As a kid I
distinctly remember the yearly Remembrance Day services at our schools. It was
a very solemn and serious occasion. We were taught to respect and treasure our
Veterans, for putting their lives on the line so we could live in freedom. My
parents, immigrants from Germany, warned of the dangers of Nationalism. I grew up in the time of the cold war and we
were taught about the importance of alliances, of working together, and the value
of knocking down borders and walls.
Here we are
today 30+ years later, and we have a new U.S. President that denounces
alliances, insults allies and is pushing hard to build new walls. And now with my young son watching the 100th
anniversary or the end of WW1, I have to answer his question of why the current
American President is not attending. How do you explain that to a 10-year-old? How do I explain it to myself?
We are
incredibly fortunate to be living in Canada, arguably the best country in the world
to live in 2018. It’s easily one of the top 5 best places to raise a
family. But we are not immune to what
ails the world these days. We can become
complacent or arrogant, thinking the politics of hate, division, racism,
nationalism won’t come here… but it is here.
We see it with media organizations like Rebel Media, with Mayoral
candidates like Faith Goldy, and with Alt Right social media trolls that spread
hate and intolerance. So as a parent how
do we sift through this information and teach our children the difference
between valid differences of opinion, versus hate and fear mongering? Is shutting down hate speech, and calling out
lies, an attack on freedom of speech?
How do we teach
our kids to respect tradition, and to be truthful, when political leaders
blatantly lie, repeatedly & brazenly?
And we have political “leaders” that show no respect to tradition, legal
processes, or convention. How is it that the supposed leader of the free world could
avoid a Remembrance Day ceremony in France, choosing instead to launch insults
on Twitter? I guess I was naïve when 3 years ago I didn’t imagine such a thing
could be possible.
We can bury our
heads in the sand, but in my backyard, a Mayoral Candidate that has been
charged with hate crimes, managed to get over 13% of the vote? Who are these voters?
These people? What are they teaching their kids? What are they teaching them about
LGBTQ rights? What are they teaching their kids about immigrants, refugees, and
Muslims or Jews? These people live in our neighbourhoods. Their kids go to our
schools.
I took my son
on a road trip to the Ford Museum in Detroit, on display is the bus where Rosa Parks
refused to give up her seat, and water fountains from the segregation era
marked “whites” and “coloreds”. It was a great teaching opportunity. We would
like to think the battles of the 60’s are behind us, then we have white supremacists
running for political office in our municipal and provincial elections?!
We teach our
kids about love and tolerance, we teach them that colour, race, religion is not
about making people more than or less than, or right or wrong. And than we come home to find hate literature
in our mailbox. Some may say
that I am over reacting, and this is all much ado about nothing. But I don’t believe
that to be the case. There is an
undercurrent of discontent that many political leaders refuse to address, or
worse, they feel they can use it to their advantage. But much of that
discontent comes from the growing disparity between the very rich and everyone
else. It’s time we stopped judging the economy on how well the rich are doing. Until our “moderate” leadership accept the
facts of this discontent and address it, the hate and resentment will continue
to grow.
So…what is the
answer? I wish I could see a clear path out of this mess, but I don’t. What I do know is that when good people stay home
on election day and remain quiet in their communities it gives licence to the chaos.
We need to find our voices, and our courage to use them with our kids, our families,
our neighbours, our schools, and with our politicians.
