in World News Something “Very Troubled” Has Come to Stay
Meanwhile new normal viciousness shows a society unable to express outrage.
In unprovoked attacks just minutes apart, a Vancouver psycho severs a hand from one guy and kills another. The suspect has a lengthy history of criminal violence. Such horror would once have brought lasting outrage, but not now.
This latest Vancouver vignette happens as Canadians adapt to ever-increasing crime targeting individuals, businesses and family neighbourhoods. Canadian cities have sunk to a sometimes barbaric level of squalor that was once unimaginable for such an affluent, formerly peaceful and “nice” country.
That might make the lack of outrage all the more surprising. So a bit of perspective could be interesting.
In 1977 Torontonians exploded in anger on learning about the 12-hour rape, torture and murder of 12-year-old Emanuel Jaques. The horror took place where the three killers worked, one of Toronto’s many downtown massage parlours catering to a Jack Layton-style clientele. That supposedly led city authorities to shut down the door-to-door sleaze operations then plaguing Yonge Street. Actually the plan was already in the works, possibly intended to increase property values. But officialdom at least appeared somewhat responsive to public outrage.
And there was outrage. Apart from media and even political denunciations, letters, petitions and demonstrations called for tougher prison sentences, a clampdown on open homosexual activity and the reinstatement of capital punishment (abolished just one year earlier). Prominent in the reaction were Toronto’s Portuguese, furious that such horror happened to a boy from their community and disgusted with a liberal society that produced such monsters.
The murder inspired at least two novels, Richard B. Wright’s 1980 work Final Things and Anthony De Sa’s 2013 book Kicking the Sky. Final Things was Wright’s least disappointing effort to portray Canadians and a striking novel not only of an innocent’s terrible death but an extended family’s descent that might reflect society’s decline.
Robert Hoshowsky provided a non-fiction account in his 2017 book Outraged: The Murder of Shoeshine Boy Emanuel Jaques and How It Changed a City.
Yet 45 years after Jaques’ death, some media retrospectives shifted attention to discrimination against homosexuals.
Toronto’s 1977 uproar was by no means limited to Portuguese. But even back then it might have taken an immigrant community’s participation to legitimize outrage in establishment minds. When immigrants are the cause of outrage, it has to be stifled. The unprecedented violence that accompanied mass immigration from Jamaica and other Caribbean countries during that same period coincided with news and entertainment media celebrating the newcomers as ineffably wonderful people.
In a 1980 Scarborough (suburban Toronto) example that did get some publicity, a Jamaican gang forced white female bank employees to strip and crawl on the floor as the Jamaicans struck them with guns while shouting racist and sexist vitriol. One of the crawling victims, a pregnant woman, also got a boot to the abdomen. Despite reluctant media coverage, Jamaican gangs had already become known in Toronto for take-over robberies that featured racial and sexual humiliation of white women.
Mass Caribbean immigration continued and so did Caribbean racist and sexist violence, as did swarming, looting, rioting and other black crime. No one of any prominence spoke out. Journalistic accounts could be vague, dishonest or non-existent. As for the violent misogyny, feminists either said nothing or claimed it typified Canadian men. Woke was well underway during the ’70s.
Emanuel Jaques’ murder prompted at least three books published between 1980 and 2017.
Canada experienced additional violence after mental hospitals were shut down in the 1980s, a policy that seemed faddish for its stupidity but is still conventionally considered irreversible. Meanwhile all aspects of law enforcement have been breaking down. Maybe symptomatic of a shallow society going steadily insane, drug addiction overwhelmed Canada, probably more than most countries. Vancouver might have led the world in granting junkies official victim group status.
Stranger attacks, by no means new to Vancouver but certainly much more prevalent than before, have now joined Canada’s new normal of disgusting public behaviour, arson, repetitive shoplifting/looting, brazen robberies, home invasions, gangland shootings, rapes, murders, rape/murders, serial murders, mass murders, and the list goes nauseatingly on. Maybe the only type of violence lagging in Canada, so far, is terrorism.
Would even that provoke outrage—officially acceptable outrage? Probably not, if it reflected poorly on immigration, multiculturalism and the rest of Canada’s demographic revolution. Although last month’s UK riots challenged regime ideology, the effect was limited to Europe and likely temporary.
Canadian inaction might reflect apathy, but ideological conditioning plays a role too. When public anger is allowed, it’s channelled into officially acceptable outlets like Antifa/BLM and allegations of mass graves. Quite likely these outbreaks of public emotion are not just permitted but manufactured.
Upcoming elections, weeks away provincially and any time within 13 months federally, offer little or no realistic challenge to official policies. Weird as it is (although self-serving too), elite ideology often celebrates the grotesque, insane or downright evil. Hatred of normality is very much the new normal. Random bloodshed just contributes to the cause.
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This article was originally posted at Vancouverzeitgeist
