Question everything

Trevor's Take

I was really angry and tired the other day and slightly depressed that one of my go-to veggie protein options at a local grocery store had risen by 24 per cent in the two years since I started buying it.

My social media account, through its magic, foreign-controlled and funded algorithms, helped me focus my anger, and saved me the hassle of fact-checking or really thinking at all. Which is nice; like everyone, I am so tired.

Sure, if I had looked into it, I’d see that the Bank of Canada calculates that the carbon tax is responsible for 0.15 per cent of that increase. But what would I do with all my ‘the carbon tax is killing our economy and our country’ rage?

Of course, I didn’t look up earnings reports of the country’s biggest grocery retailers to see if there was any correlation between my family’s increased costs and their corporate success. The nuance of realizing that those people are making out like bandits, seeing billions in profit and substantial year-to-year quarterly growth is lost on me.

I definitely didn’t check to see if the same thing is happening in other comparable countries because that would water down one of the mantras of the populist movement: It’s all Trudeau’s fault.

Not that thinking about rising food costs is just some abstract mental exercise. The problems are most definitely real and immediate, causing more and more of our neighbours to face food insecurity. Add the insane price of housing and we have untenable situations for many of us.

Thankfully I came across a promoted, well produced advertisement that promised me relief. Life will be more affordable and my country will have common sense and be great again. Now that is some great magical news.

There were no details on policies or any clue whatsoever on how this will be accomplished. Policy schmolicy I say! Just because I know how complicated our world is doesn’t mean I don’t like easy answers! And malaise and discontent should never be discounted as our American friends well know.

I was just about to post my first meme linking climate policies and communism when thankfully my Gen X brain took back control.

See, if my generation is anything, it’s cynical. We were brought up to question everything because well, we have always been lied to. We grew up through economic crashes, the last cold war and will be the first generation to have a lower standard of living than our precursors. We are used to bad times (which is why our music is some of the best ever created.)

And if there is one thing we don’t do it is accept an oversimplified solution prima facie. We don’t vote as a generation along any one line, but our formative cultural experiences hardwired us to question all authority – including solutions that might be far too good to be true.