The Negative Collective

I'm a great believer in the collective. However,  I don't  necessarily believe that the whole is greater than it's sum. In fact at this time in history, in 2014 Canada is demonstrating that we are collectively less than the sum of our parts. Collectively, without positive leadership, we are a poor example for the rest of the world.

My wife and I just returned from a trip to Bentonville Arkansas. Here we toured the Walton's Museum, a tribute to the founder of WalMart. Walton along with their Republican/Conservative government leaders,  Reagan and Bush in spite of their folksy persona, have acted to destroy the American middle class and destabilize a once powerful economy. It shows you how poor leadership, focused on Capitalism and free enterprise, can decimate an economy, a country.  But the Walton heiress, Alice Walton, has erected an art museum in Bentonville. The art museum has free admission. Capitalism's altruism at its best.

When we returned to Canada the news headline was that McDonald's Canada had suspended its Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) hiring practise here. It appears that McDonald's Canada, after exposés about it abusing Canadian workers by paying them less and not hiring Canadians in preference to foreign workers, realized it was hurting their brand. They were falling out of favour by the collective here. McDonald's at least shows more leadership and insight than the government that allowed the policy to hurt its own citizens. This TFW policy clearly undermines the labour force in Canada. But it is is just one example of a Conservative government working here in Canada to undermine the middle class by favouring special interests.

Canadians deserve the dysfunctional government they have now. We collectively suffer from the individuals that voted for these Harper Conservatives, or the ones that apathetically sat back and allowed it to happen. By allowing this collective conservative mindset to dominate our government, the roots of their mental dysfunction finds expression. As an example of this form of mental dysfunction, I work with an admitted Conservative who, although has worked all his life in government and is about to retire on a government pension, does not believe in taxes! He's a rugged individual, a leader of his church, who is a professed Christian. He doesn't realize that Christ was a socialist who believed in caring for the collective. This type of individual mental processing helps explain our present collective state whereby our national sport is the only team sport that allows fighting.

Oh well, we can only mature and get better.  In the meanwhile, pardon me while I tranquilize myself with trivia and return to watching the Blue Jays lose.