We are a silly people

Why are we so incompetent?

In March of this year, I became a reluctant fan of Bill Maher on the basis of his observation that the United States is populated by a “silly people”. He spoke in reference to how China deals with issues relative to how the US government deals with its issues. While not being a slavish fan of Mr. Maher, I do pay attention to what he says and have enjoyed his interviews with Jordan Peterson of whom I am a slavish fan.

This is what he had to way… be aware that some vulgar language is used in the video.

Bill Maher's "Silly people"

Being a Canadian disqualifies me from offering legitimate opinions on what is happening in the United States. It is not that I am bereft of opinions but, they are irrelevant in the absence of a US passport or the willingness of Americans to elect me to be their king.

However, being a citizen of the Great White North, my opinions are more relevant if not necessarily more accurate. I think Mr. Maher’s comments can easily be directed at Canadians as well. Do we really see ourselves as anything but silly when the Trans Mountain Pipeline missed its construction schedule by several years and is 400% over budget? The Coastal Gas Link pipeline is about to be commissioned and was only 200% over budget. Most large projects are the same - we can’t seem to build anything anymore and much of what is built is ghastly in its ugliness.

In Calgary, where I live, our city fathers are excitedly pushing ahead with a rail line extension to bring more people to the downtown core resulting in fewer cars on the road. The line was originally designed to extend from the northern to the southern reaches of the city at an estimated cost of C$5 billion. When more work was done, the cost estimate ballooned to C$10 billion so the northern leg was removed. Additional work resulted in even more cost and hence a still shorter line. We now have a line that is about twenty percent of the original length with the same original cost and which does not reach the newer communities. Having been on the drawing board for over six years, the people who might have taken the train downtown are now working from home. Hence, the train will be an empty white elephant as soon as it starts up. Yet no one wants to point out the nakedness of the emperor.

It wasn’t always this way. The Canadian dream was founded on the construction of a transcontinental rail line that would be impossible to build today because no one would want to finance the certain disaster.

It is not just construction projects. I recently had occasion to read Canada’s Constitution Act of 1982.  Frustration, thy name is Constitution Act.  There have been numerous amendments to the constitution since the British North America Act of 1867 and all the amendments are included in the current document.  Reading it is like playing “Snakes and Ladders”.  At any point in the document, you may hit a ladder and move forward or, more likely, you will hit a snake, find out that the section has been amended, and must start again.  Try and find out how many words are in Canada’s constitution.  No one knows because there is no universal agreement about which documents are to be included.  No wonder Canadians don’t know their own constitution.

The original version of Magna Carta (translated to English) has 63 articles and 4700 words.  Magna Carta, signed in 1215 between very unhappy Norman barons and their authoritarian liege lord King John I, is the foundational document for English common law and parliamentary democracy.  If the clauses dealing with the personal issues between particular barons and the king are removed (eg “don’t let anyone from that family of bums, the Giscards, have any official post now or in the future”), the document is smaller still.  It is remarkable for the precision of its language.

In 1763, King George III of England signed the Royal Proclamation that officially laid claim to lands in North America following the Seven Years War – possibly history’s first world war.  It allocated land to the soldiers who fought in North America and laid down conditions for the humane treatment of the Indian tribes who lived within the boundaries described in the document.  We might find much about which to disagree with King George but, at least he had the good sense to confine himself to two thousand words.

The US Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the US Constitution of 1787 with its twenty-five amendments fit on a pocket sized brochure.  In more cynical moments, I might be persuaded to believe that the profession that writes legislation today has an incentive to obfuscate their written product in hopes of future fees.

One last example.  The numbered treaties that define the relationship between First Nations and the Crown through Canada are short and to the point demonstrating the sagacity of the Indian chiefs and the reasonableness of the Crown negotiators. Treaty 7 is about 2300 words long. No wonder First Nations folks will not allow any messing with those treaties.     

Why were our forefathers able to put their ideas into agreements that are not tens of thousands of words of spaghetti logic that, in their vagueness, are open to legal challenge?  If one were to closely examine the various statutes and bills that are passed in Canadian legislatures, one might be appalled at the errors buried in the steaming mounds of words. 

Our Prime Minister, being the silliest of the silly, thinks it a good idea to cause podcasters to register with the government. Oh good. Yet another registry. But fear not because this is the governing party that can’t get its eight-year-old payroll system to work, that built the ArriveCAN app, and that spent over C$1 billion on a long gun registry that didn’t work.

The podcasters, naturally, are upset with the Orwellian implications of the proposed registry. To them I offer the following encouragement. For three years I registered myself into and out of the mine site at which I worked as “Mickey Mouse” and heard nothing from management. Either no one looked at the registry or they were pleased that such stars were showing up. In an age of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), perhaps it is silly to worry about a government computer program that registers podcasters. Remember, we are a silly people and can’t build anything that works.

Why is this?

I think it is largely because we don’t know our history. We are silly because, in a fog of hubris, we think that history started the day before we were born and that everyone older than us is dumber than us. What can we learn from dead, white folks who didn’t have cell phones, after all?

But if they had read the Magna Carta, wouldn’t the writers of the Canadian Constitution Act of 1982 be a bit embarrassed at their efforts? If you have occasion to hire others to write contracts and agreements for you, will you be happy with hundreds of pages of clauses and sub clauses knowing that the thirteen colonies were contractually bound by the words of a small booklet?

Should the engineers and promoters of Calgary’s Green Line feel proud of a project that has shrunk to fifteen percent of its original size while costing the same as the original project? Yes, yes there are many reasons for this, but have we become so demeaned that we are proud of our excuses?

And for a coup de grâce, the shame of the historical ignorance of a silly people was nowhere on display more vividly than when the “clapping seals” (a term given to me by a former clapping seal) of the Canadian parliament rose as one to give a standing ovation to a former citizen of the Soviet Union who had fought with a German SS division against the Soviet Union. You know… the Soviet Union that was Canada’s ally in the Second World War. The shame was not so much the far-removed actions of the 98 year-old honouree, but more that not one Canadian parliamentarian seemed to understand the military alignments of Canada during that war. In the unnuanced ignorance of our clapping seal class, it was sufficient that he was “a Ukrainian who had fought against Russians”.

Is it not time to conclude that we have had enough of ignorance, sloppiness and incompetence among those who bind us with their ideologies and laws.  Think of this slide into stupidity the next time you contemplate the qualifications of the two or three people occupying the seats at the front of the airplane you are in. Do you want “clapping seals” up there as well? Is it not time to start demanding real rather than silly performances from ourselves and others? It is embarrassing to be a silly people.