Opinion
Viral post from the wife of a police officer who feels her husband is in danger
At this time it is so important to keep the momentum going for systemic changes that have allowed for the death of many people like George Floyd. However it’s important to remember not to go too far. Many people have been tarnishing all police officers with the same brush. Ironically it’s the exactly the same issue society is lashing out against right now.. profiling. Just as it’s important not to profile suspects in major and minor crime investigations, it’s also important for citizens not to profile all police officers.
This post has been shared extensively and it should continue to be shared.
From the Facebook post of Ashley Anderson. Her husband works for the Indiana State Police
I’ve prayed about this for the past few days and decided it was finally time…
I’m done. I’m done. I. Am. Done… For the last week our family has been through hell. (other police families know exactly what I’m talking about) I’ve never been one to stir anything up on social media. I’d rather talk one-on-one, but this is absolutely crazy right now! I’m not posting to argue or change your opinion (I know I can’t do that on fb). I’m breaking my silence to say that the portrayal of Police on TV is not right! It’s not what is actually happening on the streets! And the overall disrespect and hate being thrown at them is unbelievable! STOP IT!!!! The Police are just as saddened by George Floyd’s death as anyone. My husband is going in to work for the 12th day today. 12 straight days… and the last week almost all the days have been from before my girls wake up in the morning to after they go to bed. Why is he doing this? Because he took an oath to defend YOU (the community)!!! He’s missed more than I could ever begin to tell you… our kids bdays, holidays, anniversaries, swim meets, dance shows, campouts, dates, overall LIFE… serving and protecting the community! He has been a police officer for 13 years and has received a great deal of hate over that time, but this last week… I can’t even put in to words the disbelief I see in his eyes… the way he has been broken down in one week from constant hate. In conversation with him he described it like this… “I’m used to being cussed at and yelled at, but never for 12 hours straight – day after day”. STOP IT!!! For 13 years he has sacrificed SO much for this community!!! And might I remind everyone that my husband is one of the absolute best Police Officers! He has had criminals thank him for treating them like humans! What he has done in 13 years is incredible, yet he is having rocks and bottles thrown at him… and having unbelievable things yelled at him – all of which are inappropriate for fb. He’s being told that they hope he goes home to a dead wife! Really! But that’s not on TV. Unless you are wearing a badge during this or have immediate family that is you really have no idea what it’s been like… because no one is telling this side. My girls have cried so much and have seen friends say/post awful things… my son has never been more angry and has had to defend his dad to people saying “save a life – kill a cop” and “if you are currently a cop, you deserve to die” !!! That’s for real people… that’s really what is being said! Imagine what is going through my kids’ heads. They are proud of their dad and have seen what he has had to sacrifice for YOU (the community), but they also see how the Police are now being hated, truly hated. They know that things have been thrown at their dad like rocks, bottles, even explosives and they are scared. I am scared. We’re scared because he will continue to get up every day and go back out there in this hate. Their dad, my husband ( and many Police officers) have kept the community safe for so long. Can you even imagine a community without them? My husband has taken hundreds of intoxicated drivers off the streets, taken unreal amounts of illegal guns and drugs off the streets and community, been fought by criminals so many times it’s scary, comforted crash victims as they wait for the ambulance, taken food to the homeless, taken clothes/toys(our own children’s) to fire victims, saved lives including a young man shot in the neck at a bar on Christmas Eve where my husband shoved gauze in the bullet hole, he’s had conversations over and over about turning their lives around and being better people, he’s shared about Jesus and plays Christian radio in his police car for them to hear, he’s conducted interview after interview where he gets a confession that has surprised even his coworkers, he’s been flipped off by a 6 year old, and had threats made to his life and his family’s, he has stopped burglars off duty, he had a gun pulled from under a driver’s leg and brought up to shoot him that my husband deflected, he has worked in the scorching heat and in blizzards, he has worked double, triple, and quadruple shifts to take down criminals, he’s been scared and he’s been exhausted, but never like right now. STOP IT!!! I’m crying and shaking, just like every day this last week. Prayers to all Police officers and their families, it is a very sad and scary time. In our home we have always taught to love and be kind to everyone (both genders and all colors and cultures). My kids are nice, and I always have told them that being told that from a teacher means more to me than their grades…. ALWAYS! Be a kind human, make someone’s day better… those are things we say in our home… always have, always will. What is happening right now is crazy and scary. It needs to stop! Love God, Love People and lift up the Police in prayer right now please!
I’m not willing to argue with anyone… I just felt the need to get one Police family’s experience out there.
Jørund ‘Viktoria’ Alme, a Norwegian man who believes he is a paralyzed woman
From LifeSiteNews
Those who challenge the view that a person can identify as an amputee despite being healthy must also challenge the assertion that one can simply identify as the opposite sex.
Almost ten years ago, I wrote a column in this space on the phenomenon of the so-called “transabled” – people who identify as amputees or suffer from a mental illness that causes them to loathe one of their healthy limbs. In 2022, a high-profile (alleged) example of this emerged when a 53-year-old healthy, non-disabled Norwegian man began identifying as a woman paralyzed from the waist down and took to a wheelchair to give media interviews.
Those who found his claims to be somewhat suspect were in a bit of a bind – which of his assertions, after all, is more ridiculous – that he is a woman, or that he is paralyzed? Our culture has accepted that he can claim to be a woman, and that we must all nod solemnly in response. “How brave of her,” we must all say in unison as his loyal wife pushes him away from the cameras in his wheelchair. “No, not the wife. The other one.”
A grimmer but no less disturbing profile was published recently by the National Post titled “Quebec man has two healthy fingers amputated to relieve ‘body integrity dysphoria.’” It’s a sad story; the young man said he had “intrusive thoughts about his left hand’s fourth and fifth fingers, the sensation they weren’t his, that they didn’t belong to his body” since he was a child and would even have nightmares about them. He fantasized about cutting them off himself. From the Post:
Instead, a surgeon at his local hospital agreed to an elective amputation in what is being called the first described case of ‘digits amputation’ for body integrity dysphoria, or BID, a rare and complex condition characterized by an intense desire to amputate a perfectly healthy body part, such as an arm or a leg. The Quebec case involved an ambidextrous 20-year-old whose attempts at ‘non-invasive’ relief, including cognitive behavioural therapy, Prozac-like antidepressants and exposure therapy, only increased his distress.
What is significant about this case is the way it was described by Dr. Nadia Nadeau of the department of psychiatry at Université Laval in a case study published in the journal Clinical Case Reports. Nadeau describes the young man’s mental and emotional distress, and notes that this distress apparently ceased after the “elective amputation” and that “he was able to pursue the life he envisioned as a complete human being without those two fingers bothering him.” One month post surgery, he had no regrets.
The particularly significant conclusion came towards the end of the report. According to Nadeau: “He is now living a life free from distressing preoccupations about his fingers, with all his symptoms related to BID resolved. The amputation enabled him to live in alignment with his perceived identity.” This, of course, is precisely the argument used by transgender activists making the case for sex change surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers – that these “treatments” will help the recipient “live in alignment with his perceived identity.” Although they wouldn’t call it a “perceived” identity – they’d call it his real identity. This perceived identity, however, was considered real enough that a surgeon removed two of his fingers.
The justifications for these “treatments” that include bodily mutilation are similar, as well. The Post noted that “Nadeau’s patient, after doing some research, ‘related his condition to gender dysphoria’… People with BID often feel their physical body doesn’t align with the image of the body they have in their minds.”
Furthermore, although “cutting off healthy, functioning body parts for psychological distress raises ethical concerns, BID sufferers sometimes resort to self-mutilation or ‘black-market’ amputations, risking their lives.”
A similar argument is made for “transgender care”: if extreme medical intervention does make the mentally ill person’s body resemble the image of reality in their minds, they might harm themselves. That’s the catch-22, of course. Isn’t surgical mutilation also harm, by definition? Not if you redefine it – that’s why trans activists no longer refer to sex change surgeries, but “gender-affirming care.” According to Nadeau: “Recognizing and addressing the unique needs of (BID) patients can lead to a future where they can live with more dignity, respect and optimal well-being.”
Who can disagree with a campaign to increase understanding and dignity for the mentally ill? I wonder, however, what the limiting principle is here. If a young man who believes himself to be a woman can get himself legally castrated by a surgeon, why can’t a man who believes he is an amputee have a leg removed? Or an arm? If we have accepted that people’s self-perceptions are more important than actual reality, where does it stop?
From the Fraser Institute
By Ben Eisen, Milagros Palacios and Lawrence Schembri
Canada’s inflation-adjusted per-person annual economic growth rate (0.7 per cent) is meaningfully worse than the G7 average (1.0 per cent) over this same period. The gap with the U.S. (1.2 per cent) is even larger. Only Italy performed worse than Canada.
Growth in gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of all goods and services produced in the economy annually, is one of the most frequently cited indicators of Canada’s economic performance. Journalists, politicians and analysts often compare various measures of Canada’s total GDP growth to other countries, or to Canada’s past performance, to assess the health of the economy and living standards. However, this statistic is misleading as a measure of living standards when population growth rates vary greatly across countries or over time.
Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, for example, recently boasted that Canada had experienced the “strongest economic growth in the G7” in 2022. Although the Trudeau government often uses international comparisons on aggregate GDP growth as evidence of economic success, it’s not the first to do so. In 2015, then-prime minister Stephen Harper said Canada’s GDP growth was “head and shoulders above all our G7 partners over the long term.”
Unfortunately, such statements do more to obscure public understanding of Canada’s economic performance than enlighten it. In reality, aggregate GDP growth statistics are not driven by productivity improvements and do not reflect rising living standards. Instead, they’re primarily the result of differences in population and labour force growth. In other words, they aren’t primarily the result of Canadians becoming better at producing goods and services (i.e. productivity) and thus generating more income for their families. Instead, they primarily reflect the fact that there are simply more people working, which increases the total amount of goods and services produced but doesn’t necessarily translate into increased living standards.
Let’s look at the numbers. Canada’s annual average GDP growth (with no adjustment for population) from 2000 to 2023 was the second-highest in the G7 at 1.8 per cent, just behind the United States at 1.9 per cent. That sounds good, until you make a simple adjustment for population changes by comparing GDP per person. Then a completely different story emerges.
Canada’s inflation-adjusted per-person annual economic growth rate (0.7 per cent) is meaningfully worse than the G7 average (1.0 per cent) over this same period. The gap with the U.S. (1.2 per cent) is even larger. Only Italy performed worse than Canada.
Why the inversion of results from good to bad? Because Canada has had by far the fastest population growth rate in the G7, growing at an annualized rate of 1.1 per cent—more than twice the annual population growth rate of the G7 as a whole at 0.5 per cent. In aggregate, Canada’s population increased by 29.8 per cent during this time period compared to just 11.5 per cent in the entire G7.
Clearly, aggregate GDP growth is a poor tool for international comparisons. It’s also not a good way to assess changes in Canada’s performance over time because Canada’s rate of population growth has not been constant. Starting in 2016, sharply higher rates of immigration have led to a pronounced increase in population growth. This increase has effectively partially obscured historically weak economic growth per person over the same period.
Specifically, from 2015 to 2023, under the Trudeau government, inflation-adjusted per-person economic growth averaged just 0.3 per cent. For historical perspective, per-person economic growth was 0.8 per cent annually under Brian Mulroney, 2.4 per cent under Jean Chrétien and 2.0 per cent under Paul Martin.
Due to Canada’s sharp increase in population growth in recent years, aggregate GDP growth is a misleading indicator for comparing economic growth performance across countries or time periods. Canada is not leading the G7, or doing well in historical terms, when it comes to economic growth measures that make simple adjustments for our rapidly growing population. In reality, we’ve become a growth laggard and our living standards have largely stagnated for the better part of a decade.
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