Vera Lynn

A few days ago a news item caught my eye and I intended to comment on it. I was interrupted and the moment passed -- but I didn't forget. The news item demanded a comment, especially because lately on this blog i've lamented the deaths of so many old friends and other contemporaries.
It's a pleasure to comment on one who is still living, indeed is flourishing. Vera Lynn, Dame Vera Lynn forsooth, is 100 years old, her birthday a few days ago.

During the 1939-45 world war, she was the British armed forces sweetheart, justifiably so too because she was really beautiful, with that slightly fragile porcelain look that is unique to a certain kind of English girl. She wasn't fragile though!She was tough and had limitless stamina, traveling on wartime transport and performing her soulful ballads -- White Cliffs of Dover, We'll Meet Again, etc -- for British troops, who I suspect, admired her looks more than her voice. I always found her voice cloying, too sugary sentimental, but she was addictive even when I heard but couldn't see her.

So, Many Happy Returns, Vera Lynn!

A sad, sick world

For several months the world has been afflicted with events that reduce me to despair. I can't avoid the hard evidence but it saddens me deeply, and leaves me bereft of comforting words to describe it all, let alone explain or justify it.  The British vote in a referendum to leave the European Union was the first great blow to my equanimity. This shattered my confidence in British common sense, tolerance and decency. The subtext of all the arguments for leaving the EU was always xenophobia, to put it bluntly and brutally, racism and intolerance. It was made explicit in advertisements, which showed hordes of brown-skinned people clad in garments identifying them as culturally alien -- women wearing a hijab or niqab, men wearing skull-caps that implied, indeed explicitly identified them as strict Muslims. There was a further implicit threat in doom-laden spoken words, that this Muslim 'invasion' of Britain would lead to an irresistible demand for sharia law.

Some of the same arguments surfaced in Trump's campaign a few months later in the USA. Racism, intolerance and bigotry were prominent in Trump's speeches, and he relied more on isolationism, 'America First' sentiments and an imaginary economic threat to American jobs. Trump went further than the 'Brexit' propagandists in whipping up hatred of 'The Other' -- the visibly different minorities with different skin pigment, hair texture, etc. It would not have surprised me had there been a lynching or two, but in fact no worse than occasional roughing-up occurred, with at least one tragic murder of two Sikhs, whose neat turbans were mistaken for Muslim head-dress.

Another example of intolerance, bigotry and racial hatred sickens me most of all. This one is closer to home. A French Canadian colleague  in the medical school never misses an opportunity to vent his hatred, indeed loathing and contempt, for anyone with roots in Canada's First Nations.  Even an eminent scholar who happens to be Metis isn't immune from his venom. I've sometimes thought what a delicious irony it would be if that hate-laden colleague were to be smitten with an illness that could be most effectively treated by a First Nations specialist. But I suppose my dream is very unlikely to become a reality. 

I could pursue this theme further, but I find the whole topic so distasteful that I'll leave it here.