Bruce Dowbiggin
We’re Listening: How Unhappiness Went Big Time
“For all practical purposes, a revolution has occurred in the private lives of Americans, who increasingly find themselves depressed and alone.”— Ronald W. Dworkin 2021
The unquantifiable in Covid madness is the psychological impact from its lockdowns, masks and social isolation. The stress on the population— especially the young— created by the harsh medicine of governments and health authorities has only been suggested at for most of the disaster.
But the hints of stress are there. “@EWoodhouse7 Covid-19 did not increase the normal respiratory disease morality burden for teens age 13-18 in 2020. But alcohol- & drug-induced deaths nearly DOUBLED. A 50% increase in this age group, w/this kind of death, is a massive indictment of lockdown & school closure policies.”
Domestic assaults and murders are other byproducts of isolation and fear. According to the CDC the U.S. murder rate is up 30 percent during the pandemic, the highest one-year rise ever. In a recent poll 23 percent of those polled describe themselves as unhappy— the highest such reading since 1972.
Society clearly rests on a knife’s edge as the traditional bonds of friend and family are eliminated by pandemic panic. Coping mechanisms have disappeared. People quake in fear of an impending truck armada from the West. Whom to trust?
Hence the vulnerability and hopelessness in so much of pop culture. And the stigmatizing of traditional strength and self confidence. “Thank you for your service” to military and health workers is a compliment but also a recognition how far much of society has drifted from the notion of personal risk and sacrifice.
This coincides with the radical left pushing to replace police officers with members of the care industry as first responders. While the practicality of sending untrained counsellors on domestic calls— facing deadly weapons— is fraught with danger there are city councils moving in this direction in a number of large urban areas.
The outcome of this policy is still uncertain, but the fact that it is even being considered is testament to inroads the caring industry has made in society. This week’s extensive Let’s Talk campaign on depression and mental illness underlines how the caring industry has largely overtaken the traditional family and friends— inaccessible in the lockdowns— who used to form a support group. It is ubiquitous.
Aiding in this transformation was the 2010 U.S. Affordable Care Act which established parity between mental and physical health in the insurance-reimbursement context. So everyone from credentialed psychologists down to life coaches is now a paid part of the health industry.
Young people today might believe that the caring industry has long been in society. Not so. As Ronald W. Dworkin notes in The Politicization of Unhappiness , “Although the general population of the United States has only doubled since the mid-20th century, this industry has already increased 100-fold… With the old authority figures belittled and real friends and family spread thin or even non-existent, the only people left who can fill the void — and who have the prestige to compel others to follow them down a new road — are caring professionals.
“This industry has emerged as the post-revolutionary successor to our broken social system. As is typical of a revolutionary political party, the caring industry’s components have replaced those of the old order: Its organization has replaced the previous social system, its ideology has replaced traditional culture, and its professionals have taken the place of real friends, relatives, and authority figures.”
As the Let’s Talk policy emphasizes, confessing anxiety or depression to total strangers is now seen as positive. So is acting as a freelance caregiver. Gone is the trusted family member or friend in a private setting. Often the afflicted’s confession is delivered in a group setting where the person must unburden themselves before a cohort indoctrinated in the catechism of caring.
Individuals may respond, writes Dworkin, “but not as individuals, or even as individuals with unique titles, as much as representatives of professional caring, each having been trained in roughly the same way to talk a person through a problem.”
In short, the caring industry has become a political movement with its own orthodoxy and loyalty. With a vested stake in perpetuating itself and its patients’ distress— a process jet-fuelled by the media’s Covid paranoia campaign. Does it help people? In the short term, absolutely. Long term? The jury is still out.
This confessional model has been carried into the political realm through diversity seminars. “Group therapy for addiction — an old caring-professional technique — has become the format for today’s “struggle sessions” and diversity seminars in corporate settings.” White privilege and gender bias must be shed to make progress to “happiness”.
But don’t dare question its purity. Propaganda is crucial to reinforcing the brand, says Dworkin. “Because everyone knows in advance that self-help books are written in conformity with existing prescriptions and rarely contain a single fresh idea, people who seek out these books often buy many of them, and they keep consuming them — not to learn anything new, but to bolster their conviction to act.”
In the end the message is that traditional sources of compassion— family, friends, the church— have failed. You are right to feel alone. And the caring industry— the collective of rehearsed people— is the only thing there to rescue you.
Like the movement to divert students’ education from parents and toward the public education gulag, the end game is a social revolution, one tried with lamentable effect in socialist nations in the past. As Vladimir Putin noted last year, “This is something we saw in Russia. It happened in our country before the 1917 revolution; the Bolsheviks followed the dogmas of Marx and Engels. And they also declared that they would go in to change the traditional lifestyle, the political, the economic lifestyle, as well as the very notion of morality, the basic principles for a healthy society.
“It is with puzzlement that we see the practices Russia used to have and that we left behind in distant past.”
So yes, let us commend the outreach of the caring industry. Let’s Talk has noble goals. But let us also hope people separated from loved ones and friends the last two years rediscover that the greatest unit of strength and nurturing is still the personal one of family and friends.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
It hasn’t been the greatest month for Wayne Gretzky. One one hand he has a Putin pal, Alex Ovechkin, systematically stalking his record for the most regular-season goals in an NHL career. After a slow start The Great Eight is now tracking Wayne like Carey Price tracking a mule deer (more on that later). When this is over he could have only 60 NHL records left!
On the other hand, his secret about supporting Donald Trump got out in the wake of Orange Man Bad re-possessing the White House. Yes, Gretz is a MAGA man, right down to the hat. While his son-in-law, LIV golfer Dustin Johnson, tees it up regularly with The Donald (they’re neighbours in the Palm Beaches) most of the hockey sweats were unaware that No. 99 votes for Trump. (In Wayne’s defence he votes GOP in the Hollywood congressional district which is like using a hair blower to melt the Columba Ice Field.)
Then, after Trump’s stunning (to some) win on Tuesday, pictures emerged on the Great One with his family at Mar A Lago celebrating the win. Janet Gretzky cooed, “Congratulations Mr. President Donald J Trump ♥️🤍💙🇺🇸 You did it, You deserved it, you earned every bit of it. The world is a better place to have you as our Leader. Proud to be an American. Thank you for being such a great friend . May God keep watching over you ♥️🙏🏻♥️ Love our family to yours !”
The secret (to some) was out. Then hero of the Great White North, which has elected Justin Trudeau three times, melted down. Like this. “People should burn all their old hockey jersey and cards of this guy. A shame”. And those were the nice ones.
University of Alberta professor Robert Summers @RJSCity: “He’s been a pretty unlikable guy for a long time, this just further solidifies it. He was an amazing hockey player.” @ktownkeith: “Gretzky is disgusting and pathetic. I will celebrate when Ovechkin breaks his record. Also FYI, Mario was the best hockey player ever, not Whine Gretzky.”
Dave MacIntyre @dave_macattack: “Wayne Gretzky being at Cheeto’s inauguration party is disappointing in ways I can’t properly express in a tweet. And no, I don’t care that hockey culture is conservative. Being fiercely opposed to a fascist dictator should be the absolute floor for anyone with a conscience….He ain’t the GOAT for me anymore.”
“Not sure this guy is the Canadian icon and encapsulation of Canadian values that many think he is. The first red flag was his very partisan support for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives starting in the mid-2000s. No thanks, Wayne!”
Globe & Mail columnist Andrew Coyne, who was on an 0-50 heater during the election weighed in. @acoyne: “I have no problem with Gretzky being a conservative. I do have a problem with him hanging with Trump. Who, for starters, is not a conservative.”
There were some who defended him. My pal Ted Bird chirped back. @manofbird: “The pissants complaining about Wayne Gretzky attending Trump’s victory party are the same people who would’ve snitched on their own kids for playing road hockey during COVID.”
But it’s safe to say that as Canada prepares to defenestrate Trudeau in the next federal election, Gretz will not be invited to Rideau Hall for beaver tails with Justin. It’s likely he’ll experience the Bobby Orr blackout, becoming a non-person in Canada for getting too close to Trump.
In Orr’s case it was his published endorsement of Trump’s losing 2020 campaign that led to the shade being drawn over the greatest defenceman (IMO player) ever. “He’s the kind of teammate I want”.
Much like the Gretzky tsunami of condemnation, Orr took it in the cup, especially in liberal New England where he made his bones. “Not that Bobby Orr will care, but his endorsement of Donald Trump is one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever read in my life. I guess all I can say is that he seems to have a weak spot for conmen/future convicted criminals.”
In Canada it was no better for Orr. Here was Vancouver columnist Daniel Wagner: “In other words, Orr faces no harm from a Trump administration and is likely insulated from the harm that others have experienced. That doesn’t excuse his endorsement, but goes a long way towards explaining it.” In the Hockey News Ken Campbell tied Orr to the Jan. 6 riots. “Bobby Orr Was Part of the Problem. Now He Can Be Part of the Solution”.
In our column of Nov. 8, 2020, we pointed the wee hypocrisy of the liberal-left press box. “Just weeks after giving LeBron James’ political activism a tongue bath, the Globe & Mail sent in the goons for Orr. “Neither Bobby Orr nor any other athletes should be leading the political conversation” thundered Cathal Kelly.
Sure. Leave it to us. Other Canadian sports media called Trump a “monster”, a “racist” and “a totalitarian”. You could heat most of the GTA with the steam emitted by their indignation at Orr having the temerity to speak out. Others swore to sell off their precious Orr memorabilia as if Orr had been accused of throwing a Stanley Cup Final.”
A bitter Orr has taken a low profile since as even some in his hometown of Parry Sound wants nothing to do with him. “Poor Parry Sound,” tweeted Mary Lou George on Oct. 31, 2020. “What a disgrace #BobbyOrr has turned out to be. Guess he believes bragging about assaulting women really is just locker room talk since he wants Trump on his team. Sad.”
Longtime fans in Parry Sound dumped on him. “I just assumed that he was a good guy. Honestly it was heartbreaking for me to learn this about him. It just shattered my impression – I guess it was an illusion – it just shattered it… It kind of now, makes me rethink a lot of my hockey heroes … it’s just disappointing.”
The message is that in progressive Canada it doesn’t pay for even the greatest hockey heroes to diverge from their Trudeaupian orthodoxy. As Canadiens star goalie Carey Price learned when he dared to disagree with Trudeau’s plans to seize guns.
“I love my family, I love my country, and I care for my neighbour,” Price wrote in a published post. “I am not a criminal or a threat to society. What @justinpjtrudeau is trying to do is unjust… Thank you for listening to my opinion.”
We commiserated with him in our column at the time. “Good luck with that, Carey. Coming in the week when Quebec commemorates the 2014 École Polytechnique massacre, the political message backfired. Quebec’s media exploded against the man who was so recently their hero. Price tried to clarify his stand.
“My views are my own, and I do believe in them,” he tweeted. “The only reason I bring up this issue is because it is what’s being brought up now and not out of disrespect to anyone.” That brought the Habs belatedly to protect him. “Carey was not aware of the unfortunate timing on his statement. The Montreal Canadiens wish to express their sincere apology to any and all who have been offended or upset by the discourse that has arisen over this matter in recent days.”
But the message is clear. Whether you’re Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr or Carey Price, Canada’s Woke chorus will not abide insubordination to their cause. That includes much of the media. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men , they can’t handle the truth. So shut up and pass the puck.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
“A Second Trump Administration Would Be a Carnival of Corruption and Greed,” New York Times headline.
Surprise! The carnival just rolled into DC. On a night after Americans told the Washington elites and Hollywood toffs to get stuffed, the denial squad was back in full force in both America and Canada on Wednesday. Instead of asking what they did wrong they re-doubled efforts to do the Obama finger point at people they see as their lessers.
But it’s falling on deaf ears. It’s now okay to answer questions again about what happened in 2020 and what will happen going forward. Our good friend Toronto Mike asked if we thought the 2020 election— laughingly billed as the “the most secure election in history”— was rigged. Our answer was that, just as in justice, it’s not good enough stage a fair election. You must be seen to stage a fair election.
The 2020 vote failed that test. Tuesday night the best argument that 2020 was a stinking potage was the mystery of the missing voters, Specifically, it appears that Kamala Harris will win about 12 million fewer votes than did Biden. They didn’t go to Trump, who’s just barely ahead of his 2020 number. Where did they go? Did they sit out the election? We thought there were millions more Americans set to vote in 2024?
Or did they, as Trump loyalist Steve Bannon suggests, never exist in the first place? It’s a telling point as the new Covid voting rules left gaps in the supervision and conduct of mail-in voting, drop boxes, vote harvesting and chain of custody. Because they were so greedy for power the DEMs engineered the @Biden win in 2020, using Covid restrictions to gin up a fanciful 81 million votes for Biden, who they knew was senile. In their exuberance to stomp out Trump using illegal ballots did they produce too high a bar for votes? Oops.
They got their comeuppance Tuesday night as Biden World collapsed onto a shellshocked Kamala Harris. Perhaps the biggest losers outside of Harris/ Biden were the legions of celebrities who took it as their appointed duty to lecture what Sunny Hostin of The View called “uneducated” voters. The sense of entitlement by everyone from Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen to Cardi B was shattered by the referendum on privilege Tuesday.
All you needed to know about their heavy foot in this election was George Clooney. The A-list actor decided after the June debate that senile Biden couldn’t win. He cut off his financial support and urged other Hollywood libs to do the same. Then he wrote an OpEd telling Joe to go. On the say-so of Clooney and Hollywood loons like Rob Reiner, Mark Ruffalo and Ed Begley the DNC threw away the legal primary votes for Biden and stuck Kamala in his place— without any vetting on her lecherous husband or radical roots.
They then rounded up the Media party and pollsters to take her from 36 percent approval to 50 approval in a week. And there we were on Tuesday. George Clooney’s election. Hope The View enjoyed it. Now they’re reduced to begging for rapprochement from the GOP after having none when the tables were turned.
The lasting takeaway from 2024 won’t just be Trump but Elon Musk and the replacement of legacy media by social media. By restoring Right voices to his X site he destroyed the social media cabal of Facebook, Google, MSM and more supporting the Blob. By going on the Joe Rogan podcast for two hours or talking to Tucker Carlson’s podcast he emphasized the new prominence of podcasts and social media as an alternative to debates on the Big Four networks or sit-downs with dismissive hosts on 60 Minutes .
Suddenly there was another channel for message sending. Musk’s conversion to Trump (after the Left spurned him) left the grandees of status quo from the Bidens and Barack exposed. Their traditional interlocutors had lost the public trust during Covid. With no alternatives but middle-of-the-night raids and dissembling NYC prosecutors they showed their true colours. .
The Trump hate was endemic— some of it justified. Allusions to Hitler, internment camps, defunding unfriendly media and more. This from the party where Barack Obama said they go high when others go low. Good night and good riddance. Had they simply waited out Trump’s second term in 2020 they’d have likely won last night with a fresh leader and an eight-year runway. Now Trump gets four more years, with J.D. Vance, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Hailey and Tulsi Gabbard ready to tack on another eight years. Kamala Harris disappears ignominiously. Bad move all around in 2020.
In Canada, a volatile Trump re-elected should act as a brake on Justin Trudeau’s wilder instincts. While Canada is not America, the populist unrest that propelled Trump is very alive in Trudeau’s nation. He sits in the 20s for approval. A Kamala win might have been a green light to more globalist pandering. Now, after Tuesday’s bloodbath Trudeau risks the CDN economy by moving further to the trash heap. For the next six to twelve months his Chinese handlers are going to be mad as Trudeau must cleave closely to them.
As we said, some are calling for unity and understanding in the wake of the 2024 election. (Most of them the ones who took the nastiest, most vicious shots at him in the courts and Congress.) There will be time for that soon. But first, for no other reason than to remember how they acted in power, recall how they took a picture of mounted border police apprehending illegal migrants in a Texas river. Biden said they were whipping the people with their reins. His lapdog media piled on. It was a lie they perpetuated for weeks.
Finally, say a prayer for the polling industry such as Disney’s 538 Project whose work was followed religiously by most media and political junkies. In the end almost all pollsters outside Rasmussen and Atlas Intel came grovelling in favour of the candidate from the uniparty. Even when the mistake was revealed several major firms refused to call close races. Meanwhile those who followed the polymarket betting sites saw a consistent preference over 60 percent in favour of Trump all night. In the end they might have been the night’s biggest winner.
Charles De Gaulle famously asked, “How can you govern a nation with 538 different cheeses?” America is about to find out that, in the new news era, governing will involve 538 different media sources producing information. With Elon Musk as the ring leader.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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