More than a century of Indian policy by the Canadian government included forced migration, segregation, limiting education, outlawing culture and separating children from their parents. As recently as the 1980s, indigenous women would lose their Indian status and rights if they married a non-indigenous person. We were not allowed full voting rights until 1960.
.. Residential schools were government-funded, church-run institutions found across Canada and the United States that put seven generations of indigenous children through their doors. Children were not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture; as young as 6 years old, they faced electric chairs for punishment, and siblings were separated. Many, including my relatives, faced physical, sexual and mental abuse. One report estimated at least 6,000 children perished of malnutrition and disease, or while attempting to escape.
.. Nor did we learn that MacDonald justified the schools this way: “When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training, mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write.” In residential schools, he added, “they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.”
.. In order to expand Canada westward, the government displaced and confined my people — a stark contrast from the Canada so praised these days for welcoming refugees from Syria and other nations.
.. Learning about our past won’t change it, but mandating indigenous history in our school systems is a good start. Without an honest dialogue and recognition of this history, we will hide behind a comfortable ignorance. My hope is that on July 1, Canadians who raise their flag high in celebration will also take a minute to reflect on the loss many have faced along the way.
How Late-Night Comedy Fueled the Rise of Trump
Trump and Bee are on different sides politically, but culturally they are drinking from the same cup, one filled with the poisonous nectar of reality TV and its baseless values ..
.. Trump and Bee share a penchant for verbal cruelty and a willingness to mock the defenseless. Both consider self-restraint, once the hallmark of the admirable, to be for chumps.
.. When John Oliver told viewers that if they opposed abortion they had to change the channel until the last minute of the program, when they would be shown “an adorable bucket of sloths,” he perfectly encapsulated the tone of these shows: one imbued with the conviction that they and their fans are intellectually and morally superior to those who espouse any of the beliefs of the political right.
.. When Republicans see these harsh jokes—which echo down through the morning news shows and the chattering day’s worth of viral clips, along with those of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers—they don’t just see a handful of comics mocking them. They see HBO, Comedy Central, TBS, ABC, CBS, and NBC. In other words, they see exactly what Donald Trump has taught them: that the entire media landscape loathes them, their values, their family, and their religion.
.. Jon Lovett, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, was representative: “This photo will be in history books and the caption will not be about how Jimmy Fallon is such a fun nice guy”), and rightly so.
.. getting a noogie from a comic on late-night television is now considered a “normalizing” activity for a presidential candidate. The implication is that you’re not fit for executive office unless you can clown for us on the tube when we’re half awake.
.. Paar invites audience members to ask their own questions of the senator. “Let’s have, you know, responsible questions from responsible people,” Paar says, and I waited for the laugh, but it didn’t come. It wasn’t a joke.
.. This was a chance to interview someone who wanted to be the president, and Paar asked his audience members to act accordingly—which they did.
.. The new age officially began with Bill Clinton’s 1992 appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, playing his saxophone.
.. This was the president as entertainer, the president as a guy so young and so cool that he could slide right onto the set of the most with-it late-night show and sit in with the band.
Who couldn’t love this guy? Well, possibly the family of Ricky Ray Rector, the retarded man on Arkansas’s death row, whom Clinton had cruelly allowed to be executed just five months earlier to prove he was tough on crime.
.. soon President Bubba .. would be telling an MTV crowd whether he wore boxers or briefs
.. We are a country with the greatest creed in all of history—the Constitution of the United States—yet we are looking more and more like a banana republic.
The Non-Transformation of Donald J. Trump
It’s astonishing, isn’t it, how suddenly Donald J. Trump is being viewed, in certain precincts, as—what’s the word?—yes, “Presidential,” and all it took was for him to issue an order to launch fifty-nine cruise missiles
.. Laura Ingraham tweeted, “Missiles flying. Rubio’s happy. McCain ecstatic. Hillary’s on board. A complete policy change in 48 hrs.”), there was wide approval from the foreign-policy establishment. The former Secretary of State John Kerry was said to be “absolutely supportive” and “gratified to see that it happened quickly,” and there’s been non-stop gushing within the Trumpian orbit. Kellyanne Conway, gusher-in-chief and Presidential counsellor, spoke about “our very tough, very resolute, very decisive President.
.. For a television performer, television appearances matter a lot.
.. when Trump started getting intelligence briefings, his briefers were advised that he was “a visual and auditory learner”—in other words, that he should deal with as few words as possible and, instead, get “more graphics and pictures.”
.. preference for pictures over words explains, as Trump might phrase it, so much, so very, very much.
.. “We rushed into Korea with no advance planning, and we stumbled into the ground war in Vietnam with uncertain footing. In neither case did we have any fully thought-out ideas concerning our objectives or the means we would be willing to expend to attain them. As each situation arose we extemporized, unsure what the next step would be, until we were far more committed than we had expected to be.” Our best soldiers never forget that sort of lesson.
.. What’s most worrisome about Trump is what’s been worrisome all along: that he doesn’t think through the consequences of what he says and does, and that he acts without a glimmer of consistency, or guiding principle; he’s a man of constant surprise. In that way, Trump is not unlike another erratic world figure, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, who also seems capable of acting in extremes, without warning, at any time, and at any level of incitement.
Donald Trump Gets Rare Bipartisan Backing for Syria Strike
WASHINGTON—For the first time since his inauguration, Donald Trump is being treated like a conventional president.
.. “In the short run, this will clearly benefit him politically,” said Karl Rove, the top political aide to President George W. Bush. “It will cause people to look at him differently, and it will cause our adversaries to see us differently.”
.. Democrats who have stridently opposed Mr. Trump’s agenda praised the airstrikes.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York called it “the right thing to do.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California called the military response “a limited, and I think an important strike, and it accomplished its purpose and sent a message.”
.. Large numbers of Republicans have reversed their position on congressional approval for Syrian airstrikes since then-President Barack Obama weighed attacking the country in 2013.At the time, Republicans such as then-House Speaker John Boehner insisted Mr. Obama lay out a fuller plan for action in Syria before launching airstrikes after the Assad regime carried out a suspected chemical attack in Damascus. Scores of Republicans said they would oppose an authorization for the use of military force. No vote was taken... Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch also praised Mr. Trump’s action, though in 2013 he said he had “strong reservations” about authorizing force against Syria.
.. Mr. Rove said Mr. Trump would lose any newfound political goodwill if he didn’t articulate his foreign-policy philosophy “within days.”
.. “He told us he would be the president of America, not ‘the world,’ ” Ann Coulter wrote on Twitter.
.. Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said the airstrikes are “illegal, and they’re unconstitutional.” Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), the lone member of Congress to vote against the post-9/11 authorization to use force against Afghanistan, said the airstrikes represent “a dangerous military escalation into the Syrian civil war and are without legal justification.”
.. “It makes people question: If a photo of an incident that has occurred in another nation causes the president to drop 50 or more cruise missiles, is that a real well thought-out strategy, or is this an emotional reaction?”