Thoughts on Father's Day

According to the philosopher Plato, Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That may be true, but I think that the problem is not so much in the living, but in the examination – or lack thereof. That’s been the thought foremost in my mind as we approach Father’s Day.

I’ve been a dad for a little shy of 16 years. My kids are the both the greatest frustration and the greatest source of pride for me. You would think that the day would mean a lot to me. To be honest, I don’t think about it much – or at least that much where I am concerned. For all the length of time that I’ve been a father, I’ve spent much longer being a son. Maybe that’s why I view it all from that perspective.

My dad is 79 years old. Despite years of hard work, heart attacks, strokes, and surgeries, he is still the same man – albeit at a reduced speed.

In thinking about him, I also think about the quote about ‘unexamined lives’. You see, I think he is a great man, and I’ll even go so far as to say a better one than me. That said, I have my writing, this blog, my political comings and goings to ensure that somebody, somewhere will know who I am and what I’m about. He doesn’t have that, and because I believe that his life has been – and continues to be – one worth living, I will offer an examination of my own.

He was born in the latter part of the Depression into a poor family that would eventually number eight kids. It was not a good situation. Wearing hand-me-downs from cousins and taking a lunch to school that consisted of a slather of lard between two pieces of bread was commonplace. I do not wish to go into a detailed examination of how and why things were that way. There were a confluence of events before my father and his siblings entered this world that set the stage, and that both alcoholism and mental illness played their part.

At age four, he was given to my grandfather’s nephew and his wife to raise, and for a while, that worked well. It was when that couple, not having children of their own, wished to formally adopt him that things changed. While not in a position to raise my father, and not having actually done so for more than a couple of years, my grandparents could not accept this and demanded his immediate return.

Living in a household with a family he barely knew, and in – to be diplomatic – less than ideal conditions, my father made a fateful decision.

One day, while walking to school, he threw his school books in a creek and with no money and just the clothes on his back, he set out to hitchhike to Toronto. He told me that the first person to stop for him ‘tried something’ but he managed to get away, and another person stopped to help. That stranger took him to his destination. 

Once he arrived, he found work as a hand with a moving company. As he had no money, he saved as much of the meal allowance he was given, and slept in either the warehouse or one of the trucks. The owner of the company would take him home on weekends and invited him to join his family for Sunday meals. Eventually, he managed to save enough that he could rent a room in a boarding house.

At the time this was happening, my father was the ripe old age of 12.

Over the years he would find himself back in the vicinity, and doing all sorts of jobs – from construction, to piling lumber, to working as a hand on some of the steamships that would haul coal and other materials between Kingston, Ontario and Oswego, New York.

He would eventually marry, helping his in-laws with their dairy farm when he wasn’t working another job. He would go back to school and get his papers to become a Stationary Engineer. For a spell, he would have his own modest haulage business, with two trucks and a backhoe.

When the economy turned and prospects dimmed, he and my mother would sell the house and part of the farm and, with everything of value loaded into a station wagon and a U-Haul trailer, make a trek to Northeastern BC, 2800 miles away.

Life often makes a person hard. It makes them cold and callous. You would think that under the circumstances, living under the same roof would have made for a less than pleasant childhood.

I lived in a home where I was never hurt or abused. I lived in a home where I was never witness to abuse either. I lived in a home where I was encouraged to think for myself, and where nothing I said, or did, or dreamed of doing was discouraged.

I was raised in a family where a mortgage payment might be late because the money went to paying for either my sister or I to go to something because ‘it would be good for us.’ In fact, he probably quit smoking a thousand times over the years, because if he had a choice between buying a pack of cigarettes and giving his kids money for lunch, we never went without a carton of milk.

I was raised by parents who refused to declare bankruptcy for their haulage business because it meant that local businesses would not get paid, and their reputations meant more than a quick out.

I lived in a home where strangers who needed a bed and a hot meal were never refused, even if my folks had been taken advantage of for the umpteenth time.

I lived in a home where I always heard my dad say that he loved me and was proud of me. For the record, he still does it.

When I was about to graduate University, I was asked how I wanted my name to appear on the diploma. I asked that my middle name, Hugh, be included. You see, that’s my father’s name and to have it written on that paper was important to me.

When I took a hand at writing fiction, I adopted the pen name ‘B.H. Cameron’ and often use the ‘H’ when I identify myself. When my son was born, the name Hugh was also included in his full name.

My father is not a complicated man, but he’s not a stupid one either. He wears his heart on his sleeve and does nothing by half-measures. He’ll embrace what he thinks is right, and not be shy about calling out things he feels are wrong. He is generous (to a fault) and is willing to hold a grudge to his dying day, but is equally willing to forget the whole thing upon hearing the words ‘I’m sorry’ – even if they were not offered in sincerity.

He would never place himself above others, but he’ll be damned if he’ll allow himself to be placed below either.

I’ve had the chance to build a life free of the hardship, deprivation and abuse my father suffered in his childhood, but that owes less to the choices I’ve made than to the ones he did. After all, I have his example of being a father to follow. He had to wing it. It reminds me of something a read in a book about the Bronfman family. When reportedly asked about building their fortune, Samuel Bronfman commented that turning a million dollars into a billion was not all that difficult. The hard part, he said, was getting to a million from just one dollar. I see fatherhood in very much the same light.

In a very real sense, I am my father’s son.

I’m neither impressed by how much a person has nor repelled by how little they may possess. I believe that family and friends are your most prized possession, and loyalty is the price you pay to maintain them. I believe that there are better people than me, but that’s based on the content of their character and not their bank account or how many dusty sheets of paper line the walls of their house.

I believe that the difference between a wealthy person and a poor person has more to do with luck and providence than any intrinsic ethic of labour or integrity.

I don’t have a role or station to fulfill, but I have a job to do, and affectations are merely the shiny wrapping paper and pretty ribbons that adorn it.

I believe a friend is someone who would feed you if you were hungry, clothe you when bare, and offer a place from the wet and cold. Everyone else is an associate or an acquaintance – including yourself if you’re not prepared to help when called upon.

I have a rather indelicate sense of humour, and will take time from the weighty matters of life to be a complete imbecile and butt of my kids’ jokes.

I will hold a grudge for longer than what my wife considers healthy, and yet, with a simple ‘I’m sorry’ the matter is put to rest.

All of this, I got from my dad.

In writing this – in ensuring that my father’s life is not ‘unexamined’ – I lay open a great deal. Like many families from our little part of the world, people keep things private. Such candidness is not common. Having said that, I don’t believe that any bit of this account represents a poor reflection of anyone. 

My grandparents lived complicated lives and had histories of their own to overcome. If there was a failure, it was that they were unable to do that, leaving those problems as an inheritance. In my youth, I could never understand this, but time teaches you that life isn’t simple, and that they were not the exception, but the rule.

We are born into this world naked and unaware, wholly dependent and wholly vulnerable. In that regard (and with apologies to those who believe in karmic reincarnation), being born a pauper is no more an indication of unworthiness than being born a Rockefeller is one of some intrinsic virtue. It means that our fate lies in the hands of those whose care we are placed in.

My father’s situation owed to the choices his father made. Everything I have – or will ever have – owes to his decision to do differently, to be different – even if he didn’t know what that was or how to achieve it.

My father was the ‘best man’ at my wedding. In truth, he’s been the better man all along.

Some thoughts on Brexit

It has been a little over ten years since I made a trip to London. Early May, and very warm.

A few months before that, I had published my book ‘The Case for Commonwealth Free Trade’. In the days and weeks that followed, I had made the acquaintance of a good number of people – many of which I am still proud to count as valued colleagues and friends.

During that trip I met with a great number of individuals involved in government and business who told me that they liked the book and it’s general direction (although some felt that the idea of a Free Trade bloc encompassing the entire Commonwealth was far too ambitious).

Almost to a person, they told me that it was a great idea and that Canada should partner with Australia and New Zealand, and possibly a couple of other member states. They also said that it was a shame that they could never contemplate any involvement in such a venture. They explained that membership in the EU precluded them from ever contemplating signing on, but that they wished us every success.

During a few candid moments in private, I asked whether or not they saw a day when this might change.

Almost all of them, regardless of party stripe, remarked that they didn’t see this as a possibility, although they would certainly back a change.

For years, I had the sense that the sentiments in Britain were akin to what you would see at a grade school dance. Boys lined up along one wall, with girls along the other. A slow dance is playing, but the only thing dancing are the lights reflecting from the mirrored ball.

Possessing perfect knowledge and some degree of mind reading, you determine that there are at least a half-dozen cases where a boy would not be refused a dance by the girl he likes and vice versa. A dispassionate and neutral observer might see the attractions, but they don’t. What they see is the prospect of humiliation and disappointment. Given the notorious degree of self-consciousness among adolescents, those involved sit through ‘Stairway to Heaven’, moving either to the washroom or the refreshment table, not to the opposite wall.

Almost every Briton I spoke to was unhappy with the European Union. Yes, they wanted to trade freely with the continent, but the whole incremental move toward a United States of Europe was an entirely different matter.

The thing is that in the spring of 2006, the call to have a referendum was a decidedly minority view, and the push to quit the EU even more exclusive.

Today, ten years and about five weeks later, not only is there a vote on the issue, it will be decided in less than a week and if polling is to be believed, that departure is a real possibility. In short, a significant portion of the British electorate has summoned the courage to cross the dance floor and seize the moment.

What changed?

A lot of people will have their own views on what represented a pivot moment, and many theories are equally valid. Having said that, I have my own.

In October of 2008, while celebrating our 9^th wedding anniversary, I lay in a hotel suite in a Cuban resort. The television was turned to CNN and the camera was panned to a group of Congressmen and Senators in Washington. At the same time, to the side of the image, one could see the Dow Jones and NASDAQ dropping like a two ton boulder off a sheer cliff face.

Like a great deal of the world, we were shocked and nervous, although the abundance of rum and sun were effective distractions.

The biggest crisis to the global economy dictated a concerted response, and the world through everything it had at the situation. Interest rates at near zero, deficit spending and ‘quantitative easing’ on a historic scale.

The good news is that it worked, but even the most effective medicine has some nasty side-effects. When using chemotherapy, doctors can kill cancer cells (which is good), but the tradeoff is to knock your immune system down to nearly nothing.

In fixing the global economy, governments and authorities did something else. They exposed their weaknesses. Like the proverbial receding tide at a nudist beach, modesties and shortcomings were revealed.

The Eurozone had always had its inconsistencies and contradictions. Harmonizing currencies among still sovereign states with greatly differing economies and economic policies was going to be a difficult task at the best of times. The difficulty lie in the fact that abandoning a significant symbol of nationhood – a currency – meant rolling back the cause of an ‘ever closer union’. That’s what it’s been all about – a European Parliament, European Courts, European laws, and yes – European money.

The Euro was not so much a deception, but a delusion – that you could harmonize the currency before you harmonized the forces that controlled and regulated it. But delusions are as stubbornly held as deceptions, and are defended just as vigorously. The defense is also similar in its pathology – defend a deception by laying down another one to cover it. If that doesn’t work, then add another.

The problem is that a delusion, no matter how stubbornly held it is, is just that – a delusion.

The delusions in this case led to drastic economic measures, and it is in the effects of those drastic measures that everyday citizens felt the pain – higher unemployment, bank failures and credit constrictions.

Had 2008 not happened, I doubt that Britons would be presented with the referendum. There would certainly have been calls for one, but they would have been dismissed by the powers-that-be as a ‘fringe’ opinion.

Delusions have a short shelf life, and even with that, require a great deal of energy to sustain. For those fighting to create a ‘United States of Europe’, the delusions have been plentiful, and the effort to keep them up equally demanding.

The delusions that you could ignore national and cultural identities and histories, that you could introduce a single currency without fully merging economic and political power, that you could create political institutions without giving them democratic legitimacy are all significant, but they pale in comparison to the one that – for Britain – started it all.

It is the delusion that you must give up your flag, your Head of State, your currency, your laws and your system of government in order to sell 10 percent more widgets.

This coming Wednesday, the world will learn if the delusion holds, or if it collapses under the weight of its own inherent inconsistencies.

Take two pills and vote in the morning

This may sound bizarre, but in following the news coverage of the US Presidential campaign, I am reminded of bacteria. I realize that in penning this I am also being more than a tad bit insulting. For that, I apologize. There is a point to this, but it requires a bit of a detour down analogy lane, so fasten your seatbelt.

One of the emerging issues in the field of medicine is how to deal with MRSA’s – drug-resistant bacteria, in layperson’s terms. The advent of penicillin in the early 20^th century meant that people could take a couple of pills a day for a week and survive potentially life-threatening illnesses. When my son was 4, he was admitted to the hospital with the same ailment that killed my grandfather’s older brother in 1927. Three pills a day for five days, and that was that. Antibiotics may have grown in number and in potency, but they are also declining in effectiveness.

There are a number of opinions regarding what happened, but they seem to fall into two categories – one, that overuse or improper use of the drugs has lessened their punch, and two – that the bugs themselves have begun to mutate and build immunities of their own. The truth is likely some combination of the two phenomena, but the outcome is the same. What used to work no longer does, and the experts are left scratching their heads over what to do.

And so back to politics.

Political insiders and professional advisors are often called 'spin doctors' by others and by each other. I know some who view the moniker as some mark of favour, some source of pride. The term really owes to the fact that like practitioners of traditional medicine,  they deal with complex interactions and know what ‘remedies’ to employ when a campaign gets sick (i.e:  goes off the rails). Their patient’s health and wellbeing is what counts, even if it is a campaign and not the human body

For years, they have prescribed the same types of messages, targeted the same demographics, and pushed the same particular issues. The strategies have been repeated because, to this point, they have always worked. 'Play to your base' has been standard operating procedure since before most of us were born. Do it effectively, and you get 4 years and then, come the next election, it's more of the same.

What if, like their medical counterparts, the treatment that these ‘doctors’ are prescribing are losing their potency?  What if all of the pills in the ‘spin doctor’s’ black bag don’t deal with the infection?


Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz should never have – in the eyes of the American Spin Doctor Association – gotten this far, this fast, and with this much potency. Like their medical counterparts, the politicos have thrown every textbook treatment at them. Endorsements from former candidates and current office-holders, nods of support from powerful interest lobbies, and the unleashing of surrogates to the 24 hour news channels and talk radio circuit are the equivalent of following an article in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine or The Lancet. They look for what the professional consensus declares to be the ‘gold standard’ treatment, apply, then sit back and wait.

But if polls and delegate counts are the blood work and diagnostic tests of the ‘spin doctor’, it is clear that the treatment is not working.

The patient, of course, is not sick – but they are ‘sick and tired.’ They don’t respond to the Bill Clinton pill, and they seem to have developed a severe reaction to the Mitt Romney medication as well.

In this case, people are not the bacteria – but their problems are. Declining living standards, the hollowing out of industries – and communities – as well as the devaluation of what many considered the ‘American Dream’.  The treatments on offer have been the same for four decades, and if they had worked even a fraction of the amount they have been purported to, you would not have seen this phenomenon unfold.

The ‘spin doctors’ say they are as surprised as anyone, but should they really be? When you stake a career on political consulting, when you work 50+ hours a week on K Street, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients, and you get to sit in a studio where Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper ask you what it all means, do you have the luxury of shrugging your shoulders and muttering “I dunno”?

My take is this – the bacteria is ‘anger’. It has been made stronger by a combination of inaction and indifference. The bug gets stronger with each ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I don’t care’ that comes from the governing class. They, in turn, calmly declare that they’ve seen it all before and administer a treatment of ‘we care, seriously we do’, of actors and singers appearing on stage and doing a rendition of their last Billboard top ten tune, or referencing the catch phrase that helped their last picture earn $100 million, and a heavy duty course of surrogates ‘explaining’ what the ‘real’ issues are.

The treatments used to alleviate the discomfort. Joe Q. Public’s overdue mortgage payments didn’t miraculously catch up just because Fleetwood Mac queued up ‘Don’t Stop’ for the umpteenth Bill and Hillary whistle stop, but he felt that much more positive about his situation that he could actually see light at the end of the tunnel.

Today, the light at the end of the tunnel feels a lot like the headlamp of a speeding locomotive.

Joe Q. Public has grown weary of the medicine he’s been taking for the past four decades, and like someone with a long term illness that defies conventional treatment, he’s willing do the equivalent of going to some third world country where a doctor has declared that they have a new experimental drug that the medical community back home won’t certify. If you’re that sick and that frustrated, you might just borrow fifty grand and fly halfway around the world for the ‘extract of the adrenal gland of the whatchamacallit’ because the hospital back home is full of people in white coats who just shrug and mutter ‘I dunno.’

The political establishment, I believe, brought this on themselves. The spin doctors over prescribed answers to tough socioeconomic issues with treatments barely stronger than a placebo. They allowed the ‘anger’ to grow and metastasize. Just as important, they failed to come up with something strong enough to give the patient – the middle class voter – any real relief. Instead, they have tried to manage the anger, much like a doctor tries to manage pain.

And that’s the thing. If all you are doing for your patient is managing their pain, you are admitting that curing their condition is not in your purview. The patient knows that, and that’s why he and she are willing to take the risk.

A letter to my British friends

As a Canadian, I am loathe to make any comment about the affairs of a foreign country, even if that country’s head of state and mine are one in the same.

The fact is, though, the current campaign regarding whether or not Britain should – or should not – remain in the European Union has already had such influence insinuated into it. There are those in EU member states who have declared their opinion as to what Britons should do, and what they may do if the answer is not to their liking.

More importantly, those in the Remain camp declare that “the Commonwealth wants us to stay.” As a citizen of a Commonwealth nation, I do not recall being asked my opinion on this matter. On the other hand, if people in the UK have declared that the feelings and sentiments of Commonwealth kith and kin are valid, then I no longer feel that I have any particular prohibition on stating my views.

In 2006, I travelled to the UK and met with several people in relation to my book “The Case for Commonwealth Free Trade.” I received a very polite and sincere welcome, but also a warning. I was told that while the idea sounded splendid, and that Canada, Australia and New Zealand should certainly avail themselves of the opportunity, the EU meant that Britain could only stand at the sidelines and give its well wishes. There was a sense at the time that the move toward an ‘ever closer union’ was inevitable and that little could be done to halt the inexorable march of time.

Two years later, while my wife and I sat in a hotel room in the Caribbean, we tuned into CNN and the unfolding economic crisis – the precipitous crashing of stock indices and the impromptu gathering of bankers and politicians to show solidarity. Just like the proverbial receding tide at a nudist beach, much came to be revealed. For eight years, we have been treated to terms like ‘stimulus’, ‘quantitative easing’ and ‘liquidity’ on an all too regular basis. That may have been the obvious result, but something else happened.

Theories and plans that had been treated like articles of faith began to be questioned. Like Sir Karl Popper’s theory of falsification, people began to discover limitations to assumptions, where things began to break down. That included the ‘European project.’

To this interested observer, the origins of ‘Brexit’ trace back to the very beginning of the UK’s membership in the Common Market back in the early 1970’s.

It was based on two assumptions and a bit of a finesse.

The two assumptions were that:

• Europe was in economic ascendency while the Commonwealth was in decline; and,
• Economic unity in Europe was necessary to ensure political solidarity against the threat of Communism

The finesse was not necessarily to deny that the planned end-game of the EEC was a ‘United States of Europe’, but to suggest that Britain could sign up for the economic access without taking on the political project.

Four decades later, the reality is as follows:

• The European Union’s long term growth prospects are moribund while Commonwealth nations are among the star economic performers; and,
• The end of Communism eliminated the ideological threat, and what military threat may or may not remain falls within the purview of NATO – not the EU

The finesse, as well, has shown itself to be ineffective. 

Skeptical minds might question how Britain is not part of a nation-building project when it must submit its national laws to a European Court, adopt laws passed by a European Parliament, and elect legislators to said Parliament. Suggestions that Britain is not heading toward inclusion as a province or state of a larger federation is reminiscent of the Black Knight in ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ who, after having had his arms and legs lopped off, dismisses the injuries as ‘but a scratch’ and insists that he’s still up for a fight.

You can say that you belong to a trade agreement, but that trade agreement has a flag, an anthem, a Parliament, a President, a currency, courts and a body of laws. If it waddles like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, then one can only be drawn to a particular conclusion.

Free trade agreements exist around the world and in different guises. In the past decade, Canada has signed more free trade agreements than I can count on my fingers. That, incidentally, includes the recently negotiated agreement with the EU. In none of these instances were we told that we would no longer have a Prime Minister, or that we should stop singing ‘O Canada’, or that Her Majesty would no longer appear on the front of our 20 dollar banknotes.

Understand that Canada kept her sovereignty and political independence when concluding the Canada-US agreement in 1988. Also bear in mind that it was an agreement between a nation with half the UK population versus a nation with ten times our population, who had amassed more economic and political power than any other country or empire in the annals of human history. Yes, 35 million Canadians managed to secure free trade access to the world’s only superpower without having to change our flag or sing a different song at sporting events. There is no NAFTA flag, no NAFTA Parliament full of NAFTA MP’s – never has been and never will.

The experience of jurisdictions in North America and around the world is that you can do trade without a political merger. The EU does trade deals with non-member states all the time, so a post-Brexit UK should not be any different.

And that is the central question – one of politics, not economics.

To this outside observer, leaving means you don’t want Britain to become a like a Canadian province or an American state to a larger federation. Remaining means you are supportive of Britain becoming the jurisdictional equivalent of Ontario or Alberta, Ohio or Massachusetts.

What this outside observer cannot tell you is what you should do. That is fundamentally a decision for the British people. If you believe that the world has evolved in such a way that the future of your society is better served under a different construct that is a decision that you can make. If you feel that the future of Britain – economically and politically – is better served by maintaining political independence, then you have your choice as well.

Canadians and Britons have gone through much over the decades and generations, and the result of this vote will not alter that. It is your choice, and those of us beyond your border wish you luck in this monumental decision.

Anger versus hubris

*** In this politically charged atmosphere, it seems ridiculous to put a disclaimer, but here it is. I do not think Donald Trump is a good choice and if I were an American and a Republican, he would not receive my vote. On the other hand, I do not think his supporters are some strange sub-species that inhabits sewers, or should be publicly shamed and herded off a cliff. In fact, I think that such disdain actually has the unintended consequence of fuelling that movement. Understanding their motivation is not the same as agreeing with it.***

Long ago, I began my first campaign – to secure a party nomination in my local provincial constituency. A supporter had lined up a meeting between myself and a key contact - a local restaurant owner and political activist. In short, an extremely important person. I went to the restaurant and met with the man, along with a few others – two of which would be elected to municipal councils in future votes. It was a good conversation. We talked about the issues, the nomination race, and had time to talk about some personal connections we shared.

I did not win that race, but came very close. I can say without a doubt that I would not have done as well without the backing of this group. We remained friends beyond the vote.

A couple of years after, sitting down in the restaurant, we talked about that race. It was then that the man told me exactly why I got their support. He told me that my competitor had gone to pay a visit the week earlier. He went on to say that there was one particular difference between the two of us that made the difference. I asked him what it was, and he answered “you didn’t wipe off the seat.”

I was a bit confused by this, but he went on to explain that when the other candidate came and pulled out a chair to sit down, he grabbed a napkin and proceeded to wipe off the seat before sitting. The man was a proud business owner, and his restaurant was a focal point for the community. In that one gesture, the candidate gave the impression of haughty disrespect, of looking their nose down at them, and his establishment. The owner said that I showed up, sat down without ceremony, and talked informally.  The bottom line is that I won their support because I showed respect, and my opponent lost it because he didn’t.

It has been about two decades since that time, and I never really thought much about it. That is, until I started watching both the rise of anti-establishment politicians and the tone of those who are opposed. Although I do think that there are a number of people who ‘get it’, one of the better summations was made by Brendan O’Neill of The Spectator magazine in his piece “From Trumpmania to Euroscepticism: Revenge of the Plebs”:

“In both Middle America and Middle England, among both rednecks and chavs, voters who have had more than they can stomach of being patronised, nudged, nagged and basically treated as diseased bodies to be corrected rather than lively minds to be engaged are now putting their hope into a different kind of politics. And the entitled Third Way brigade, schooled to rule, believing themselves possessed of a technocratic expertise that trumps the little people’s vulgar political convictions, are not happy. Not one bit.”

For me, the direction of political debate in America and elsewhere creates a great deal of conflict in my own mind. By full disclosure, I have a bit of a foot in both camps. I do have a degree from a highly rated school, and I have had many an occasion to associate with people who exercise a great amount of ‘resources’. In short, I’ve been relatively lucky. I am also the child of working poverty, of a rural family that struggled to pay the bills and faced the kind of adversity that many of my university friends would not have first-hand knowledge of. Most times, it leaves me a bit cold and frustrated with both camps, but it also provides an insight.

When those in positions of authority say that the answers aren’t always that simple, they are right. When they say that anger and emotion are not helpful in the development of public policy, they are also right.

The thing is that when people living on the margins say they are angry and feel disrespected, they are speaking sincerely. When they say that they feel victimized by a system that certain people game for advantage, they are right. When they say they feel scapegoated for every ill of the world and feel as though they are being told to take the blame for every problem in society, I cannot disagree.

The truth is that if those who are considered part of the socioeconomic ‘elite’ feel at liberty to make the argument that the ‘average’ voter is naïve and uninformed, it must also be acknowledged that they also come off as arrogant, insulting, and oblivious to the life experience of a significant part of the population.

Let’s also broaden the dialogue a bit, because this is not about left wing versus right wing either.

My argument is thus: The activists in the Tea Party and Occupy movements are different signs of the same anti-establishment coin. They differ only in their ideological approach, but they have little use for the same group of people; and that people are drawn less to a political program than a desire to:

a)      fix what they think is broken;

b)      humble the people they feel have kept them down; or

c)      all of the above

If you think that there is an establishment elite stifling legitimate political debate and dissent, you may be drawn to Donald Trump. If you think the problem is that the same establishment elite is lining their pockets and reserving social and economic privilege for themselves at the expense of you and others like you, then you may have considered showing up for a Bernie Sanders rally. Same anger, different direction.

In martial arts, you are taught you can defeat your enemy by channeling their momentum to your own benefit. The faster someone runs at you, the higher you can fling them in the air. Trump (on the right) and Sanders (on the left) have succeeded by practicing politics like a martial art. The harder people who are identified as ‘establishment’ run at them, the more they are able to use the attack to solidify their own position. This creates a feedback loop where the attacks feed the entrenchment, giving rise to more attacks and more entrenchment. If a feeling of disconnect and disrespect by the establishment is what drove people into those camps, then a doubling down by the establishment is not going to do anything but boost those numbers.

But there is something more to this – something that is making the debate more intractable and potentially more volatile.

My father worked for years as a Stationary Engineer. In simple terms, he worked on and maintained steam boilers. Beyond all of the specific duties of care and maintenance, his job was to ensure that the boilers worked under a constant and steady pressure. Run too cold and they do nothing. Run way too hot and you’ll get anything from a heavy blast of steam from a release valve to an explosion that could take out part of a city block.

Democracies work the same way. Polite and vigorous debate generates healthy heat. On the other hand, apathy makes them run cold and if you stifle or prohibit debate, expect the gauge needle to go into the red. The anti-establishment direction is like the water in the boiler. It lies dormant on its own, only boiling when it come into contact with heat.

And like boilers, the Trump and Sanders campaigns are driven by the steam generated by the establishment elite that not only provided heat to the disaffected, but pressurized them by constricting what constitutes fair and socially acceptable debate.  The lack of opportunity and socioeconomic mobility is the flame, and the inference that people lack the intelligence or moral grounding to legitimately complain about their lot in life serves to ratchet up the PSI’s.

While leaders are creations of their own particular time and circumstance, the forces that put wind in their sails have come before and will likely do so again.

In many respects, the US (along with a number of countries) is going through something akin to the ‘Gilded Age’ (1870’s to roughly 1900), where life got exceedingly good for some while not so much for others. During that time, the Democrats produced William Jennings Bryan, who advocated ‘free silver’ in order to alter the Gold Standard, while the Republicans had Theodore Roosevelt, the ‘trust buster’ who went toe to toe with men like Morgan and Rockefeller. In other words, both major political parties in the US fielded Presidential candidates who made shaking up the status quo a major priority.

Disenfranchisement leads to reaction, leading to more feelings of disenfranchisement. Of course for some it will officially end in November when an individual is elected US President, but that is a merely milepost along a much longer road.

We live in the political age of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object – lots of heat and light with no respite from the fireworks.  Unless one group loses their anger, or the other loses their hubris, we will continue to live in interesting times.