Confabulation

I had to look it up. I could see some roots in “con” and “fabl” looked like something made up. Google AI and Wikipedia are somewhat different. The first sounds authoritative while the second is, as usual, more nuanced. Both note an association with belief in false memories as a sign of dementia, much confidence that mistaken beliefs are true. It sounds a bit like letting someone off the hook.

A retirement home administrator once talked about current residents dividng them into the young-old and the old-old. As someone closer to her old-old all the time, I don’t like age and dementia as synonyms. But one former American president that we Canadians live next to, had difficulties that I tended to dismiss until I could see them for myself by tuning in to the last five minutes of a presidential debate. Age was not the problem.

I’m therefore concerned that so much of the press is ignoring what is right in front of them. We Canadians are coming to terms with trying to deal with such a person - who insists that we are sending enormous amounts of fentanyl to his country and must be punished. Other candidates for punishment are in the news every day – including his own supporters. It was therefore instructive to read a post this morning by Chris Truax in The Hill about a certain person’s mental decline and asking, “What Now?” as well as adding an unfamiliar word to my vocabulary.

This author believes that confabulation arrived on July 15 with the certain person’s memories of an uncle who had conversations with a serial killer. (We Canadians might put the date much earlier in terms of the fentanyl accusation, but few Americans seemed to worry about that.) The certain person goes on to talk about drug prices apparently being reduced by 1,000 percent and Truax notes that mathematical miscalculations are another symptom. Barack Obama and James Comey didn’t make up the Epstein files. Who appointed Jerome Powell? We know. It also says something about Canadians that a person like me knows all about these stories even from our own daily press. They are not a mystery

Now the US economic numbers are wrong. Blaming Canada gets a pass this yime. Instead, a certain person fires the Commissioner of Labor Statistics. He thinks the head of the Federal Reserve must go so that American can keep “doing GREAT.”

There was another article in the Australian publication, Aeon Weekly, which should give us all pause. It is entitled “How to Run the World” and written by David van Reybrouck, Philosopher Laureate for the Netherlands and Flanders. His main argument is the need for new forms of international diplomacy and is well worth reading. A couple of points struck me in relation to the news of the morning and there are some good aphorisms: “Diplomacy is distrust clad in good manners;” Worlds Fairs in the early twentieth century were “multilateralism for the millions: competitive entertainment where European countries came together to challenge each other.” Multilateralism continued with the creation of international institutions that somehow worked for a long time.

But a new threat has emerged. Climate change. The first bodies to deal with it followed the institutional model of international panels like the International Panel on Climate Change, with the COP conferences of 198 countries. The signings at these conferences, the author states, are the result of four centuries of diplomatic history. We agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels” at COP 29 in December of 2023. We forgot that science had known and warned about the dangers of fossil fuels for thirty years before this. The president of the largest country in the world thinks climate change a hoax. (Confabulation?) Another maxim from the author: “We are unprepared for the storms ahead and unwilling to redesign the vessel.” Nature, he notes, has no national boundaries. We are only beginning to wake up to that reality.

Van Reybrouck goes one to propose elements of innovative design that deserve another post. A commentator on our national television noted last night that after a recent US visit, he sees in Americans a growing understanding of why we Canadians are so upset.

We Canadians can wait for better tariff arrangements, we can buy local products, and we can enjoy vacations in our own country, but it is the responsibility of Americans to do something about a certain person. Protests are good. Holding elected representatives to account for their actions or lack of them is even better.

Sex, Lies and . . .

Traditional online news design creates views of where we are right now. The New York Times website this morning has an article about starvation in Gaza on its left hand side and an obscenely oversized giant hamburger on the right side. Does anyone else see the irony here? News and enterprise compete on nearly every page.

Then there’s the morning Globe & Mail . It’s full yet again of the story of five young hockey players and their interaction with a young woman, who took them to court for sexual assault and lost the case. On other pages. we revisit the Epstein trial and the MAGA world’s obsession with it. We move on to a certain president’s visit to Scotland where he may not receive the greatest welcome ever. It looks as though Canadians are stuck with tariffs coming soon. The Substack types feature “enshittification” all over Substack as though the term were as common as “technology”.

It's so easy to abandon all this and go to the game world of Connections, Wordle, Strands, Letterboxed and Spelling Bee - or even Tri-Mountain Solitaire and Free Cell. Piano practice is more sensible. So is getting back to painting in acrylics, no matter how amateur the result. Doing things we love, in the latter cases, is healthier.

But we can’t avoid the pain and suffering in our world and its foolishness. The additional word to be added to the title is Money.

·       The young hockey players are groomed to line the pockets of the professional leagues. They are a commodity at a very young age.

·       The young woman buys into the glamour of association that their fame and fortune creates.

·       Sex becomes a commodity for both sides here. When it all becomes public both sides lose in spite of a verdict of not-guilty.

·       Starvation is hard to imagine in a world of large hamburgers.

·       Those whose identities are tied up in conspiracy theories have a rough time, when alternative facts run amuck.

·       The Scots are big on values and honesty. We’ll no doubt read more about how that one plays out.

·       Tariffs affect all the players. We’re waiting for that movie too.

·       “Enshittification” is now the word of the year and you can watch at least three YouTube videos that explain it. But there used to be some good old words to use for many of these situations. They were pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Those still seem to cover the waterfront.  If we want to move beyond them we just might have to do more about the last one.

Choices

It is hard not to get emotionally involved with current bullying from the south. If you google bullying, It mainly responds to school-yard events. It’s tempting but not too productive to think of it that way. Even mainstream news media reports with a “Can you believe this?” without any correction.

Canadians need to stay calm, but at the same time respond to threats with firmness and name the lies. A US president proclaims that things have never been better in his country one minute and then plays victim in the next. While the constitution names some rights to impose tariffs, in several cases, this guy is just breaking the law to assert personal power.

We might do a few things:

• Say “STOP LYING”.

• Say nothing.

• Laugh at someone who is being rediculous and pathetic.

• Be unimpressed.

• Stop negotiating.

• Wait.

• Talk to friends - personal and international.

• Trust those who are trustworthy.

Other

It’s Pride Month in Canada and there will be the usual parades across the country. While I don’t normally attend them, I commend that they still happen as a reminder, even though we also have a charter of rights and freedoms. That’s why reading American Supreme Court and other legal decisions is so depressing. A side issue is the way news media always names the party in power when a judge was appointed as a rationale for the decision... I have no idea of the party affiliation of any Canadian judge, nor do I care. I still trust judges to be nonpartisan – and I still trust the system as a whole. If there have been bad decisions in the past, new knowledge and new understandings can change them for the better.

But what is common to recent decisions is the US political sphere in almost a knee jerk reaction – cynical acceptance of the decision in advance or even surprise. What is sobering is the dismissal of the “other.” It’s everyone for themselves” in a dog-eat-dog world. But it’s deeper than that. Whether believing, agnostic or atheist, the speaker often reveals his definition of the divine.

I continue to be a person who tries to practise my understanding of my faith. Karen Armstrong quotes a monk who once stated, “It doesn’t matter what you believe – but it does matter what you practice.” Maybe that idea gets it right. If you believe in a deity that punishes, you live in fear – for yourself and for those you care about. You need to do whatever it takes to feel safe. Protecting leads to becoming defensive – and the right to defend seems now to be the right to be violent against anyone who is perceived as the other.

In a recent hearing here was a response to Senator Slotkin who quoted from a memoire, “Senator, I’d be careful of what you read in books and believing it — except for the Bible,” he said. The speaker was the United States Secretary of Defense. What does he believe?

And that’s where we now - in serious trouble. Even though he and I both might call ourselves Christian, we seem to have big differences about the contents and directives of that book, Reading it in many translations, seeing splits and wars in empires based on interpretations as small as the single word, “and” in a creed –. Beliefs lead to actions.

I don’t always know what I believe. Unlike most of my family and friends, I stick it out in a faith community because I’d rather be able to attack it from the inside if I need to. But it is because of what all its community teaches me – not just the official leaders or hierarchies, though some of them are models too. Thar community saves me from that fear of the other.

When I do see that fear in action in other parts of my life, I try not to become fearful of its consequences. If life is a gift, we are neither gods nor objects. As Simone Weil said, the past and the future are our only treasures. We have the gift of insight into ways our world could be better – and we can do some small things to make that happen.

We all depend on those others – first parents, then friends and colleagues and so many others, past and present, that make our lives possible in ways we can never know. To humiliate others, to torture others, to remove others is never the answer. We are watching a regime unfold in which everyone is suddenly becoming the enemy – a different color of skin, a different political party, a different view of the law, a different gender or orientation, a different view of science. It's not just sad. We can learn from history. It’s another country on a route of self-destruction. It’s even more important to live in my own country and take steps, however small, to make it the place I want it to be – compassionate, creative, courageous – and beautiful.

Serious - here in Canada

I have found that reading conventional news articles is somewhat lacking in their reporting of how strange the US now really is. Outlets like the New York Times dutifully report the outrageous things that Mr. Trump says. as though these were the normal way for a world leader to talk. I know the difference between reporting and opinion columns, and I admire the distinction when it is made. But are endless lawsuits, violent arrests, attacks on universities normal? I am also aware that news outlets are moderating articles and that explains why Paul Krugman and Jennifer Rubin are now writing on Substack. You cannot keep them down. Freed from scrutiny, they are posting at least once every day.

I am also paying much more attention to local news. We recently had a half hour show from CBC featuring Timothy Snyder – later clipped for TV inserts, but the full interview is much better. The local morning newspaper is full of reports about our Canadian coping in the face of ongoing threats of tariffs. Paul Krugman is right about the unseriousness at home. Jennfer Rubin is right about words that have been highjacked – like “emergency.” We are serious here in Canada – even optimistic that our new government is taking our new reality seriously.

And Snyder has been moved to explain why he moved to Canada, because resident Americans have accused him and his wife of forsaking them. He is at pains to respond to the charges on his own Substack with some fact checks:

·       Charge: He left during the Trump administration. Untrue. He left during the Biden administration and even after the move, he was frequently campaigning in the US. Have a look at the number of YouTube videos that feature him.

·       Charge: His move relates to the election. Untrue. Both he and his wife have been courted by the University of Toronto three times in the past 20 years and the third was the decisive one. People migrate. People also look for new opportunities and this move provided some good ones, including lecturing to far greater numbers of students than at Yale and influencing them. Cross border countries have an influence on the US now as they have done in the past.

·       Charge: Snyder is a coward. Fact Check. How many of his critics have visited Ukraine and put themselves in the line of fire as he has done? People need to be as courageous as they can be, wherever they are.

·       Charge: The move is not progressive enough; Fact Check: Toronto, of all the Great Lake Cities he has known since he was a child, has done the best job compared to the others. As a large public one, The University of Toronto allows him to reach more students, who are multiculturally diverse and pay lower fees. The new assignment does not negate his love of and respect for Yale. Coming to this new situation represents a positive development for an academic like him.

·       Charge: He is not engaged with America. Fact Check. Simply look at the record, much too lengthy to summarize here. Through his books and their many translations, he is known and respected as a writer and speaker in America and around the world. His books are about the present and the future of America. Both Vance and Musk have loudly criticized him.

·       Charge: Canada cannot be taken seriously. Fact Check. American provincialism and exceptionalism blind folks to the reality of other places, their characteristics and importance. But some of the countries like Canada are ones working to hold Mr. Trump back. Resistance can happen without staying. The US is too often adapting, rationalizing and buck-passing. Canada is acting and developing solidarity to deal with a crisis it did not create. You can do democracy work from anywhere and he has done so in living in many parts of the world.

The lesson. In speaking personally he says, “Stop sweeping people away that you don’t agree with.” Criticism or dismissiveness are not actions. They are exactly how authoritarianism works. Dismissiveness is Trumpism – how he came to power and how he stays in it, where all that matters is power and spectacle. Instead, work with somebody else or groups to do things, however small, to make the world better - or as the Canadian national anthem says – strong and free. Action means imperfect people working together.