Think Tank of One

Re-Entering the Fray -- December 8th, 2019 I haven't written anything here for a while, largely because it seemed that it was interfering with my job hunt. However, as the older of us know only too well, Ageism is allowed in this supposed era of tolerance and experience now counts for nothing. At any rate, I have moved from Toronto and am attempting to restart my life elsewhere.... Regardless, the need to observe, to think and to comment could not be set aside. Also, as Polonius says in Hamlet: "To thine own self be true". I cannot really refrain from watching and learning, or from adding my tuppence to the debates of the day. It is time to reclaim one abandoned vehicle and limp forward with it. This is the Winter of our Discontent, for more reasons that any one single person can easily articulate. Even so, in the early 1990s, I had read John Ralston Saul's "Voltaire's Bastards" The Dictatorship of Reason in the West", Christopher Lasch's ""The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy" and was also enjoying P.J. O'Rourke's books -- especially "Parliament of Whores". It wasn't too difficult to sense that trouble was coming, a new generation had embraced Post Modernism, with its divorce from history, reason, and common-sense. Now, more than 25 years later, the transition is complete. What too many of us regard as "Political Correctness" is the order of the day, both the Left and much of what used to be the right have abandoned old principles and hug the news in an expedience that is sugar-coated by the appearance of morality. The currents of any time have to be studied and understood, and Post Modernism is as pernicious as the Romantic bastards of Marxism-Leninism and Nazism of the early 20th Century. Restless protest against this governing ideology are on the increase all over the planet -- except that nobody understands it. Worse, the systemic sabotage of the Western canon of literature and thought of the last 30 years has largely meant that the protest is an inarticulate one. We are heading into a 'culture war' as noisy and unruly as that of the 1960s, but nobody knows what is wrong and how to address it. If there is a danger from demagogues (for and against),our defences against them are weak indeed. We live in more perilous times than most of us realize. Being now at the ripe age of 60, and having been able to keep a good share of my most important books in the personal unrest that has attended the last couple of years, I will become active once more. As a contrarian of mostly conservative orientation, well-read and deeply versed in history and literature, and sometimes fair-minded, maybe I can make a worthwhile contribution. Watch this space.

The 2018 Toronto Gun Surge I have, more or less, called Toronto my home since 1978 when I arrived as first-year university student. This year, however, marked the first time I ever heard gunfire in the streets of Toronto, and I heard it three times. Gunfire isn't unfamiliar to me, I served in the Canadian Forces for 13 years (albeit 13 peaceful ones), and had a civilian career that let me get into trouble a few times too. Nobody shot at me when I was a soldier, I had to wa...Continue reading

Toronto's Emerging Housing Catastrophe It's been a year since I last posted a blog here, largely because I thought being so opinionated was really hurting my chances of finding a new job. I houldn't have bothered, my real handicap was that I am in my late 50s, and that systemic ageism is very real. I remained unemployed, ran down through all my resources, and -- inevitably -- got evicted from the apartment I had occupied for 17 years last April. It has been a wild ride sinc...Continue reading