Archive for 2008

08w44:2 Our Racist National Columnists

by timothy. 0 Comments

Fire Margaret Wente (and Dick Pound) Facebook group
As of November 1 2008: 2560 members

Fire Margaret Wente Facebook Group
As of November 1 2008: 104 members

Stand up for Margaret Wente Facebook group
(started by the National Post‘s Jonathan Kay)
As of November 1 2008: 209 members

Considering the support to fire Wente for what she wrote, there really should be a Facebook group to Fire Jonathan Kay for what he wrote on September 23rd:

It so happens that the very day the Deschamps Doctrine was announced on the HRT Web site, I received my review copy of A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada — in which left-wing Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul argues that Canada is ‘a Métis civilization’ that owes all it has (except for the nasty racist bits, of course) to ‘Aboriginal inspiration.’ The question of how, exactly, a bunch of warring, pre-literate aboriginal hunter-gatherer societies could claim credit for the creation of a modern, democratic, capitalist, industrial powerhouse built entirely in a European image is one that, alas, I must leave for others. That’s because I could not get past Saul’s ridiculous introduction.

Also, from the topic page (Wab Kinew of CBC radio on Wente and Pound) from ‘Fire Margaret Wente’; an report for CBC radio here by Wab Kinew.

08w42:2 The Kondratieff Theory

by timothy. 0 Comments

Related to the previous GR and the current news:

The Kondratieff Theory
http://www.kwaves.com/kond_overview.htm
“The Kondratieff wave cycle goes through four distinct phases of beneficial inflation (spring), stagflation (summer), beneficial deflation (autumn), and deflation (winter). Since, the last Kontratyev cycle ended around 1949, we have seen beneficial inflation 1949-1966, stagflation 1966-1982, beneficial deflation 1982-2000 and according to Kondratieff, we are now in the (winter) deflation cycle which should lead to depression.”

Kondratiev wave | Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave
In heterodox economics, Kondratiev waves—also called grand supercycles, surges, long waves, or K-waves—are described as regular, sinusoidal cycles in the modern (capitalist) world economy. Fifty to sixty years in length, the cycles consist of alternating periods between high sectoral growth and periods of slower growth. Most academic economists do not posit the existence of these waves. [emp mine]

08w42:1 The Depression

by timothy. 0 Comments

Immanuel Wallerstein’s Commentary No. 243
http://fbc.binghamton.edu/243en.htm

“The Depression: A Long-Term View”

The depression has started. Journalists are still coyly enquiring of economists whether or not we may be entering a mere recession. Don’t believe it for a minute. We are already at the beginning of a full-blown worldwide depression with extensive unemployment almost everywhere. It may take the form of a classic nominal deflation, with all its negative consequences for ordinary people. Or it might take the form, a bit less likely, of a runaway inflation, which is simply another way in which values deflate, and which is even worse for ordinary people.

Of course everyone is asking what has triggered this depression. Is it the derivatives, which Warren Buffett called “financial weapons of mass destruction”? Or is it the subprime mortgages? Or is it oil speculators? This is a blame game, and of no real importance. This is to concentrate on the dust, as Fernand Braudel called it, of short-term events. If we want to understand what is going on, we need to look at two other temporalities, which are far more revealing. One is that of medium-term cyclical swings. And one is that of the long-term structural trends.

The capitalist world-economy has had, for several hundred years at least, two major forms of cyclical swings. One is the so-called Kondratieff cycles that historically were 50-60 years in length. And the other is the hegemonic cycles which are much longer.

In terms of the hegemonic cycles, the United States was a rising contender for hegemony as of 1873, achieved full hegemonic dominance in 1945, and has been slowly declining since the 1970s. George W. Bush’s follies have transformed a slow decline into a precipitate one. And as of now, we are past any semblance of U.S. hegemony. We have entered, as normally happens, a multipolar world. The United States remains a strong power, perhaps still the strongest, but it will continue to decline relative to other powers in the decades to come. There is not much that anyone can do to change this.

The Kondratieff cycles have a different timing. The world came out of the last Kondratieff B-phase in 1945, and then had the strongest A-phase upturn in the history of the modern world-system. It reached its height circa 1967-73, and started on its downturn. This B-phase has gone on much longer than previous B-phases and we are still in it.

The characteristics of a Kondratieff B-phase are well-known and match what the world-economy has been experiencing since the 1970s. Profit rates from productive activities go down, especially in those types of production that have been most profitable. Consequently, capitalists who wish to make really high levels of profit turn to the financial arena, engaging in what is basically speculation. Productive activities, in order not to become too unprofitable, tend to move from core zones to other parts of the world-system, trading lower transactions costs for lower personnel costs. This is why jobs have been disappearing from Detroit, Essen, and Nagoya and factories have been expanding in China, India, and Brazil.

As for the speculative bubbles, some people always make a lot of money in them. But speculative bubbles always burst, sooner or later. If one asks why this Kondratieff B-phase has lasted so long, it is because the powers that be – the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and their collaborators in western Europe and Japan – have intervened in the market regularly and importantly – 1987 (stock market plunge), 1989 (savings-and-loan collapse), 1997 (East Asian financial fall), 1998 (Long Term Capital Management mismanagement), 2001-2002 (Enron) – to shore up the world-economy. They learned the lessons of previous Kondratieff B-phases, and the powers that be thought they could beat the system. But there are intrinsic limits to doing this. And we have now reached them, as Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke are learning to their chagrin and probably amazement. This time, it will not be so easy, probably impossible, to avert the worst.

In the past, once a depression wreaked its havoc, the world-economy picked up again, on the basis of innovations that could be quasi-monopolized for a while. So, when people say that the stock market will rise again, this is what they are thinking will happen, this time as in the past, after all the damage has been done to the world’s populations. And maybe it will, in a few years or so.

There is however something new that may interfere with this nice cyclical pattern that has sustained the capitalist system for some 500 years. The structural trends may interfere with the cyclical patterns. The basic structural features of capitalism as a world-system operate by certain rules that can be drawn on a chart as a moving upward equilibrium. The problem, as with all structural equilibria of all systems, is that over time the curves tend to move far from equilibrium and it becomes impossible to bring them back to equilibrium.

What has made the system move so far from equilibrium? In very brief, it is because over 500 years the three basic costs of capitalist production – personnel, inputs, and taxation – have steadily risen as a percentage of possible sales price, such that today they make it impossible to obtain the large profits from quasi-monopolized production that have always been the basis of significant capital accumulation. It is not because capitalism is failing at what it does best. It is precisely because it has been doing it so well that it has finally undermined the basis of future accumulation.

What happens when we reach such a point is that the system bifurcates (in the language of complexity studies). The immediate consequence is high chaotic turbulence, which our world-system is experiencing at the moment and will continue to experience for perhaps another 20-50 years. As everyone pushes in whatever direction they think immediately best for each of them, a new order will emerge out of the chaos along one of two alternate and very different paths.

We can assert with confidence that the present system cannot survive. What we cannot predict is which new order will be chosen to replace it, because it will be the result of an infinity of individual pressures. But sooner or later, a new system will be installed. This will not be a capitalist system but it may be far worse (even more polarizing and hierarchical) or much better (relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian) than such a system. The choice of a new system is the major worldwide political struggle of our times.

As for our immediate short-run ad interim prospects, it is clear what is happening everywhere. We have been moving into a protectionist world (forget about so-called globalization). We have been moving into a much larger direct role of government in production. Even the United States and Great Britain are partially nationalizing the banks and the dying big industries. We are moving into populist government-led redistribution, which can take left-of-center social-democratic forms or far right authoritarian forms. And we are moving into acute social conflict within states, as everyone competes over the smaller pie. In the short-run, it is not, by and large, a pretty picture.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein, distributed by Agence Global. For rights and permissions, including translations and posting to non-commercial sites, and contact: rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically, or e-mail to others, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To contact author, write: immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu.

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

08w39:1 The past week's highlights

by timothy. 0 Comments

Margaret Atwood interviewed on the subject of debt:

In the Red | Deborah Solomon
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/nytimes/atwood/

Margaret Atwood’s old-fashioned approach to debt | Sinclair Stewart
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/reportonbusiness/atwood/

// Atwood will be giving the 2008 Massey Lectures, which will air on CBC Radio 1 November 10-14

Notes on the American Class system:

Wealthy Teen Nearly Experiences Consequence | The Onion
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/theonion/wealthyteen/

Notes on the Canadian experience:

Original – and aboriginal | Noah Richler
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/theglobeandmail/afaircountry/

John Ralston Saul’s latest book, A Fair Country has just been published, and I hope to have a review ready by the end of the week. So far it’s achieving ‘must read’ status.

08w38:2 Timely Chomsky

by timothy. 0 Comments

“What would happen in a functioning democracy is that in the towns, people would get together publicly in public places and they would determine what policies they prefer. The candidate would then show up and they would tell him, ‘here’s the polices that we prefer. if you’re willing to represent these policies we may vote for you but if not go home’. That would be a functioning democracy. Or they would just chose their own candidates. But we’re very far from that. The way the political parties function as candidate producing machines, basically organized by concentrations of private power (which capital comes from) [and] are modes of marginalizing the population.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4zjTEYySTg

08w38:1 Roundup

by timothy. 0 Comments

I was complemented on Goodreads last night by a long-time reader who I haven’t seen socially in years; he mentioned that it’s been kind of slow, and I responded that I’ve been busy. Etc …

I’ve gotten involved with the Department of Culture, which got a fair representation in the Oakville Beaver (although they spelt Jol Thomson’s name wrong) and earlier this week I got a message from Sheila Heti telling me there would be an hour of silence in Trinity Bellwoods Park on Friday (last night) to remember DFW – a writer who I never really got into, despite trying to read Consider the Lobster, after it got a glowing review on the CBC years ago (a review which stuck in my head to the point that I realized it was poison to be considered hip by the CBC). Of ‘Consider the Lobster’ – that essay didn’t give me anything to think about of which I did not think already (having grown up eating lobsters regularly, I now find them somewhat repellent). My appreciation for Mr Abbreviation & Footnote is reserved to an increased us of abbreviations in my own writing (that, and the experience of working for TD Bank last year, wherein I had to note accnts using abbreviations, as per policy).

I didn’t post Ms. Heti’s notice since I didn’t really think GR readers were numerous enough, nor local enough, to care. I think she has a better network of potential interest on that front. Also, (personally) spending an hour in a cool park in silence to mourn a suicide who I didn’t mourn and whom I’d never met didn’t sound like a valid Friday night activity.

Instead, I went to the Power Plant opening, and had the Weirdest Night in the World. Across town, New Kids on the Block were singing twenty-year old songs to now-30 something one-time teeny-bopers. I remember reading in one of my sister’s magazines during their hay-day, a girl’s letter stating she was certain that she was in love with Jordan Knight, had some understanding that it was irrational, and asking what to do. I’ve always kind of wondered what happened to her, how she must have eventually grown out of it, and perhaps these days is married with children. Which in it’s own way is

Infinitely Sad | Troy Patterson
http://www.slate.com/id/2200152/

What’s the Matter with Canada ? | Christopher Flavelle
http://www.slate.com/id/2199929/

The growing ideological no man’s land | Michael Valpy
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/theglobeandmail/noideology/
“For more than half a century, Canadians have seen, or read about, a succession of left and right governments that have promised cure-alls for society’s ailments but failed to deliver. Ideological fatigue has set in: Canadians have become tired of the left-right arguments. They have become pragmatic, eclectic, interested only in what works. An increasing number of young Canadians have grown into adulthood not knowing about or having experienced the nanny state in its heyday.”

// Comment: I liked this article but hated the run-down on the Baby Boomer electorate. Valpy states: “Mr. Graves attributes the electoral shift – incrementally to the right, hugely to the non-ideological no-man’s land – to three factors:..” He goes on to list the three factors: the baby boomers are getting old, they’ve had their parents die, and 9/11. In other words, the electorate doesn’t consist of anybody but Baby Boomers? The anger and frustration I feel in reading that rundown is not something I can express in simple sentences herein. I’m not old, my parents aren’t dead, and fuck 9/11 and all the scare-mongering it has wrought. The Baby Boomers lived through the Kennedy assassination, the oil-shock, the hijackings of the 1970s and 1980s, the Munich Olympics – why should 9/11 be a factor now?  Nine-Eleven should be a greater concern to my generation to whom it was something new, coming out of the blue and borrowed from movies made by Baby Boomers for over twenty years. Valpy concludes, “Those circumstances combined have given them a gloomier and more fearful outlook on life, making them more likely to be plums for the picking by Conservative strategists.” If Boomers are gloomy, perhaps they have the right to be, considering all that they’ve lived through. But the neglect of youthful perspectives, of those of us for whom are lives are still largely ahead of us, and who have the right to dream of brighter tomorrows, is another part of their shameful legacy. The Boomers are not the entire electorate, nor I should add, are they a monolithic block of like minded selfish assholes. They are citizens of a country different than the one they were born into, and one that doesn’t have to be the narrow-minded and ignorant hell the Conservative party would be happy to govern.

Protesters greet Harper at rally | Tina Depko
http://www.oakvillebeaver.com/news/article/206011
“Although the Department of Culture is largely made up of members of Canada’s arts community, spokespeople say they aren’t just pushing for better funding. They also want a better Canada, according to Toronto artist Danielle Williams. ‘We’re really discontent with the way the current government is being run and we don’t want to see that again,’ said Williams. ‘Arts is an integrated aspect of being Canadian.'”

The House: Saturday September 20 2008
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/thehouse_20080920_7679.mp3
“This week on The House: Guest host Alison Crawford talks political gaffs with Conservative MP Jason Kenney. She asks him how his party decides how to handle political mis-steps during a campaign. Reporter Louise Elliott tests Stephen Harper’s theory that Canadians are becoming more conservative. Alison speaks to two members of Toronto’s multicultural media about how parties are trying to woo the ethnic vote.”

Culture in Danger
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhgv85m852Q
(I had to click on the CC – lower right hand corner – to turn on the subtitles).

08w37:1 The past week's highlights

by timothy. 0 Comments

The Rise of the Mega Region | Florida, Gulde, Mellander
http://goodreads.ca/shorty/florida/mega-regions/

Naomi Klein at the Department of Culture Town Hall
http://departmentofculture.ca/video-naomi-klein-at-last-nights-town-hall/

Buffered and porous selves | Charles Taylor
http://goodreads.ca/shorty/taylor/porous-selves/
“Almost everyone can agree that one of the big differences between us and our ancestors of five hundred years ago is that they lived in an ‘enchanted’ world, and we do not; at the very least, we live in a much less ‘enchanted’ world. We might think of this as our having ‘lost’ a number of beliefs and the practices which they made possible. But more, the enchanted world was one in which these forces could cross a porous boundary and shape our lives, psychic and physical. One of the big differences between us and them is that we live with a much firmer sense of the boundary between self and other. We are ‘buffered’ selves. We have changed. Modern Westerners have a clear boundary between mind and world, even mind and body. Moral and other meanings are ‘in the mind.’ They cannot reside outside, and thus the boundary is firm. But formerly it was not so. Let us take a well-known example of influence inhering in an inanimate substance, as this was understood in earlier times. Consider melancholy: black bile was not the cause of melancholy, it embodied, it was melancholy. The emotional life was porous here; it didn’t simply exist in an inner, mental space. Our vulnerability to the evil, the inwardly destructive, extended to more than just spirits that are malevolent. It went beyond them to things that have no wills, but are nevertheless redolent with the evil meanings. See the contrast. A modern is feeling depressed, melancholy. He is told: it’s just your body chemistry, you’re hungry, or there is a hormone malfunction, or whatever. Straightway, he feels relieved. He can take a distance from this feeling, which is ipso facto declared not justified. Things don’t really have this meaning; it just feels this way, which is the result of a causal action utterly unrelated to the meanings of things.”

The renouncers | Robert Bellah
http://goodreads.ca/shorty/ssrc/renouncers/
“What has become clear to me in recent years is that the old dream of progress, which used to be assumed, is being replaced in popular culture by visions of disaster, ecological catastrophe in particular. If, as I believe, we human beings are at least to some extent in charge of our own evolution, we are in a highly demanding situation. Never before have calls for criticism of and alternatives to the existing order seemed so urgent. It is in this context that I want to consider whether the heritage of ‘the axial age’ – the period in antiquity that gave rise to such social critique through practices of renunciation—is a resource or a burden in our current human crisis.”

08w36:1 Department of Culture Town Hall

by timothy. 1 Comment

I attended the town hall regarding the funding cuts at Toronto’s Theatre Centre on Wednesday night (original press release reproduced below from the Dpt of Culture website). I recorded it. Raw mp3 linked to below. – Timothy

Department of Culture

Audio Mp3 (72.5 MB)

—————————-

Valuing Culture:

TOWN HALL REGARDING CUTS TO CULTURAL AND HERITAGE GRANTING PROGRAMS

Wednesday, September 3, 2008, at 7 p.m.

The Theatre Centre
1087 Queen Street West, (South East Corner of Queen and Dovercourt)

For more details:
departmentofculture.ca

Who should come?
Everyone concerned about ensuring the social and cultural health and prosperity of our nation in the face of a Federal Government that is aggressively undermining the values that define Canada.

Who will be speaking?
•    Claire Hopkinson, Toronto Arts Council
•    Susan Swan, Former President, The Writers Union
•    Lisa Fitzgibbons, Executive Director, Documentary Organization of Canada
•    Naomi Klein, Writer and Political Analyst

What will we be doing?
Talking about the issues and proposing a comprehensive strategy for unseating key Conservatives in the imminent election, both in the GTA and across the country.

Why is this important?
Because cuts and policy changes are radically changing Canadian society.

This event is as much about funding cuts to women’s groups, youth training programs, harm reduction programs, food inspection, environmental organizations and health policy, as it is about cuts to arts funding. It should not be too much to expect a decent society to live in, one that prioritizes the welfare of it citizens before the wealth of a few. We are placing the issue of defunding arts and culture in relation to vast cuts to Canada’s social safety net made by a socially irresponsible Conservative government. We are bringing artists together to:

•    Lend our creative and organizational skills to the goal of unseating Conservative MPs from government;

•    Ensure that the electorate is intelligently informed about the policies and issues

•    Hold other parties and candidates to task for their social and cultural agendas;

•    Make alliances with other like-minded communities and organizations.

What’s the Background?
The recent wave of cuts by the Conservative government has sent shockwaves throughout an already resource-strapped arts community. Since taking power in 2006, the Conservative Government has eliminated almost $60 Million from Cultural and Heritage Granting Programs.

The most recent cuts:
•    The PromArt Program, $4.7 million (administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade)
•    Trade Routes, $9 million, Department of Canadian Heritage
•    Stabilization Projects and Capacity Building, of the Canadian Arts and Heritage Sustainability Program, $3.4 Million
•    Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, $1.5 million
•    National Training Program in the Film and Video Sector, $2.5 million
•    $300,000 to the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, for programs archiving important film, television and musical recordings.
•    Canadian New Media Fund, $14.5 million

This meeting is intended to articulate the issues and organize a plan of action. If an election is called, we will establish swing teams to unseat Conservatives in every city across the country. If there is no election, the same teams will be organized to criticize, challenge and creatively pressure the government to change their policies

For more information or media inquiries contact:
media@departmentofculture.ca

THIS EVENT IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE:
Franco Boni, Izida Zorde, Heather Haynes, Darren O’Donnell, Gregory Elgstrand, Sara Graham, Graham F. Scott, Roy Mitchell, Naomi Campbell, Anthea Foyer, Michael Wheeler

The DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE wants you as a member. Anyone interested in organizing, doing research, writing, making graphics, videos, blitzing ridings, attending all-candidates meetings, marching in the streets or contributing funds should get in touch with: membership@departmentofculture.ca

Download this press release (PDF)

Téléchargez le communiqué de presse en français (PDF)

08w35:2 Funding Cuts

by timothy. 2 Comments

I drafted the majority of this a couple of weeks ago, in light of the recent announcement of the funding cuts. In the interim weeks, Leah Sandals and Jennifer McMackon have done better jobs than I could have in assembling related links. Also, in the past week, it became increasingly clear that Harper will call an election within the next two weeks, making these controversial cuts and copyright bill null and void unless the Conservatives return to power with another minority or, god help us, a majority.

I live in a riding with an NDP candidate, and I will with good conscious vote to reelect her. Doubly, as a citizen of Toronto, I’m in an essentially Liberal area. For this reason, it has been said over the previous two and half years (since the last election) that the Conservatives have been screwing us over. It has also been said that Harper ideally wants to destroy the Liberal party. Do we really want to have such a petty and vindictive bunch of assholes deciding things for the other 33 million of us? Equally troubling is the fact that Harper grew up in Etobicoke, which is to say, Harper hates his home town. Well, fuck him too, and the scare-mongering flyers I’ve been receiving in my mailbox.

To Take Care of Oneself

As artists, it’s not a question that society owes us a living; to use that phrase is itself problematic – to use the word ‘owe’, suggesting a debt or some other economic transaction.

For me, I go back to my early 20s, having gone through art school and having met and befriended people who in many ways weren’t really capable of taking care of themselves. They were deficient in life skills primarily, but also in terms of coping mechanisms. It wasn’t so much that they were losers or retarded in the legitimate sense of the word, but they were just different, round pegs for society’s square holes. Myself, I’d like to live in a society of difference/variety/heterogeneity. How we deal with the challenges presented by ‘un-normal’ people is one by which we can measure the state of our civilization. Since for me civilization is about the education we provide and acquire to remove ourselves as far as possible from the states of animals (who are fearful, ignorant and cruel), a civilized society is one reflective of communities of care and of elevated compassion: a state present even in animals but which we can nurture and encourage more of as self-aware beings.

In grade school, we had a class of ‘special kids’ who were the ones in wheelchairs, or were borderline blind, or whatever. One girl in particular I remember as probably having cerebral palsy. Because of the area (rural Nova Scotia) this class might have been doubling as a day care (I’m not sure what type of education was being provided) but for the most part, adapting to the needs of these children was taken for granted as the proper thing to do. It taught me that I lived in a civilized society because these people were both cared for and not to be mocked. Through this a sense of compassion was both taught and encouraged.

In my 20s, I learned that some people weren’t able to take care of themselves. And the lesson for me was just because this is so doesn’t mean people should be poor, unemployable and underemployed, nor end up homeless. It should be possible to accept these people and make sure they have homes, enough money for food and clothing and comfortable lives. There’s no need for them to suffer just because they’re different.

Like the disabled children of my community, they should to be taken care of. As a rich society not overwhelmed by the incompetent (I’d guess they’re less than 20% of the population), it should cost peanuts to make sure these people have ok lives. Considering that the real fuck-ups who end of in jail are cared for by the state, investing in keeping the annoying from becoming homeless and moochy shouldn’t be that big of a deal.

Maybe all they need is some kind of compassionate service – a councilor or a social worker. In terms of homelessness explicitly, I’ve heard it said that many are people who would be fine if they had a stable address and a social worker to help them take their medications on time. This doesn’t seem a lot to ask. If we can provide services for those who are not able-bodied, we should also accept that some people are just born different, and that they are just not ‘able-minded’ by what are thought of as society’s norms. 1

There is room for critique as to what constitutes the able-minded, but that is for another discussion. Meanwhile we’ve had plenty of critique of society’s norms, and while that has brought to light these considerations, they haven’t done much to encourage people toward compassion.

People who aren’t capable of fitting-in (to the extent that they can’t take care of themselves in the usually accepted way) just need accommodation and consideration. It isn’t a question of being owed, but of helping people within our community. Those who are physically and congenitally disadvantaged do not argue about being owed a living, but I think they rightfully feel entitled to being treated with respect and dignity.

So, send in the artists, with century old arguments about being owed a living and expecting support from government-funded organizations. What these arguments amount to is artists saying they’re retards who can’t take care of themselves and are essentially hopeless at basic economic management. Given that it was in art school that I began to think about this (as stated), that may be case. However, unlike the trolls commenting on the newspaper-site boards, who are happy with the cuts, I didn’t consider my fellow art-students and graduated artists as losers, but simply different. And so, I’m not very sympathetic to a line of argument that plays into ignorant prejudice among those completely uneducated and insensitive to the arts. The continued begging at government coffers, based on the idea that artists are incapable of surviving without it, seems self-harming and essentially untrue.

On the one hand, artists like to argue that they’re vital to society for all sorts of reasons, but on the other hand, they’re arguing that they’re incapable of functioning within that society. Over here, arguments about the intelligence of art and the superiority of the artist over the corporate clerk, and over there, whining about capitalist exploitation in the Third World while their dealers take 50% of the price of their work. Here a sense of entitlement to government financing, while there, artists who want to be above regulation and censorship while continuing to cash the government cheques.

In a sense, artists have become the ill character of a sitcom who doesn’t want to get better because everyone has become kind and giving toward them. In that manner they’ve degraded themselves and have invited disdain, which by the end of the episode is played for laughs. One of the values of Conservatives is personal responsibility, and the ability to take care of oneself. It thus follows that Conservative governments do not see much value in funding the arts because it’s representative of coddling adults who should be able to self-manage. By arguing that they’re retarded for so long, artists have willfully invited disdain.

Canada is a hard place to live

Sixty years ago, Roberston Davies’ Fortune, My Foe was first performed in Kingston. It contains a line I’ve seen much quoted in arguments reflecting on the development of arts funding in Canada.

Everybody says Canada is a hard country to govern, but nobody mentions that for some people it is also a hard country to live in. Still, if we all run away it will never be any better. So let the geniuses of easy virtue go southward; I know what they feel too well to blame them. But for some of us there is no choice; let Canada do what she will with us, we must stay.

Davies of course did not leave, but stayed and became part of the Canadian cultural legacy. (The internationalism of the film/television and music industries meant that we can still lay claim to those stars who now live elsewhere but who began with Canadian passports). In the years leading up to the 1967 Centenary, Canadians (reflecting a post-war, mid-20th Century modernist mindset as much as anything else) invested in developing a sense of nationalism. The result of this investment is people like John Ralston Saul and Adrienne Clarkson, the only two Canadians left in the media-scape praising Canada as a nation, both old enough to have been young adults at the Centenary, and both now at an age when they just seem like old fuddy-duddies.

The children of their generation is that of my own, kids born in the ’60s and ’70s and in terms of inherited legacies, pot smoking was far more successfully passed on then the spirit of Canadian nationalism. Planted in post-war soil Canadian Nationalism flowered for 1967, was worn in the lapel of Trudeau, then withered and died as is natural for flowers and all other living things. While ambitious and certainly worth the attempt, a government funded attempt at generating an artificial trans-continental consciousness in a place so geographically varied and multicultural is retrospectively absurd and perhaps deserving of it’s demise.

But the 1950s research into this attempt was that of the Massey Commission and the result was the Canada Council. We are told legends by elders of generous funding and ‘National Gallery Biennials’, where every couple of years the National Gallery would ‘define where Canadian art was at’. (src). This was part of the Nationalistic enculturation which produced the likes of Saul and Clarkson. By this early 21st Century, the children of those boomers are much more interested in city-state politics and thinking, founding the likes of Spacing magazine, not really giving a shit about McCleans while mocking Richard Florida even as he legitimizes them to the current crop of out-of-touch establishment.

In his 1993 introduction to a reprint of Fortune my Foe, Davies describes the genesis of the play; after World War II put a stop to touring plays by independent and occasionally American theatre companies, his university friend Arthur Sutherland established a theatre company in Kingston and invited Davies to write a ‘Canadian’ play to complement the repertoire of English and American comedies. In describing this background, Davies defines an artist as ‘a person who enlarges and illuminates the lives of others.’ In commissioning a young Roberston Davies, Sutherland, although aware of the risk…

“…wanted a play about Canada. It was risky because Canada has for a long time been thought a dull country, with dull people. But there was a time when Norway was thought dull, and Ireland was thought absurd, yet both of them brought forth plays which have been acclaimed as treasures by theatres around the world.”

Which reminds me of Norman Mailer’s claim that the economic recovery of Ireland in recent years can be traced to James Joyce. In other words, the capacity of a country to see itself reflected in a work of imagination can both be an ‘enlarging’ experience and also so inspiring to bind a community together. Davies is also claiming that the difference between being considered dull and ‘interesting’ (or cool, in the present sense) is in the nature of one’s self-imagining, and the messages that puts out. If painters of the United States had confined themselves to images of the American Gothic and considered that an accurate self-representation rather than satire, would we not think of the U.S. as dull?

After offering a synopsis of his play, Davies in the ’93 introduction goes on to say that his task was to make the play not too didactic. Within the structure of the play Davies had a character of a puppeteer, a European immigrant, who is sponsored to give a puppet show by the producer characters of Philpott and Tapscott. As Davies explains, the European puppet master was reflective of the recent wave of European immigrants and refugees from devastated Europe, who brought with them Old World sensibilities about art and culture, and were met with a homegrown New World audience who did not share those same ideas.

“Message,” Davies wrote, “was very much on the lips of Canadians like Philpott and Tapscott, the do-gooders who took up the puppet-show, without having any understanding of its special quality or its cultural background, but who were convinced that the task of art was to teach – to offer a Message, in fact, and to offer it in terms that the stupidest listener could understand. Canada was, and still is, full of such people. They think of art of all kinds as a sort of handmaid to education; it must have a Message and it must get across. The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff”.

Is it not the idea that the Conservatives, in government and individually, are people not touched by feeling? Is this not reflected in Jose Verner’s comments that she would like cultural funding to be efficient? Myself, I like efficiency since it’s about doing as much as possible with the least effort – in other words, ‘being lazy is good’ as they say in computer programing, for just this reason.

It is in fact sensible for the government to want to do this. But it is also the case that the government appears to show a disdain for the arts that lie partially in a complacency engendered by funding. Canadian art is rather pathetic and remains so because the infrastructure was set up within a moment of forethought and generosity, and instead of igniting both the imagination and the culture of the country, merely created institutions staffed by people who take the funding for granted and feel entitled within their institutional titles. Instead of fostering culture, they see themselves as beyond petty and quaint nationalistic concerns and instead fly off to Venice every couple of years to hob-nob with the planet’s remaining arrogant aristocrats, shaking away the dirt of the stupid ‘unwashed masses’ of this country who usually live in the neighborhoods the galleries move to. Admittedly, that’s being overly cynical and ignoring the good that many artist-run centres and other galleries do within their neighborhoods (before raising the market-value of neighboring properties by their presence) but such ‘good’ is questionable as a repetition of a colonial mindset that sees certain groups as needing help: bring them civilization and culture; capital-c Culture having replaced Jesus in a secular society.

On July 17th I had no idea that the programs in question even existed, and I’m in the culture business. Which is to say that the gang of young adults who have turned Toronto’s gallery-area Queen West West into another nightclub district probably have never heard of the programs either. Why then should I or they have cared on August 17th? When I didn’t know they existed I didn’t care, and now that I know they exist and may not for much longer I still don’t care that much. In effect, the Conservatives have potentially legislated my mid-July mindset into existence.

In as much as I’ve gotten emails repeating the contents of a new Facebook group, I have a suspicion this may be a lost cause. As evinced by their artist-statements, artists in this country are rarely capable of being eloquent enough to convince Conservatives or the rest of the population of their value. The Conservatives have upset an easily ignored minority, and inspired such comments as:

“when the government stops spending money on endeavours that provide next to no value to the Canadian people it is not pandering, it is good government. Am I the only person in the god forsaken country that remembers we have a fricking health care crisis? Sure, there is an element of pandering, and there is plenty of other funding that should be pulled but will not be, but the simple act of pulling funding from people who never should have received it is a good thing. End of story.” (from)

and

“I think that is what I was getting at. I’m all for supporting the arts but I feel that people of Mr. Lewis’s status and influence should not be receiving money from the government whether he is right or left wing. A friend of mine is an artist and she maintains most of the arts grants go to people who don’t need them. The real starving artists don’t have the influence to affect awards.” (from)

and

“The government is the one entity in the country that is least likely to make an intelligent decision on how to spend money. In fact, the only reasons to access government funding over private are laziness, a desire to be unaccountable for the funds you receive, and the knowledge that the general public sees no value in your product.

The government should contribute to the arts through tax credits alone. This can amount to a large amount of support, ensures there will be a respectable amount of accountability built into the system, and will bring the arts community closer to the community it supposedly serves.” (from)

yet, there is one considered argument:

“Fund the Olympics and not artists? Artists leave something behind for future generations; athletes… well, they’re fun to watch. Someone said independent producers such as Avi Lewis should pay to find their own distributors. Maybe. But then you should be consistent and argue against ALL government economic subsidies and incentives. Let’s stop subsidizing automakers, oil companies, the aerospace industry, etc. For the most part, the organizations and individuals affected here are either completely non-ideological (such as Tafelmusik) or engaging in economic development for Canadian businesses, which employ Canadians (such as the Hot Docs festival’s Toronto Documentary Forum, which among other things, brings foreign investment into Canadian productions). Finally, what’s lost here is that arts and culture have always been an important part of international diplomacy. The Tories are letting their ideology trump the national interest. Shame on them.” (from)

But in regards to Tafelmusik, a baroque orchestra playing on period instruments, they charge between $89 to $15 dollars a ticket. Surely they work a profit margin in there somewhere? Surely those wealthy egotists so eager to have their name immortalized for a few decades on a hospital wing (or listed in platinum lettering in the lobby of retarded new ‘expansions’ ignored by people waiting in line to pay $22 to see largely empty galleries) can find a mil or two to send the Bach to China? -Timothy