A lamentation for 'March holiday season'

Variations on a theme, and mockery at the state's expense.

(Programming note: I’ll be in Ottawa next week for Canada Strong and Free, a few meetings, and a few runs along the Rideau Canal. If you’re around, say hi.)

The ‘Palace of the Soviets,’ pictured above as but an artistic rendering (and flanked by one of the more asinine pieces of government comms ever imagined), was an ambitiously batshit attempt by the Russians in the 1930s to house the site of their political convention centre on the very ruins of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

Too costly for the same ideology that would eventually go broke chasing Ronald Reagan through space, if built, the palace would have instantly been registered as the world’s largest structure.

The intended message behind such a monolith of Stalinist architecture and bureaucratic excess? Simple: no man comes before the state.

Not even God.

I find myself thinking about such plans, fellow cis-phallo-havers of the non-surgical variety, and cherished birthing, bleeding peoples, in the wake of our non-denominational “March holiday season,” and yesterday’s Easter Sunday Transgender Day of Visibility.

“No man comes before the state . . . Not even God.”

*Plants tongue firmly in cheek*

And what a successful few days it’s been for hammering that message home!

• The deplorable proles were lucky to receive a deliberate “Fuck You to normal people.” (“Normal,” gross, don’t they know that Covid isn’t done with them yet?)

• Canadians have had the audacity to complain about lower economic productivity than that of Italy, a country that takes an afternoon nap.

• The state broadcaster was surely right to share government astroturfed climate science from an alleged $30,000,000 shell corp. with a half-empty office.

• Canada’s energy minister deftly made the case for never again selling… Canadian energy.

• The esteemed and cognitively robust President Joseph R. Biden proclaimed Easter Sunday as Transgender Day of Visibility. (Some may argue that the biological males who hold an apparent perversion towards dominating female competition have plenty of visibility, but not us, no, and certainly not I.)

• Wrong-thinking Canadian journalists and Substackers failed to make the case for a Canada in decline, and the need to hunker down, rebuild from the wreckage of the postnational era, and to fight alongside like-minded allies.

  It's 2025. Welcome to the Thunderdome.

• The brave and venerable sports commentator… turned epidemiologist… turned climate expert Bruce Arthur mounted a glorious defence on taxing the working poor to change the weather.

• Adroit Liberal back-bencher Ken Hardie, who has in the past compared the Official Opposition to N*zis, and who communicates like a sober person, was happy to signal-boost these stunning and brave academics and economists who definitely haven’t done something like this before…

These far-right misinformation accounts have gone too far. You should report this guy under the Online Harms Act.

• A trial balloon has gone up for the KILLING OF THE CANADIAN ELDERLY for the Liberal ‘good.’ (Hey, ice floes, ättestupa, and other forms of cultural Senicide remained popular for centuries for a reason!)

• The Globe’s ‘award-winning’ health columnist wondered aloud — and quite rightly!! — about whether men even hold an advantage over women in sporting competitions.

• And the PM’s new adviser certainly won hearts and minds by yelling at some lawyers and legal experts after a faultless defence of Bill C-63 in the Toronto Star, where her affiliation went conveniently unmentioned until the final line.

*Right clicks, disengages irony settings*

A truly remarkable few days, to be sure, and one where this writer, a human male (careful, no slurs!) who observes Easter, and who hopes that you and yours had a blessed weekend, could do little but mock along with the rest of the dumbfounded, normal adults across social media.

And yet, and it bears repeating in many of these columns — for, after all, what is creativity but a circular effort to grow and refine one’s raison d’etre for creating in the first place — this crap is no longer landing.

You, dear reader, are not crazy; not some thought criminal. You’re not even remotely an outlier. Together, you’re larger than the state.

On matters of good faith — and even real faith — you have Team Outrage Du Jour beat. The victim routine is no longer working. The post-national experiment failed. Supposed ‘well-meaning’ accomplished everything but.

And on matters of good clean fun, and the relentless mockery of the ideas and ideologues who made the world worse, as if this were all some student-union passion project they could afford to cock up, let us learn from the teachings of March holiday season, and afford ourselves some grace.

After all, they deserve it.

The ‘doomer’ right sure enjoys a melancholic metaphor. (Perhaps they should “touch grass” as often as they make that suggestion to others.)

One of their favourites belongs to that of the boiling frog.

I can appreciate that this has become a variation on a theme (remember, circles), but here’s the pep talk:

For the first time in a long time, it’s not you in the pot who is boiling.

Turn up the heat.

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