Death and Taxes

Nothing is certain, they say, but death and taxes. I’m not so sure. Death has been a target of scientists and dreamers for generations. So far, death is winning. Though lives have gotten longer – largely due to improvements in sanitation and nutrition and vaccines and antibiotics that prevent early death– the gains have so far been marginal. And while more people are living longer, the maximum age has not increased much at all. A few years or a few decades seem to be the best we can do. Some new studies that suggest that reducing people’s stress is one way to lengthen lives and make people healthier and more active once they do get old. Doctors and yoga teachers are doing what they can; newscasters and politicians seem to be working in the opposite direction.

And of course if the climate reaches the tipping point it all becomes fairly moot.

So while death continues to be certain, taxes are a whole other thing. Thanks to the endless tinkering of lawmakers, tax systems in the most countries in the world have become ridiculously complex and increasingly opaque. Rich people – and lot of middle class folks as well – have seen the amount of taxes they pay fall to zero through a combination of loopholes, deductions, tax credits, tax shelters, and, of course, outright fraud. Avoiding taxes seems to be a national sport in some quarters.

There is little that can be done about the 4% or so of chronic cheats – those who prefer to game the system even if they are already winning at it (other than hunt them down and put them in jail). Whether you are talking about welfare systems or Ponzi schemes, there are always a few who will take advantage of deceit to get ahead. Of course, when we are dealing with the welfare system we are talking about a few hundred dollars at a time; rich tax evaders skip out with millions or even tens of millions each.

A truly courageous government would make revising the tax system a number one priority. It is a daunting task. Most tax codes run to hundreds or even thousands of pages and even experts can be surprised at some of the provisions. A lot of the things included in tax law are put there for, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, honourable reasons.

Take for example the tax deduction for your bus pass. The idea was that this would encourage people to take public transit. In fact, more than 90% of the people who claim it were already taking the bus. They were being paid to do something they were happy to do anyway. Studies have shown that if the same money had been spent on improving infrastructure, ridership would have  increased by more than a few percent.

Both the Canadian and the American tax system are filled with similar boutique tax credits – giving money to people for things they would do anyway and almost always benefitting the middle class and the rich while providing nothing to those who actually need a hand up.

Will the new government in Canada or the next one in the United States do the right thing and simplify the code so everyone is one a level playing field? Not bloody likely. There are plenty of points to be gained by adding yet another little deduction and almost none to be made by requiring those who currently avoid the inevitability of taxes to pay their fair share.

And that’s ten minutes.

Domestic Violence

Three women were shot near Ottawa on Tuesday – killed by a man who had recently been released from prison for assault and choking charges. Two of the women were ex-girlfriends while the relationship with the third is not yet clear. After his rampage he was heading to Ottawa, apparently to seek vengeance on lawyers or to attack the Court. The downtown was briefly locked down and we were warned to stay in our office. Fortunately he was captured without incident and is now facing three first degree murder charges.

He will undoubtedly spend the rest of his life in prison (he is already 57) though that is little consolation to the family and friends of the women he murdered.

Now there is a lot of soul searching going on as to what could have been done to prevent this tragedy. Did the courts or prison system fail? Did the community fail? Though as one women who campaigns against domestic violence put it: Once a man starts hunting woman who can stop a bullet?

Few things disgust me more than people who hit their partners – the people they claim to love. Statistics show that women are twice as likely to be victims as men. Moreover, it is men who escalate the violence and who are responsible for the vast majority of injuries and deaths in domestic situations. Regardless, anyone who resorts to violence in the family has a problem and should seek some sort of help. If they won’t then society should intervene.

The first step is to make sure than abused partners have someplace safe to go and the second is that abusers are given real options to change. Education of young people that violence against others, and especially against those you are in a relationship with, is wrong would help too. But equally important is to begin to treat domestic violence as serious – or more serious – than any other crime. The truth is the person most likely to kill you – whether in Canada or the United States – is not a stranger but a domestic partner.

Everyone makes a mistake in their lives and perhaps one conviction should be treated the same way it would be if it were an act of violence against an acquaintance or a stranger – but domestic abusers seldom stop at a single assault or a single conviction. One charge may be a mistake on their part – or even on the court’s part – but two or three or four? That is a clear pattern – especially when more than one partner is involved.

If someone is convicted of sexual assault, they are generally put on a sex offender’s registry. Their movements are tracked and often measures are taken to reduce the chance of them offending again. Maybe we need to do the same thing with those who are shown to be abusers. Two convictions or three and they go on a domestic abuse registry. Measures could be taken to warn potential partners of their history. They could be kept away from guns. They could be monitored to see if they take treatment.

Even as I say it, it seems draconian and excessive. And yet something needs to be done for those who refuse to reform themselves.

But that’s ten minutes.

The Order of Things

Harve Bennett died yesterday. He was a writer and producer involved in the Star Trek franchise. In the wake of Leonard Nimoy’s recent death, it produced a fresh outpouring of grief on social media. Add to that the serious injuries Harrison Ford suffered in a plane crash and it has been a rough week for fans of the SF genre. I, too, have felt a few tears hover on the edge of my eyes.

It is always sad when we see our icons pass. Even worse is the passing of elderly parents or friends. Every one is a real loss in our daily lives and a reminder that eventually everyone we love will die and we will have to suffer the pain of their going. Unless, of course, we die first.

This is the natural order of things. We are born, we live, hopefully, a rich full life and then we die. We are mourned and then life goes on. So, when I hear that an 83 year old actor has died I feel a little sad — it marks the end of an era. A milestone in my own life. Another reminder of mortality.

Time is passing and neither wealth nor fame nor talent nor good works can halt its effects. We are all going to die.

Yet that simple truth — observable, falsifiable (point out one person who doesn’t die), more certain even than taxes — is very hard to accept. Blame consciousness if you like. Think how blissful it must be to be a dog. You go through life — it is either nice or nasty but you don’t spend all your time fretting about it. You enjoy the good and creep away from the bad. Then you don’t feel well and then you are gone. No worries.

Not so with us. We know early in our lives that we are going to go. It is one of — though certainly not the only one — pillars of religion. The afterlife — the grandest denial of death that has ever been constructed. Whether it is heaven or reincarnation — the central tenet of every religion is that life only transitions; it doesn’t end. Even atheists spend a certain amount of energy thinking about the singularity and our pending transition to immortal robot life.

The McGarrigle Sisters put it best in their song: Why Must We Die?

But, really, life is sweeter knowing that it must end. Knowing that you may never see flowers again, aren’t they more beautiful, isn’t their aroma more delightful? Could we really cherish anything if we knew it was here forever in unlimited supply? Even chocolate might lose its delight if you had it eight times a day for fifty years.

Death after a full life is natural. It is death that comes too soon that is the greatest tragedy. Women and men cut off at the height of their powers; children who never had a chance to blossom. These are the wounds that never heal. These are the blows from which lovers and parents never recover. These are the deaths that rob us of life.

So accept the natural order of things and hope you never have to suffer the unnatural one.

And that is ten brief and fleeting minutes.

Dying

In a landmark ruling, the Canadian Supreme Court has overturned the ban on doctor-assisted suicide, proclaiming that a ‘right to life’ cannot preclude the ability of competent adults who are living in incurable suffering from choosing to die. A right to life cannot be made into a duty to live.

This is a tremendous victory for those of us who are determined to end our lives in a dignified manner if we need to do so. It is not a victory for thoughtless suicide; the limits placed by the court require a careful and rational process of competent choice. When death is inevitable or can be seen as an escape from unmitigated pain, the right to choose the method and timing of dying becomes a fundamental right.

Those with strong religious views have immediately decried this measure and some have demanded that the government use the ‘notwithstanding clause‘ to pass legislation reversing the court’s decision. This is hardly surprising; these same groups routinely want to overturn people’s fundamental rights in order to impose their own peculiar ideology on others. Fortunately, in this country, they are extremely unlikely to get their way.

A more cogent criticism of the ruling comes from those organizations and individuals who represent the disabled or those suffering from mental health issues. They fear that this ruling represents a slippery slope wherein people will be forced or forcibly persuaded by family and the medical establishment to accept unwanted death. The slippery slope argument is one that is used by those who resist change of any kind. It reminds me a bit of the ‘domino theory‘ that stated that losing Vietnam was only the first step in losing the whole world to communism. I suspect it has similar merits.

I doubt that many people could be persuaded to kill themselves and even fewer doctors who would agree to help. How, in any case, do we measure unwanted death? If someone sincerely says they want to die, shouldn’t we accept that they are telling the truth? If they are not competent to know the truth, then the ruling doesn’t apply to them.

In any case, governments are unlikely to allow the matter to rest in an unrestricted and unregulated way. Everywhere assisted-suicide has been put in place, strong safeguards have also been established to protect those who are vulnerable. There is no credible evidence that this is not true.

For most of us — my friends anyway — this is viewed as a victory for ‘living well.’ None of us want to resort to a horde of pills accumulated over the years or the messy relief of a gun barrel in the mouth. Yet, many who fear the decline of Alzheimer’s or the agony of terminal cancer had been making exactly those plans. We will now be able to sleep better at night knowing that when the final sleep comes it can be approached with dignity, grace and peace.

And that’s ten minutes.

#jesuischarlie

It is doubtful that I have much to add to the outpouring of outrage, grief, courage, thoughtfulness and strength that have come in the wake of the 12 murders that took place in Paris yesterday. But it’s all I have in my mind today, so I really have no choice.

There is no explanation of these events that satisfy all the facts and opinions that might be expressed. We all know that it has nothing to do with Islam but it might have something to do with Islamism — that is, an aggressive political ideology that draws its precepts from carefully selected snippets from the Muslim faith.

In this it does not differ from every other extremist ideology that claims its origins in a major world faith. Christianity over the centuries have had its fanatics, as have Hindus and Conservatives.

It is hard to imagine a faith or political movement that hasn’t been abused by its extremists.

There is plenty of blame to go around, I suppose, and we can point in every direction we want but the reality is all the blame here belongs in one place — the three men who committed these crimes and, perhaps, the half-dozen or so who abetted them. They had a mad grievance against the world and, like all grievances, it required them to point their rage somewhere.

They chose to point it at a group of satirists and cartoonists but they just as easily could have pointed it at a soldier standing guard at a war memorial or a group of school children quietly going about their business in… Connecticut. The ideology of hate knows no bounds.

A free society does not come without a price. Part of that price is that someone will try to use the freedom of society to destroy it (or sometimes, just abuse it). I often see people on Parliament Hill who, non-violently, say the most abusive things about the character of my progressive society. While I defend their right to do that, I wonder, sometimes, if they were in charge if they would support my right to criticize them and the social order they built.

Because that is what Paris is all about — the demand that you shut the fuck up. I don’t want to have to take your criticism. I have the right to force you — at the point of a gun — to take mine.

So, in retrospect (which I sometimes think is the value of these little ten minute writing sessions — they help me think things through), those men in Paris are nothing special. Their slapped together ideology is nothing new. They are simply foot soldiers in the long standing war to impose fascism on the world. And by that, I mean the desire to say to the world — shut up about your rights and freedoms and values and just do what we tell you.

We’ve seen where fascism can lead if we let it. But we’ve also seen that it doesn’t last. Nowhere. It doesn’t last because in the end it is not in our natures to be quiet and it never will be.

So, all I can say, like so many others have, Je suis Charlie.

But that’s ten minutes.

Empty Chairs

Christmas for me is about memory. I find that the rituals and routines of the holidays — putting up the tree, shopping for gifts, Christmas parties, the music — all serve to evoke strong and vivid recollections of places I’ve been and people I’ve spent my time with. People who live on in memory.

When I lived in Frobisher Bay, I became good friends with John and Nicole Barclay. These two couldn’t be more different. John was a tall, slim English Canadian with a love of the outdoors. Nicole was short, in constant battle with her weight, a French Canadian who couldn’t imagine going a day without washing her hair. He was full of corny jokes and she with passionate ideas about life and work. Yet they were a great couple.

On Christmas Eve they hosted a traditional Quebec fete. It was a remarkable time. Friends and not-so-friends would gather at their place, all differences set aside for that one night. We would talk and laugh and especially, we would sing. There was food and drink through the evening but the best was yet to come. At midnight the Catholics and the Anglicans would head off to midnight mass, leaving the heathens and the Baptists to fend for ourselves. A half hour later and they would return, buoyed up by the service and flushed with the -30 degree evening air.

Then the party would start. Turkey and ham and tourtière would appear. Desserts of every imaginable type, Drinks — wine beer and spirits for the imbibers and elaborate punches for the teetotallers — flowed like water. The lights were dimmed and replaced with the glow of candle and firelight and the sparkle from the Christmas tree. One year, someone looked out the front windows and suddenly threw back the curtains to let the light of the moon and stars and an amazing aurora borealis flood in.

Faces gleamed in the diffuse light, voices, somewhat restrained before midnight, now rang out with joy and hope and wishes for peace on earth, good will toward men. I recall two men in particular — Rick and Mike —- who seldom saw eye to eye on anything, standing side by side, harmonizing on ‘Away in a Manger.‘

We would talk and laugh and sing and finally roll home at about 4 in the morning to gather a few hours sleep before the more relaxed celebrations of Christmas day.

It was a glorious time and I remember them all so well. A few years after I left Frobisher Bay, Rick, 38, died of a massive heart attack. One night, a few years after that I got a frantic call from Nicole. John had died in a climbing accident in Switzerland. Nicole never recovered and faded from everyone’s view. Mike lost his son when he died in a blizzard a few miles from town. Mike struggled after that and died a few years ago.

So many empty chairs now. Vacancies that can only be filled by memories. Yet I still see their shining faces, filled with joy and pleasure and gentle loving companionship. That’s what Christmas means to me.

And that’s ten minutes.

Ferguson

I’m not sure what people expected would happen with the Ferguson Grand Jury. While most grand juries deliver indictments when prosecutors desire them, the record in the case of police officers appears to be the opposite. There may be many reasons for that. Jury bias or public pressure on prosecutors to seek indictments when the evidence is weak. In this case, race was almost certainly a factor if only because race is always a factor in American justice issues.

Most Canadians don’t even know what a grand jury is or what it does. We don’t have them in Canada; in fact, they are a unique feature of the American system. In other democratic countries the role of the grand jury is played by the ‘preliminary trial.’ This process involves a judge or sometimes a panel of judges. The prosecutor has to demonstrate that there is sufficient evidence to go to trial.

In some cases, the prosecutors don’t even go that far. They determined in the case of a police officer in Quebec who killed a five year old in a fatal collision that there was insufficient evidence even for a preliminary hearing. A public protest – and apparently new evidence — has prompted them to reconsider.

There is a fundamental problem for progressives and more importantly for the oppressed in understanding the role of the police in a democratic society. People on the right have a hard time understanding it too but their bias leans in a different direction. The former are wary of the police, concerned that they get away with too much, that they are nothing but agents of the privileged classes using force to maintain the status quo. The latter view them — each and every one of them — as heroes saving us all from the forces of criminality and anarchy.

They are both right. And they are both wrong. The police have a sometimes dangerous job acting on our behalf; the alternative is vigilantes and lynch mobs. The police have demonstrated a willingness to turn a blind eye to criminality in their ranks. These conflicting world views combined with the proliferation of guns, the racial divide and the ready willingness to resort to violence in America made Ferguson inevitable.

People are outraged that no indictment was reached, that no trial will be held where the evidence could be made public. The prosecutor says he’ll reveal the evidence anyway but that will hardly be sufficient. In any case everyone has already made up their mind. The police officer either is a racially motivated murderer or he is a hero.

Both views can’t be true. The real tragedy of Ferguson is that there is no longer a real way to resolve those differences. No way to be sure that the people we entrust to hold up the law and ensure order have not betrayed us.

Dialogue is dead in America. All that leaves is riots and broken windows; tear gas and arrests. If we’re lucky it will stop at that. Until the next time.

But that’s ten minutes.

Virginity

There is nothing special about virginity. Everyone was a virgin once. Some people, apparently, more than once. Rob Anders, the doltish soon-to-be former MP, always claimed he was saving himself for marriage. Frankly, looking at Mr. Anders, he should have made wiser investments.

Still, some people seem to put inordinate value in the state of virginity. Suicide bombers and other terrorist martyrs are promised a specified number of virgins when they get to heaven. 72 seems like a lot but really a young vigorous fellow could go through those in a month or two. And then what do you have? Frankly I’d rather be promised a half dozen experienced older women who might appreciate an eager young man romping around paradise. An argument for quality over quantity, perhaps, though I might make a stronger argument for skipping it altogether. Particularly since I don’t think forcing women to do anything – even under God’s orders — is particularly attractive.

In any case what do female martyrs get? Seventy two pimple faced boys? Really who could possibly want that? Male virginity, Mr, Anders aside, is pretty much an unproveable quality or perhaps indefinable (does it include masturbation?). All you really have is the guy’s word for it. So yeah, it doesn’t exist (unless other people have made the decision for him).

Of course it is not much more provable in young women, despite the claims of some who are prepared to examine them medically to prove it. The hymen is a delicate flower that is easily plucked — isn’t that the expression? But it can be as readily plucked from vigorous athletics, bicycle riding, or quite often simply by day to day living. Methinks the doctors often tell little white lies to make their clients’ families happy.

Because they often know the consequences of a false negative. In some cultures it can be devastating or even deadly to be accused as a girl of not being a virgin. Surely, only an evil person would bring that punishment down on someone. Unless the loss of virginity leads to pregnancy or disease, what difference does it make anyway? And even those results are not a matter of punishment but of care.

Still it seems to matter plenty to some, if we are to believe those fathers who take their daughters to purity dances and require them to pledge their virginity to dear old dad. I mean, even for a non-Freudian like me, that just seems wrong and unnatural. Yet they — the Dads — defend it as the most natural thing in the world. And why is that?

Because like everything else that calls on men to pronounce on the value of women’s bodies it comes from the desire to own them, objectify them, enslave them.

Yeah, virginity, yet another tool of the patriarchy to reduce women to possessions and to keep them children all their lives.

Not sure where to go from there but fortunately,

That’s ten minutes.

Guns

When I was a kid, my dad forbade us to have toy guns. He had served in World War II and knew the damage bullets could do to human flesh. He had other, more personal reasons, to dislike guns. In 1936, his brother shot his sister. Not deliberately. He was cleaning an ‘unloaded’ gun but had failed to clear the chamber. The cleaning rod flew out of his hand and through the head of his sister. She had just returned from church and was dancing around the kitchen, still filled with the spirit. The bullet itself drilled through the floor and narrowly missed my grandfather.

My father, who had been living in Boston, returned home to try to help deal with the shattered family. He didn’t stay long — Humpty Dumpty can’t be put together again.

Of course as kids we improvised. No metal guns or plastic ones allowed we made them out of Lego bricks or with broken hockey sticks which along with clothes pins and elastic bands proved an effective and, occasionally, painful alternative. We even found a bullet once and pounded it with a hammer until it went off. Amazing we didn’t kill someone.

You can imagine the uproar when my father discovered that a neighbour had set up a shooting range in the basement and was letting his 11 year old son fire off .22s. Good thing he didn’t find out we were shooting at toy soldiers.

Kids like guns — maybe it’s cultural maybe it’s the anarchist spirit that wells in every child.

As I grew older I had my own gun experiences. My cousin accidently wounded a girl while clearing crows on his farm. An aunt-in-law blew her arm off while trying to commit suicide during a drunken fight with her husband.

Eventually I discovered a simple fact. The more guns there are in a community or country, the more people get shot with guns. The more people die from guns. Sure, people say if there weren’t guns people would attack each other with knives or clubs. Okay. But guns are so damn efficient. People who try to kill themselves succeed 15% of the time except when guns are involved. Then it is 85%. And the survivors don’t look great. Guns may not kill people but people kill themselves very effectively with guns.

Suicide is not inevitable. Most people (though not all) who try once get help and never try again. Unless guns are involved.

Guns are also the weapon of choice in domestic murders. It is much easier to stalk and kill your ex with a rifle than a knife.

I’m now strongly against guns and wouldn’t give my grandsons a toy one. I’m a bit conflicted of course. My boss is a northern Aboriginal Senator who voted to end the long gun registry in Canada. But we have agreed to disagree.

But that’s ten minutes.

Saying Good-bye

Saying good-bye seems less dramatic than it once did. A quick hug, thanks for everything, see you soon, seems sufficient in the modern age. No great teary farewells, no clinging at the train station or at the foot of a boat ramp. Even airport scenes are less effusive than they were a few years ago.

We are living longer, perhaps, and so our expectations of seeing each other again are greater. We know that everyone is just a plane ride a way, a few hours, a day at the most. If something happens – that niggle in the back of our head – we can be there for one last farewell.

In any case, we have Skype and Facebook and e-mail and texting and all those things that let us keep in touch. Everything except actual touch. We have all these tools to let us transmit words or even pictures. With Youtube we can even send each other movies. But there is no way to send a last caress, a final embrace. We cannot feel the texture of our loved one’s hair, cannot experience the scent of their skin. Even voices are not the same when digitized and transmitted a thousand miles.

We think, nonetheless, that this semblance of togetherness is enough. That it will sustain us. And it does because it must. We need to be sustained in the comfort of knowing that nothing is forever, no good-bye has to be the last. I suspect it is one of the factors that sustains religion; the selfish (or even selfless) urge to never be parted finally from those we love.

But reality is so much different. A life can end in a moment and sometimes you don’t even have the chance to make a symbolic farewell. Seven years ago this week, a friend, George, disappeared from his home. He had been ill, growing worse, dementia was encroaching and, one day, he simply walked into the woods. There was no explanation, no note, he was simply gone. His body wasn’t found for six years. And during all that time, his friends and family wondered; is he truly gone? Our minds knew but our hearts still wondered.

I think of those people who lost friends and family when the Malaysian aircraft disappeared. They will never have the chance to make that last farewell. Pictures and Youtube videos will not sustain them, will not give them what they need to make that last sweet necessary farewell.

So today, when you leave for work or set out on a journey, hold your lover or your children or your closest friend for just a moment longer. Because you never know….

And that’s ten minutes.