Tag: politics

Word Wednesday – I detest that!
Word Wednesday – I detest that!

Last year, I wrote about the Canadian General Election and how it seemed to go on forever. What I didn’t mention at the time is that our elections seem to go by in the blink of an eye when compared with our neighbours to the south. 12 weeks of election run up isn’t even close to the 60 or so weeks that the U.S. Presidential Election seems to last. I know it’s not the actual election until November, but the Primaries and all of the other things that go along with a Presidential election just never end. Even a dedicated political junkie like me is getting election fatigue.

It’s not just the fact that the election seems to be never ending and the jokes on late night television started sounding the same about two months ago, it’s that I cannot stand one of the candidates. Naturally it’s the one who gets the lion’s share of the media coverage because the world is a cruel place sometimes. At first, sitting here in Canada, I thought that Donald Trump running for the Republican nomination was funny, a lark if you will. Now, it’s March and it’s not funny anymore. Not even close. To hear the hatred spewing forth from both the man and his supporters makes me queasy. When he was just a blowhard with a lame reality show (The Apprentice), I could (and did) choose not to watch. Now that he is running for the highest office in the United States, I can’t turn it off.

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To those who say “You’re Canadian, the Presidential election doesn’t affect you” (though most of them say it far less eloquently than that), I reply that as our largest trading partner, the political state in the U.S. does affect us. In that vein, I’d like to offer the words of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau – when speaking to the Press Club in Washington DC in 1969. “Living next to you [America] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” Our media is heavily influence by the United States, our economy is intertwined, and our position relative to them is unchangeable. We cannot move further away, and Trump is not a friendly or even-tempered elephant.

It’s not just that he’s a racist and has refused to distance himself or decline the endorsement he received from a former Grand Wizard in the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) (and by the way, thanks KKK for making the word wizard a bad thing by using it in your hate-filled organization), but that’s definitely part of it. It’s not just that he is a misogynist and that I disagree completely with his views on women. It’s not even that he regularly makes up ‘facts’ and that his supporters blindly believe him until somebody dares to question him and he claims that he was “misheard” or “misquoted” or “taken out of context”. It’s that he’s a bully and I absolutely abhor bullies.

I was going to use abhor as my word for today but it’s a little too popular for my liking. Then I went to detest, but it didn’t feel strong enough to express how much I loathe Trump and what he stands for. So I racked my brain and came up with Execrate – it’s a synonym of abhor, loathe, and detest but it’s a little less common and a little more fun to say. Plus execrate has a fun etymology – it comes from Latin (of course) exsecrat, which means cursed. Ex is a Latin prefix meaning not and the Latin word sacer unsurprisingly translates to sacred – so the literal translation of execrate was “to put someone under a curse” – which I find very soothing in relation to Mr. Trump (I really like the idea of putting him under a curse – maybe the Imperius curse.. hrm this has possibilities). Nowadays, execrate simply means “to utterly detest” which fits well with my feelings on the subject.

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Execrate ( ex·e·crate ) Transitive Verb
1. To declare to be evil or detestable : denounce
2. To detest utterly
March 2, 2016
Word Wednesday – New Beginnings
Word Wednesday – New Beginnings

Canada got a new Prime Minister today. Just 16 days after Canadians voted decisively for real change, Justin Trudeau was sworn in as Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister at Rideau Hall this morning. While not everyone is happy about this (but honestly no government will ever please everyone), I am excited for the change. I think that the gender equal cabinet (there are 15 female cabinet ministers – the largest percentage of women ever) that is also the most diverse cabinet ever is going to ultimately be a good thing. It’s not like cabinets in recent memory have ever been about putting only the most qualified people into the portfolio that most suited them. There has always been an element of regional parity in cabinet making which already hampers the “best person for every position” philosophy, and I don’t think that any of the 14 women chosen weren’t qualified for their portfolio (besides, the only portfolio that you really need prior qualifications for is Finance IMHO).

It has been said that Canadians don’t vote a government in, they vote one out – which I think is true. We’re a multiparty country that vacillates between two governing parties in cycles ranging between 8-12 years. Part of me, the political idealist who is mostly hidden, wants to think that this election wasn’t just about voting out a leader who had overstayed his welcome, it was about something much bigger – possibility.

The new Prime Minister being sworn in. Photo from @JustinTrudeau on Twitter

The possibility of a different direction for the country. One open and honest and accessible to everyone. My amazing friend, (I still can’t believe I’m her friend… I feel like she’s going to wake up and realize I’m nowhere near cool enough to be her friend) Amanda, wrote a heartwrenchingly honest letter to our new Prime Minister asking him to keep his promise to make transgender rights a priority. I feel like if anyone is going to be able to help Alexis grow up in a country that affords her the protection and respect she deserves, it is Mr. Trudeau. And if he doesn’t follow through on this promise, I will be right there with Amanda and all the other allies protesting and holding him accountable.

Already there has been change. Today’s swearing in ceremony was different from any other one in Canadian history – with the public being invited to the grounds of Rideau Hall and with Mr. Trudeau going out and mingling with the crowd. Another amazing woman I know, Amy Boughner, was fortunate enough to be able to go and she got to meet the new Prime Minister and get this picture of him when he was out meeting with the people who came out to witness this historic event.

Photo Courtesy of Amy Boughner

I was trying to decide what my Word Wednesday word was going to be, and flipped on the television coverage of the ceremonies, and the words “hope”, “change”, and “new beginning” kept coming up. I think the perfect word to encapsulate the feeling from today is possibility. So that’s my choice for Word Wednesday on this gorgeous November day. Possibility. It’s a word that has positive connotations, and I think it’s a great thing to have positive thoughts at the swearing-in of a new cabinet.

Possibility

Possibility is another word with Latin roots (I always come back to the Latin roots), coming from Latin to French to English – a fairly straightforward etymological progression. The Latin root word is possibilis meaning “able to be done”, which inspired the Old French word possibilite, from whence (yes, I’m aware that “from whence” is redundant, and I’m going with it anyway because it’s less awkward and Shakespeare used it) we get the English word possibility. Possibility – it even sounds positive, and full of hope and opportunity.

Possibility (pos·si·bil·i·ty ) noun
1. A thing that may happen or be the case.
2. The state or fact of being likely or possible; likelihood.
3. A thing that may be chosen or done out of several possible alternatives
4. Unspecified qualities of a promising nature; potential.
So there’s a definite possibility that next week’s Word Wednesday post will have something to do with the word whence, because it’s awesome and makes me happy, and there’s an air of possibility in the new government that took office today.
November 4, 2015
Word Wednesday – Election 42 Edition
Word Wednesday – Election 42 Edition

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or aren’t Canadian), you will have heard that a general election has been called for October 19th 2015. The election period is an unusually long 12 weeks (most are considerably shorter) and I’m already sick of the rhetoric. It’s like the old joke – how can you tell when a politician is lying? His (or her) lips are moving. I will vote come election day, because I was raised to believe that they who do not vote have no right to complain about the government. Since I happen to quite enjoy complaining about the government, I have to vote. I’m fully prepared to pay more attention to the election – once the summer is over. I have a limited attention span for political doublespeak and it’s definitely not 12 weeks long!

I’ve worked the last few elections as a poll clerk. I haven’t decided if I want to work this one. For one thing, it’s the day after a big conference I’m really looking forward to attending. For another it’s a really long day and if you don’t have a good partner, it can really suck. The pay is decent though, and it is fun to be a part of the democratic process.

Courtesy of Elections Canada

That said, you’d have to have been under a rock to not have heard something about the first leader’s debate. I chose not to watch it on television or stream it, but instead kept track of who was saying what about whom via Twitter. I noticed, that as politicians are wont to do, there was a lot of prevarication going on. Which gave me the idea for today’s Word Wednesday post. So some good came out of it at least.

Some of the politically savvy readers may know that as a matter of parliamentary procedure, one member cannot call another a straight out liar in the House of Commons. It has consistently been ruled as “Unparliamentary language” and there’s a partial list of all the words deemed unacceptable here. I’m not sure what the rule on thesaurus use is, because I would like to point out that almost every member is guilty of prevarication on occasion.

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Prevarication (pre·var’i·ca’tion** ) noun
1. a false or deliberate misstatement; a lie
2) the act of deviating from the truth

Maybe calling someone a liar would be better if we used a fancier word? Don’t accuse your opponent of lying – say they’re prevaricating. By the time they look up the meaning, you’ll be long gone. At least the first time.

Prevarication has a pretty interesting etymology. it comes from the Latin word praevaricatus, past participle of praevaricari, meaning to act in collusion – or literally to straddle. The meaning comes from the second half of the word, which has its roots in the word varus, meaning bowlegged.

So the next time you think a politician is straddling the truth, don’t accuse them of lying – accuse them of prevarication instead. You’ll say the same thing, but it sounds better.
August 12, 2015