These are the text messages I sent my wife Rachelle on Monday:

*******************************

Me: Yep.

Me: Dropped Jones off at daycare and am now at the polling station getting ready to cast my vote for mayor!

Me: No.

Me: Mayor McCheese is not on the ballot.

Me: It is a shame. Not only is he VERY experienced, but he’s also delicious.

Me: I agree, we do underestimate taste when it comes to appraising our candidates.

Me: I think Doug Ford would have been a buttery mayor, like wagyu beef.

Me: John Tory? The current mayor? Beef jerky.

Me: He looks creepy. Desiccated and plastic, like if you bred a dry roasted peanut with a Ken doll. Looks like somebody from Blue Rodeo who suddenly got really, really old!

Me: No.

Me: No, that’s not a “dig” at Jim Cuddy.

Me: All I’m saying is that his opponent, Jennifer Keesmaat, has aged pretty well.

Me: What?

Me: Look, all I mean is that she looks as good now as she did 15 years ago. Let’s smash the patriarchy and vote for her!!

Me: Oh.

Me: Well, when you put it like that I guess it does sound a bit like I’m going to smash the patriarchy by voting for a woman I think has aged well.

Me: And you think that’s wrong?

Me: Okay.

Me: Well, in my defence I knew JK back in the day.

Me: Didn’t I tell you?

Me: But look, I also like her transit plan. Very smart. And let me assure you, she’s more than just another pretty face! You should vote for The Keezer!

Me: A nickname I had for her.

Me: Oh, that was so long ago.

Me: Lava Life, I think.

Me: We only went out on one date.

Me: Went to Maine for a long weekend.

Me: Yeah, I guess it was a three day date.

Me: What did we do?

Me: Well, she’s a HUGE Stephen King fan so we went on a tour of his house in Bangor.

Otherwise, we just drank some wine, walked the beaches, talked policy. Stuff like that.

Me: Hunh!

Me: Hadn’t thought about that, but yeah, Stephen King’s house is my screen saver.

Me: Look, I hadn’t even met you yet!

Me: Rest assured, if you were running for mayor I would vote for you!

Me: You would organize the hell out of this city!

Me: You really would.

Me: And I LOVE the idea of making Toronto a Sanctuary City for all the lost animals of the world.

Me: You would be a way better mayor than JK.

Me: I would be a Russian bot for you.

Me: I would lie to congress for you.

Me: You wouldn’t believe how many laws I would break for you political ambition!!

Me: People would be screaming at me every  goddamn time I tried to eat out. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.

Me: It’s true. You are the fire with which I burn. You have all of me, my love, you always have and always will.

Me: Yes.

Me: Absolutely. You have my word.

Me: I will change my screen saver.

Public shaming of members of President Trump’s administration has become the latest act of resistance against the government. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant, Environmental Protection Agency Chief Scott Pruitt was lectured and videotaped while dining out, Kellyanne Conway, a consultant to Trump, was mocked in a grocery store, and most recently Stephen Miller, a particularly loathsome advisor to Trump, threw out $80 worth of sushi after the bartender followed him outside of the restaurant and told him to go fuck himself.

Here, in their own words, are other Trump officials relating their stories of being heckled in public:

************************************************************************

Mira Ricardel, Deputy National Security Advisor:

“ I was called a ‘Shit Donkey’ by some tall woman when I went to see Ocean’s 8 at the Cineplex. It completely ruined the movie for me. This is not the America I know.”

Kevin McAleenan, Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection:

“ I had just finished collecting the quarters from the washer and dryers at one of my rental properties and was walking back to my car when I felt a little sting on the back of my neck. When I turned around I saw that some old man sitting on a stoop had just spit a sunflower shell on my neck.  He then fired another, and that one hit me in the leg, and as I reached for my taser he called me “a traitor to my nation and to humanity,” before twitching out.

Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce:

“ The woman working on my feet during my morning sports pedicure was extremely rough, almost violent while exfoliating my heels. And make no mistake, it was intentional. I can tell. And when I admonished her  and told her how lucky she was to be living in America, she said something under her breath in a foreign language. I called the manager and had her fired, but it’s getting intolerable, this lack of civility.”

Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education:

“ I was at the Illuminati sex party in Novgorod and right after the sacrifice, a man wearing a goat’s head refused to have sex with me saying, “Children in cages aren’t my thing, you Trump skank.” I had my mask on so I don’t even know how he knew who I was. Jesus, I don’t even want to think about what they’re saying about me at Martha’s Vineyard!”

Peter O’Rourke, Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs:

“ I was at a Bryan Adams concert with a few of my paintball buddies and while I was out on the floor enjoying the show I saw that they put my picture on the giant screen with the words, EVIL TRUMP FLUNKY across it. Not cool, Bryan, not cool.”

The story I was watching was about Russia being banned from the winter Olympics in South Korea for doping infractions, and it was being told in a very sober, serious manner.

A story for adults, told by adults.

The video footage behind the newscasters voice was of stern Russians with machine guns, scientists doing scientific things, and IOC officials looking like assholes.

These stock images didn’t exactly correspond to the story, but they symbolized it in a recognizable enough manner, which is really all that TV newscast aspire to.

As the story was winding to it’s end, the tone of the announcer changed. The mood was brightening. Full of incredulity, the newscaster said, “And how are they responding over in Russia? Well, Putin is saying that the IOC ban was orchestrated by the USA in effort to discredit him and influence the upcoming Russian election.”

This was said as a joke, the sort of thing that would make you think, “Oh, those crazy Russians!” Most of us, at least over 35, have seen thousands of TV newscasts and unconsciously know the formula—it is the tone of voice that conveys how seriously we are to take a story– and this conspiracy theory was intended as a little bit of levity added on to an information dense segment.

Russia.

What do we know about Russia?

I know nothing, really. I’ve never been there and came of age during the Cold War, certain that I was to die in some Regan inspired volley of nuclear weapons. I don’t have a clue what, or why, typical Russian people think the way they do.

1. Do Russians have reason to think the US would act against their interests?
2. Do Russians believe the CIA has the capacity and will to tamper with evidence?
3. Has the USA ever tried to influence a foreign election? *1

From any sort of “rational” point of view, the answer to all these questions is “yes.” A Russian might have cause to believe Putin’s claim. It is not insane, but it is delivered to us in the exact same way that a skateboarding dog story would be, and because of this we unconsciously dismiss it, even as we hear it.

Strange, that, but there you have it.

The media shapes the message, and I would love to see the last two minutes of all broadcasts to be person-on-the-street interviews with people from foreign nations in the news, more like Humans of New York than a Hot Take on a topical news story.  I need this perspective. I want to know what they are thinking, what their faces look like and how they nervously smile when they’re on camera. 

They need to be portrayed beyond symbol, and be seen as complex, fully developed people we can understand and love, rather than targets to demonize, mock and bomb.

*1 For those interested, the Columbia Journalism Review has just published a detailed and fascinating article on the impact of Russian Fake News on the US election.

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-media-election-trump.php

Donald Trump is the living embodiment of a cliffhanger.

I swear, everything the man does compels us to astonishment. And once this happens he has us trapped– as the complicit media knows all too well. Almost obediently, we’ll sit there in anxious anticipation, eagerly awaiting his next act as if it were an episode of Breaking Bad. Trump, always the catalytic agent, exists to propel narratives forward. Where that story came from or where it might be headed is entirely immaterial, all that matters is that in that moment you cared, and the more passionately you cared, the better for him.

Since his election my media streams have been rivers of fire. All day long people have been screaming at one another and making the boldest declarations. It reminds me of the Olympics, actually. Some sport I will have never heard of might pop up, and after a brief, mechanical explanation of what it is and a few minutes of watching, I’ll feel like an expert.

And so it goes with politics. We may not speak the language, we may not have visited the country, we may not have any friends who are native to the place, but in very short order, we still have really, really strong opinions about what should happen to it.

Whenever I find myself assuming this role and asserting some far too sure political view, I remind myself that I have trouble keeping my own house in order. What’s my economic plan for the USA? Hell, what’s my economic plan for my family!

The world is infinitely complex, and our ability to understand it is miniscule. Our chances of being wrong about something are far greater than our chances of being right, and it’s important we keep this in mind, particularly when judging those we disagree with. I mean, if you’re awake enough to understand that not all Muslims are terrorists, then you should be awake enough to understand that not all of your political opponents are racist morons.

One’s politics are a very poorly articulated version of the sort of person one might be in the world. Typically it says more about how we’d like to be seen, than how we actually conduct ourselves. And it is just so hard to live a pure life in this society, we must always keep in mind that it is upon monstrous deeds that most of us have happily, blindly, built our lives.

The furious, pre-apocalyptic tensions defining the USA right now are typically lumped into two categories. There are the coastal city-states that house the progressives and elites, and then there is the rest of America, a kind of seething, primitive horde—think Orcs.

I try to look at it more like the future pitted agains the past.

Every year our world changes more than it has in all the generations stacked before it. A lot of people are disoriented and terrified by the velocity at which their lives are now moving, while others are grateful that time has finally caught up with them. And when one traditional way of life is subsumed by another, there is usually a violent reaction, and I think that’s what we’re seeing– the past trying to claw the future back in place, and a resentful and protective future stomping back.

So be kind if you can, for everybody is feeling like they’re hanging off the edge of a cliff.

I didn’t have much of an appetite for the Oscar’s this year.

Normally I’d be all in, enjoying the glittering and flimsy spectacle as much anybody, but this year felt different, and whatever spirit or anticipation I’d typically bring to the affair was just not there. In fact, I was dreading it, imaging it another long– really long– continuation of all the sneering, bitter arguments that were ceaselessly looping through my media feeds.

Social media has begun to feel like tuning in to some late-night AM radio call-in show. The voices, disembodied and angry, fire from the dark, each one inveighing some furious certainty. There is no complaint too small or too large, and each one comes obsessively detailed by the over-confident sender. There’s an urgency to all these declarations, too, as if impulse more than thought, and the momentum always moves forward– retreat or rumination, let alone a kind of sympathy, utterly unthinkable.

To willingly step into this each day, as I do, is an act of madness. To me, it feels like being closed in a room with a hundred growling dogs while the unmediated grievances of the world strobe in front of you. It colours your mood, this, so even before something of “actuality” happens in your physical life, you’re already tense and combat ready– you’ve already become somebody you don’t want to be. And I swear, if we could somehow tap into the cataract of doomed energy that feeds this monster, we would be masters of the universe.

Initially I had imagined the Internet as something almost utopian. It would be democratizing and unifying, kind of like The Force, and united by the millions we would be able to destroy evil Death Stars. Instead, it’s proven to be infinitely divisive, revealing that the Internet itself might be a horrible Death Star.

The limitless options presented by technology have moved us away from what had been commonly shared. Whatever our interests may be, however perverse, remote or idiosyncratic, we can find a subculture dedicated to that passion or hatred online. We are never alone, but our channels never seem to be open, either. Living in gluttonous echo chambers of our own devising, we now customize our experiences, changing them to suit our needs rather than adopting to the mean. In this way, popular culture is being eradicated, with each person becoming a hermetically sealed culture unto themselves.

Naturally, the idea of compassion or empathy withers in this climate of radical tribalization. It’s now completely normal for people to proudly boast of de-Friending somebody who disagrees with their politics or to happily live within the paradox of being tolerant of everything but intolerance. If you step into Twitter, far from finding a marketplace for the free exchange of ideas, you find a war zone. Every once in a while you pop up from your trench, fire off a few salvos at the enemy, and then duck down again—kind of like a shooter game.

The Internet in the age of Trump ( who I believe saw and exploited this rather than created it), is a grim landscape lacking in kindness.

Full of hall monitors ready to pounce on anybody not adhering to the common orthodoxy, it’s a place you go to confirm your certainties and your enemy’s idiocies. It is a place where fighting, where aggression is the entertainment, and it is perhaps the loneliest place on the planet.

******************************

Me: That’s not true.

Me: I hate Donald Trump.

Me: Yes, I do.

Me: I really do.

Me: What on earth makes you think I don’t?

Me: The way I’ve been shaking hands?

View post on imgur.com

Me: Look, I’ve always had a strong, Presidential handshake. It’s one of the things that attracted you to me, you know that!

Me: Oh C’mon, Justin Trudeau didn’t beat him! The media, so many lies! So unfair!!

Me: Trudeau was just trying so hard to be macho. Sad.

Me: Fake. Not true

Me: I am not talking like Trump now.

Me: Trudeau’s a bad hombre.

Me: Bigly.

Me: You see the way he was ogling Ivanka?

Me: Disgusting.

Me: An embarrassment to Canada.

Me: No, you’re an embarrassment to Canada.

Me: You are, too.

Me: Hell, I don’t even think you root for Canada during the Olympics.

Me: You’re not a patriot.

Me: You’re not helping to Make Mike Great Again.

Me: You’re a disruptive technology.

Me: Sorry????

Me: My Google Autofill?

Me: That’s a sacred precinct!

Me: You shouldn’t be poking around in there!!

Me: Well, I really don’t know why “Trump Anime Sex Fantasies” showed up there.

Me: Probably some keys Jones hit by accident.

Me: That little nugget gets into everything!

Me: What?

Me: He did what?

Me: Fuck!

Me: That was a gift from my sister.

Me. Sentimental value. Huge sentimental value.

Me: Don’t have a clue where I’m going to find another The Apprentice: The Board Game.

Me: Jesus. I feel sad.

Me: That was a fun game.

Me: Better than fucking Catan.

Me: Who wants to buy goddamn wheat?

Me: Really, you think you can make an night of it with friends “buying wheat?”

Me: Please.

Me: My attitude is fine.

Me: Anyway, we’ll see how he feels when I destroy his dog toy.

Me: I swear to God, that dog is evil.

Me: It is, too. The tail wags for no reason.

Me: No!! There was no battery in it!

Me: Really!

Me: It was creeping me out so much I removed all the batteries, but it still barked and tilted its head!

Me: Oh.

Me: I just thought there was the one spot for batteries.

Me: Who ever heard of two spots for batteries?!

Me: That’s insane!

Me: Whatever.

Me: Still think it’s possessed.

Me: Gonna murder us all in our sleep.

Me: I am going to build a wall around that dog and make Jones pay for it.

Me: No, watching Poltergeist hasn’t poisoned me against a toy dog!

Me: Well, maybe.

Me: Yeah, I guess you’re right.

Me: I had forgotten how scary that movie is.

Me: Netflix should be more careful with the types of movies they broadcast.

Me: Yes, I was.

Me: Have you ever watched Poltergeist stoned?

Me: Fucking terrifying.

Friends;

I am sorry for any broken limbs and shattered teeth that my enthusiasms may have caused. It was not my intention to hurt any of you, and you should know that Father Russia loves all of his children.

I must thank you very much for this training session. I needed it. Sometimes, the stresses of a global Alpha can be intense. Sometimes, you must break something or you yourself will be broken!

(Waits for applause to subside)

A man does not have it easy in this world, let me tell you.

But I am not here to speak of the unknowable hardships and cruelties a man such as myself must endure. No, I am here to congratulate Ezio Gamba for the powerful and autocratic judo lessons he has dispensed to the national team! He has made you all super hardcore, and that is the Russian way!

We are too hardcore for the Americans!
(Cheering)

We are too hardcore for the Japanese!
(Cheering)

We are too hardcore all the feminine states of Europe!
(Cheering)

We are hardcore!!
(Waits for applause to subside)

And Ezio, much of that is due to you, and I thank you.

I will tell you something you would not guess, but it is not conducting surveillance operations or gassing protestors where I feel most at home.

No, it is on the judo Tatami. It is there where I am my powerful true self.

I am a master of all flesh in the Tatami. There, in a tight embrace, I can unleash the unmeasured furies of my passion!

When I was a young and confused KGB agent, it was judo that provided me with a safe spot. It was there I could be my masculine self and share my physical feelings with other men, but elders grew concerned at the disorienting and often unsettling intimacies of the matches, and so they set me up to fight with Lyudmila.

She was very mannish looking and a formidable opponent. I did not know she was of the females until much later, after much rough combat. We were eventually paired in matrimony and an off-spring was made in the dark of the Russian night.

The American song Islands In The Stream played, I remember.

Yekaterina.

A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.

Our daughter, it is the one good thing Lyudmila and I did together. She is better than any judo moves we ever made, and I am not ashamed to say I would kill with my hands any man who would think to violate her with his primitive heterosexual urges.

No longer paired with Lyudmila, I was free to practice judo with whomever I liked, and those were glorious times for Vlad. Such beautiful judo! Truly, it is the sport of love.

Anyway, my old female partner has gone on to marry another man, a man 20 years younger than her! How about that?

I could have him killed, but I will not. He will suffer with Lyudmila as I suffered with Lyudmila, and I will continue to be the most powerful Alpha in the world, enjoying judo with as many partners as I choose!

You must eat the pain, comrades!!!

Long live Russia, and long live judo!!

His silence during this time had fueled all sorts of speculation, with some people believing he’d been in Switzerland to attend his girlfriend giving birth, while others thought he was ill, had power seized from him or that he might even have been assassinated.

Well, he appeared hale and hearty on Monday morning, and it turns out that Putin, utilizing the survivalist training he learned as a KGB operative, had spent the last week camping on his own. These are his private journals from that trip:

Day 1:

As spring approaches, the burning comes hard and fast.

I shudder with the unnatural urges and I know that I must, once again, remove myself to the Bialowieza Forest and make peace with the natural world.

My mind, as if fevered, returns again and again to that Sikh cab driver as he stared out his car window on Shkolnaya.

For a moment, our eyes, like magnets, found one another, and we were two beautiful, masculine animals locked to one another, our breathing becoming so urgent and alive, and in such perfect and furious unison as to be inseparable. We would to be just one, all flesh, muscle and luxuriant and mysterious beard. Ah, but this moment lived only in our hearts and minds, for we never met or spoke, just two rugged ships passing in the fading light of a tired Moscow day.

In the Bialowieza Forest there are no seductive cab drivers with strong, Indian features. No, here there are berries. Here there are cold streams in which to cleanse impurities from one’s naked body! Here there are animals to kill! Here there are so many places to unleash the rage and to let the echoes of pain take flight!!!

Day 2.

I am heterosexual.

I am heterosexual.

I am heterosexual.

I am Dear Shirtless Leader.

I am a powerful, heterosexual leader.

I am ruthless and without pity.

I am heterosexual.

Day 4

I use rocks to pound my hands. The pain reminds me of how much I love women and not men. Rocks are my friends. I will incite my people to throw them at the homosexuals when I return from my purification!

Day 5.

I spent the day in penetrating, decontaminating meditation.

The cold of the March forest felt good on my naked body. It was like being caressed and then handled roughly by the indifferent hands of an anonymous man looking to satisfy his own primal needs. I was an empty and willing vessel, a village waiting for to be led by its mayor.

I then ate two birds that I knocked out of the air using my belt. They are part of Father Russia now.

Day 6.

Today a young stag approached my camp while I made weapons from the beaks and talons of the birds I ate. This buck looked at me with both certainty and curiosity, and as a confident as a bear, walked right up to me and licked my bare chest.

I could have torn him apart with my horrible weapons, but I did not. He continued to lick– he must have been starved for nutrients and minerals—and I took his beautiful head in my powerful hands– and then he began to lick me in an intimate spot. The forest was a beautiful canopy above us and the sunlight was falling like gold coins all around, and for a moment there were no other living creatures in all of the universe, and then I twisted his neck and killed him, and there was but one living creature left, and it was then that I knew I had won and was ready to return to society.

but recently he’s been opening up a lot of Chatbox windows, always asking strange questions and speaking in an absolutely bizarre voice. At first I though it was a joke, something he liked to do when high, but today I think I put the pieces together.

I recently wrote about the Guardians of Peace, the organization responsible for the massive hack on Sony,

and one of the results of this is that they started to follow me on Twitter. I have to say, this has been unnerving, but perhaps not as unnerving as learning that US Law enforcement has been actively gathering intelligence on the Guardians of Peace through undercover operations on Facebook. I now suspect that the FBI has hacked into Rob’s Facebook account and is now using it to try to gather information about my relationship with, and knowledge of the Guardians of Peace.

What follows are some of the Facebook Chatbox sessions “Rob” and I have had over the last couple of weeks:

Rob: Hey, big guy! How are you favorite sport’s teams today?

Me: The fucking Canadiens were beaten by the Senators! Lost $150!! Please don’t tell Rachelle! She’d kill me if she knew I was still gambling!

Rob: A secret gambling vice, that’s a real exploitable vulnerability, Michael! I bet your enemies could ruin you with that information! Anyway, sure would be nice if the Guardians of Peace hacked into the Canadiens and taught them a lesson or two about football! Can you make that happen, Michael?

Me: Rob, it’s pretty early for bourbon, isn’t it?

Rob: I like our friendship, Michael, it is good that we share! We must go to a strip club soon! You have a Korean fetish, right?

Rob: Who is your favourite sexy actress? I like the way that Miley Cyrus twerks!

Me: Her dancing is cultural appropriation, Rob!

Rob: America is a land of freedom that grants equal opportunity for all, do you not agree with this premise?

Me: No, not really.

Rob: Mike, can I call you Mike? You know what treason is, don’t you? Is treason or revolution something you would support?

Me: I would like to commit various treasons with Jessica Simpson.

Rob: If you had to pick a country to invade, what country would it be?

Me: I don’t know, Russia? Somebody’s gotta make Putin put on a shirt.

Rob: So are you saying that Russia is the next to suffer a major cyber attack???

Rob: The Eagles are a great band. What do you think they would make of the Guardians of Peace and their hack on an innocent corporation (Sony) working within the free market? Do you think if the Eagles knew anything about the terrorist organization The Guardians of Peace, that they would turn that information over to the authorities? I do. I think that the Eagles, your favourite band, would do the right thing.

Me: The Eagles aren’t my favourite band. The Doobie Brothers are.

Rob: The Doobie Brothers always do the right thing. They hate North Korea, love freedom and always give the government useful information in the war against terror!