A Brief One by Doug Draper
Posted October 30th, 2016 on Niagara At Large
The days are growing shorter, the nights are growing longer and darker, there is a chill in the air, and if that isn’t enough to put any and all fond memories you may have of the summer gone by on ice, there is the spectre of creepy clowns with black balloons trolling the streets of neighbourhoods across our nations this Halloween.
And that is not even where the journey into the heart of darkness ends this Halloween eve.
In the United States, there is the prospect of Donald Trump winning one of the most powerful elected office in the world (not to mention access to the nuclear launch codes), followed by the prospect of Hillary Clinton winning the U.S. presidency and turning her back on every last promise she made to Bernie Sanders and his millions of supporters to pursue a more progressive agenda as she pivots and triangulates her way back to her Wall Street sponsors.
In Canada, there is the proposed construction of more tar sands pipes, the signing of more job-killing “trade” deals and big labour unions that are against bogus trade deals unless they involve jobs their members manufacturing military equipment for regimes with horrid human rights records or constructing pipelines to export tar sands goo to equally questionable regimes. And there is climate change which, I am becoming more and more convinced that none of the mainstream political province in any province or territory cares enough about addressing if it means interfering with entrenched interests.
In Ontario, there is the current Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne, followed by Tory leader and premier-in-waiting Patrick Brown, followed by an NDP that has not shown the courage to run on a truly progressive platform for two provincially elections in a row now.
And here in Niagara, there are the majority of politicians currently serving on Niagara’s regional council and the Niagara Peninsula conservation Authority, with developers with buzz saws and bulldozers waiting in the wings.
But at least everything is being done to get rid of the creepy clowns. In some communities across our nation, they’ve got the police driving them off the streets, and school boards and the like are banning them from Halloween parties.
Don’t retire whatever you may use to ward off the spooks though.
I have this terrifying hunch that long after this Halloween is over, if you pay any kind of attention to what is going on at municipal council, that at least here in Niagara, the creepy clowns will still be around. You will find them sitting around the horseshoe in a council chamber near you.
Remember the words the boat captain heard near the end of his journey into the heart of darkness – ‘The horror. The horror. …”
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