Julian Assange, Opioid Genocide, and the Joy of Skiing Downhill
on Whistler, whistleblowers & bad juju
The unresolvable problem of attempting to be nice is that the inherent badness of the world doesn’t care. The virtue of niceness enables it. Corruption and injustice keeps right on happening whether you talk about it or whether you don’t. Evil has not experienced a moment’s discomfort by people keeping their mouth shut so as not to create an awkward moment and all of the social and emotional stress that must inevitably ensue. Niceness that expresses itself through silence either exclusively or primarily must surely slide into the realm of pseudo virtue—quisling virtue, Maurice Chevalier virtue—the kind where refusing to choose a side is, of course, to make a choice, the wrong one, always when it matters most.
Several years ago, a Christmas Day in Vancouver, we were visiting with friends in their Downtown Eastside apartment. At around three in the afternoon, with Christmas dinner coming on strong in the kitchen, our festivities were interrupted by a loud and unusual thud. It came from outside and sounded like two cars colliding. Our hosts went outside to their patio to see what was what. They came back inside and closed the patio door. It wasn’t an accident. Much worse than that. Their neighbour, from a higher floor, had jumped to his death. His body lay on a transparent overhang two floors above the pavement.
Years later, passing the building where we’d spent the infamous Christmas Day, I mentioned in passing what had happened to the people with whom I’d been walking. They were in town en route to Whistler and they pulled up abruptly when I mentioned it. Poor form on my part. The walk ended then and there. I have seldom excelled at the thrust and parry of polite conversation. Perhaps, that is putting things mildly.
In the time since the Christmas jumper (an unfortunate pun), the opioid crisis has killed well over 100 British Columbians per month. In the first nine months of 2021, more than 1,500 people have died from bad drugs. That’s a shockingly high figure that shouldn’t need to be inflated to catch anyone’s attention. But it is a figure that seems to capture only the most direct casualties of the crisis. The despair runs much deeper than that. Among men in particular.
But modern Western societies have largely tended to view surplus men as overgrowth in need of a proper pruning. How else to explain the near absence of outrage over such slaughter? In Oh! What A Lovely War (1969), the English upper-class tells itself that World War One casualties—what, after all, is a mere 50,000 deaths a day, given the glorious honour of defending king and country?—are not actually all that appalling when you consider the men doing the dying love it, they absolutely adore the adventure of it all, the camaraderie, the European experience. Whenever I hear Canadian politicians and media pundits talk about the mass death of most an entire generation of under-privileged, working-class men, I hear the same undertones. In public, they say it’s a tragedy every bit as bad as Covid. In private, they say that drug casualties are losers who tried to party their way out of a responsible life and got caught. They made a choice.
When Julian Assange started Wikileaks, the belief was that the internet would free information in such a way that the public would see—finally!—all the evil Western governments got up to on the d/l. The public would act! But as 2021 draws to a close, we can safely say that the public does not give a shit. Britain doesn’t give a shit. Canada does not give a shit. Ecuador grunted out an unconvincing semi-shit for half a minute, and then they too simply ran out of shit/s to give. Julian Assange—who intended to liberate us all—will spend the rest of his life in some country’s prison or other for the crime of letting the public know what Western governments were doing in the name of democracy, and if that doesn’t signify the ultimate death of whatever bullshit order it is that’s about to fail, what does?
Maybe that’s the natural way of things. In Mario Monicelli’s I Compagni (The Organizer) (1963), set in late 19th century Italy, factory workers turn against the union organizer (Marcelo Mastroianni) for the crime of trying to end the practice of 14-hour work days with only an unpaid half hour for lunch. You shit-disturbing, commie!
In No Highway in the Sky (1951), Jimmy Stewart plays a conscientious aviation engineer who tries to ground his airline’s planes when he discovers an aeronautical flaw in the tail design that he believes will cause the plane to crash. For his whistle-blowing integrity, he is branded a psychotic lunatic and threatened with career ruin. Profit before people, you sonofabitch!
“It’s not personal,” Stewart says in his own defense, “I didn’t invent the mathematics that made me believe what I did. And I still believe that there’s truth in my work, test or no test. And when you believe in something that’s what you got to do isn’t it, if you want to live with yourself?”
Julian Assange thought so.
How wrong he was.
All of us who ever spoke out were wrong. What good does it do? Neither whistleblowing nor harshing the mellow of Whistler vacationers accomplishes anything. What good does it do to witness and acknowledge the realities of a neighbourhood where first nations citizens are dying from drugs at a disproportionate pace? Obviously, government is aware and a lot of fine folk are doing their darndest, ok?
In the present world, the virtuous citizen does not go outside proper channels. Enjoy life. Love each other. Ski. Jump for all I care. Just shut your mouth. The courageous citizen is to trust that our non-partisan and benevolent political and academic leaders acting responsibly on behalf of our visionary techno and corporate elite, know what they are doing. Follow protocol. Be responsible. Above all, do nothing. If you see something wrong, trust in them—not in your senses or in science.
The powers who once oppressed us now protect us.
It’s just bad juju these days to say anything otherwise.
Towards that new resolve, let’s forget everything I’ve said…
…should not be that hard (that’s what she said).
See you on the slopes.