Talk about two weeks of asking questions, trying to find the right explanation for what the shooting of Charlie Kirk means: Do words actually do violence? Is there a place for discussion anymore? What is required in a democracy? Is this about broken politics? How do we find civility? Then, suddenly it’s Jimmy Kimmel and, is the FCC chair in Trump's pocket? Is this censorship or deplatforming? Is it really about the Sinclair and Nexstar's big-media mergers?And swarm headlines: “There will be a reckoning.” “This is civil war.” “They murdered him.” “Social media is aflame right now with leftist celebration of Charlie's death.” “Conservatives Say 'no Mercy’.”.MILLS: From underdog to undone: The trouble with John Rustad’s leadership.You can lose yourself in the no-man's land between the left and right polarities. And we do. I used to watch a lot of Charlie Kirk video clips when they'd come across my feed. I found him respectful in tone, straight up, and brave. Did he say some stuff that I disagreed with? Yes. Did he prooftext scripture in a way that I disagreed with? Yes. .So what?Would I link arms with him and march off to battle? Depends. I've had the same experience watching just about anyone: Tom Mulcair, Jordan Peterson, Mark Carney, Pierre Poilievre, Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Bari Weiss, JK Rowling, and Margaret Atwood. Does this make me a limp-wristed, mamby-pamby typical Canadian? .EDITORIAL: LGB breaking free from the rainbow alphabet soup.No. Maybe I've just never been a joiner; I don't know. But I do know I want to think for myself. And it’s the pull to stop "thinking for yourself” that feels so strong right now. Pick a side: "us" versus "them.” And I'm stumped, frankly. Where can we draw the line? Does everyone on “the right” believe that abortion is wrong from the moment of conception? No. What about the war in Ukraine? Carney's economic policies? Alberta independence? Women in religious leadership? Homeschooling? Transfats? The capitalistic raping of our small-towns by box stores? What to do with Tulsi Gabbard (former Democrat with some eccentric religious views), Naomi Wolf (now Christian but former raging feminist whose books are still circulated widely)? Gay politicians in the Conservative party? (My grandfather would be shocked!) .Who are the plain, unequivocal good guys and bad guys? The “we”?Did you as a religious person disapprove of JK Rowlings for her dark magic in Harry Potter, so at odds with the kind seen in the more Christian novels of Lewis and Tolkien? Until you learned that she upholds real, biological gender? Is she okay now? A moral person? And heaven's to Betsy, what are we going to do about Elon Musk? What side is that guy on? Many a nice virtue-signaling liberal bought his cars only to then have to scamper for those “Bought before we knew he was crazy!” bumper stickers. Do you wash them off when Elon's in Trump's bad books? .THOMAS: Report shows blanket upzoning makes housing more expensive.Nobody fits the cookie cutter. No, that pigeonholing is the currency of political parties. It is the mantra of George Bush Jr following 9/11: “If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.” It is the slogan of the powerful who hold the levers of social media and program the algorithms to foment polarization, clicks, and doomscrolling. And it’s for their gain, not ours. They treat us like ones or zeroes, on or off. Bits in an ideological computer program. .No, we do not move ahead by choosing a side, wallowing unchallenged in our shared beliefs, patting each other's shoulders, and then collectively pummeling the other side. Sure, you’ll get rid of the other side, only to find that — gasp! — the other side has crept into your midst. Churches know this. Homeschooling co-ops know this. Pride Parade organizers know this. Recently, supporters of RFK were reminded of this in a combative hearing full of vitriol from what should have been his Republican peers. What then? Do we do that Canadian (or Aristotelian) thing and stand "the middle way"? .HILTON-O’BRIEN: Is public education dying?.Rik Emmett, lead singer of the former band Triumph, sings:“Everywhere you look some kind of war is goin' onAnd no man's land is never gonna stay that way for longBetter climb off of that fence, boyBefore somebody shoots you downHey, they're gonna shoot you down, and they'll say"Hey, boy, just who's side are you on, anyway?"But I haven't got the heart to act my part out in their playBut in the end, you got no choice, it's the only game in town [...]I stand the middle ground.”Nice. Canadian. But then I can't help but hear the wise words of The Karate Kid's Miyagi: "Walk middle, sooner or later, get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do 'yes' or karate do "no.' You do karate do 'guess so,' just like grape.”.It’s true: sometimes two roads just diverge. And I find myself agreeing with Catholic commentator Katherine Boyle, who is calling this a time for martyrdom in a society seemingly bent on suicide. We each have to know what it is to be courageous and to daily speak truth and not to slink away in fear. But the “gloves are off” and “a time of reckoning” palaver is not for me, basically because I don’t know who I’m supposed to be hitting or reckoning with. I'm with Jordan Peterson: People are not their group identity. The pure "they" as Donald Trump and JD Vance describe it does not exist. We are not just right or left. We are not who we vote for or the colour of our hair. .THOMSON: If the West has its way, Palestine will be Afghanistan 2.0.Yes, it’s true: Easy for me to say. "Conviction is the luxury of those on the sidelines" (from A Beautiful Mind), and we Canadians love playing smug moralistic armchair warriors watching our American cousins battling it out, with far more skin in the game. But something gets lost in the volleying back and forth between the polarized positions that seems to so miss the point. When I am only reference points connected to other people and other issues, I am no longer an individual. It’s too easy to hate people when they're just a belief. We cancel, we deplatform, we topple statues. On the day of the shooting, I watched two Democrats (one who works at Fox News) on the podcast “Raging Moderates” say that Charlie Kirk had been “doing the most democratic activity you can do as Americans: Set up a tent on a university campus and invite people to debate.”Conversation is all we have. And as we learned during COVID-19, it’s not going to take the powers that be smartening up; it’s going to take individuals talking to individuals as individuals to save us..Due to a high level of spam content being posted, all comments undergo manual approval by a staff member during regular business hours (Monday - Friday). Your patience is appreciated.
