The Unbearable Brutality Of Everyday Life

Watch this video.
You owe it to yourself.
It won't make you feel better - about anything.
It will demonstrate that it's a really good idea to figure out how to make yourself understood when you're traveling.
It will show, if you needed reminding, that it's smart to be nice to be people with high-powered weapons.
It will show that the sign: Welcome To Vancouver, doesn't mean a damn thing.
It will remind you that officials don't really care that you're having a bad day.
It will confirm the casual ferocity of airport security these days.
It will show that even in a highly civilized country such as Canada, they shoot first and ask questions later.
It will show the terrible loneliness of life when it goes wrong.
It will show the tragic, sudden end of Robert Dziekanski's life, how in just 33 seconds, four officers from Canada's highly respected national police force, the RCMP, decided to attack an unarmed man with several Taser bolts, and while he lay writhing and screaming on the ground, kneeled on his neck.
It will show how he went from animated, agitated, to still.
It will show the unbearable lightness of being.
This video will ruin your day.
This video has now been seen around the world and has set off an international incident between Poland, Dziekanski's country of origin, and Canada, his country of termination.
It has led to various denials, excuses, explanations, failures to comment, demands for investigations, threats of court action, threats of international action, and, according to an RCMP spokesman, eggs thrown at the patrol cars of random RCMP officers and "aggressive behavior" toward officers from ordinary citizens. Well, duh.
It has not led to riots the way the Rodney King video led to riots in Los Angeles, but it has made people very angry toward the apparent arrogant brutality of those sworn to serve and protect.
It has made flying, already the most stressful activity, appear even more hazardous.
It is an echo of 9/11, as officials now feel empowered to deal with perceived threats with extreme prejudice.
It reminds me that the same week Robert Dziekanski died, I spent 8 hours in the Toronto airport thanks to weather delays, trying to get to New York, cycling hopelessly through customs (4 times!) and still not getting anywhere except from the departure lounge to the ticket counter to the departure lounge to the ticket counter! No one cared.
I saw people get hot under the collar and red in the face and raise their voices. No one started throwing things like Dziekanski, but then he spent 12 hours getting nowhere and couldn't find his mother, and even once he began to get really agitated no one spoke to him in his only working language. They couldn't even figure out that it was Polish, not Russian.
I could relate to what Dziekanski was going through, even as I thought he was foolish for losing it. But as far as I know, foolish is not punishable by summary execution.
This video reminds me that a number of RCMP officers have died in the line of duty in the past couple of years, and that may be why these officers were so quick to use force to subdue a threat that could have been easily diffused by a conversation in the right language. The guy was afraid he'd lost his mother, for pete's sake.
Watch this video and ask yourself what you would have done under the same circumstances.
Ask yourself if there's any good reason why Robert Dziekanski died on October 14.
You won't like the answer any more than you'll like this video.
I'd like to blame someone, such as the four RCMP officers involved, when I know that they're only the front line in a society that has completely lost its mind. Walk down any street in any city and you'll come face to face with the brutality of everyday life. On the way to my office, I have to run a gauntlet of crazy people, rude people, destitute, desperate people, people faking disabilities, people freaked out on crystal meth and crack - and that's in the good part of town.
Here on Orato, Trisha Baptie and Pauline Van Koll are covering the last week in the trial of a local man accused of murdering women by injecting them with windshield washer fluid, butchering them and feeding their remains to his pigs. He then allegedly took the pigs to market and sold them for public consumption.
Everywhere I go, the signs are clear - brutality has become commonplace; in fact, it has overcome every part of life, even culture and entertainment. If you don't believe me, sit down with your son and watch him play one of his video games. Sit down with your daughter and see how her favorite fan mag treats its so-called teen idols. More like teen targets.
I went to the art gallery the other day, and most of the art looked as if it came straight out of Stephen King's bad dreams. These "installations" looked like Russell Crowe's garage in A Beautiful Mind - a fascinating combination of sick and crazed.
The gentleness has gone out of our lives. And I don't think it's coming back.
That's why you should watch this video. In the words of Bertold Brecht, he who is still laughing has not yet heard the bad news. After you see this video, I guarantee you will stop laughing.