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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-06-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2009. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt As long as people worship Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will arise to make them miserable. – Aldous Huxley Iown a book entitled The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush. It is not a satire and it was not written tongue-in-cheek. It was penned and published in all seriousness, back in 2003, early in the 43rd president’s mandate, before his career turned into a careen and his cartwheeling catalogue of colossal disasters became embarrassingly obvious to all but the most blinkered Republican diehards. Point is, such diehards still exist. There are people – plenty of them – who still believe that Dubya was a great president and a misunderstood hero of his time. Yes, Virginia, dinosaurs do roam the earth. And not exclusively in America. Recently, the citizens of Russian were asked to select The Greatest Russian of All Time. There’s a challenge – Russia’s produced literary giants like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev to pick a random half-dozen. And Russian musical geniuses – Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich spring to mind. Pianists like Horowitz and Richter; violinists such as Oistrakh, and Rostropovich; dancers from Nijinsky to Nureyev… Russia has given the world outstanding philosophers, engineers, statesmen, athletes – name a category and it wouldn’t be hard to appoint a Russian name to it. So who did Russians pick as the All Time Greatest Russian? A 13th century saint, prince and politician by the name of Alexander Nevsky, actually – but that’s not what caught my eye. Neither was the chap who notched second place, a Russian prime minister from the early 1900’s named Stolypin. Nope, what got my attention was the guy who took the bronze. Third most popular Russian of all time, chosen freely and without coercion by 50 million voters? Joseph Stalin. Think about that for a moment, tovarich. Joe Stalin: one of the greatest mass murderers and certifiable madmen of all time. A megalomaniacal drunk who had his enemies either murdered outright by firing squad or lingeringly in brutal Siberian prison camps. They reckon Stalin had at least 800,000 enemies executed. Another 1.7 million ‘officially’ perished in the Gulags. Nobody knows the final tally but it’s somewhere between 3 million and 60 million souls. Almost all of them his own countrymen. And their descendants regard him as a hero? It’s not like the vote was a fluke. In an earlier poll, Stalin came in second. And in a 2006 survey nearly 40 per cent said they would vote for Stalin if he were still alive. What is in human nature that makes so many of us eager to polish our manacles and kiss the cat o’ nine tails? Not hard to figure out in a country like North Korea where to diss the repulsive runt who likes to be called Dear Leader can get you killed on the spot – but why Russia? Stalin’s been dead for more than half a century and the Putin regime goes to great lengths to distance itself from his grisly legacy. How come millions of Russians still think Joe was a stand-up guy? Even weirder – look at Britain. The English have been tugging their forelocks and prostrating themselves before royalty ever since a guy named Offa, son of Thingfrith convinced them it would be a good idea, back in 774 AD. Offa no doubt had some muscle for backup, but nowadays? Nobody’s going to get sent to the Tower by royal edict yet still there are staunch loyalists who are happy to pledge loyalty to a family based solely on their DNA. Granted, Britons have an admirable and worthy woman as Queen currently, but they’ve been equally reverent and deferential when the throne was occupied by dipsomaniacs, syphilitics, lechers and raving loons. Mao Zedong, another monster and a contemporary of Stalin, once mused that his ‘popularity’ was a consequence of his superhuman charisma. “People like me to sound like a lot of big cannons,” he explained. I expect that Mao merely like to think that he came across as a cannon barrage, whereas he was really just a dumpy little guy with mossy green teeth, halitosis that could blister paint and a penchant for deflowering underage girls. Stalin, too, had delusions of grandeur. His real name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili but he preferred Stalin (it means man of steel). Alas, the Butcher of Georgia was made of less durable stuff. Stalin was only five foot four, had a crippled left arm, pockmarks all over his face and, at his death, only three teeth in his mouth. But people don’t buy reality; they buy images. That’s how we got The Great Helmsman and the Man of Steel. And that leadership genius George W. Bush. Arthur Black Other Views Heroes with feats of clay Ontario’s opposition Progressive Conservatives needed to inject some optimism into a leadership campaign that has gone badly off track and the governing Liberals suddenly are providing it. The Conservatives’ race has produced a few policy ideas worth considering, but has been dominated by unnecessary backbiting over an issue that cannot help, but only hurt their party, a push by two candidates to scrap or severely restrict powers of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and tribunals that investigate alleged abuse. Extreme right-wingers have been worked up over this, but few in the public care about it. The Commission, starting half-a-century ago, and tribunals with a few aberrations, have done worthwhile jobs protecting against discrimination and the party needs to move on quickly to other issues and hope voters forget it flirted with this one. The race also has struggled because of a widespread feeling the Liberals under Premier Dalton McGuinty, despite the economic recession, have enough support, 47 per cent, in polls to win a third successive election, and whoever the Conservatives choose will not matter anyway. But the Conservatives are fortunate in having an issue that could help invigorate them dropped in their lap. It has been revealed that the health ministry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars setting up a still unfinished electronic records system wasting money on it spectacularly at a time it lacks money to fund real healthcare, including reducing wait times in hospitals. The Liberals have paid $2,700 a day to individual consultants who were mean enough to charge the taxpayer an extra $1.39 every time they bought a muffin and $1.59 for a can of pop. This is at a time when many residents are particularly hurting through job losses. It is the sort of waste taxpayers easily relate to, while overspending millions is so remote from their lives it sometimes goes over their heads. Parallels were seen in the uproar over nannies, hired to look after children, being forced to work unpaid overtime washing an MP’s car, and an environment minister building Ontario’s biggest garage at her home for her family’s gas-guzzlers, for which she lost her job. These are down-to-earth failings people can recognize and do not accept. Most residents had not blamed McGuinty for the economic recession that has cost tens of thousands of jobs in Ontario, because they saw this happening elsewhere and attributed its start particularly to financial institutions pushing credit on people in the United States who had no hope of repaying. But the Liberals’ waste on electronic health information has started to focus attention on the whole issue of Liberal spending, some aspects of which have been overlooked. The Liberals first said their deficit this year would be $14 billion and most residents appeared to accept this extraordinary shortfall was necessary to preserve jobs. But it has jumped to $18 billion and prompted a wave of charges they cannot be relied on and are dithering. The Conservatives have an opportunity to remind that the Liberals lost more than $100 million investing in those shaky sub-prime mortgages forced on U.S. residents, a huge error of judgment they have never fully explained. The Tories will be able to recall the Liberals were caught helping children’s aid societies pay for top-of-the-line, gas-guzzling SUVs for employees to drive in their jobs, and $2,000-a- year gym memberships to relieve their stress, while they did not have enough to pay for programs children need. The Conservatives are able to remind that David Caplan, the health minister responsible for making sure those overpaid consultants got free muffins, was not long ago, the minister in charge of lotteries, who failed to protect ticket buyers from cheating retailers. The Conservatives are demanding McGuinty fire Caplan this time and the premier, struggling to defend the indefensible, must wish he had done so earlier and may have to put him in a less visible role when the heat cools down. The Conservative leadership that seemed a booby prize is looking more like a job worth having. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Music played, the sun shone, and the summer heat warmed. The merry chatter of the children drifted along on a gentle breeze. Oblivious of the crowded streets they skipped boisterously past shuffling feet, strollers and pausers. It was the first family outing of the summer, a return to a favourite vacation destination and they were eager to visit all the familiar haunts and do all the familiar things. At this moment they were heading to the fun little restaurant they knew so well. For days leading up to the holiday, the kids had bubblingly babbled on about the music and menu. They knew what to order and had been salivating for the mouth-watering four-cheese pizza. They loved the din and chaos of the congested eatery, that the root beer came in bottles that looked like beer bottles, and the cheesy tunes from the player piano. Oh, yes, the plan was in place and their steps got even livelier as they neared the eatery. But then, suddenly and out of nowhere, Dad suggested a change in plans. Why not pick up some food and have a picnic by the river, he mused. A what?! What could he possibly be thinking? Well, it’s a couple of decades later and I know now exactly what he was thinking. Our family had taken this little holiday for several years. It was tradition, from beginning to end. We looked forward to certain parts of it and to stray meant not being able to experience something we had anticipated. But, had we listened to my poor outnumbered husband that day we might have discovered something we enjoyed equally as much. While the outing was all about family, a picnic would have provided a relaxing time, perfect to appreciate nature’s beauty and each other’s company. Instead of taking in the circus created by a crowd in a confined space, we could have spread out under blue skies and open air. I haven’t thought about that day much in the years that have followed. And I can’t remember ever going on a picnic since. They have simply not been my preferred eating out experience. But a comment tossed out during casual conversation recently about picnic potential on an upcoming mini-holiday, stirred some dormant memories, of open trunks, wicker baskets, bounty spread out on blankets, and sated bodies spread out on green grass. Of conversation as slow and easy as the drone of the nearby hovering bee. Of fresh air, blue sky and bright sun simultaneously relaxing and reviving. As a child I went on picnics. They didn’t have the same feeling of ‘event’that going to a restaurant had. I couldn’t order a shake or get French fries. There was no busy-ness to amuse. But they were, in their own way, fun. What changed? As I do after all, very much enjoy dining al fresco, I suspect the extra work and planning required to put together a picnic, rather than grab a burger enroute might have something to do with it. But that’s no excuse when the work can be done for you. So, that casual comment noted above, though initially given short shrift by me, has been replaying in my mind and gradually gaining a spark of enthusiasm. The suggestion was a prepared picnic to be enjoyed beside a waterfall in the woods. It’s good to know there’s still a part of my brain sharp enough to see the value in this different dining experience. Tory race gets some optimism Dining out There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. – Aldous Huxley Final Thought