jadero

Seems straightforward to me. It's pretty typical to permit testimony from those who were directly victimized. It's also pretty typical to permit impact statements from those indirectly victimized.

Not everything is a dog whistle and not every policy input needs to be restricted to those with specific expertise. I have no mental health training, so I shouldn't be making frontline decisions, but that doesn't change the fact that I want appropriate expertise in place. If that is not policy input, what is it?

Those stories mirror my own experiences with school and teachers. I, too, had to take on teaching math and, more surprisingly, how to actually approach the challenge of learning.

Yet, somehow, at the block parties, dinner parties, BBQs, picnics, and across the back fence I could always count on people to complain about how badly this or that person or couple was at parenting. Rarely did I hear people complain about schools or teachers except in the most egregious failures.

You must know a different set of parents than I do. Over the couple of decades raising my kids, interacting with other parents, and dealing problems at school, my experience is that people in general and parents in particular typically complain a lot more about other kids' lousy parents than lousy teachers or lousy schooling.

I would say that your comments were not wasted. Maybe I'm the only person who had never heard it framed as a battle over what can legitimately be called a mental illness, but at least one person has new insight into the issue.

I would guess that it was for the same reason that you "wasted" your excellent points regarding mental illness. To participate in the discussion, to raise issues that are perhaps not properly considered or analyzed, and to get the ideas out there for use by others. Isn't that why we're all here, to learn, teach, discuss, share?

So now that police have a clear connection between the original threats and the people who made those threats via the presumably real identity of the person who made the freedom of information request. This means that the investigation into the original complaint can move forward quite easily, right? Right?

Also, since when is it reasonable to keep secret the identity of those making successful freedom of information requests.

Okay, that's just scary. That just reinforces my opinion that fixing the environment, social programs, and the various rights issues are not separate battles. Effectively fighting any one of those battles requires fighting the ideologies, not the specific action. Pushing those ideologies back to the margins is the only way to stop playing whack-a-mole.

And we didn't move to anywhere from anywhere. Culture is changing, and it's changing for the better. Where it seems to be getting worse - it's always been that bad. Those people are just getting louder as they dig their heels in deeper.

This is something I've wondered about for several years now. Are some of these things actually becoming more prevalent or increasing in severity or is it like a cornered animal fighting for its life?

I think we need to be vigilant either way. Sometimes the cornered animal prevails and sometimes incipient rescue causes the victim to succumb because they think the fight is over.

I'm not worried about what's causing it anymore ... I already know it's human behaviour

What worries me the most is ... human behaviour

This is why I've started pushing back on those who criticize me for my attention to the "small" things. Those small things are founded in the same ideologies and cognitive and statistical failures that lie behind the big problems.

Everything we can do to fix the small things at their source will take us a step closer to fixing the big things. Short of some dictator taking over and forcing us to do what's necessary, our best line of attack is on the underlying ideas and behaviours.

That is also why I tend to doomerism. What we have now is the result of 60 or more years of concerted effort, with Reagan and Thatcher representing the ideological tipping point. We now have 50 years of those ideologies becoming so entrenched that everyone just takes them as objective fact. That means that only variations on the theme are generally accepted as legitimate areas of discussion.

Shore of Lake Diefenbaker. Ice is plentiful. Snow, not so much. We get a decent amount, then the wind and sun strips it off the hills before the next snowfall.

Heh, yeah. Shore of Lake Diefenbaker in SK.