Keith McNenly
Special to The Lake Report
The next few months will be uncertain; the years ahead, consequential. Political power has been wielded carelessly, alliances betrayed, and friendly borders turned into front lines. Propaganda and cruelty have become tools of ambition, hardening into tools of war.
Yet working Americans have rediscovered their electoral voice. The midterms brought a tidal wave repudiation — but whether the retreating water will cleanse what has been muddied, or merely expose the damage beneath, remains to be seen.
The future is impossible to predict. So rather than forecast political manoeuvring or global consequences, I want to tell a smaller story.
A couple of years ago, a man parked at a turnaround beside our property, beyond a screen of trees. He got out and began to scream. A short time later, several police vehicles and an ambulance arrived. Then after a time, the scene just as suddenly ended.
Perhaps he was at risk of harming himself or another person, but in the end, that must not have appeared the case, as he was eventually allowed to drive away. Perhaps he had simply found the nearest secluded place to release unbearable pressure — to scream from somewhere deep inside himself.
Places of solitude where a person can do that, without alarming someone or inviting intervention, have become rare. Even privacy has witnesses.
Somewhere along the way, a part of that man had been broken. He may have reached a point where screaming was the only port available in the storm of today’s chaos, his mooring ropes to human connection and compassion frayed.
In a time when screens replace embracing hugs, and “likes” replace warm kisses, loneliness in a crowd is becoming normal. The comfort of personal connection is eroded by isolation, by social media, and by a public life deliberately divided for power and profit.
The political moment compounds those private burdens. A nation that was a dependable partner had become adversarial. The strong intimidate, trespass, even kill the less prepared, then blame their victim.
Public discourse devolves into conflict, contempt, and spectacle; the Canadian marketplace has become a field of calculation, where even buying salad greens can feel like a small act of war in defence of sovereignty.
I have struggled to understand how democracies permit their own undoing. I have watched the United States move into a politics of authoritarianism, grievance and cruelty, and I have wondered how so many citizens accept it in their name. Elections matter. Accountability matters. Character matters even more.
In Canada, our land anchors us together, embraced by three coasts. The red maple leaf on our flag recalls the sweetness drawn up each spring from thawing earth and waking sun — sap freely shared, renewing its promise of life and reward after the darkest and coldest winters.
The blue-wave midterms may signal that Americans have begun to reclaim their democracy as young representatives and electors take centre stage. When American families gather at Thanksgiving, there is reason to hope they may rediscover fellowship and common purpose before their difficult winter still ahead.
We once had a beautiful, gentle beagle. She mostly spent her days lying nearby in the shade while my wife and I worked in the gardens.
One day she suddenly began screaming and crying with such terror that we ran to her. She had become tangled in loops of wire carelessly abandoned long ago at the tree line, hidden within long grass and weeds.
She was not physically hurt, but she could not understand what had seized her. To her, it was as if she had been captured by an invisible and scentless enemy.
We freed her, held her, and spoke softly until she calmed.
Her instinctive reaction was to scream and cry. That is the natural response of a creature caught in something it cannot escape alone. Human beings are born screaming and crying, perhaps shocked from the warmth and safety of the womb into a colder, stranger world.
I have heard the desperate cries of other animals, too. Perhaps in our vulnerability we are not as different from them as we like to believe.
In these dangerous times, I wish there were a place close enough for every person to reach: a remote forest of dense, towering trees. A place where the only eyes and ears are those of gentle animals, and the only voice is the wind rustling through leaves. A place where one could shout of love and loss, indifference and injustice; where one could empty the heart and gut of everything held too long inside.
I wish there was a screaming place.
Niagara-on-the-Lake resident Keith McNenly was the chief administrator of the Town of Mono for 41 years.
