Reaction to U.S. politics takes shape

Halfway through this summer of discontent and rising nonsense

Let’s put everyone with a sense of humour in front of the line of this rag-tag, unorganized, grassroots movement being born in Peterborough: “The Anti trump Resistance” in Canada. (We don’t capitalize the man’s name, because it is more than just him).

Leading the parade will be the likes of political cartoonist Michael de Adder and his colleague, Bruce MacKinnon of the Halifax Chronicle Herald, who have an uncanny finger on our national pulse. Today’s cartoon by de Adder, who is a New Brunswicker with a degree from Mount Allison, shows a pudgy Canadian in a ball cap offering a pint can to two astonished Americans with heavy-duty guns. “This is open-carry in Canada,” he says.

Where, oh where is Rick Mercer when we most need him? This summer of discontent and rising nonsense, ripe for the satirist’s plucking.

Jokesters must be favoured in the first rank of our movement, since, as de Adder says, “We all have a reason to be stressed.” Everybody I meet is stressed.

Around the globe, news is made and re-made by a man whom conservative columnist George Will describes in the Washington Post, as “a sad, embarrassing wreck of a man.”

My tongue-in-cheek column last week recommended the neighbourhood barbecue as a powerful, subversive activity meant to build social capital and solidarity. This week, brighter minds than mine have sent me the following wisdom:

“For heaven’s sake, strengthen the study of Canadian history in our schools! Do you know that a high school grad needs only one course in Canada’s history? One! How can we know and value and defend liberal democracy with such puny exposure?”

Yes, let’s really get all of us expert on Canada’s past: the glorious and the inglorious, the heroic and the racist, the slow walk, without a civil war, to independence, finally sealed in 1982, (Seems a very sensible pace, now).

Absorb our inspired Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which, to their communal detriment, the Americans do not have.

Learn about our costly internationalism through two world wars.

“For social solidarity and to prevent widening the gap between rich and poor, we need political decisions of an enlightened kind, such things as a decent guaranteed income, and single -payer health and education,” another wrote.

Private philanthropy, on which so many Americans depend, is not the answer. Social sharing, the redistribution of wealth through fair taxation, is.

Ideas kept coming. “Psychologically, people need to belong to the community. A doctor told me that that loneliness is next to heart disease as an ailment of the aged.”

“Keep and increase public spaces; playgrounds, community gardens, DIY hockey and skating pads, picnic tables everywhere, so citizens (and don’t call us 'taxpayers,' please), can engage and meet one another.”

“Get us weaned off the automobile

‘Take the heart, the emotions, the feelings of a people into account more fully: Tell the stories of human goodness. They have a multiplying effect.’

with good bus service, widespread cycle paths and a change in driver attitudes.”

“Don’t let up on pressure to preserve what has been gained in sexual and reproductive rights in Canada.”

“Challenge the talented retirees moving to Peterborough to lend their skills: On boards, with civic and volunteer associations. There is no retiring from life or from the need to be useful.”

“Practise meeting one newcomer a week: At the NCC or in the neighborhood or at work or at the doctor’s office. Maybe take a rebuff or two, but go at it again.”

“Make Peterborough’s slogan “You’re welcome here.” (In Africa, they would add: “now pick up a hoe.”)

“Take the heart, the emotions, the feelings of a people into account more fully: Tell the stories of human goodness. They have a multiplying effect,” one wrote.

“Dire predictions about climate disaster fuel fear. Show that successful efforts are being made here and everywhere to reduce carbon emissions and must be speeded up.”

Many of these resisters turned up on July 21 for an important run at civil engagement: protesting Premier Doug Ford’s repeal of the progressive 2015 sex ed curriculum.

I can see the movement gathering steam.