To the Expositor:
A life of ease and contentment produces an insufferable complacency to that entitled generation to have experienced the benefits of an uncluttered future. There is no trash in their yards. There are no signs of hoarding the good life. These things do not happen to them. I am romanticizing the ‘Edwardian Era’ as such a time when life was too fashionable to be bothered by the inconsistencies of not having enough to keep life alive. The shocking conditions in factories and other industrialized places of business; the sweat shops, the brothels, the unfortunate status of those with no proper connections to escape the grueling poverty to produce the luxury for others. Then the First World War happened and life as they knew it changed forever. Then the COVID-19 health crisis happened and life as we know it will never be the same.
We have been cocooned into complacency. Hydro rates have decreased so that we can still be virtually connected as cheaply as possible. We have to be kept in isolation so that when the panic starts there will be control. Today, I heard the sirens blaring out the warning. Today, the announcement of the collapse of the billion dollar oil industry in Alberta sounded the countrys’ funeral dirge. We will never recover, as most of the ‘civilized countries’ did not recover after the First World War. That society did not have the moral integrity and fortitude to deal with the cataclysmic changes required to survive and neither do we. It is not in the character of our children to give up everything and share the wealth. So, we will all starve together.
The great equalizer will be when the banks fail. And they will fail. The government is spending too much money. We cannot afford the luxury of their expenditures. But I do not hear anyone complaining, just yet.
We are being lulled into the belief the government knows what is best. They do not. They are guessing. And we should be more worried. It is not difficult to predict the future by looking at the past. The Weimar Republic found themselves in a similar situation. Their solution was to print more money to cover their debts. As a result their money became worthless. The banks failed and the great depression was the great instigator of equality.
There are still many people who have memories of that time. The hardships, the enforced poverty, the hungry eyes of the children. Their resilience is worth more than any Sunday morning speech from Parliament Hill. The luxury and ease of that way of life has no comparison to the realities we will soon have to acknowledge. It is to that generation we need to go for the solutions to our problems.
The problem is that generation is living in long-term care facilities which have failed them as we have failed ourselves.
Lee Weimer
Manitowaning
