Getting ready for Tuesday’s Renfrew Town Council meeting, I went through the meeting agenda that was released the Friday before, three days before the meeting itself and with a weekend in the middle of it, so that if anyone had any questions, there’d be no way to pose them since staff was off for the weekend, not that they answer their emails anyways under any conditions that I can discern.

I had no such questions of my own, so that’s a bit of a moot point personally, but Councillor Dick raised the timeline since he’s an elected councillor, responsible to electors, and clearly under the same timeline as I am, a retired dude with the time to spend on such late-breaking documents.  In other words, I had a better opportunity to go over the agenda and prepare for the same meeting than an elected councillor had, a gentleman with many other things to do than I.

The egalitarian streak that sort of runs through me found that to be appealing to a degree, but the common sense part of me kind of screamed out that this was just not a good “business” practice, where the principals receive the information at the same time as the non-actors.  It’s also a state of affairs that gives significant advantage to a guy like me who, blessed with retirement, good health and nothing better to do, can arrive at the same time and in the same place more thoroughly briefed on the minutiae of the agenda items, and the often-redundant appendices that make going through the agenda document about as much fun as walking through muck.  You’d think they were actually attempting to dissuade people from reading this documentation, although, in my experience, it’s often in the murky water where you find the most concealed gems of information.  But that’s me, and I’m not a Renfrew councillor, one who has to appear in public, live-streamed or available afterward, who has every statement or non-statement right there on the public record of YouTube.  I could see how there would be a strong incentive to say nothing for a councillor, since your options are to wade through the miasma of “late-breaking” information, stay quiet and perhaps appear stupid, or say something and remove all doubt, or so the saying goes.  I could completely understand the incentive to remain quiet, not that I witnessed that.

China is dead.  And what isn’t dead is dying.  Give it maybe ten years, then watch the place collapse from within.

Demographics can be a real bitch, and the Chinese aren’t the only ones having to deal with it, but they’re the ones who will have to deal with it so quickly.  Other industrialized countries, including Canada, will face this danger themselves, but will do so over a longer period of time, most likely because of immigration that’s intended to stave off this prospect.

But how can a country of 1.3 billion people be suffering from a demographic crisis?  The answer is simple.  When over 50% of that 1.3 billion people are over age 50, you come to the stark reality that the population is going to take a gigantic hit in the next couple of decades as these people pass on, and with no idea as to how they’re going to be replaced.  That’s a staggering 600 million people gone in the next twenty years or so.  And in a country where earlier laws limited parents to two children, and then one child by law, you don’t have to be brilliant to figure out the problem. In fact, China’s population is currently estimated to be under 1 billion already, and it will steadily go down.

So who’s going to work in the factories?  Who’s going to keep that manufacturing juggernaut going that kicks out just about every finished product the world wants or needs?  Who will be there to keep China in position to be the overlord of East Asia.  Nobody, that’s who.

Clearly, I’ve fallen and hit my head and just don’t know that I’m concussed yet.  How else to make sense of my even-tempered outlook on the upcoming presidency of Donald J. Trump?

Honestly, where did my old self go, other than just getting older?  Why am I so bloody  reasonable about this clown show coming back for a second kick at the can?  I’m not American.  I have no money.  Why would I be giving the guy the benefit of the doubt when I never had any doubts about his absolute lack of fitness to hold the presidency in the first place?

It’s a strange spot I find myself in.

For the first time in a somewhat long life I witnessed an election be the reason for a watch party.  Usually it’s a sporting event, a sporting championship, maybe a UFC beat-down.  But on Tuesday, the US presidential election became the new Super Bowl, with almost everyone I talked to that day mentioning that they were going someplace to watch the election.

My goodness times have changed.

I’ll bet there was a watch-party of sorts at Rideau Cottage as well, or maybe on Wellington Street over at the PMO, or Prime Minister’s Office.  And while I doubt anyone was wearing the colours and swag of the team they were rooting for, I’ll bet you’d have no trouble figuring it out regardless.

I’ll bet they were rooting for Trump.

Huh?  Wait, what?

Think about it.

I haven’t read my morning paper this morning, so I don’t have any great detail, but I feel I don’t need to for one simple reason.

I know how to read a map.

Donald Trump, as much as I hate to say it, is the 47th president of the United States, I think it’s the first and only time a once-serving president came back to serve again after being out of office for a number of years and defeated in an election between terms.

Pundits and talking-heads on television, radio, and the internet will have the complete low-down on the how’s and why’s of it, so there won’t be any of that here.  As perplexed as I am by his win, I can still see how it came to pass.  After all, you can’t just rage over your morning coffee about the supposed “stupidity” of Americans to vote for such a man.  Rather, you have to look dispassionately at why a nation approaching 350 million people would do so in the face of everything we know and see about him.