I'll Step on Your Neck!

These were simpler times....

That’s my mom Evelyn Anger, and her sister Whileen, in 1947 - about nine years before I was born. I don’t know the occasion, but obviously something was happening to make them dress like twins.

What I can tell you is that they both look uncharacteristically sombre. These were two sisters who liked to laugh.

What prompted this was remembering one of my aunt Whileen’s favourite sayings. Or, maybe, shouts:

“If you kids don’t stop doing that I’m going to step on your neck!”

As kids that threat was met with shrieks of delight and we’d all run for the hills.

Now when I recount this story I tend to see open-mouthed horror and a quiet, “She really said that? To her kids?”

As if there was ever any real intention to step on the children’s necks…

You see, back in the sixties people could say stuff like this and it was understood that it was a joke, and that there was no intention to actually follow through. It was just understood that some things are so stupidly ridiculous that they wouldn’t happen.

It was a joke. Whileen knew it, my mom knew it, and the kids knew it. Nowadays a lot of people have lost a lot of that sense of humour, and some days it seems like it’s not a positive thing.

Nowadays a lot of people are simply unwilling to give anyone else an inch of slack; even the tiniest benefit of the doubt.

Or, for that matter, to apologise when they get it wrong.

That humourless, unyielding approach to life is what we’re seeing all over the place at this very moment.

In the US one half of the government has ground to halt for weeks because a few pig-headed old white guys demand that only their chosen person should guide the show. And another faction of pig-headed old white guys refuse to accept that, and insist that their chosen one should get the job.

The truth is that these guys are pretty much interchangeable, and either one would be as good or bad as the other. And there’s another quiet and unspoken truth, that a few of these pig-headed old white guys would actually be happy if the entire government just shut down.

It’s as if they’re all standing there shouting “Hey you Democrats! Get off of my lawn or I’ll step on your neck!”

Except of course, that this isn’t a joke. These pig-headed old white guys will do irreparable damage to a large part of the American population just for the sake of looking more pig-headed than the other guy. Or more loyal to that soon-to-be-convicted criminal called Donald Trump.

As a Canadian this frightens me, both because what happens in the US invariably winds up impacting many other places, and because we have our own home grown mini-Trumps like Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre and Alberta premier Danielle Smith.

These people are modelling themselves and their platforms on what they see coming out of the US, and will happily inflict it on us if we let them. That’s troubling, and worth working to stop.

(Sidebar: yes, there was lots of truly bad behaviour back in those days, and lots of things happened that were by any assessment really bad.)

Followup: I see that the GOP finally managed to find someone they could all sort of live with. Let’s see if he can last the week…