
     ↩

  2. Some definitions of ‘inherent’ do suggest that it means a permanent and inseparable element – for example, Dictionary.com. To me, it merely means to be closely connected with, but not necessarily inseparable. I could be out on a limb here. And here’s what might be a better discussion of this basket of words. That James Champlin Fernald seems like he knows what he’s talking about. ↩

On (Dis)Engagement, Part 1: Trudeau’s pro-choice edict

On (Dis)Engagement: Let’s not act like we all need to think alike on everything (and ideas on how to proceed when we do) :: A two-part essay :: 1 2

“The fundamental political idea of modern times is the presumed moral superiority of centralized control.” – Paul Lutus

This two-parter isn’t actually about abortion, but rather about living in the same country while remaining on speaking terms with one other. The recent revival1 of abortion in our political discourse (pardon my charitable language) makes abortion a timely table-setter for the rest of this essay.

Justin Trudeau

Justin Trudeau in 2009 (Wikipedia)

This past Wednesday, after his party’s weekly caucus meeting, federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said “I have made it clear that future candidates need to be completely understanding that they will be expected to vote pro-choice on any bills.”

I’m pro-choice™ myself, or at least I think I am. But does Trudeau’s definition mean “pro-choice, no matter what?” What if “voting pro-choice” means voting to explicitly permit no-questions-asked abortions at or after, say, 25 weeks, the 50% survival threshold for premature births? Is it so regressive to question the ethics of aborting a fetus that has a strong chance of being viable without further support of the mother? It’s possible to support easy and early abortions but to also have a nuanced position on late-term abortions. You might question the political wisdom of bringing it up, as women aren’t exactly lining up to get late-term abortions (only 2-3% are done after 16 weeks), so this would generate a lot of heat for seemingly no good political or practical reason.2

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  1. CTV News: “Topless protesters disrupt anti-abortion rally on Parliament Hill” ↩

  2. Morally, “one is too many” may be an averable reason. But the evils of the asymptotic effort required to stamp out every last transgression might outweigh the evils of the actual transgressions. ↩

Revisiting Thursday night’s Agenda, on the Fair Elections Act

I felt compelled to share with everyone what I thought was an important discussion of the Fair Elections Act: the Thursday night broadcast of The Agenda on TVO. Unfortunately, a major component of the broadcast was a one-on-one with Pierre Poilievre, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform. Ordinarily I would say that including the minister or member primarily responsible for a piece of legislation in a discussion of said legislation is at least desirable if not essential. Unfortunately, in this case the minister has shown himself again and again1 to be, um, a pants-on friar, and I can’t ethically re-post anything he says without extensive rebuttal. He’s like the Iraqi Information Minister during the 2003 invasion, but not as likeable.

As of yesterday (Friday), there’s good news for everyone and bad news for me. The good news for everyone is that Poilievre is open to changing some parts of the bill – though problematic items remain. The bad news for me is that there was an overnight window during which this post would have been oh, so timely, and I totally missed it.

In the commentary that follows, I’ll be referring to a Globe and Mail piece called “Everything you need to know about the Fair Elections Act”. I won’t comment on everything – just the parts that would make my younger self throw things at the screen.

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  1. In that piece, Nerenberg notes that Poilievre has been doing one-on-one interviews rather than panel appearances. It might be telling that he does not appear in the panel discussion on this show, but availability might be a reason. I haven’t looked into it. ↩

My response to the online consultation on our prostitution laws

Prostitution Réprimée Santé Sacrifiée

Prostitution Réprimée, Santé Sacrifiée / “Repress prostitution, sacrifice health” (William Hamon, Flickr)

Here are my responses to the online consultation on prostitution laws. The consultation ended on March 17, so now I can post what I’ve submitted without unduly influencing the words of other people.1 No doubt better arguments have been made than mine (here’s the response from South Western Ontario Sex Workers, and here’s a response from an author whose sister was murdered by Robert Pickton) – and as my use of the above image2 reminds me, I didn’t really get into the health issues of it and argued on basic principles instead.

Police chiefs were asked for their views, but could not come to a consensus.3

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  1. Apparently some religious authorities didn’t scruple about telling their sheeple what to say. ↩

  2. I don’t really take the argument in this direction, though I happen to agree with the message. ↩

  3. Their having been asked is somewhat problematic. As a friend on Facebook puts it: “It’s not the cops’ job to make laws/speak about laws/have anything to do with law other than hand-cuffing people who broke said law.” ↩

When you win Ontario, do you win it all?

Ontario in Canada

Ontario in present-day Canada (Wikipedia)

Stephen Harper might be representing Calgary Southwest, but his government hinges on Ontario – in the 2011 election, 73 of the CPC‘s 166 seats came from among Ontario’s 106 seats. Alberta contributes a paltry 27 (of its 28 seats) to the cause. This made me wonder, though I’m nigh-absolutely certain I’m not the first to wonder: Is it possible to win without winning Ontario – and therefore, from the runner-up perspective, win Ontario and not win in Canada overall? (Spoiler: Yes.)

In 2011, Ontario held 38.4% of our national population. Quebec is a distant second at 23.6%. If you didn’t get Ontario, can you win without Quebec? (Spoiler: Yes, but it’s vanishingly rare.) And finally, does getting both Ontario and Quebec ‘guarantee’ you’ll win? (Spoiler: Surprisingly, no.)

Deciding what constitutes a minority government is sometimes difficult: here’s a list of minority governments in Canada. I’m not going to spend much time distinguishing between minorities and majorities – for me, a plurality is a win. Even when it sort of isn’t.

Important note: The early elections were much different from today’s, both ethically and procedurally. I only talk about winning, not how the wins were won, if you follow me. Elections Canada has a web-book, A History of the Vote in Canada, whose second chapter talks about early elections and their questionable practices.

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