(ed.’s note – the following post was in the pipe before Edward Keenan sorta scooped us with his article a couple days ago, Rob Ford: the illusionist. All similarities in theme, tone, intent, right down to word usage frankly is purely coincidental and, we’d like to think, a product of that old adage ‘great minds think alike’. We fully expect a Marcus Gee knock-off to soon follow.)

I like to drink. Alcohol, that is. The other stuff’s fine, life-sustaining and all that but booze is my true liquid consort.

I like that moment a couple, few drinks in when your internal stars align and everything seems just right. All the shit of the day, those niggling, unsettling concerns and qualms about your life, the world around you, all together subside. Passing bliss, let’s call it, because it is very, very brief, fleetingly so. It comes only once a drinking session (if you’re lucky) and the rest of the time you spend chasing its vapours.

I like to think that my drinking of alcohol is a healthy pursuit. Studies (mostly French) have shown that regular consumption of red wine is, indeed, good for you. Lowers blood pressure, helps digestion. It also gets the creative juices flowing on those occasions when I’m feeling a little blocked. Weakens my editorial inhibitions and loosens the reins on my muse. Our literary canon is stuffed to blasting — See? I’m drunk right now! Can’t Touch This!! — with works from writers who were drunkards through-and-through.

My doctor, however, tends to disagree. Dr. Moderation, I call him when I’m feeling agreeable. Dr. Downer when I’m not. “The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” I tell him. But it falls upon his deaf, Philistine ears as he probably spent an excess of his time in school learning anatomy and biology instead of the wisdom of William Blake. (Yeah. I am really hammered here.) It is just wishful thinking on my part, I am told, to believe that drinking alcohol in anything but a moderate manner isn’t deleterious to both my body and mind.

Doctors. What do they know?

Advice is free unless it comes with a prescription, and we are equally as free to ignore it if it suits our fancy and doesn’t jibe with our beloved preconceived notions. Expert opinions are all well and good if you can understand them but they’re not nearly as comforting as our own biases and gut instincts. Wishful thinking beats the hell out of critical thinking any day of the week.

Wishful thinking is also a powerful tool in the hands of a politician. You want the stars, ladies and gentlemen? I’ll get you the stars, and the moon too. Would you like the moon too, ladies and gentlemen? Just click your heels and say there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. Clap your hands really hard, boys and girls, and Tinkerbell won’t die!

You say you like subways, all ye taxpayers? Can’t stand those streetcars? According to the highest principles of customer service, the customer is always right. So let’s ditch those LRT ‘streetcars’ and dig us up some subways!

Saying you like subways instead of streetcars is not a transit plan. It isn’t even a Transportation City Plan. It’s a statement of personal preference, an opinion. Like saying, chocolate ice cream is better than French vanilla. There are no facts backing such a claim up.

Who wouldn’t love a NYC/Paris/Barcelona/Beijing (pick a city) style subway running under the streets of Toronto? All things being equal. Bu they’re not. No expert on public transit matters that I’ve come across has said that, given the current economic environment, population density, specific needs of certain under-serviced areas of the city, subways are the way to go here. Correct me if I’m wrong, subway lovers.

Transit City was not simply some whim of a downtown, lefty, car-hating mayor. It was a tortuously long negotiation between 3 levels of government and a multitude transportation industry analysts and professionals. Perfect? No. But far less flawed than the mirage now being floated by the mayor.

But as we have been saying since the start of Rob Ford’s candidacy he operates purely in the chimerical. A mythical, magical place where one’s beliefs are never contested and exist undented by logic, reason or reality. Of course you can cut taxes without cutting services. It’s just simple math. If you’re not gay or sticking needles in arm, you can’t get AIDS. Basic common sense. How do you deal with decreasing crime stats? Hire more police officers. D’uh! Roads are made for cars, trucks and buses. Otherwise, they’d be called ‘bike lanes’ or ‘tracks’.

Certainty is never having to say you’re wrong. It is a specialty of those who share our mayor’s political persuasion. A big tent of closed-minded true believers standing firm in the face of anything that questions their faith. Such a cloistered view treats any and all contrary information as suspect which must be discredited quickly and with extreme prejudice, usually by vilifying the messenger. They see things not as they are, to paraphrase Don Quixote’s Dr. Carrasco, but as they’d truly like them to be. Unlike the book’s errant knight, however, these conservative pedants aren’t looking to make the world a better place for anyone else but themselves.

Life is easy inside that kind of bubble where there are always uncomplicated yes or no answers to whatever question is asked. Answers that, invariably, validate your own bias. Where troubles melt like lemon drops/Away above the chimney tops/That’s where you’ll find me. Such blinkered thinking has no basis in reality but does have very serious adverse consequences in the real world. Here in Toronto, we’re only beginning to get a glimpse at some of those and it’s only just a few days into Rob Ford’s mayoralty.

It’s enough to drive us to drink. Don’t mind if I do. It is Friday, after all.

— suddenly soberly submitted by Cityslikr