Capstone 2021 Featuring the Best of Canadian Defence and Security

 This week we held our second annual CDSN Capstone Seminar.  We held the first one in Toronto at the Canadian Forces College.  This year, alas, we had to do it online, but it came off very well (we will be posting at our CDSN Youtube channel soon).  Again, the idea of this event is to have our partners nominate their best presenters from the year before so that we can both give these mostly younger scholars and policy analysts a bigger platform and give our partners a chance to have their events exist beyond the day and place they held them.  

This year's event featured speakers from the Dallaire Centre of Excellence for Peace and Security, Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research, North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network, Project Ploughshares, Archipelago, Defence Security Innovation Hub, and the CDSN's own post-doc program.  For bios and more info (and ultimately some links to their work), go here: https://www.cdsn-rcds.com/capstone2021.  

We had our two Undergraduate Excellence Scholars, Ozan Ayata and Stella-Luna Ha, introduce the panels, and then I moderated the Q&A for each panel.  We started with Vanessa Brown of the Canadian Defence Academy, who shared her experiences teaching critical theory to the officers attending the Canadian Forces College.  She found that the students responded better than one might expect to naming the patriarchy.  Linna Tam-Seto, who spent her Post-Doc at Queen's University, presented her research on mentoring women in the Canadian Armed Forces.  She noted that there is no formal training for mentors and that there is much confusion due to cultural differences and also gender dynamics.  Stephanie Houle of the University of Ottawa discussed moral injury, which was a new concept to me: Moral injury refer to psycho-spiritual consequences that violate one's core moral beliefs/expectations Witnessing/failing to prevent/experiencing morally ambiguous situations, atrocities, betrayal.  And it is pretty prevalent among those who have served.  It is not the same as PTSD and requires different preventative and restorative measures.  Peter Kikkert of St. Francis Academy presented on the Canadian Rangers, which are individuals that work as part of units based in the north, on a variety of missions.  Because they live in the communities that they protect and assist, they have good connections and play an important role in assessing potential hazards.

The second panel started with Sarah Shoker of the U of Waterloo.  She discussed the challenges of using artificial intelligence in targeting systems.  The key challenge is how to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants, and, given how badly this is done by humans (all males of a certain age?), the adage of garbage in, garbage out applies to AI.  Donna Dupont of PurpleCompass went next, arguing that we need to shift paradigms.  She had the best figures to illustrate her arguments-->

She went on to discuss the future--that combines known unknowns and unknown unknowns:

 

 

Finally, Marek Szeles presented the Digital Triage Assistant, which his team has been working on, to provide battlefield medics and commanders with real-time data of the health of their troops.

The future is here, apparently, as this seemed like something out of science fiction.  He also had a cool video simulation.

I learned a lot from the two panels, as each Capstone Laureate presented important, cutting edge research.  The fields of study were wide-ranging, which was most apt, given how the CDSN has a variety of streams of research.  I wish we should have gotten together in person, but we managed to have a compelling and enlightening event even at a distance.

I am very thankful Stephanie Plante, Melissa Jennings, Paxton Meyer, Vincent Belanger, Evelyne   and Graeme Hopkins of the CDSN HQ did all of the planning, budgeting, arranging, and social media-ing.  I am very proud of my team and very grateful to all of the CDSN partners who helped make our second CDSN Capstone event such a success.

 

 

 

 

The Outbidding Has Begun

 This week, I tweeted about how the upcoming primary races in the GOP will be outbidding contests.  I want to explain what I meant and suggest that it is already a thing.  The reason why this is important is that ethnic outbidding fosters violence, whether the outbidders win or lose.  

For me, it goes back to Donald Horowitz's Ethnic Groups in Conflict.  But others observed the basic dynamics as well.  When you have a homogeneous party compete with a heterogeneous one, the competition with the homogeneous party will push the candidates to make more and more extreme claims to be the best defender of that group.  I always referred to Sri Lanka, as it was seen as a likely case for democracy and such after the British left.  But over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, the Sinhalese politicians who competed for 90% (more or less) of the vote learned to appeal to the Sinhalese population of Sri Lanka by targeting policies against the Tamil minority.  Each election became, in essence, an auction for the parties to make the highest bid--how best to oppress the minority.  In such auctions, moderation tends to get punished by voters.  

The Republican Party, since the realignment of the 1960s in response to resentment towards the civil rights movement, has become increasingly homogeneous -- the party of white Christians.  The Democrats are the heterogeneous party, with many ethnic, religious, and racial groups supporting it.  Sure, you get various individuals from minority groups voting GOP, but the vast majority are white.  And, of course, the big question is: who shows up in primaries?  The development of safe seats due to gerrymandering and sorting (people moving to where they feel comfy) has meant that the dynamic of politicians moving to the center during the general election is no longer so relevant or so strong.  Instead, candidates and incumbents worry about who is on their flanks during the primaries.  Why?  Because the most enthusiastic folks tend to show up in primaries and they happen to be right wing folks for the GOP and left wing folks for the Dems. We saw the GOP move further to the right in the 1990s as Gingrich and others focused on eliminating RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and punishing folks who reached across the aisle.  

Fast forward to 2016: about 20 candidates are running for President, and one of them is making the bluntest, most naked appeals to white supremacy--Trump--and the rest are too scared of alienating that part of the Republican base to confront Trump.  They hoped he would self-destruct (and he tried mightily), with the last survivor picking up that part of the base.  That was definitely Ted Cruz's strategy.  And, yes, that Ted Cruz was the second strongest candidate in 2016 says much about the contemporary Republican party.

With a nakedly white supremacist Republican administration, opposition within the party mostly died.  Instead, Republicans feared that Trump would punish any opposition, any effort to compromise or moderate, by supporting candidates to primary incumbents.  So, in 2020, we got QAnon types running, pushing the Republican incumbents to either support the furthest right-wing stances or stay silent.  Those incumbents who recognized Biden's election early faced not just the likelihood of being primaried but also threats directed against them and their families.

Now, you have many Republicans who will say that Biden is the President but not say that he won the election fairly.  This is all about anticipating the next set of primaries.  The only people in the GOP now that do not fear being outflanked on the right in the next primaries are those who are retiring or those who are already very far out there (Romney is a semi-exception).  So, the outbidding has already begun--we already have politicians fearing being outflanked, so they are taking extreme stances, which undermine US democracy and incite violence.

Of course, there is another actor in all of this: Fox.  Fox has become more and more consistent in voicing the far right.  Tucker Carlson now sets the agenda for the entire network, as the latest episode of the Press Box podcast makes clear.  The question these days is which pieces that appear on the network aren't white supremacist and far right.  And yet Fox faces outbidding pressures as well.  They worry about losing market share to Newsmax and OANN, which are yet further to the right.

As a contrast, the Dems are very much a heterogeneous party, which can drive people crazy as it is never doing what all members of the party wants.  But note that their primary in 2020 was not about who belongs in the party, not really, but about, dare I say it, electability and policy issues.  A white supremacist stance would have alienated key voters.  There was not even a Clinton-esque Sista Souljah moment to prove that a candidate was sufficiently friendly to white folks.  Instead, ironically, the Black women of South Carolina looked around and realized that it was better to have a bland white dude run and win than a Black candidate (Harris or Booker) or a woman (Harris or Warren or Klobuchar or etc.).  

The GOP's ethnic outbidding has hurt the Dems by peeling off white voters.  But as the country gets increasingly diverse, the GOP electorate gets relatively smaller, which means that the Republicans face a difficult choice: become less white supremacist and reach out to other ethnic groups OR double down by stopping immigration and suppressing the votes of non-whites.  And, yes, they have chosen the latter even though GOP performance among Latinos suggests another way to go.  But who is going to show up in primaries: these conservative Latinos or the white supremacists?

The only choice is to game the system, and that is what they are doing now.  Which means that the Dems must do everything they can to prevent that from happening including killing the filibuster at least on voting rights issues, if not everything else.  

And, yes, the GOP and Fox will continue to incite violence and then blame mental health (despite not pushing for funding for mental health efforts) when white dudes kill women, non-white people, and non-Christians.  Alas, we are in for more violence, not less. 

Democratic Backsliding and the US: A West Coast Roundtable

 Yesterday, I was part of a roundtable held by Simon Fraser University, which is located in Vancouver, on the erosion of democracy with a focus on the US.  I was joined by Jean Lachapelle of the University of of Gothenburg and Dietlind Stolle of McGill.  Dietlind and I started at McGill at the same time so it was nice to hang with her.  I live tweeted the event, but I wanted to summarize what they said and what I said here.

Jean is part of the V-Dem project, which measures democracy around the world.  He showed a variety of trends, including how the US's score has been in decline after rising in the 1960s and 1970's.  He focused on the role of parties and polarization.  That backsliding happens when major parties act to undermine democracy.  He was generalizing from a variety of places, like Hungary, but it very much spoke to the US case.  Indeed, in the various figures, the US tended to be closer to Hungary, Brazil, and the like than to democracies to whom we would prefer to be compared.  And then when he focused on parties, the GOP ended up being quite close to Hungary's Fidesz, to India's Hindu Nationalist Party [BJP], and the like.  The Dems moved a smidge, but in most figures stayed on the pluralist, democratic end of the spectrum.  Which meant that the US story is one of asymmetric polarization--that the GOP went nuts and the Dems have not.

Dietlind is a specialist on attitudes, so she discussed survey results of where Americans stand on the issues of democratic backsliding, particularly executive aggrandizement.  She showed that Republicans are generally more supportive of executive aggrandizement than Democrats. She discussed how the generally higher support by Republicans also stands out comparatively and is in part due to elite mobilization (aka Trump). She also showed that Dems support democratic backsliding as well, but only when an important policy is at stake (e.g. abortion, or lockdown). 

What did I say?  Well, here are my slides:

I started by noting that the backsliding of most democracies has not been caused by their armed forces.  There have not been coups in most of the cases that we are discussing: US, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, India, etc.  Turkey is the exception to be discussed below.
I, of course, discussed that the events on Jan 6 were not a coup--that individuals from the US military participated but not elements of the military itself.

I then discussed the bad: that if we like our militaries, we can't hope for them to save us.  That militaries can't stop the backsliding since the backsliding is due to the stuff happening within and between parties.  Nicely connects with Jean's arguments.  Asking the military to help is actually bad.  I did note that coup attempts can make things worse, as the Turkish example illustrates.

I then discussed the erosion of the norms of civil-military relations, which referred to the appointments of retired generals as SecDefs, Trump referring to his generals, and Trump politicizing the military by having partisan speeches with military folks as the backdrop.  I pointed out that the real troubling thing regarding the military and Jan 6th is it has helped to remind us how white supremacist organizations are infiltrating the armed forces and the role of vets in far right terrorist organizations.  Plus how everyone wants to dress up like Special Operations folks.

I then had to conclude with a Star Wars reference

But that was not the end, as we had a good q&a.  Since I basically argued that my topic, civ-mil, was not so relevant, I made myself obsolete.  But did that stop me from talking?  Hells no.  When we were asked about where US asymmetric polarization came from, I discussed how it was a GOP-led thing from Gingrich to McConnell with a soupcon of bottom up (sort of) tea party along the way.  I did rant a bit about the asymmetry and the temptation by the media to run their false equivalence machines.  That the Dems want to expand the franchise and the GOP wants to limit it, and the latter is obviously the anti-democratic move.  As I have said before, #voterfraudfraud is an abomination. 

 

 

 

 

Quarantine Report, Week 53: The Learning Curves are Shallow

 Yes, I am going to keep this q-report going even though it has been more than a year.  Until stuff returns to something approaching normalcy, I will keep reporting my weekly descent into madness.  When I used that phrase last year as this weekly post started, I referred to insanity.  Instead, it has been about anger.  

Ontario returned to the "red" zone yesterday.  This was a couple of weeks after the wastewater tests were showing an acceleration of infections.  Nope, we had to wait until the cases started to hit the hospitals.  And what was Red mean anyway?  Only 50% capacity at restaurants.  Yeah, people are still eating in restaurants?!   They moved from 10 people can meet indoors to 5?  Why meet with anyone not in your pod?  Ontarians have been referring to our government as incompetent murderclowns, and I think that gets it right.  Doug Ford and his band of yes-folks keep opening too soon, closing too late, and keeping open places that are dangerous and occasionally closing places that are safe (public parks and the like).  It is almost as if they are not paying any attention to the science or to any of things we have observed over the past year.  We have gone from regretting that we haven't learned from the Spanish flu to we haven't learned from last month.  

Luckily, most of the folks I know are doing ok.  Mrs. Spew and I continue to listen not to our politicians but to the scientists.  We don't travel, we don't eat out except via takeout, and we don't hangout with others.  It is not the most interesting life, but the variants are scary and we can be patient.  The shot schedule up here suggests that we might get our first shot by the end of June.  This is slow compared to my American friends and relatives as my facebook pages are filled with happy folks getting vaccinated.  But it is faster than I would have expected.  My mother noted that it took decades to get a polio vaccine, and we have a boodle of vaccines within a year.  

Speaking of slow learning curves, the Canadian government continues to slow walk through the sexual misconduct and abuse of power scandal.  I did some media stuff this week after my op-ed appeared Monday night online and Tuesday in the real paper (that does not happen as often or as easily).   I had been reluctant to talk about gender and the armed forces because I know of so many people who are so sharp on that.  But when the story becomes civil-military relations, like what is the job of the Minister of Defence, well, I felt more comfy talking about it.  That the Minister of Defence still has his job speaks to two things: the amazing ability for Trudeau to dither; and how the Liberals focus on domestic politics uber alles can actually mess them up politically.  Sometimes, doing the right thing is good politics.  Just a thought. 

And I can get through this as long as folks give me chances to talk and talk and talk.  Which was the theme of the week.  I met with our first year PhD students as part of a course they have to prepare for the comprehensive exams.  So, I talked about the civ-mil field and the questions they might be asked.  At the end of the week, I was part of a virtual roundtable at Simon Fraser University--on the very western tip of Canada--to discuss Backsliding Democracies with a focus on the US.  My role was "not a coup" and then I got to also rant a bit about the GOP and false equivalence machines.   I will post later today what the other folks said and what I said.  Good q&a, and it was fun to hangout virtually with folks including a former colleague from my McG days.  

Mrs. Spew and I went on an errand together.  We had to sign some bank documents, and it was the first time we were in a car together in many months.  These days, I go out for the groceries, and she goes out less often for some errands, but we haven't been driving to random small towns and we have definitely not been going to movies.  It was fun, well for me, to see my wife unused to my driving, which is a bit more aggressive than hers.  She got back into old patterns on the way back, but it is interesting to see which muscles we have been using and which ones we have not.  

Spring is here, and it actually feels like it.  Usually, we are still deeply buried in snow and cold weather and our spring does not really start until late April/early May.  Climate change may have pushed things up this year.  Which means I may start biking soon.  I am putting away the x-country skis, the snowshoes, and my downhill skis, as the time for that stuff has passed.  I usually want winters to end here, but I was hoping for more of those adventures.  The long mud season that awaits is not so much fun.  The best news is that the ultimate folks are starting to talk about summer league, and I am aching to throw some reckless passes deep and to hang out, perhaps at a distance, with the silly folks in the great Ottawa ultimate leagues.  

To get through the next stages of anger at the governments local and federal, I will focus on the prospect of ultimate in the near future.  Whatever you are looking forward to, embrace it, as we are closer to the end of this thing now.

More Civvies, Less Mil, Please

Watching Mercedes Stephenson interview yet another survivor of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces [CAF] and ... the Department of National Defence [DND] has caused me to expand my SecDef rant to apply more broadly: it is not good to have the part of the government that is responsible for overseeing the armed forces to have many former military folks staffing it.  

In my various posts about SecDefs Mattis and Austin, I made the claim that it is really hard to erase decades of socialization.  I haven't worked in many different kinds of organizations, but I can tell you from my one year at the Pentagon, the armed forces can be quite effective at socialization--shaping the sensibilities of those working within.  Indeed, unlike most other organizations, the armed forces does this deliberately and thoroughly--from haircuts to language to posture to daily battle rhythms.  To argue that one can simply toss that aside after twenty years or so is just silly.  It is even harder to de-socialize or re-socialize if one's next job involves both overseeing the armed forces and working closely with them.

There is also the networking side of things.  While it might be advantageous for policy-officers in the Department of National Defence to know people in the military, it also raises risks.  That the DND official might worry about the impact of a policy change upon his or her former pals.  

There is also the path dependence of gender thing--that the military is still overwhelmingly male and white and all the rest--so picking people from it to staff DND means that it will make it harder for DND to be more diverse and inclusive and representative of Canada (my friends in DC tell me the preference for veterans has the same impact on civil service jobs).  Plus given that the CAF has a legacy of treating women poorly, importing men from that environment who either participated in such treatment or were complicit, as the woman interviewed by Mercedes testififed, is a bad idea.

Sure, #notallwhitemilitarydudes are guilty, but they all come from an institution that has had pervasive problems of sexual misconduct and abuse of power. 

To be clear, we don't need the civilians and military folks to be at war over policy.  However, some tensions between the civilian side of the house and the military side of the house can be productive.  If the civilians at DND and the military folks in CAF are always seeing things exactly the same way, that is probably a problem.  Because it might just mean the civilians see themselves as allies/protectors/cheerleaders rather than overseers.*  If you want to argue that the military can oversee itself, the past couple of months should make it clear that is a bad argument.  When I talked to parliamentarians long ago, they argued their job was not to oversee the CAF but to hold the Minister to account for his work in overseeing the CAF.  Well, if he isn't doing the job (see my forthcoming editorial on that) and if the parliamentarians aren't overseeing the armed forces, who is?

So, as we move forward beyond the current mess, let's:

a) name a new Minister of Defence who did not serve in the armed forces for decades
b) re-think DND personnel policy as well
c) oh yeah, change the culture of the CAF.

 

* Canada is not alone in this.  Some countries' ministries of defence are entirely populated by active and retired military personnel.  Others may not be staffed that way but still see their jobs as protectors of the armed forces from civilian (legislative) interference.

Quarantine Report 52: Whatever It Takes

 Many have commented how strange time is during this quarantine.   A week feels like a month, but it does sometimes seem like it was just yesterday that we were cancelling our trips and preparing for a few months of abnormality.  What made it such a draining week?  Lots of meetings and a guest lecture, I attended the big Ottawa defence and security conference virtually, and I faced stinging rejection.  A couple of fun zooms with friends.  And, yes, marking the year that was in quarantine with posts about the lessons learned, a discussion of the highs and lows in activities and such, and all the feels.

Rejection, as I keep saying, is inherent in the enterprise.  Yes, I have heaps of grant money to fund the activities of the Canadian Defence and Security Network for another five years (we are finishing year two of a seven year grant).  But I was hoping for more so that we could study the implications of the pandemic, and more resources would mean helping to correct some of the mistakes I made in the initial effort.  Instead, we will have to scramble a bit to do some of the stuff we have planned.  A bit more uncertainty and more grant-writing ahead.  I will eventually be de-briefed to find out what we could do better.  Revise and resubmit is the academic's way of life. 

I spent Wednesday through Friday live tweeting the CDAI's Ottawa Conference on Defence and Security when I was not tied up with something else.  Usually, it is held in downtown Ottawa, and I just spend two days absorbing the info, meeting military folks and those interested in the CAF, and asking pesky questions.  I wonder if I would have had the guts to ask some of the questions I asked on twitter like: "Hey, former Prime Minister Harper, how do you feel about the global conservative movement you are trying to lead that seems either tempted or interested in appealing to extremists?" or "Hey, Minister of Defence Sajjan, if you don't use your authority to handle a situation, is that abuse of power or just misuse of power?"  See, I can be bipartisan!  A few quick bits of stuff I picked up along the way:

• Acting CDS Lt.Gen Eyre gave a pretty strong talk about how broken the organizational culture is in the Canadian Armed Forces, uttering abuse of power, which implies his former boss Jon Vance.  Eyre noted as acting CDS, he does not know how much time he has in the job, but will not worry about job security.  It was pretty much as good of a talk one can give in this circumstance.  The question will, of course, be: how does he walk that talk.
• 
  A panel with Mercedes Stephenson, one of the journalists who broke the Vance story, and two women officers showed how precarious it is to be a woman in the CAF.  They were far more restrained in what they said than what Eyre's said.  Both Rear Admiral Patterson and Lt.Col Heer were very impressive, and I wish they could just do their jobs without having to speak for all
  women in the CAF, an impossible task.  Alan Okros, a CDSN Co-Director, was also on the panel and was his usual sharp, insightful self.
  
• The panel on right-wing extremism showed how much of this is not just an American problem or a Trump problem but a global problem. 
  
• It was fun to see Stephen Harper talk.  He is so much sharper than recent Conservative politicians, but dangerously so.  His criticisms of current and past policy on China glossed over his own efforts to embrace China in that quest to get in to that market.

 In Canadian academia, this is crunchtime as those writing Masters' Research Papers are now facing deadlines, so I have had some meetings to chat with students and much to read.  The classes have gone well this term, with the students very engaged.  It does not hurt to be teaching civil-military relations at a time where Canadian civ-mil is in its worst crisis in decades.  

I had two fun zooms this week.  One with a pal from Texas Tech who has had to grapple with chairing her program in mid-pandemic.  The other was with the IR poker group where we have a zoom open and we play poker in another window.  Second game in a row where I have lost.  But I won in the larger scheme of things as there was much solace from hanging with friends, comparing beard lengths, and discussing retirement ages.  

And, yes, I made Nigella Lawson's chocolate chip cookie dough pots to celebrate the year of quarantine:

I have gotten through this year by hanging out with friends on zoom, by stress-baking/eating/exercising, and by complaining constantly.  As Captain America said:

All The Feels: A Year in Quarantine

Over the past few days, I have blogged about some of the highs and lows and some of the lessons to be learned from a year of this pandemic.  Today, to commemorate the year, I just want to spew about all the stuff that I have felt, which is probably what everyone else is feeling.  Again, I am lucky as my comparative plight is not that bad, but it has still been a very hard year.

Anger: The first emotion that comes to mind is anger.  Yes, we were due for a pandemic that would not be contained, given the near misses and the trends.  But it didn't have to be this bad.  Remember last winter when Trump said, among many things, that 200,000 dead was a good outcome.  The US blew by it.  Trump's failures are many, but among them are: politicizing mask wearing; acting too slowly (not unique to him or the US); undermining international cooperation rather than leading the world as Obama had done; directing assistance in the wrong directions; failing to develop testing/tracing at the federal level....  But it was not just Trump.  Leaders around the world and across the various federal units continue the pattern of closing too late and opening too soon.  A few weeks ago, the Ontario health officials were talking about re-opening amid the new variants, and a reporter basically asked: this is a disaster, right?  And the health officials said... well, yeah.  Speaking of health officials, Fauci and others pushed back against masks early on, and, as my sister said, that planted a seed.  Or watered one that was already there.  Which gets to my anger is also aimed at all the anti-maskers who push back against what was by last summer so obvious--this things spreads by air.  The politics of masks now is a replay of the politics of masks in 1918.  Which gets me to...

Frustration:  Much of what we know about COVID-19 now is really what we knew about the flu of 1918.  So many of the dynamics are the same.  So, the good news is that we social scientists can say that human behavior can be generalized because there are common dynamics. Woot?  But the bad news is that there were many mistakes that we should have known to avoid.  That public policy matters, that gutting public health would be so very costly, that perhaps one shouldn't politicize masks.  Again, it didn't have to be this way.  I am also frustrated that I have not been able to use the extra time I have had (no commutes, no travel) tog et more done. 

Loneliness:  One thing this has taught us is how much we need each other.  Yes, I am very annoyed at those who go to bars, but I get it--that the need to gather is hard-wired.  I have not been able to hang out in real life with anyone for a year except my wife and except for one day of cookie deliveries.  Zoom and phone calls and all the rest are helpful, but they are not the same.  I miss my daughter, my family, my friends, and nearly everyone else. 

Fear: The fear has come in waves.  A year ago, that morning in Billy Bishop airport, hearing every cough and sniffle definitely generated fear.  And then in the first few weeks, we set up a laundry basket and stashed our robes right inside our front door.  After every trip out for groceries or whatever, we would strip, grab the robe, and then run up to the shower to wash off ... something.  Turns out that this thing is not quite that sticky.  Less about fomites and touching stuff and far more about breathing.  The fear faded as we learned to stay at home, as the banks, takeout places, Costco, and grocery stories developed the infrastructure and habits to make those trips less problematic.  The fear is back, as the variants seem to be nastier--the UK one is not just more infectious but deadlier.  

Grief: I grieve for the lives that were lost.  I grieve for those who have been harmed perhaps forever as this thing scars lungs and does other damage--the long haulers as they are now known.  I grieve for the old folks who are spending their twilight years in isolation, deprived of contact and of the things that give them joy and relief.  I grieve for the kids who have been deprived of so much and yet have had so much thrust upon this.  I grieve for my students and everyone else's as they are under tremendous stress to keep going despite losing the best parts of university life and of k-12 life as well.  I grieve for those who have paid highest price despite facing tremendous inequalities.  People of color not only have faced a year of escalated police abuse but have been exposed to greater exposure to the virus and slower access to the vaccines.  I have cried more this year than any time since ... a long time ago.

Empathy: I feel for everyone (ok, not the anti-maskers, Trumpers, or police beating people) who are going through this madness.  We are facing a common threat and feeling many of the same things.  We have far more in common this past year than that which divides us.  When I am out and about doing some shopping, seeing the other folks struggling to keep their masks up and their distance, and seeing the clerks engaged in pandemic security theater (not sure wiping everything down compulsively really matters that much), I can feel the common humanity, the common struggle we are facing.  We are all in it together even if some folks don't act that way. 

Gratitude:  There has been so much goodness in the face of the awful, that I am so thankful for those who are doing the heavy lifting.  Not just the doctors and nurses, and not just the clerks, but also those who made the content on our streaming services that keep us distracted, amused, and moved.  A while back someone asked what this would be like in 1989, and I said that we would all be standing in lines at Blockbuster.  I am grateful that amid the screwups, the government of Canada has been willing to spend heaps of money to keep people fed, housed, and warm.  I am super-grateful for the new COVID relief act that Biden pushed through, as it will help not just my daughter (hey, unemployment tax relief!) but lots of people now and maybe well into the future if it sticks.  I am grateful for the short bust of ultimate I had last fall with an older (but not old enough!) small bubble of players--we only played for five or so weeks, but it was much solace.  I am grateful for all of the dog pics and cat pics and all the animals that have been rescued as people sought comfort in the form of furry life over the past year.  I am even grateful for our old cat--who I used to fear--who has become cuddly in his old age.  It has been an awful, awful year, but I am grateful for the silver linings that appear from time to time.

Relief: I am relieved that science was able to kick out multiple vaccines so quickly with incredibly high rates of protection.  I am relieved that my mother got her shots, that some of my siblings are semi-protected, that my friends on facebook are posting pictures of their new shot record.  I am relieved we are past the second and maybe third waves, that the end of this thing (whatever the new normal is) is closer than the start of this thing.  There is still plenty of pain and suffering in front of us, but there is some relief in knowing that we are just some jabs away from some sense of normalcy. 

Hope: I have much hope for the future--that we will be able to fly and connect and eat out and go to movies and do much of the stuff that we did before.  I don't really know much about the 1920s, but the images in my head are mostly of dancing, drinking, theater-going, and partying.  Once we can get together again, we should celebrate and we should have riotous wakes to mourn our losses.  I am hopeful that people will hug a bit more even if they shake hands less--that we will appreciate much of what we took for granted, at least for a while.  I am hoping to take the trips that we missed eventually--Hawaii, South Africa, and others.  I am determined to get my family together as soon as I can cross borders--bringing my wife to her relatives, getting out to Hollywood to see my daughter, and so on.  And yes, some of those plans involve skiing. 

Acceptance: I mentioned above my frustration at not getting enough done with all this extra time, but I also feel acceptance. That it is ok to be stressed, to be distracted, to be less productive.  It is ok to binge-watch, it is ok to eat heaps of sweets, or to drink a bit more.  There is no perfect way to handle this very difficult time, so whatever works (which also got us through the first few years of my daughter's life) is the mantra of the moment.  We could have done better, but we could have done worse.  We should not blame ourselves for falling short in our daily lives.

When people have been asking whether it is too early in the day to drink, I have said that the drinking lamp is lit for the duration. I should correct that--the drinking lamp is lit for the duration plus ... however long we want to celebrate getting through this.  It has been the longest year of our lives for most of us. We have lost much, but we can get to the end of this.  And for that, I am extremely grateful.

 

Lessons of the Lockdown, A Year Into the Madness

After a year of being home with, um, not so much freedom insight, what have I learned about myself, my life, and the world?  

Most obviously, I don't need travel, but I sure as hell want to travel.  The lack of travel has forced me to get out of various ruts at home--going beyond the tried and true dinners, pushing me to bake more than chocolate chip cookies and apple pies.  To pick up new winter sports even if they are not the ones I really enjoy.  

I learned that I have both more and less discipline than I thought.  I have managed to exercise nearly every day, thus allowing me to do that aforementioned baking.  But my work focus ... not good.  I can't complain too much because I have friends who have it far worse, but this year felt like the first few months of the Trump Administration where I spent so much time just distracted by the shitshows and desperately tried to make sense of things.

As I used to work from home a couple of days a week since we moved to Canada, I was used to dinners where we had already exchanged the day's news, leading sometimes to a loss for conversation.  Now? Jeez, a year of it being just the two of us day after day, and with me finding talk about Trump being too much, yeah, my conversation skills have ebbed.

I have learned how thirsty I am for connection.  I have organized zooms with friends on a mostly regular basis plus my twice weekly family zooms to keep my isolated mother company.  Thanks to silly games that my sister brought to these games, I have learned much about my siblings and mother that I had not known before. 

I have learned that students both hate and need asynchronous courses (taped) as live courses can be both pretty good and awfully draining.  The online era is good for some students, bad for others, and a mix for profs.  There is definitely no pleasing everyone.  I would rather be in the classroom, but I also like not having to commute to work.  I miss the camaraderie in the hallways, I miss students dropping by for random chats, and I miss the change of pace that going to work involves.  The steady drumbeat of being at home does wear on me.  But again, I can't complain too much as the students are going through so much--I can feel the stress through the zoom connection.  

Pressure really does reveal character.  Someone said in a tweet months ago that times like these make givers give more and takers take more.  The way I have put it is that COVID does to people, societies, and governments what it does to the human body: it reveals pre-existing conditions.  We have politicians who are far weaker than I suspected, unable to stand up and insist on mask mandates, so focused on keeping bars and restaurants open that they haven't prioritized schools.  They close too slow and open too soon.  But there is variation--some are willing to spend to get through this.  Canada was better off for much of the first year as Trudeau was willing to spend to keep people at home while Trump was not.  

 This crisis has reminded us that federalism is both boon and bane.  It is great to have the units make policy when the center sucks, but when the units make bad policy, it is not so good.  In Canada, the feds are reluctant to step on the toes of provinces when it comes to health care.  Which is why testing/tracing and vax rollout are not doing too well in Ontario and Alberta and Quebec.  But the feds can spend money on people and firms, so they have done better on providing a safety net.  Not so many long lines at food banks up here.  In the US, Cuomo and Newsom looked good when compared to Trump, but with Trump gone, it is clear that these governors suck mightily.  With better, smarter folks running things from DC, now federalism gets in the way, as we see in Texas and Florida where their governors seem determined to get as many of their constituents killed or sick. 

We have way too many people who have no empathy at all--which meant that explaining that masks helped other people was a bad strategy for a significant hunk of the population.  On the other hand, as Mr. Rogers would say, watch the helpers.  We have seen so many people put themselves at risk, so many people who have reached out to others.  It is easy to focus on the anti-maskers and other destructive people, but they are a minority.  Most people have managed decently through very tough times.  

Still, I have learned that my old standby, confirmation bias, works great (yes, the irony is intentional).  Folks learn the lessons they want to learn.  There were abundant lessons to be learned from past pandemics, but those who didn't want to learn chose not to.  And as we go along, we keep seeing the same things--"oh hospitalizations are not going up yet (hey, it's a lagging indicator) so things are fine." again and again.  The science does create some uncertainty like can we get it from touching things, but over time we have gotten some clarity about this pandemic.  It hasn't always shaped our behavior. Restaurants practice pandemic theatre by wiping everything down repeatedly when the danger is in the air.  Motivated bias continues to kill.  

When this all started a year ago, I thought we would be quarantined for a few months.  I was wrong in two ways--obviously this has lasted far longer but also that in Canada and the US, we really didn't quarantine.  Not like the Europeans and others.  The next bit of uncertainties involve how many people will resist the vaccinations and how can we act once most of us are vaccinated. Will we shake hands?  Will we hug?  Can we fly without too much nervousness?  Can I cross the border to visit my family?  Can I get back?

It has been a brutal year, especially for older folks who essentially losing two of the last years of their lives living just to dodge the virus and not much more and especially for the young who are losing some of the funnest years of their lives, separated from friends and family.  I think I have it the easiest as I don't have to take care of any kids at home and definitely no home-schooling, my job has continued with no real threat to lose it, and I have someone to share the madness.  And yet it is definitely one of the hardest years of my life.  We have all lost people and have had friends and relatives who have suffered.  So, there is a greater need for empathy and sympathy than any other time in my life.  

The only way out, as they say, is through.  So, here's hoping that next year's anniversary is one with far more celebration and less anxiety and stress, and may we all be able to move about the cabin.

Be well.

The Year in Quarantine: Highs and Lows

 Everyone has their own "damn, it's a pandemic" day, where they start the clock on their lockdown.  For me, it is March 11th, not because that was the day that the WHO declared there to be pandemic, but because of three things: Tom Hanks announcing his catching COVID, the NBA shutting down, and my last trip where I heard every sniffle and every cough at Billy Bishop Airport in Toronto on the way back from the first CDSN Capstone event.  Obviously, other folks' pandemic life started earlier--because they lived in countries that got hit earlier or knew people in those places or were less engaged in wishful thinking.  I think we all felt this thing coming at us, but hoped that it would somehow miss.  I know my trip to Hawaii was a big part of my wishful thinking until pop. 

As I look towards the end of the first year (hopefully of just two) of being quarantined, I thought I would look back and list the highs and lows, the things I did, the things that happened to friends and family, and so on.  This blog is mostly aimed at helping me remember now and then helping me remember down the road. So, here's some of the numbers and rankings and such from this past year:

• Losses: two friends that were my age of out of the blue heart attacks.
• Relatives with COVID: two nieces
• Vaxxed: three or four nieces, one brother, one sister, one mother thus far.
  
• What I Miss Most: Seeing my daughter.  We were going to see her more times in 2020 than in the past couple of years.  Nope.  
• Non-daughter edition of what I missed most: We had a South African safari scheduled in July.
  
• Most regretted pandemic decision: PS4.  I do play from time to time, but I really suck at video games.  I am, of course, thinking of getting an Oculus since VR gaming can't possibly be as difficult.
  

• 

  Home of former neighbors
  and Flying Canoe Hard Cider
  

  Furthest I have traveled: Mont St. Marie for one day of skiing.  Second: late spring/early summer drives to Perth and Spencerville to get out of the suburb and see small town Canadia.
  
• Average pants-wearing: 1.2days/week--when I go shopping for groceries. 
• Number of trips to campus in the past year: 3.  To my office: 2.
  
• Ultimate: five or six games in the fall before things tightened up again. It was a fun team and a fun, small, bubbled leage.
  
• Teleconferencing technology:
• Frequency:  Zoom > Skype  > BigBlue Button (built into course management system) > Facetime  > Google Meetup/whatever  > Webex  > Other
• Preference: Zoom > Skype > Facetime >>>>>>>> everything else

• New cookbooks: 3 Nigella Lawson, 2 from my sister for cooking recipes from African-American history
• Fave recipes
  
• Baking:  Nigella's Chocolate chip cookie dough pots, King Arthur's Apple Turnovers, 
• Cooking: Nigella's Kofta combined with KA's golden pita
• Least used/useful purchase: PS4.  I really suck at video games
• Most useful purchase: Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer, new mic and camera.  Oh, and the heaps and heaps of masks I bought in the spring and summer. 
• Favorite non-downhill skiing winter exercise: snowshoeing. I get to walk in water and it is good exercise
  
• Least favorite skiing/winter exercise: cross country. I am not good at it, and I fall over.  Less so but still not a lot of fun. Plus my boots don't fit great.
  
• Favorite masks: Spidey!  The Carleton one that was part of a kit of pandemic stuff fits well, is comfy, and is probably the best one for doing the job.  I really like 
  
• Prettiest but least usable mask:

 

• Favorite re-watches: Mandalorian, seasons 1 and 2; Star Wars Rebels
• Favorite movies: Palm Springs, Old Guard, Moxie
  
• Favorite tv shows:  Wandavision, Money Heist, Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, Lupin.
• Biggest Surprise: I not only started to exercise every day (biking and treadmilling in spring/summer/fall; the aforementioned winter stuff plus treadmilling in winter) but kept it up.  It was mostly aimed to give me permission to stress bake and stress eat, and it has worked out pretty well.  It helps me get through a lot of tv/movies, and I have been able to maintain my weight at a lower level than I started last March (a nice way to say I have plateaued).  
  

 I will save the big lessons I have learned for another post this week as I commemorate a year in lockdown.