Perspective

By Sniffles

Today, Ponto — the cute little Montreal construction cone — wears the poppy. It's Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day in Canada, so poppies abound. And for the first time in decades, the day is being observed without troops deployed in an active war. (Thanks, Joe Biden!)

It's also a day to think back on the last few weeks and take stock. We cats have actually avoided cable news like the plague lately — because we know that since their ratings have tanked, they're glooming and dooming to keep us all scared and watching. We're not saying there's nothing to be worried about — we just want to keep things in perspective. So if you're wringing your hands about Election Day and the midterms, take Canada as a case in point.

After the Canadian federal election in September, you would have been hard-pressed to find any home-based media who thought things were going well for Justin Trudeau. He didn't win a majority government. He took a personal trip to British Columbia on Truth & Reconciliation Day. He was shuffling his Cabinet. Would he even be Prime Minister in a few years? Oy, the negative waves.

Today, no one is talking about Justin's trip to BC anymore, and the Liberals are in close talks with the third-party NDP to make legislation happen on a case-by-case basis. (An outright coalition is probably out, but the prickly NDP leader Jagmeet Singh surely knows that his path to continued influence rests on delivering good policy for Canadians.) The Cabinet looks pretty swell, and a well-respected woman is now Deputy Prime Minister. And oh, yes — the opposition Conservatives are eating each other alive on stupid stuff like vaccination mandates.

It made us think of the stories that are coming out about the GOP, which is starting to commit intraparty suicide over the 13 House Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill.

There was a point — specifically, after the Virginia election results — when we thought maybe the fractures in the Republican Party would hold. But now, with GOP Congress members facing death threats for delivering for their constituents, we're not so sure. If these stories keep coming, the GOP might very well go the way of the Whigs.

In short, let's keep producing for the American (and the Canadian) people. And let's not forget the thousands of service members whose sacrifices to defend our democratic way of life have made all these political fights possible. We cats PURR.