The Citizen, 2019-07-18, Page 5Other Views
Racism and other leaders’ qualities
Nature’s summer entertainment Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
As far as divisionary political tactics go,
telling someone to go back to the
“broken and crime-infested places
from which they came” may have been a
misstep for United States President Donald
Trump.
Recently, Trump Tweeted a diatribe
attacking “‘Progressive’ Democrat
Congresswomen who originally came from
countries whose governments are a complete
and total catastrophe”. It’s widely believed the
Tweet was directed at a group of four U.S.
congresswomen who have a diverse collection
of backgrounds, though all but one of them
were born in the United States.
The congresswomen are colloquially called
“the squad” and include Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez of New York (an American-born Puerto
Rican descendant); Ayanna Pressley, the first
black woman elected to the House from
Massachusetts, who was born in Cincinnati;
Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar, a
Somali native who immigrated to the United
States at the age of 12 after spending her
childhood in Kenyan refugee camps and
Rashida Tlaib who was born in Detroit and
represents Michigan.
The Tweet was a blatant attempt by Trump
to try and drive a wedge between the
Democratic congresswomen and Democratic
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, but I think
it may have backfired.
Pelosi has, in recent days, been
attempting to mitigate “the squad’s” influence,
which resulted in Ocasio-Cortez to accuse
Pelosi of trying to suppress women of
colour.
Trump couched his Tweet in defense
of Pelosi, stating she is not a racist, which
we can believe, because it takes one to know
one.
Before any Canadian Trump supporters
start writing angry letters to The Citizen
arguing that Trump isn’t racist, do
your research. He targeted President Barack
Obama because he was foreign (which he
wasn’t), he has called the men of an entire
race rapists, he refers to non-majority-
white countries as “shitholes” and he does
anything but try to stop racism within the U.S.
borders.
If that’s not enough to convince you, then
I’ll just promise you this: if you defend him
against claims of racism, I’m not going to
waste time reading it, so don’t bother writing
it.
Trump’s racist Tweet didn’t achieve the
division he sought. Instead of further driving
Pelosi and the “the squad” apart, Trump’s
remarks have resulted in a near-unanimous
recognition of his racist tendencies, even from
those formerly from his own party.
Pelosi, turning Trump’s “Make America
Great Again” slogan on its ear, said he was
trying to “Make America White Again”.
Ocasio-Cortez reminded Trump that the
country she comes from is the United States,
and reminded him that all politicians swear to
serve that country.
Former Republican Representative Justin
Amash of Michigan called Trump’s Tweet
“racist and disgusting”.
Why should this matter to people from
Huron County?
Well time and time again I hear people
compare our current Premier Doug Ford to
Donald Trump and, depending on who is
making the comparison, it’s either meant to
damn Ford or praise him.
While Ford certainly isn’t as overtly racist as
Trump, he has had his moments like slashing
anti-racism initiatives and struggling to
denounce white supremacy after being linked
to Toronto mayoral candidate Faith Goldy who
has made claims that there is a “white
genocide” in Canada.
Am I calling Ford a racist in the same vein
as Trump? No. What I’m saying is that we
need to expect better of our politicians than a
minority (a minority that was able to elect
Trump, but a minority nonetheless) of our
neighbours to the south.
We need our politicians to stand up for what
Canadians believe in, and I don’t mean that
flippantly.
When our forefathers fought in the World
Wars, it was for freedom, not freedom if you
happen to have the right colour of skin or a ‘Y’
chromosome.
We need Ford to openly state that racism has
no place in Ontario and anyone who stands for
it, whether veiled or blatantly, should have no
place in politics.
We need initiatives and education that
have a goal of eliminating racism,
sexism, homophobia, transphobia and
bigotry. We need these now more than ever
thanks to the political influence south of the
border.
We need politicians who are willing to take
a stand against those who inspire hate.
What we don’t need is someone who can be
compared to Trump, whether the intent is
praise or damnation. We need politicians and
leaders who are beyond that kind of
comparison.
So call on your local representatives and
make sure the message that southwestern
Ontario is sending is the correct one of hope
and love.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 18, 2019. PAGE 5.
4 stars, no washroom
If anyone took the time to read our recent
Valedictorian speeches, you’ll see that
thanking Google and Wikipedia for an
education has become as normal as thanking
God when you win an Oscar. (Actually,
statistics say director Steven Spielberg is
beating God in Oscar speech mentions. God is
actually tied with Harvey Weinstein. Ouch.)
Googling things is just a way of life now.
You see an actor on television and you wonder
what he was in – Google it. You no longer
have to agonize over it for days. You make a
bet with a friend – someone’s paying up in a
matter of seconds. No need to wait.
As both a reporter and an editor of other
reporters, you can imagine I Google a lot.
Whether it’s a spelling, a location, a business,
it’s necessary to have it right. As a result, I
have found that a stunning amount of people
have taken the time to review things on Google
you never thought demanded a review.
If you Google a restaurant or a movie, sure,
it makes sense to see out-of-five-star reviews,
but others I’ve come across are just strange.
One of the first ones I came across was the
Pacific Ocean. Googling whether or not to
capitalize the “O” on Ocean (you do) I saw
that the Pacific has a solid 3.5-star rating
among the 21,705 people who have reviewed
it. Sounds pretty good... until you Google the
Atlantic and see its 3.9-star rating, though only
reviewed by half the people. (Indian Ocean:
4.2; Southern Ocean, 3.2 and Arctic Ocean,
3.3 – just to round things out.)
Our own beloved Lake Huron carries a 4.7-
star rating, which is pretty good for the Great
Lakes (tied for top with Lake Superior). A
recent review complaining about the lack of a
clean washroom, however, left me stumped.
I was surprised to see that the Kingston
Penitentiary had a 4.6-star rating, only to find
out that the ratings pertained to tours of the
now-closed jail. I had not-so-secretly hoped it
would be full of former prisoners reviewing
the facility and dishing the dirt.
Of course, Google can quickly become a
place to let your partisan flag fly. The White
House, for example, has garnered a few one-
star reviews since it came under, to quote one
reviewer, new management.
Queen’s Park has also fallen victim. Though
carrying a robust 4.3 review, some reviewers
weren’t that impressed with the “house of lies”
in the centre of Toronto.
Niagara Falls is certainly a fan favourite
with a 4.9-star rating – one percentage point
higher than the American falls. Eat it, Trump.
Speaking of Niagara Falls, hundreds of
people took the time to rate and review
municipal parking lots around the falls.
(Convenient, but a bit pricey, if you’re
wondering – though one person classified one
lot as a good picnic spot, so there’s that.)
For the longest time, there was a bad review
of Blyth online from someone who was angry
because his bike had been stolen there. The
village, however, has since pulled through.
I’ve come across a few in the weeks leading
up to a trip to Newfoundland this August with
Jess. A monument to the location where Terry
Fox began his iconic Marathon of Hope earned
a few one-star reviews for being “hard to find”
and in a “bad location”. Folks, that’s where
Terry started – not much can change that.
The internet is a great thing and it’s given
everyone a voice, but you have to wonder
about the people who take the time to review
bodies of water and some of the other oddities
you find on Google.
And when it comes to oceans, I wouldn’t
take anyone’s word for it. Go yourself.
Nature is usually a mixed bag, neither all
good nor all bad. Take, for example,
the mulberry tree growing outside our
kitchen window.
Now this is not one of those decorative,
weeping mulberry trees, the kind you see in
trimly landscaped suburban lots. This is an old-
fashioned, mid-sized tree that this time of year
is covered with berries so dark blue they almost
seem black. It’s the bane of my wife’s
existence because when birds eat these blue-
almost-black berries in one end, they leave big
blue-almost-purple stains from the other. All
over the porch, the porch railing, the sidewalk.
There are a lot of berries, which means a lot of
birds and a lot of stains. The berries ripen over
several weeks so it means this isn’t a
momentary misery.
But then there’s the other side of this messy
equation – the glorious view of nature we see
out the kitchen window at all times of the day.
Naturally there are robins – and the mothers
bring their teenaged first summer generation to
introduce them to the plentiful berries. Less
evident are the cedar waxwings that flutter,
almost silently, into and out of the tree.
Now and then you’ll get a peek at them, as neat
and tidy as men dressed in those brownish
tuxedos.
Lately we’ve been entertained by a hen
turkey and her three growing chicks. (We’re
hoping this isn’t the same hen we saw earlier
with a dozen or so tiny chicks!) Several times a
day the foursome arrives under the tree to feed
on the berries that have been dropped from the
tree by careless robins, cedar waxwings and
other berry-eating birds.
Shortly before I sat down to write this,
however, we noticed a huge shadow up in the
tree against the morning sun. A closer look
revealed it was the mother turkey, not content
to wait for other birds to deliver a meal to the
ground so she flew up to take first choice.
Eventually she dropped to the ground. Slowly,
one by one, the three young turkeys hopped
down too. How they managed to fly up into the
tree with their still barely-feathered wings
remains a mystery.
A few years ago it was a family of young
fox pups that provided the entertainment. Day
after day they arrived to munch on the sweet
berries on the ground, then take an opportunity
to play-fight with their brothers and sisters. We
never saw any parents around and hoped that
they hadn’t been killed, leaving these
youngsters on their own. When the berries ran
out, so did our entertainment.
It may have been a touch of nostalgia
that tempted me to plant the mulberry tree in
the first place. When I was a kid, one of my
uncles, who was a carpenter, built a tiny house
for my grandmother after my grandfather had
been killed suddenly in a car accident. My
father lent a hand and took my brother and me
along. There was a large mulberry tree in the
front yard and my brother and I spent the day
up in the tree eating berries. I’m sure my
mother thanked my father for the purple
stains that, inevitably, must have ruined our
clothes.
After we moved to our country property I
was still in my 1960s, self-sufficient, back-to-
the-land phase (I’ve always been a little late
catching on to fashion so this was the late
1970s) so I planted all sorts of fruit trees –
an apple orchard, plums, cherries, even a
peach. The apples are still growing strong but
the soft fruits have long since died. In fact the
mulberry occupies the space once meant for
the cherry.
You can’t kill a mulberry, it seems. Well
you almost can. Once, many years ago, this
tree seemed to have died. I cut it to the ground
but then the stump sprouted a shoot and soon
we had a tree growing again.
One of the other annoyances of the tree,
besides the bird-stain problem, is that it’s
messy in another way. Branches are always
dying and falling on the lawn, needing to be
picked up and disposed of. But even here,
nature has compensations. The thin tips at the
end of dead branches make perfect perches for
tiny hummingbirds so we often get to watch
them as they flit from the tree to the feeder and
back again.
Because the tree is relatively short and there
are three large limbs that branch off from the
main trunk, it makes an inviting challenge for
our youngest grandchildren to climb up. Their
parents find this offers some cute photo
opportunities, armed as their generation is with
ever-present cellphone cameras.
The future of the tree still hangs in the
balance. One of its large branches died over the
winter and needs to be removed. For a couple
of years now I’ve been debating whether or not
the whole tree should come down. My wife
sometimes complains that it blocks the view
from our kitchen window across the fields and
up the hill to our neighbour’s house.
I suspect that mother turkey and her chicks
and the tuxedoed cedar waxwings may buy the
tree some more time. That and the fact it’s
summertime and I’m feeling lazy.
Keith
Roulston
From the
cluttered desk