Gravydämmerung: No pity

[sabotabby]

The internets, and my little corner of it, are full of big-hearted liberals professing concern for the health and welfare of our Honourable Wife-Beating, Crack-Smoking, I-Did-It-In-A-Drunken-Stupor Mayor. Yes, there's a fair amount of schadenfreude among my friends and to some degree among the media, but the heartfelt pleas for him to "get the help he needs" and all the bleeding-heart sympathy for his addiction problems actually do seem to predominate. Maybe that's why he's had a bump in the polls (as opposed to his usual bumps of coke); people feel sorry for his teary addict routine. At the heart of this loud-mouthed, sexist, racist, homophobic, austerity-pushing pig-rapist is a broken man. Pity him.

I don't.

And let me be clear: I believe that drug addiction is a health issue, not a criminal issue. I believe in the decriminalization of all drugs, including crack. I do not believe that addiction is a choice per se.

However, I also believe that the addict has agency, and that addiction can spiral well beyond the life of the individual afflicted and destroy the lives of others, and to that extent, an addict must be responsible for him or herself. Addiction isn't an excuse. Plenty of addicts live lives of quiet desperation, damaging only themselves; the ones who use their sickness as a bludgeon against others, against their consent, bear some responsibility.

Amidst all the public concern for the Laughable Bumblefuck on the part of the chattering class, I hear little concern for his wife and kids, and their physical and emotional safety. We know he's assaulted his wife. I can't imagine that his kids will grow up undamaged. Where's the sympathy for them?

Amidst all the wishes that he would get the help he needs, where are those volunteering to help addicts who are less white, less rich, less famous? The ones that Ford blocked harm-reduction initiatives for, the ones he suggested dry out in a jail cell, the ones he wanted to run out of town? When are they going to get the help they need?

What about the city? The kids in Scarborough who, because he's run the city for the past three years in a drunken stupor, are still cut off from educational, work, and recreational possibilities because he blocked the expansion of a functional transit system? The working poor who need affordable housing, the destitute who need shelters? Where's the sympathy for all the ordinary people he's fucked over?

Addiction's a tough ride no matter who you are, but Ford is a man who's had literally every possible privilege handed to him and every chance to get clean. He's insanely rich, politically connected, white, male, and heterosexual. If a guy like that can't get his shit together and check into a rehab, fuck him. Even if he did, fuck him anyway. Sobering up is unlikely to make him less of a jizzbag. I work with people who came to this country with nothing, who've had to scramble up to barely surviving and get shat on by the SUN for doing so, and the most out-of-control violent gangbangers I've ever met have destroyed fewer lives than this piece of shit.

At the risk of getting personal, I've been at the receiving end of someone else's drug addiction. Multiple times, actually. It's not pretty. It's not a victimless crime. I see my own experience writ large and ugly and all the guilty mushy liberals praying for his recovery.

All of Toronto is Ford's battered spouse, begging him to get help when we should be booting him in the ass. Let him dry out in a jail cell. Let him beg for change in a cardboard box. We owe every single junkie and dealer and petty thug in Toronto our sympathy and aid before we throw one iota of it in Ford's direction.

Let him destroy himself. The world will be a better place.

Comments

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

I used to have a lot of pity for him, that is up until this week. Now I see his actions as far more deliberate than before and his addiction bleeding over into destroying people around him. I think he's using everything hard in his life as an excuse.

[sabotabby]

I admittedly never had any sympathy for him. But then, I have a pretty authoritarian streak to rival the right and Stalinists.

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

I always knew he was a prick but I had this complex narrative that assumed he was relatively forced into this political life by family that he just wasn't suited for. I also tend to assume that everyone "belongs" somewhere. I can't imagine living in a world that doesn't have a place in it for everyone.

Lately life is telling me abundantly and repeatedly the same thing over and over and that message is that I am too damn fucking nice.

[sabotabby]

I think there's a place for him. It involves a lamp post and the People's Justice.

But yes, I know that feeling. It doesn't make any difference, realizing that you're too damned fucking nice, but the realization is a bit cathartic when it happens, no?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

I believe that drug addiction is a health issue, not a criminal issue. I believe in the decriminalization of all drugs, including crack.

Oh so do I. But Ford doesn't. Not for other people.

[sabotabby]

Which is part of the reason I'm like, "fuck him, let him OD."

The other part is that the only solution to the political questions he poses is the firing squad.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Bit of an easy target....anyway, what do the police say anyway? Doin nuthin?

[sabotabby]

Under investigation.

He was going to cut Blair's budget, hence Blair turned on him. Classic gangster movie shit. It's all going to end in a bloody shootout.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

You can't make this shit up.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

We owe every single junkie and dealer and petty thug in Toronto our sympathy and aid before we throw one iota of it in Ford's direction.

[outcastspice.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[sabotabby]

Thanks.

[coconuthead.livejournal.com]

I don't generally experience the need to feel sorry for arrogant liars. I suppose it's unlikely that he'll get what he deserves, but I hope he does.

This whole thing has been an education for me. I always thought Canada was better than this.

[sabotabby]

Nah, Canada is full of the same kind of rotting shitfaces as the U.S. We're just less honest about it.

Absolutely brilliant

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Even my not-terribly liberal knee jerked at your closing line, but fuck that, knee — an individual's compassion is not an infinite faculty, and there are far more deserving subjects towards which ours can be directed.

Tweeting, because this should be required reading all over the place.

[sabotabby]

My job is essentially giving a shit about people no matter how badly they fuck up. And I'm good at my job.

Ford is not. And he is far too much of a fuck-up, drugs or not, for me to give a shit about him.

[robby.livejournal.com]

You know that I hate to be contrary, but the
premise that he's a crack addict, may not be true. Believe it or not, some people smoke crack occasionally and recreationally.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but Ford's not one those people who thinks that - he's long campaigned on zero tolerance for hard drugs, including cocaine.

[robby.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying to pity him, or excuse him, but alls I'm sayin' is that
we can't assume that he's an addict.

[sabotabby]

Yes, I know. I even know people personally who fall into that category (as well as addicts who can go months without but still display all of the personality traits associated with addiction).

Ford is pulling the alcoholic card, though, and I have no reason to disbelieve him. He's displaying pretty classic behaviour. He may not be a crackhead, but he's an addict.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

I love the fact that he's playing the alcoholic card (i.e. blaming everything on his drinking) while denying that he is, in fact, an alcoholic.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Ford has long established how much sympathy he wants:

The report recommends the city distribute crack pipes and other paraphernalia to addicts and explore opening safe injection and inhalation sites.

“It’s euthanasia. You’re just giving them a place to kill themselves. That’s what is going to happen. You might as well just have a crematorium beside the crack house,” Mr. Ford said.

He said these “harm reduction” strategies only encourage addicts to continue their drug use.

“You’re not helping them, you’re enabling them,” Mr. Ford said. “They’re going to smoke that crack whether you give them those crack pipes or not. They’re going to shoot that heroin whether you give them clean needles or not. If people want a change, it has to come from within.”

And he campaigned a great deal against harm reduction:

“My residents don’t want it, I don’t want it and I’ll do everything in my power to stop it. Who’s going to want to live in a community that’s invaded every day and night by drug users?”

And also:

"Let me give you a suggestion on how you deal with hard-core drug addicts,” Mr. Ford said. “This is not drinking wine or smoking a joint, this is heroin or cocaine. With heroin or cocaine, you end up one of two ways: dead or in jail. That’s it. There’s only two ways.”

Hey, if he's good with those options...

[sabotabby]

I'm fine with either of them. (For him, not anyone else.)

[ironed_orchid]

Agreed!

I read the 113 things Ford has done list, and he truly is a awful human being.

[sabotabby]

I feel like that list isn't even complete.

[ironed_orchid]

I'm sure it isn't.

The "right-wing communists" bit is the best.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

Don't feel the bleeding hearts and not feeling this. I'm all over the map.

CP24 today was a swing for me. I know what it's like to come from a family like that. I got lucky.

The problem - not Ford but the disease he carries, and I'm not talking about addiction - has got to be solved for real and I don't think poetic justice will do it. Wish I knew what would.

No arguing with you point by point though.

[sabotabby]

Fair enough.

[(Anonymous)]

As an alcoholic and addict (recovery 10+ years now, whoohoo) I feel I really must say in response to this --

YUP

Bitingly well-said, as always.


-- kore on DW

[sabotabby]

OMG congrats on 10 years!

And thanks.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Yow. Well put. Respect (as always). Unfortunately, this goes for so many more and is not restricted to any country in particular.

[sabotabby]

No, but I have this unshakeable memory in my head about a story my Swedish friend told me. It was about a minister who had lost her job after a scandal. The scandal was that she hadn't paid her fees for television service.

And while it seemed a little extreme, it blows me away that we have a mayor who, at this point, may be getting away with actual murder, and there's nothing anyone seems to be able to do to stop him.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

Idle speculation, but are his hench-creatures going to allow him to stay around long enough to let him drag them down?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the police might not want to continue investigation if Ford were out of the picture.

[sabotabby]

His hench-creatures are calling for him to step down. Rats, sinking ship, etc. Today he took a day off after another video was released yesterday of him high as a kite and swearing up a storm.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

"Hench-creatures". I am adopting this word for my personal vocabulary, with much thanks in your direction.

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

You're the best!

[sabotabby]

Hah, thanks.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Agreed 100%. There's a difference between an explanation and an excuse. Ford's addiction explains his behaviour, but in no fucking way does it excuse it. I do agree that he needs help and I hope he gets it, but not out of compassion for him. My motives are far more selfish. He can't be mayor while he's away in rehab. And yeah, I feel enormous sympathy for his wife and especially his kids. I shudder to think what their home life must be like.

"However, I also believe that the addict has agency, and that addiction can spiral well beyond the life of the individual afflicted and destroy the lives of others, and to that extent, an addict must be responsible for him or herself."

Oh God yes! THIS. This so hard.

I rarely talk about this because I'm always afraid of coming across as a huge jerk, but I've had to cut certain people with mental health issues cut out of my life because their issues were causing them to behave in ways that harmed me. I felt huge guilt over this. I kept asking myself if I reinforcing stigmas against mentally ill people and then circling around to the realization that I'm not required to be anyone's verbal and emotional punching bag. A lot of my friends with mental health issues are still in my life and I started looking at what made them different from the people I had to cut off. It was agency and personal responsibility and communication. I have my own intermittent mental health issues - hello anxiety! - and I do my best to manage it and not let it affect other people.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

Yes. There is a huge difference between having mental health or addiction issues and doing one's best to cope with them responsibly, and having said issues and using them as an excuse to behave abusively to other people and then deny all responsibility for it.

[sabotabby]

Me too. And it's hard, because I've been on the other side of that, and had people cut me out because of my mental health issues. But self-preservation is important too. Part of what I needed to learn was that my mentalness did hurt others.

[nichtsda.livejournal.com]

I've been exempt from seeing that kind of touchy-feely-let's-not-raise-our-voices response to Ford, but I know the type. Some people on the left think anger is harmful at worst and ineffective at best. Nevermind that, say, the French Revolution (or any other revolutions) didn't arise out of love for the powers that be.

But I do recall a similar sympathy shown towards pill-popping hypocrite asshole Rush Limbaugh 10 years ago. And I disagreed. I thought he should serve some jail time, not get treated at a luxury rehab spa, as we might see Ford do. And I honestly don't believe Limbaugh is now more sympathetic towards poor people and their addictions. I wouldn't even find it a surprise that he remains a hypocrite on the matter. Limbaugh, like Ford, is a severe narcissist, and "but it's different when _I_ did it" attitude is a very narcissistic point of view. I wasted a lifetime trying to be sympathetic towards narcissists, but they don't want your sympathy so they can change. It's just another form of attention.

If Ford really does have a problem and needs help, perhaps a permanent vacation from running Toronto into the ground would do him some good. But ousting him for smoking crack is like busting a serial killer for rolling through a stop sign.

[sabotabby]

I wasted a lifetime trying to be sympathetic towards narcissists, but they don't want your sympathy so they can change. It's just another form of attention.

Yes, this.

But ousting him for smoking crack is like busting a serial killer for rolling through a stop sign.

Yep. But if this is what they get him on, I'm happy to see him gone.

He could use a rural vacation. He seems to hate Toronto anyway.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

BTW, I checked my city councillor's Twitter feed out of curiosity to see what she had to say about this, while not being all that hopeful of great things, because suburbs. But I was pleased to see she was slamming him with great enthusiasm, and even made a couple of pointed comments about Anthony Smith's death and the fact that Ford apparently exchanged a lot of mysterious phone calls with Lisi on the day Smith was killed.

[sabotabby]

I think he had Smith killed, and I think Lisi did the deed.

I read the SUN's poll of councillors on whether he should step down, and I was interested to see that while most said "yes," the most left-leaning said "no comment."

[metalana.livejournal.com]

The left wing of council has avoided commenting all along. I hear they have strategy meetings, and they presumably decided years ago to stay out of the whole thing. Smart move, so that (hopefully only one of them) can run for mayor with a positive message.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[sabotabby]

Thanks!