Gemini AI Assisted
The concept of cultural lore is fascinating, but don’t get hung up on facts. A mythical story is not just a story, and it is only true in one respect.
Lore Is Not True
Except when it is true. Here’s how the human memory works. Within the individual, the event which occurs contains a reduced perspective of the facts, tempered by emotional response and limited point of view.
However, when that person tells the story, there are now two stories: the facts as the participant perceived them, and the story as the person heard themselves tell it. Those two blend in the teller’s memory. As the storyteller matures and changes, multiple versions of the story morph down the time line to become today’s version.
Oral History
Now take this idea of human memory and pass the story through generations of storytellers. Every time the story is told, that version of it goes into the popular lore along with all the others. If one storyteller has a girlfriend with curly black tresses, that “truth” is likely to slip in and stick. If you add in the caveat that history is written by the winners, depending on lore for specific data is a mug’s game.
Cultural Editing
You might expect this to mean that cultural lore is a hodgepodge and none of it is “true.” But there is another factor well known to fans of popular culture. There are thousands of stories in the background of every culture. They get told over and over as the years pass. But not all of them survive. Cultures change, and stories that were once revered lose traction and disappear.
What remains are the stories that are true to the beliefs and ideas in the present time. If the society once had a good relationship with a neighbouring tribe their lore would be full of positive memories of that group. However, if the neighbours became greedy and started a war, those happy stories would disappear, and new stories about the evil enemy would gain precedence.
What Lasts
The really interesting part is when you look at a story and say, “Hey, people are like that today!” What does that mean?
There are qualities embedded in the human race that are very difficult to erase, because they don’t come from enculturation, but from the millions of times individuals have reacted to the same stimulus in the same way because of the way the human brain works.
Which brings us to Armageddon. (BTW, Armageddon is the venue. Apocalypse is the event) The source most of us are familiar with is the Book of Revelations, which was written in about 97 AD.
(Aside: it is interesting to note that probably very few people these days have actually read Revelations, which, appropriately enough, is the last book in the New Testament. Thus the knowledge of the Apocalypse possessed by most people today is a new set of lore developed by modern popular culture.)
It Sounds So True
When people look at the Apocalypse references in popular media, there is such a similarity between the predictions and the events of modern days, there is a temptation to say, “The prophesy is coming true!”
Of course, in the sense that a writer two thousand years ago had a mystical experience that gave him the facts which he wrote down, this is a bit of a stretch.
What is amazing is that before our history was written, the human race had experienced the rise and fall of so many empires (at least six that we know of) that the common lore had saved a pretty accurate version of what happened when they fell. Combine the knowledge from the academics of the day with the experience of the common people watching their own leaders rise and fall, and there’s a pretty good store of information to let an intelligent, educated group of people make some pretty reliable predictions of what is likely to go on in any society that allows its leaders to get too much power.
Look at Shakespeare’s Tragedies, for example. A superior leader gets too much power and he starts to get ideas of taking over completely. The only solution the Elizabethan culture could come up with was to kill him off.
I have to admit, the idea has a certain appeal, but our lore frowns on that solution.
The Bottom Line
The moral of the story is that men with too much power and money tend to act the same way and precipitate the same political crises. It doesn’t take a metaphysical episode to make a reasonable guess where the plotline is headed.
Which means, ironically, that the prophesy might be true after all.
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Created with the help of Gemini AI
I’m not a big fan of the star system. I’ve worked too long in the entertainment business to be fooled that anyone who is good at one job qualifies them in any way for adulation about the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, it’s quite the opposite.
So when a famous performer dies, I’m sad generally. If I liked their work, it’s too bad I won’t get to appreciate any more of it. I’m also sad in the way we all are when another person dies, thinking of the effect on their families and friends.
Dolly Parton was different.
Think of those empathetic people who, when you’re talking to them, seem to be completely interested in you and what you’re saying? Dolly cared so much about other people she could do that to every audience member in a whole auditorium, a movie audience, or anyone on electronic media of all sorts.
I wasn’t a fan of Dolly Parton in the traditional sense. Of the thousand or more songs she recorded, I’ve only heard a few, and I only perform couple of them. For me, her “Trio” work with Linda Ronstad and Emmy-Lou Harris was a highlight.
And now she’s gone, and I think of the huge family whose lives were affected by her personality, her music, her philanthropy, and her example of how we should live our lives. And that’s a big loss to humanity.
She was a ray of bright sunshine in the gathering darkness, and just knowing she no longer walks among us leaves me with a personal sense of loss.
Thank you, Dolly, for being you.
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Created with the help of Gemini AI
The Twenty-First Century has heralded a serious change in the conducting of warfare and diplomacy. Most of the changes were actually happening for the fifty years before that, but now they have become obvious.
One basic premise that has changed in international politics is the ages-old practice of making allies of those who think like us.
Superpowers Are More Alike Than Different
The Cold War ideological difference between capitalism and communism has evaporated. The United States is no longer a stalwart champion of fairness and equity. China enslaves the Uyghurs. US puts immigrants in concentration camps. China wants Taiwan. Russia tries to take over its neighbors. US threatens its NATO allies and supports a nation involved in genocide.
US is a sham democracy run by oligarchs. Russia is a one-man dictatorship. China is a collective dictatorship.
Morals, ethics, and political philosophy no longer drive diplomacy. Free Enterprise is the game, and billionaires and national governments are the players. “Not fair” is the complaint of a loser. This is the business world, and economic power is all that counts.
War Is Going out of Fashion
The writing is on the wall for all to see. Two superpowers have each taken on one small country and discovered that even if they throw their whole arsenal at it, they can’t win.
Competition
None of these government types is much better than any other. If China will give us a better deal, why shouldn’t we deal with them? The superpowers have played their ideological game for so long they take their ethical advantages for granted. If they found themselves on a more even playing field where success is determined by goods and services provided, they might treat their customers with a little more respect.
NATO was formed to protect the North Atlantic countries from aggression. United states has recently threatened aggression against two NATO countries. I can see a NATO without the United States. If Canada falls into the false security of America’s “Golden Dome,” we might find ourselves cuddled up in a nice, cosy den with a grizzly. Perhaps the solution to our Arctic sovereignty is to negotiate the boundaries and sea lanes with Russia and China. That would make the Americans sit up and take notice.
The Bottom Line
If the superpowers want to base world diplomacy on economic power, they need to revisit the idea of customer relations. You can’t bully customers who have alternative sources of goods and services. If America wants to maintain its leadership role, it needs to start acting like a leader. If the middle powers want to use their advantage, they need to stop being so picky about who their friends are.
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AIDED BY GEMINI AI
Canadian press this week is full of free ink for the Apprentice President TV Series, with everyone wondering what the hook will be this week. This decision is always based on two factors: what is the real problem he wants to distract attention from; and where can he find a victim important enough to attract everyone’s attention.
What he will do is anyone’s guess, depending on what his paranoid brain feels is the worst threat. Will he make some grand gesture in the Iran War to turn attention away from a TACO Tariff Tuesday ? Or will he make a big splash against Canada to distract from his failures in the war?
Whatever he does, his language will always be the same old bullying. “When I place a tariff, it is protectionism, which everybody does. When you place a tariff, it’s called retaliation, which is a term for trade war.” Canadian negotiators have really drawn a line in the sand when it comes to a Canadian cultural sacred cow. No, not dairy products; hockey sticks.
Reports from our bargaining committee show cautious optimism, which is the best they can do, considering who they’re dealing with.
Trump has two pressures on him. The first force is the voter this November. Some of the swing states that he depends on have a lot of trade with Canada. For example, we are Wisconsin’s biggest trade partner. The demographic of Trump supporters includes a lot of business people, and they are the type who show up to vote, pushed by their pocketbooks. So, if he’s worried about the mid-terms, he has to soft-pedal the tariffs. He is also pushed by his upper-level business supporters, who are acutely aware of the damage his tariffs have been doing to the economy. So to some degree, the outcome will depend on whether the wolves at the top end of the food chain think they’ve got as much as they can out of this round. If they ever get enough.
This farce will continue until the voters finally say, “You’re fired,” either this year or 2028.
Trump has at least done us one favour. We now realize that the nice doggies that US has been protecting us with have a lot in common with the wolves we fear. Canada is now getting serious about protecting her sovereignty, funding her military and diversifying her trade partners.
This ought to be a good time for the mid-level countries to get together. Two of the international bullies have exhausted their arsenals on wars that are going badly. When the most powerful military force on earth starts running out of ammo fighting one small country, it changes our perception of the balance of power. Let’s work with that.
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Created with the aid of Gemini AI
Back in tribal days, the war leader was usually the best fighter, and he led from the front. The main development of war tactics in the last couple of millennia has been the gradual movement of the leaders away from danger. Since Medieval times, the noble/serf relationship has dominated the battlefield, with the serfs taking the brunt of the battle.
The Common Soldier
As far as the soldiers were concerned, the apex of feudal warfare was WWI, where thousands of volunteer soldiers struggled back and forth across the muddy fields of northern Europe, directed by generals whose only tactic was to throw huge numbers of men against each other, and hope some of them survived. Then Hitler invented the blitzkrieg, and technology began to supersede manpower.
However, the development of warfare often involves an aggressor amassing huge amounts of the technology that won the last war and being surprised at the result. The Ukrainians demonstrated this neatly when small squads of men with rockets and drones sowed chaos in columns of Russian tanks. Now they have fielded Unmanned Ground Vehicles for defence, attack, supply and medevac.
For private citizens, however, the scale continues to tip the other way.
Civilian Involvement
WWII created the big change for civilians. Up to that point, the only way you got personally involved in a war is if the front lines were in your vicinity. The invention of the bomber airplane changed all that. Now the front lines were in your own yard no matter where you lived.
However, strategists have learned that bombing a civilian population simply doesn’t work. First London and later German cities were heavily bombed, but the population proved remarkably resilient.
Guerilla Warfare
The battle for democracy during the Cold War brought civilians right into the battlefield, as guerillas hid within the population and government soldiers found it difficult to distinguish one from the other. Civilian deaths accounted for 65% of fatalities in Viet Nam, and up to 75% in Korea. In Gaza that number is around 80%, although Hamas is so embedded in the population it is hard to tell.
The New Reality
Technological advancements lately have created the nine-to-five soldier, who sits at his control desk in a safe place and guides his drones and missiles into battle against civilian and military targets, then goes back to his bunk or even to his apartment to sleep.
The US-Iran war is the poster child for the situation. America has had 18 service members killed. No civilians. Information from Iran is sketchy, but 6000 soldiers and 2000 civilians is a reasonable suggestion. No matter how this war ends, average Americans will only feel it in their pocketbooks, while Iraq will take decades to recover. And still the war rages on, with no end in sight.
Soldiers are being removed from danger, and civilians now provide the casualties.
Imbalance
These observations lead to the suggestion that despite our democracy, there is a large imbalance in power between the leaders running these wars and the common people who are suffering from them. The deaths of thousands of soldiers in WWI meant nothing to the generals who ordered them into no man’s land. Likewise, the deaths of thousands of civilians mean nothing to the would-be dictators whose only objective is their own power.
Looking Ahead
And now we come to the greatest war humanity has ever fought: against climate change. Unfortunately, despite our democratic governments, our economic structure is returning ever closer to the medieval pattern, with a few economic giants and their lackeys calling the shots, and the vast majority of the population following like sheep.
These greedy people are the perpetrators of the problem, with their vast wealth built on the causes of climate change. They have achieved the ultimate in protection from feeling the effects of their actions; by the time the environment crashes, they’ll be long dead and gone.
The innocent victims will be our grandchildren.
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Created with Gemini AI
There are two ways to make a fortune in business. The first method is invention. You come up with a new idea, a new product, or an improvement on an old method. The other technique is to make it as easy and as cheap as possible to market your goods and services. A successful business will do both of these to some extent. However, it’s a sliding scale, and given the present political and geological climate, governments have to be very careful which type of business they are supporting. In the energy business, the entrepreneurs are forging ahead, creating the new tech that’s going to solve the energy crisis. The scavengers are finding the fix, taking the easy way, and often skirting the rules and the law and sliding into criminal behaviour.
An Example
One of the many times the government has bought Bombardier out of a hole people were asking, “If the company had to ask the government for help, why did the executive officers get big bonuses?”
Andrew Coyne answered succinctly. “Bombardier is not a company that needs government grants to make airplanes. It’s a company that uses airplanes to get government grants. The execs got the grants; they did their job.”
In the Oil Patch
Back in the day when Canada didn’t have huge oil reserves, the companies that were inventing tar sands production were the leading edge, and they needed government backing to do so. Unfortunately, the oil they produced is the dirtiest and most expensive in the world. The latest new tech they found was fracking, and we know where that’s going.
That Was Then
Now tar sands production is supposedly profitable. But more profit could be made by producing more oil. To do this, they need pipelines, preferably funded by the government.
And now we come to the main point. Oil production is no longer so desirable. The true innovators are spending their time and effort on renewables.
Big Oil has slipped from innovators to scavengers, needing government help to increase production and make more money, to no advantage for the rest of Canada. Only about 35% of our oil shares are owned by Canadians, so even the profit motive is debatable.
The Bottom Line
Only 22% of the members of the members of the Progressive Conservative Party see any connection between global warming and the recent wildfires. One of them was quoted last week in the media expressing profound confusion how a Liberal could see any connection at all between a new pipeline and the wildfires that are destroying the world.
Are we allowing the scavengers to set the agenda?
PS
Remember, Natural Gas is also a fossil fuel. It just isn’t black and icky, and a spill just evaporates so you can’t see the greenhouse gases filtering up into the atmosphere.
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Created with the help of Gemini AI
I will always remember the moment when Justin Trudeau lost my confidence in him. He had won the election and was saying all the right things and everything looked okay. An then he called off his promise to institute Proportional Representation. It had been a key point in his campaign, and the main reason I supported him. And then he didn’t need it anymore, so he dropped it. That was the beginning of a long, slow slide.
And now I’m getting to a similar point with Mark Carney, and it has to do with a bridge.
Laying the Blame
It all started in 2012, when Conservative Stephen Harper was Prime Minister and Dalton McGinty was winding down as Liberal Premier of Ontario. The contract was signed, and shovels went into the ground in 2018.
Fast forward to 2026. Governing parties have switched, with Liberal Mark Carney in charge in Ottawa and Conservative Doug Ford running Ontario. And chaos reigning south of the border.
The Original Terms.
My impression of the contract was that Canada would pay for the bridge. Once it was open, Canada would collect the revenue until the price was paid. From then on, the two countries would share the profits 50/50. Canada obviously wanted the bridge more, so took the original risk, but it all evened out in the end.
The Fix
Enter the bent president whose greed for himself and his henchmen outweighs all other considerations. He wants a better deal. He suggests profit sharing from the start. Negotiations ensue. The key snag seems to be “servicing the debt.” It’s a minor matter that Canada borrowed $6.4 billion to complete the project. When do we get our money back?
The Announcement
Carney announces a new deal, in which sharing of the net profit starts right away and somehow (I’m not sure how) Canada gets the debt serviced.
The Denial
US says there is no debt servicing in the deal.
And it seems this is the case. Unless Carney can, by some twist of financial magic, make “servicing the debt” part of the overhead that comes off before the net earnings are calculated, there’s a $6.4-billion-plus-interest loan that needs to be paid off.
It’s definitely not covered in the “Operating Costs” section of the contract, which specifically lists cost of maintenance, staffing, and snow removal.
Two Questions
First, how could anyone spend six billion dollars on a project and not have a reasonable contract? The only possible answer is that was then and this is now, and with Mr. Greed Personified in charge, no contract is worth anything.
Second, and more important to me, why did Carney say the debt servicing was included when it wasn’t? He’s the financial wizard. He didn’t make a mistake.
The Bottom Line
If Carney made the statement and the statement was false, in Canada we call that a lie. The Canadian electorate needs reassurance, and we need it now. Up until this point we have trusted Carney without much evidence either way, but he has created a great credibility gap.
I’m going to be monitoring messages from the Prime Minister’s Office very closely for the next week or so.
In the Future
There are a lot of bad deals going down these days, and I figure a lot of countries are playing for time. They are assuming that Trump and his Republican supporters will fall out of favour, hopefully in the November mid-terms, and at worst in 2028.
Once Trump is gone, there is going to be a rush of people, both inside the US and outside, demanding re-negotiation of these deals, and the Gordie Howe Bridge will be near the top of Canada’s agenda.
But then we will be dealing with Democrats, who have a history of being less interested in doing business and more concerned with the welfare of their citizens. There will be a lot of deals that the Democrats will be happy to blame on Trump but do nothing to change.
This doesn’t sound like a good deal, no matter how you slant it.
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Created with help from Gemini AI
Last September, I put myself in a situation where I had to fish or cut bait. I shouted loud and clear that I owed the government some money, and I was going to give it back.
Well, last week I gave it back, and I was really glad I did, for various reasons.
Honesty
Otherwise known as the fear of getting caught. I’ve written the cheque and handed it to a responsible person, and I’ve done my duty by the community and the government.
Stress
Everybody has a list of “shoulda-oughta” things you really mean to get around to. Checking off an item that had been hanging over my head since COVID was a real relief.
Closure
But the most important part of it was my meeting with the manager who had originally overseen the projects that generated the money.
This is how it went:
I was a member of the Surrey Seniors’ Planning Table, an ad hoc organization of civically active volunteers who advocated for seniors and provided services for them. There was no charter, no official organization, but due to the active nature of the members, we were a force in the community. Some of our political members were on first-name basis with the mayor and various council members.
But an organization with no charter cannot access government grants to do projects. So, we worked under the administrative umbrella with DIVERSEcity Community Resources Society, a local NGO that provides services mainly to new immigrants, but also to seniors. When we wanted to get a grant to run a seniors’ drama group or a seniors’ activities website or a storytelling program, we had a knowledgeable agent who guided us through the application process and kept track of expenditures while the project was running.
And signed off on the project when it was all over. We’ll get to that in a moment.
This was a win-win situation for all concerned. It was a crackerjack group of seniors, with lifetimes of experience in many fields. There were never any egos or grandstanding. We each had our individual place in the organization, and we shared the work around. The lucky agent at DIVERSEcity had a serious group of hard workers who, with minimal supervision and no hassles, would turn in a completed project every year or two, done and dusted.
And then COVID hit. The project we were working on was already wrapped up; all new activities stopped. And we were an aging group, with no younger people bringing in new blood. By the time COVID was over, the group had scattered. Some moved away, others were in nursing homes. Our hotshot manager got moved to another branch at the office, and was no longer involved.
And, except for the lighting and sound equipment from the drama group and a box of books from the storytelling sessions, there was nothing left.
I sold the equipment, but I didn’t know who to give the cheque to. Hence my years of quandary. Heaven knows what will happen to the books.
But that wasn’t all. There was an “unfinished business” feeling to it all. I tried to get everyone together for a final lunch, but nobody was available. I didn’t quite realize it, but we had been a tight-knit group, playing a small but important part in each others’ lives.
The Bottom Line
So last week when I met the DIVERSEcity lady for coffee, I suddenly remembered what a great person she was, and how much she had helped us, and what good friends we were. We talked nonstop for an hour in Starbuck’s on what I’m sure was her lunch hour, and when we parted, we agreed that it had been a good meeting for both of us. We needed to remind ourselves that we did a lot of good work and helped a lot of people, and we had a lot to be proud of. It’s wonderful to have someone say those words out loud, even just to each other.
PS: What Goes Around…
And now that I am holding the other end of the stick and receiving the services I once provided, I can’t help but notice how kind and caring the health care people are, and I hope I did as well in the old days.
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CREATED WITH HELP FROM GEMINI AI
They say travel broadens the mind. It certainly broadened mine. As I toured various European cathedrals, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the artistry and engineering and, quite frankly, thr expense that went into their creation. But I couldn’t ignore the niggling thought that a lot of that expense was paid for by the tithes of poor parishioners in Europe and South America.
It all hit me when I went to the Vatican Museum. I immediately felt affronted at the casual warehousing of hundreds of years’ worth of masterpieces.
Then I turned down an aisle in this jumble sale to see, away at the end, Laocoon and His Sons Fighting the Serpent, a famous statue of the Greek Hellenistic period. Tucked away in a corner, crowded around by less important works, not even labelled. In a real art museum, it would have been a showpiece.
And the casual disregard for the real value of art hit me. According to the church, works built to the glory of a deity by their very nature uplift all humanity. Well, at least the followers of that deity. And of course, the members of the clergy and princes of state and industry who live in the palaces and partake of the glory.
Did the spiritual uplift of the cathedral benefit the poor peasants, or did it just keep them quiet while the payoff was limited to the glory of those further up the food chain? Was the average person better off because of the expense? When we add in the effects of the many religious wars over the years, the answer has to be a resounding “No!”
FIFA Soccer
The bottom line here is that the Vancouver government laid out $700 million to benefit FIFA, who made over $2 billion for the whole series. The estimated number of visitors to the games is very similar to the number of cruise ship customers who visit in a month. I doubt if Vancouver City Council is willing to pay $500 per taxpayer for that industry.
Face it. On a dollars-per-visitor basis, there just aren’t enough customers brought in by the World Cup to justify the expenses.
SpaceX (and perhaps even NASA.)
Should we be spending billions (NASA yearly budget is $24 billion) on getting into space, when so many people live below the poverty line? At least the space programs are looking forward, with the possibility of big paybacks in future.
As I get older and hopefully wiser, I become more and more socialistic. The American Dream is just the latest version of Manifest Destiny. Keep the workers in their rightful place with the promise that if they work really hard and follow the rules, 0.01% of them will join the rich. Meanwhile, let the rich spend your tax dollars to benefit their egos and business enterprises.
The Bottom Line
Taxpayers and voters should always question the tax dollars spent for value received. Was the World Cup sponsorship worth it?
And the question behind that; have we been glamoured into supporting the lifestyles and egos of an increasingly small number of the uber-rich?
For me, it’s not too hard to draw that line. I’m not that enthused about the Olympics, but I do recognize their value, however misplaced, to the grassroots players of the recreational leagues. When my city pays $500 per taxpayer to support an entertainment event that makes $2 billion dollars for a bunch of uber-rich foreign investors, it’s gone too far. We have been victims of the same scam for a couple of thousand years, and it’s time we put an end to it.
PS.
Ironically, one of the main benefits supporters of the series harped on was how much they learned that they can apply when Vancouver hosts the next big event. Very helpful. They learned how to scam us better.
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Created with the help of Gemini AI
The war in Ukraine may be a drone war at the moment, and the locals may be winning, but like all wars, this one is a matter of people vs people, and economy vs economy.
People vs People
In the long haul, this war comes down to people vs people. Like Hitler, Netanyahu, and the Allies in WWII, Putin’s strategy is to attack the people of the Ukraine and try to make life so miserable that they quit. As the London Blitz demonstrated, even a democratic population will endure incredible hardship if they see no other way out. Like the bombing of Germany and Gaza showed, destroying the cities doesn’t work if the leadership doesn’t care about the welfare of the population.
When a war has gone on this long, and the leaders have doubled down this hard, the only factor that can end the war is a political move within one of the countries that ousts the leaders who are managing the war. Basically, the people get so tired of the war they say, “Enough.”
Putin is never going to negotiate for peace, and the war’s effect on the Russian people is very small in the major flow of their lives. Russia is running the war on the strength of the dictator.
Zelinski is a democratic leader, but he is ruling under martial law and his back is to the wall. He would like to negotiate out of the situation, but he knows Putin will not negotiate in good faith, so he must keep fighting. The Ukrainian people are waging the war on the strength of their loyalty. This is a powerful motivator.
Economy vs Economy
However, setting aside the spirit and abilities of the people, wars cost money, and this is where the stark realities show through.
| Ukraine | Russia | |
| Annual GDP | USD 200 million | USD 2 billion |
| Debt as % of GDP | 90% | 15% |
| Deficit as % of GDP | 17% | 2% |
| Defense Expenditure % budget | 54% | 19% |
Notable is the annual GDP line, which shows Russia has ten times the resources on a yearly basis.
The “Deficit as % of GDP” line shows how over-extended the Ukrainians are. As a comparison, Canada has about the same percentage as Russia in this field, and we are always worried about it.
The Bottom Lines
The only military reason Putin has been able to continue this war is that he has the ultimate final threat: nuclear weapons. With a sympathetic American administration, there is little chance that the rest of the world can call his bluff. Because it isn’t a bluff. As history has demonstrated right up to the present day, when you’re dealing with an egotist who doesn’t care about anything but his own power, negotiation is always an iffy proposition. We can only hope that the old “mutual fear of destruction” will continue to function.
The financial bottom line is pretty stark for Ukraine. Without a whole lot of financial aid from the rest of us, they simply cannot hold out.
The political bottom line is that democracies are always waiting for the next election to straighten things out. The kicker for this November’s US mid-terms is that any weakening of the present president will actually strengthen the nation’s ability to stand up to the dictators.
As the old curse goes, “May you live in interesting times.”
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