Tag Archives: Eye Weekly

The Power of Wishful Thinking

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(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

Not So Much Where You Live

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Leisurely making my way through Jeb Brugmann’s Welcome to the Urban Revolution when the concept of “city consumers versus trained urban citizens” stopped me up. Three weeks after the election that made Rob Ford Toronto’s mayor-elect and with much chatter about the divide revealed by his win, here to me was an idea that transcended mere geography. Could this be an insight into the core political sensibilities of the two camps?

Anybody who’s been following along with the post-election analysis knows of the downtown core/inner suburb, old city of Toronto/other places that weren’t Toronto but are now divide. We examined Edward Keenan’s article about here last week. Marcus Gee did as well over the weekend in the Globe and Mail although he failed to cite Mr. Keenan as his primary source material. The general consensus is that there were enough exceptions to prove the rule that it was suburban Toronto alienation from City Hall over the past 7 years that led them to vote for Rob Ford in droves while downtowners thought anyone voting for Ford was an idiot.

Here’s another take on it. “City consumers versus trained urban citizens.” Rob Ford supporters, regardless of where they live, think of the city only as far as what it gives to them personally. A place to live and work. Getting between those two places easily and safely is of primary importance and should be the main thrust of what a municipal government does. Pave the roads. Fix the streetlights. Clean the streets of garbage, both literal and figurative. Do it as cheaply as you can especially in the short run. Almost anything beyond that is simply ‘The Gravy Train’.

Trained urban citizens, on the other hand, see the city not so much as a set place on a map (that’s GPS to you city consumers reading along) but more as an entity that morphs along with its residents. The city extends beyond our backyard or office lunchroom or driver’s seat. It is a collective organism living and dying by the actions of those who are a part of it. What makes a city truly livable is when a majority of decisions made, from the corridors of City Hall right down to even personal ones, have a net positive effect on a majority of its citizens. An impossible goal to achieve, perhaps, but a better one to aim for than simply an every man for himself free-for-all.

There are more than a handful of credible theories about the origins and development of cities. At the core of each of them, however, is the inherent social nature of the human species. Push comes to shove, we basically like to hang out with each other. Arguably, we need to hang out with each other. Not everybody, of course. There will always be that one neighbour in the apartment above you who cannot get enough of Bon Jovi at top volume. Or the couple across the street who don’t think they have to clean up after their dog that makes a habit of pooping on your front lawn. But overall, we thrive and prosper with positive interconnectivity at all levels of our lives, and that is made much more possible when more of us have the opportunity at that positive interconnectivity.

That’s why 53% of eligible voters in Toronto didn’t vote for Rob Ford. Cities seldom flourish with short term solutions. Rob Ford is all about short term solutions appealing to our least likeable and most anti-social trait. What’s in it for me?

So, the upcoming battles that will be waged at City Hall won’t be fought along where you live lines although, clearly, the maps suggest they will be. No, it’s going to be about the overlap between what some think is best for themselves and what others see as being best for the city. Streetcars versus buses? Green initiatives? More cops at the expense of social services cuts? No longer mere campaign slogans, these are now items that very well may be put on the table for debate. You know, the whole ‘Vision Thing’ that was raised and summarily dismissed during the election race. An approach to city building that goes beyond the end of our own laneways, neighbourhoods and even outside ward boundaries.

That is the difference between trained urban citizens and city consumers. It isn’t just about my house or my bike lane. It’s our community, our roadway. A vital difference in the general well-being of any city, and one that must be overcome if this whole notion of an amalgamated Toronto is to work for everyone who chooses to call it home.

— hopefully submitted by Cityslikr

Moving On

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In the lacuna between election day and official start of the new council, I wallow. Fluctuating wildly between boredom (Come on, come on, come on! Let’s get this party started!!) and still lingering disbelief and outrage at what transpired on October 25th, I’m in creative irons. I lash out. I curl up in a fetal position, sucking my thumb. Making no headway.

The funk has not gone unnoticed among my dwindling readership. Normally chastised by one ‘Jerry’ (if that indeed is his real name) for using curse words, we were taken to task a couple days ago for replacing brains with bile and, essentially, crying over spilt milk. “The dirtys [sic] been done [sic] help us clean it up so maybe next time the right decision can/will be made,” ‘Jerry’ opines.

‘Jerry’’s right, of course. What’s been done has been done. Screw it. Deal with it. Move on. The die has been cast. We have to play the hand that’s been dealt us, if you’ll excuse the mixed game metaphor.

How exactly do we proceed with an incoming mayor representing only half of a sharply divided city? Council is very much an unknown with almost a third of it made up of new faces which is a rare high turnover at the municipal level.  In many ways, this should be a very exciting time for Toronto. Old challenges met by new faces.

And yet, and yet… where we are and how we got here doesn’t really bode well for where we are going. As told by Edward Keenan in his piece for Eye magazine 10 days ago, the deep chasm that fully revealed itself on election day goes beyond income disparity or geography. Much of it seems to be based on the perception of reality itself. Those in ‘Ford Country’, mostly the pre-amalgamated non-Toronto cities making up what’s now been called the inner suburbs, think City Hall under the David Miller administration was severely out of touch, spending all its time and money on their precious downtown core while neglecting everyone else and using inner suburb money to do so, further adding to their alienation and disenfranchisement.

That this sentiment is factually incorrect on almost all counts is beyond question. Keenan points out that early on in his tenure Miller embraced the United Ways’ 2004 report, Poverty By Postal Code and set out to deal with the problems it highlighted. “Miller and his allies on council took that report to heart, and many of the city’s centrepiece policies are aimed at addressing the problems it outlines,” Keenan writes. Thus was born Transit City, the Tower Renewal Program and the designation of 13 ‘high priority’ neighbourhoods, almost all of which were located outside of the downtown core of the old city of Toronto.

Despite this, Keenan suggests that many of those who would benefit from these programs were unaware of them. While filled with righteous indignation about plant watering, retirement parties and the proverbial Gravy Train, they somehow missed the memo about all the activity down at City Hall going on to help bring them and their communities into the fold. How did that happen?

Well, here’s where Keenan’s insightful and exhaustive article falls flat on its face frankly. Apparently, all those who voted for Rob Ford were simply “…not part of the conversation about urban policy. They’re working to pay the bills, take care of their families, get ahead and enjoy their lives…” As if everyone who didn’t cast their ballot for Ford (the downtown elite, let’s call us) were doing nothing more than hanging out between attending council meetings, eating bonbons and sipping lattes, hiding the information from outsider prying eyes. One of the most shocking omissions in Keenan’s piece was any talk about the role of the mainstream media in the dissemination of misinformation. Voters could reel off the litany of Rob Ford bumper sticker chants but remained in the dark about what was really going on at City Hall? That’s somehow “our” fault rather than the likes of Sue-Ann Levy or John Oakley?

But, I put my elitist heart on my sleeve.

In case you’re thinking, oh no, there he goes, railing about past events, what’s over and done with, I think it’s very pertinent to how we go forward from here. If the new mayor and some of the council have been elected on faulty premises or outright distortion of facts, where does that leave us in opposing them and trying to defeat their worst intentions? Do we surrender to their unreality? Since we were viewed as snobs and out-of-touch downtowners during their campaign whenever we expressed contemptuous doubt for their candidates’ misguided and ill-informed ideas, how will that change now that he’s in charge?

“Maybe if a few more downtown elitists spent some time in Ford Country,” Keenan figures (but not the other way around with Ford Country residents shedding their ignorance about us elites), “we could start a conversation about bringing about the ‘united Toronto’ Ford proposed the night he was elected.” OK, Mr. Keenan. We get to know our Ford neighbours, hang out at their place for a backyard bbq. Start up a conversation over our ribs and Coors Lite.  So… we’re going to finally stop that Gravy Train, eh?

Where does the conversation go from there? I don’t ask rhetorically because I really want to know. The answer will determine how the next four years plays out.

— exhortingly submitted by Cityslikr