Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Oft used in American politics is the phrase “the shining city on the hill.”

As Ronald Reagan emphasized, “America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.”  

In his farewell address to the nation, Reagan expanded upon his romantic proclamation of cityhood and statehood and brotherhood:  “I’ve spoken of the Shining City all my political life. …In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.’” 

While the American rhetoric of the ‘shining city upon a hill’ seems, to the Candian ear, patriotically florid, perhaps a little bit of idealsim and civic patriotism might go a long way here.

Halifax you say? Thee of the navel-gazing cat by-laws and backyard chicken flutters?

Yes, Halifax. Where, like most places, there is an inferiority complex, lassitude, complacency, and good, old-fashioned, fear and loathing.

If  ever there was a shining beacon upon a hill, dramatically introduced by the slap of a cold, great ocean upon a face, a face of rock, this is it – Halifax.

It is a hill with a city around it that looms out over the sea;  peering at passing ships and greeting every Canadian ancestor that ever came from Europe. Almost all of us.

It is a city that you cannot even blow up by accident.

Back in 1917 the snow fell like white blankets around the wounded buildings whose remains stood skelatol and blackened, but still there. And the people still came and gathered, and fell around the twisted husks like the snow itself. Even the great Halifax explosion only inspired us to hang on.

And as silly and as ornamental as American political phrasing seems to us often times, we need not turn up our nose up at it or risk losing an important lesson — the lessons of our own stories, our own legacies, our own mythologies, and, yes, our own flushed and florid blarney.

As self-evident and filled with blatant trusims as pep talks often are, where, when we hear the truth we know it, and where we recognize that which we need to do better while also acknowledging the mettle of which we are made, we still need to hear it.

Halifax, itself, needs a pep talk.  

The Citizens for Halifax Society  ( www.citizensforhalifax.ca) spoke to me this week. Urban planner and caring visonary, Patricia Busby joined me on air to discuss the direction of Halifax and the whole notion of “the vision thing”.

According to Busby, we lack vision. We have, and I will paraphrase, “pothole Mayoral mentalities”. Which is a shame, because the potholes are so big around Halifax right now they could house entire shipments of stowaway Algerians. But instead of “cover your ass” career pothole politicians and councillors, we need people (Mayors, councillors, business leaders) who take the risks necessary inherent in leadership.

A case in point is Trade Centre CEO and Commonwealth Games bid leader Fred MacGillivray. He and his team got the bid for Canada, and especially for Halifax, and yet was, in my opinion, stabbed in the back.

 But Fred MacGillivray’s disheartening battle should not discourage others (it was never about money, there were always ways around that issue arding to me; money was used as an excuse to steal thunder) – others who care and who need to lead.

When you lead, even in a democracy, you push people out of the way. People get offended. Noses get out of joint. How do you think the original pioneers did it? By pretty-pleasing everyone?

It is gumption and backbone that dug out the stumps and cleared the land. The notion of American and British exceptionalism (something from which we may re-learn) began, for America, in the late 15^th century when America was no more than a gleam in Christopher Columbus’s eye.

In 1630, a wealthy attorney named John Winthrop took a group of fellow Puritans across the Atlantic to build a New Jurusalem in the New World. From the book of Matthew’s Sermon On The Mount, Winthrop characterized their new homeland and their new adventure as “a city upon a hill”.

Equally a blessing, equally an opportunity, Halifax has all the right ingredients.

Just add some heart and stir. 

And don’t let the turkeys get you down (Reagan said that too).

Elliot Spitzer, the former Governor of New York, pegged as “Mr. Clean”, and the prostitution scandal that swirled around him last week, deserves some more reflection this week.

Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler Magazine, has just offered Spitzer’s former prostitute one million dollars to pose nude. She has already received book deals and reality TV show offers from sleazy, on-the-make producers (is there any other kind?).

The 22 year old woman from the broken home (it is always such, or, at least, love-less and dysfunctional) who was “outed” as an over-priced, common, hooker is now rewarded due to notoriety in the same fashion that the home movies of Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson helped their careers. The only God is that which grabs headlines. Apparently, there is no such thing as shame or scandal for them.

Why? Why do we reward those who do wrong? In fact, transgressors, moral or otherwise, hide behind the “don’t judge me” rule: unless you are without sin, don’t apply standards or remind anyone of them. This is clearly false. Yet, many are subdued by the false argument that “anything goes” so, don’t judge me. “Who are you to judge”? say they.

Well, moral standards do exist. So do issues of ethics and self-respect.

What was also truly shocking about the Spitzer affair is that he made/allowed his wife to join him on the pedestal of shame as he stood down. Did she really need to be there? Can’t the good/bad Governor carry his own water? Hasn’t his poor wife been through enough?

Dr. Robert Epstein, a prominent behavioral researcher at the  University of California at San Diego told us today on air that the gap between young people (Spitzer’s hooker was 22) and older adults is getting wider – it’s worse for teens. The average farther spends only 30 minutes per week with his kids, and half of that time is spent watching TV; the disconnection between generations is even worse than during the height of the Hippy era.  

The only moral guidance and cultural instruction kids get these days is through the fashion and entertainment industries and the media.

Do you trust me, or any other talk show host, to raise your kids? How about Oprah?

No wonder 50 percent of African American girls have a sexually transmitted disease and more than a quarter of white girls aged 14—19 have the same.

But there we are, traipsing around the world with the Americans telling other societies and civilizations how to do conduct a culture — teaching them “our values”.

Maybe we should just send them the DVD.  

Halifax Regional Municipality police chief Frank Beazley told me in studio that crime stats are lower in Halifax. Year end stats from the Halifax Regional Police show violent crime is down 10 per cent, property crime down 15 per cent, break-and-enters 14 per cent, car theft down 29 per cent, theft over 5k down 30 per cent, theft under 5k down 16 per cent. But do you feel safer?

The lower stats are due to mainly to better policing: targeting “hot zones” with a rapid reaction force.

We still seem to have a lot of gun use in crimes relative to our population and to the rest of the country. We still seem to have too many random acts of violence. We still seem to have more than our share. There are still high-profile unsolved crimes — murderers on the loose, in other words.

“We know who these people are,” declared Beazley with an open-faced, direct, look. His face crowned in white. “But it’s a question of evidence,” an interesting on-air admission.

I assume, by his actions, that the good Chief would like listeners to come forward if they know anything.

Chief Beazley also let us know how disappointed he is with driving infractions. There is a an overall increase of 30 per cent in driving infractions with 46,000 people charged for speeding, stop sign infractions, and inattentive driving with a 17 per cent increase in collisions.

The most startling stat comes with drinking and driving Charges are up 50 per cent!

In a related story, the NSLC reports record sales. On the day of December 22^nd 2007 the NSLC sold more alcohol ($5.2-million) than any other day on record. NSLC reaps in money bottle-over-fist for the Province and themselves. December alone saw 5.6 per cent hike in net sales and a 2.5 per cent increase over volume.

NSLC thus recorded the highest level holiday sales in its 78-year history!

A great advertising campaign helped things along.

Remember to spend millions, promote alcohol consumption, and drink responsibly!

Meantime, according to Maclean’s magazine, Halifax is number 10 in the most violent cities list. Ahead of Halifax are Vancouver (10th spot) with many times over the population, and Edmonton (5) and Winnepeg (3). Regina (a hole if ever there was one) is number one — at least they are number one at something.

A question to ask yourself: why is Moncton and Saint John nowhere to be seen on such lists?

Barbara Stegemann is the author of The 7 Virtues of a Philosopher Queen – A Woman’s Guide to Living & Leading in an Illogical World. While the self-help category is a road often travelled, Stegemann’s contribution to it is refreshing for its’ clear attributions and enthusiasm.

In the early Nineties, The Celestine Prophesies was all the rage. But it was old wine in a new bottle which owed much of its life ruminations to the
New England transcendentalists of the Nineteenth century, namely Thoreau and Emerson. The school of thought saw that the human spirit had the capacity to soar beyond its earthly shackles to define itself — unadulterated by stratified, ossified, thinking.

The self-help category of books has some familiar company: from Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, to Anthony Robbins litany of books and tapes, to relationship speculator John Gray’s Men are From Mars, Women from Venus, to the Granddaddy’s:  Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale; not to leave out Dale Carnegie’s “
How To Win Friends and Influence People, and Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled — which is now 25 years old.

Barbara Stegemann goes back further, a lot further, to the ancient Greeks for her wisdom. She also does it without being selfish.

Most of the books I have listed above are about overcoming some self-perceived flaw in order to “have an advantage” over others — to control, dazzle, overwhelm for personal gain.

For Stagemann however, personal gain does not come at a cost to others, nor is it really a personal gain despite the personal and private persual of virtue over flaw, over insecurity, over weakness, over self-betrayal; personal gain in Barbara Stegemann’s world is always a shared thing by the philosopher. Her book is not about getting ahead, it is about how to love and how stop making the world a shit storm.

Stegemann’s greatest strength in her 7 Virtues of a Philosopher Queen lies in her clear attributions and direct references to Plato and Socrates, knowing that many of her readers will be experiencing these great philosophers for the first time. Unlike her self-help peers, there is no derivative thinking. Why pretend when you can go to the source? With Stegemann, it is less pedantic teaching and more compassionate sharing – a woman who is excited about her education and has learned to love life.

Having compassion for oneself and gaining a foothold on the goodness you have to give are cornerstones in self-development; self-development is at the core of all of Judeo-Christian notions of perfectibility. In Islam, the concept of “Jihad” actually refers to the soul’s struggle within, the war within one’s self.

When you hear the truth, you usually know it. The Ancient Greeks always believed that the successful soul is living to the fullness of one’s capacities in the pursuit of excellence.

Barbara Stegemanns’ great accomplishment here lies in her proud, conscious, and direct attributions to Plato and Socrates as she enumerates the nature of Aristotelian virtue and applies it to the workaday world of the modern woman. Stegemann’s post-feminist impulses and approach to feminism as a branch of humanism also is liberating, making it accessible and un-alienating to men.

To live a full life Stegemann says you must also surround yourself with people who believe in you and will not be jealous or threatened by your success. It reminded me of when President Ronald Reagan left office. His simple note to his successor was, “don’t let the turkeys get you down.”

In The 7 Virtues of a Philosopher Queen, Barbara Stegemann says it better.

www.the7virtues.com

If U.S. Presidential hopeful (and Democratic frontrunner) Barak Obama was a “white” male, he would just be another bright, anonymous, Harvard product. As it so happens, his father is Black and so, by American racial perceptual standards, he is Black.  

Many in the U.S. think that a male politician of mixed race represents “change” and a departure from the way Washington does business. It is the vainest, most superficial and fatuous approach to politics imaginable – Americans are voting for him primarily due to skin color (people can never point to one of his accomplishments, they just, like, sorta like him). It makes the burden of being white and privileged less intense as you seem to be voting against the politics of exclusion.  

Ironically, as an “underdog,”, Barak’s skin color makes his own social privilege and Harvard educated elitist burden also less intense.  

Barak Obama’s father’s pigment has nothing to do with what should make a good President, anymore than Obama’s half-black skin color and Kenyan roots and international living arrangements growing up (not to mention his family’s money) can inform him of Black experience. Moreover, I will even venture to say that Barak Obama’s proximity to Black culture and understanding approximates my own – or any of my white friends in Sackville or Bedford.  

You see, Barak Obama is not “black,” as far as any context of exclusion is concerned. He is not even half-excluded, or “half-black” in any social sense. He is a man whose father happens to be black, and upper class, who went to Harvard.  

Barak Obama is a Harvard product that has appeal to Whites because his skin is “different,” he makes whites feel better about themeselves as purveyors of social justice when they cheer for him and appeals to Blacks because he seems closer to their own racial experience.

But when it comes to the politics of exclusion, the real problem is Hillary Clinton’s gender, not Barak Obama’s race. Hilary Clinton does not have the social luxury of being half anything; she is all women, which comes at a political cost.  

Social anthropologists have mentioned that being sexist is harder to fight in higher social circles than being racist. Within the gender of being female there is also an unacknowledged or repressed gender inter-competitiveness that claws back women who stand out: at a primitive, crocodile level of the human brain there is an understanding that “alpha females” attract more male attention and, therefore, create less for others.

Women who stand out are a threat to many men as well as many women. Being a man, of any stripe, in the world of power politics is easier.

Hillary’s problem, sadly, is that she is all woman and Bark’s good fortune is that he is not, as Borat would say, a “vanilla face.”