School’s Out

I was going to make this big ranty post about the SK provincial government’s attitude toward education, citing the absolute farce of our premier scolding school divisions for instituting or increasing school fees for parents while at the same time his government has been underfunding primary and secondary education (and likely post-secondary as well) for the past decade, but then it occurred to me, as it has occurred to me many times over the past number of years, that complaining about this government is like farting in the wind.

The truth is it doesn’t really matter what this government does. They’ve made it abundantly clear they don’t give a rat’s arse about the people in this province, but considering there is no viable alternative to their lack of transparency, and downright underhanded bullshit, we’re stuck with them. Just like we’re stuck with Uncle Doug, who, every Thanksgiving puts on his favourite sports team jersey which he hasn’t washed since the team won the pennant in 1962, douses himself in Brut, and shows up for sit-down dinner having already drunk a 26 of Wild Turkey while driving from Smuts in his $70,000 truck that he parks in four spaces because he has the god-given right to do so owing to how he’s white, male, and old.

You know he’s going to piss himself at the dinner table again (which is why there’s now plastic on the floor and chairs in the dining room) and probably fall into the fire again (although the scuttlebutt is that in 2004, it was actually Aunt Myrna who pushed him into the fire because he kept flicking marshmallows off her roasting stick. Uncle Doug thinks he’s a laff riot). It doesn’t even matter if you don’t tell Uncle Doug where Thanksgiving is being held this year because some codependent dinglefuck always spills the beans. He shows up drunk, gets drunker, messes himself and pukes in the bathtub (or sometimes the kitchen sink) before yelling “fuck you, you fucking fucks” and somehow makes his way to the bar after supper.

You can’t get rid of Uncle Doug, and we can’t get rid of the current government. We are in a dangerous place; unopposed governments do not make good policy. Unopposed governments do not legislate effectively. It doesn’t matter if the government is a monarchy, an oligarchy, a communist regime, or a democratically elected one; if a government governs unopposed and unchecked, it becomes unwieldy, plagued with narcissism, nepotism, croneyism, and ultimately corruption. These aren’t my rules; this is what history has taught us.

So rather than linking and citing sources, let me just say that until someone stands up and tells Uncle Doug his antics are unacceptable and that we won’t tolerate harmful behaviour anymore, we’re going to have to keep putting plastic on the furniture, stocking ozonol in the medicine cabinet, and explaining to a sigh why that guy in the family photos has no eyebrows.