Bruce Dowbiggin
We’re Listening: How Unhappiness Went Big Time
“For all practical purposes, a revolution has occurred in the private lives of Americans, who increasingly find themselves depressed and alone.”— Ronald W. Dworkin 2021
The unquantifiable in Covid madness is the psychological impact from its lockdowns, masks and social isolation. The stress on the population— especially the young— created by the harsh medicine of governments and health authorities has only been suggested at for most of the disaster.
But the hints of stress are there. “@EWoodhouse7 Covid-19 did not increase the normal respiratory disease morality burden for teens age 13-18 in 2020. But alcohol- & drug-induced deaths nearly DOUBLED. A 50% increase in this age group, w/this kind of death, is a massive indictment of lockdown & school closure policies.”
Domestic assaults and murders are other byproducts of isolation and fear. According to the CDC the U.S. murder rate is up 30 percent during the pandemic, the highest one-year rise ever. In a recent poll 23 percent of those polled describe themselves as unhappy— the highest such reading since 1972.
Society clearly rests on a knife’s edge as the traditional bonds of friend and family are eliminated by pandemic panic. Coping mechanisms have disappeared. People quake in fear of an impending truck armada from the West. Whom to trust?
Hence the vulnerability and hopelessness in so much of pop culture. And the stigmatizing of traditional strength and self confidence. “Thank you for your service” to military and health workers is a compliment but also a recognition how far much of society has drifted from the notion of personal risk and sacrifice.
This coincides with the radical left pushing to replace police officers with members of the care industry as first responders. While the practicality of sending untrained counsellors on domestic calls— facing deadly weapons— is fraught with danger there are city councils moving in this direction in a number of large urban areas.
The outcome of this policy is still uncertain, but the fact that it is even being considered is testament to inroads the caring industry has made in society. This week’s extensive Let’s Talk campaign on depression and mental illness underlines how the caring industry has largely overtaken the traditional family and friends— inaccessible in the lockdowns— who used to form a support group. It is ubiquitous.
Aiding in this transformation was the 2010 U.S. Affordable Care Act which established parity between mental and physical health in the insurance-reimbursement context. So everyone from credentialed psychologists down to life coaches is now a paid part of the health industry.
Young people today might believe that the caring industry has long been in society. Not so. As Ronald W. Dworkin notes in The Politicization of Unhappiness , “Although the general population of the United States has only doubled since the mid-20th century, this industry has already increased 100-fold… With the old authority figures belittled and real friends and family spread thin or even non-existent, the only people left who can fill the void — and who have the prestige to compel others to follow them down a new road — are caring professionals.
“This industry has emerged as the post-revolutionary successor to our broken social system. As is typical of a revolutionary political party, the caring industry’s components have replaced those of the old order: Its organization has replaced the previous social system, its ideology has replaced traditional culture, and its professionals have taken the place of real friends, relatives, and authority figures.”
As the Let’s Talk policy emphasizes, confessing anxiety or depression to total strangers is now seen as positive. So is acting as a freelance caregiver. Gone is the trusted family member or friend in a private setting. Often the afflicted’s confession is delivered in a group setting where the person must unburden themselves before a cohort indoctrinated in the catechism of caring.
Individuals may respond, writes Dworkin, “but not as individuals, or even as individuals with unique titles, as much as representatives of professional caring, each having been trained in roughly the same way to talk a person through a problem.”
In short, the caring industry has become a political movement with its own orthodoxy and loyalty. With a vested stake in perpetuating itself and its patients’ distress— a process jet-fuelled by the media’s Covid paranoia campaign. Does it help people? In the short term, absolutely. Long term? The jury is still out.
This confessional model has been carried into the political realm through diversity seminars. “Group therapy for addiction — an old caring-professional technique — has become the format for today’s “struggle sessions” and diversity seminars in corporate settings.” White privilege and gender bias must be shed to make progress to “happiness”.
But don’t dare question its purity. Propaganda is crucial to reinforcing the brand, says Dworkin. “Because everyone knows in advance that self-help books are written in conformity with existing prescriptions and rarely contain a single fresh idea, people who seek out these books often buy many of them, and they keep consuming them — not to learn anything new, but to bolster their conviction to act.”
In the end the message is that traditional sources of compassion— family, friends, the church— have failed. You are right to feel alone. And the caring industry— the collective of rehearsed people— is the only thing there to rescue you.
Like the movement to divert students’ education from parents and toward the public education gulag, the end game is a social revolution, one tried with lamentable effect in socialist nations in the past. As Vladimir Putin noted last year, “This is something we saw in Russia. It happened in our country before the 1917 revolution; the Bolsheviks followed the dogmas of Marx and Engels. And they also declared that they would go in to change the traditional lifestyle, the political, the economic lifestyle, as well as the very notion of morality, the basic principles for a healthy society.
“It is with puzzlement that we see the practices Russia used to have and that we left behind in distant past.”
So yes, let us commend the outreach of the caring industry. Let’s Talk has noble goals. But let us also hope people separated from loved ones and friends the last two years rediscover that the greatest unit of strength and nurturing is still the personal one of family and friends.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
@PaulChampLaw So, Wayne Gretzky flew on an FBI jet in April 2025 with Kash Patel to watch the Capitals? We all make choices…
Canadians always liked to see themselves as a reflective people. Not hurried into extremes. Slow to anger, quick to act on danger. Humble guys like Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr.
If there’s one thing that pissed them off it was anyone sucking up to Americans. Unless… they make it BIG in the U.S.. There was a big exemption for Canadians like Gretzky or Orr or Mike Myers who went south to make a fortune. For them the standards didn’t apply. They were heroes of the nation.
Until Donald Trump. Any Canadian hero not calling him Cheeto or Orange Man Bad or Hitler can expect to receive the mark of Cain from the Left huddling in the Great White North. Anyone excoriating POTUS 45/ 47 , however, is given a lifetime hall pass. No exceptions.
As Gretzky has learned again. Sunday a new photo emerged of the greatest offensive star in NHL history playing golf with the president at his Jupiter, Florida, golf course— the one where Ryan Wesley Routh tried to assassinate Trump. This led to the same predictable rending of garments and clutching of pearls that greeted Gretzky’s earlier declaration of loyalty to The Worst Human Being Ever®. Traitor is now the mildest description of 99 chez nous.
Give the Gretzkys credit, they didn’t disguise their decision. After Trump’s stunning (to some) win last November, Janet Gretzky cooed, “Congratulations Mr. President Donald J Trump ♥️🤍💙🇺🇸 You did it, You deserved it, you earned every bit of it. The world is a better place to have you as our Leader. Proud to be an American. Thank you for being such a great friend. May God keep watching over you ♥️🙏🏻♥️ Love our family to yours !”
The incensed Canadian left swung into action. “University of Alberta professor Robert Summers @RJSCity: “He’s been a pretty unlikable guy for a long time, this just further solidifies it. @ktownkeith: “Gretzky is disgusting and pathetic. I will celebrate when Ovechkin breaks his record. Also FYI, Mario was the best hockey player ever, not Whine Gretzky.” “People should burn all their old hockey jersey and cards of this guy. A shame”. And those were the nice ones.
The bile harkened to Orr supporting Trump in 2020. In our column at the time we noted the furious aftermath from Canadian hockey worshippers. Canadian sports media called Trump a “monster”, a “racist” and “a totalitarian”. You could heat most of the GTA with the steam emitted by their indignation at Orr having the temerity to speak out politically.
Orr has taken a low profile since, as even some in his hometown of Parry Sound wants nothing to do with him. “Poor Parry Sound,” tweeted Mary Lou George on Oct. 31, 2020. “What a disgrace #BobbyOrr has turned out to be. Guess he believes bragging about assaulting women really is just locker room talk since he wants Trump on his team. Sad.”
As with everything in the current McCoys vs Hartfields feud between the countries the venom launched at Gretzky’s decision to support Trump is underscored by the quaint notion that Canada is anything like it was when Gretzky’s 1988 wedding was a national celebration in Canada.
As the polling from the 2025 Canadian federal election showed young people are fed up with their Boomer parents’ nostalgia for the nation that smuggled the American diplomats out of Iran in 1979. They want economic opportunities and the ability to buy homes. What successive Liberal governments have given them is trans insanity, cities overrun by Hamas protesters and national debt backloaded on their shoulders.
To say nothing of Chinese infiltration of the economy and trade. No wonder they keep trying to change the words to O Canada all the time.
The decisions by Gretzky and Orr, among many expats, is partially due to Trump’s contrarian stance. But it also reflects a distance from the land where they grew up. Mike Myers and Elbows Up played on this sentimental loyalty to help Mark Carney succeed Justin Trudeau. But as more and more financial and talent stacks head south for opportunity (see Nutrien’s decision to ship Saskatchewan potash via the U.S., ignoring B.C.) it’s becoming clear that a reckoning is coming.
Trump’s brusque brushoff of Canada as no better than a 51st state was like an intervention with a friend or family member who’s gotten lost. It was a chance for self examination as we said in this 2018 column, Sometimes An Ingrate Nation.
Instead they bought the fake line that Trump would “invade” the country. Canadians lamented their treatment of “loyal old friend Canada”. But since the Iran heroics what has Canada done to help the U.S.? America has guarded Canada militarily. It has protected the trade lanes where Canadian goods are shipped. It has accepted hundreds of thousands of health patients unable to receive timely treatment in Canada’s single payer system.
It has encouraged Canada an automobile industry. It has allowed Canada’s film and TV industry subsidies. It has (so far) tolerated Canada’s dairy cartels. And it has welcomed Canadians by the millions to holiday or invest in America.
Now list the selfless deeds Canada has performed for America since Ken Taylor squirrelled the diplomats out of Tehran. Um… give us time. We sent Orr and Gretzky to the U.S. to jumpstart hockey. And all the SCTV folks. Canada also became the home for every foaming leftist in America seeking to escape Trump. Beyond that? Diddly squat.
So instead of the prolonged lamentations of the women and men and others of Canada, perhaps Elbows Up should listen to VPOTUS J.D. Vance. “And with all due respect to my Canadian friends, whose politics focus obsessively on the United States: your stagnating living standards have nothing to do with Donald Trump or whatever bogeyman the CBC tells you to blame. The fault lies with your leadership, elected by you.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Ottawa and Alberta have reached a memorandum of understanding that paves the way for, among other things,. a new oil pipeline in return for higher carbon taxes.. How’s it doing? B.C. and Quebec both reject the idea. The Liberals former Climate minister resigned his cabinet post.
The most amazing feature of the Mark Carney/Danielle Smith MOU is that both politicians feverishly hope that the deal fails. Carney can tell Quebec that he tried to reason with Smith, and Smith can say she tried to meet the federalists halfway. Failure suits their larger purposes. Carney to fold Canada into Euro climate insanity and Smith into a strong motive for separation.
We’ll have more in. our next column. In the meantime, another Alberta initiative on healthcare has stirred up the hornets of single payer.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Canada’s health system is the worst in the world. Except for all the other systems.” If there is anything left that Canadians agree upon it’s that their provincial healthcare plan is a disaster that needs a boatload of new money and the same old class rhetoric about two-tier healthcare.
Both prescriptions have been tried multiple times since Tommy Douglas made single-payer healthcare a reality. As a result today’s delivery systems are constantly strained to breaking and the money poured in to support it evaporates in red tape and vested interests.
But suggest that Canada adopt the method of somewhere else and you get back stares. Who does it better? How can we copy that? Crickets. Then ask governments to cut back and create efficiencies. No one wants to tell the unions they are the first to move. As a result, operating rooms sit empty for lack of trained nurses and rationed doctors. The system is all dressed with nowhere to go.
There are many earnest people trying their best to fit the square peg in the round hole. But so far it has produced a Frankenstein quilt of private clinics in other provinces handling overflows and American hospitals taking tens of thousands of overflows or critical cases. Ontarians travelling to Quebec for knee surgery. Albertans heading to eastern B.C. for hips and shoulders. Nova Scotians going to Boston for back surgery.
To say nothing of the legions of Canadians on waiting lists for terminal cancer or heart problems who, in despair of dying before seeing a specialist in 18-24 months, voyage to Lithuania, India or Mexico to save their lives. Everyone knows a story of a family member or friend surgery shopping. Every Canadian health authority sympathizes. But little solves the problem.
Which has led to predictable grumbling. @Tablesalt13 if the Liberals hadn’t surged immigration over the last 4-5 years and if all of the money spent on refugees and foreign aid was redirected to health care how much shorter would Canada’s medical waitlists be?
And if any small progress is made the radical armies opposed to two-tiered healthcare raise a stink in the media, stopping that progress in its tracks. Suggesting public/ private healthcare systems is a quick trip to a Toronto Star editorial and losing your next election.
Into the impasse Alberta has introduced Bill 11 to create a parallel private–public surgery system that allows surgeons to perform non-urgent procedures privately under set conditions, moving ahead with the premier’s announcement last week. The government says the approach will shorten wait times and help recruit doctors, while critics argue it risks two-tier care.
The legislation marks a major shift in healthcare reform in Alberta and faces (shock) strong opposition from the NDP which is pairing these reforms with the province’s use of the notwithstanding clause in banning radical trans surgery and medication for minors in the province.
There are examples of two-tiered healthcare elsewhere in the West. France, Ireland, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany, among others, use a dual-tracked system mixing public and private coverages. Reports FHI, “In the most successful European healthcare systems, e.g., Germany and Switzerland, the federal government handles the PEC risk, via national pools and government subsidies, sparing the burden on individual insurers.” While not perfect it hasn’t produced class warfare.
The Americans, meanwhile learned to their chagrin with ObamaCare (the Affordable Care Act, that government healthcare is not the answer. The U.S. heath system replaces government accounting with health insurance rationers as the immoveable force. Many Americans were outside this traditional system, paying out-of-pocket. Under the Obama plan everyone would be forced into a plan, like it or not.
The AFI continues, “ACA has a flawed design. Its architects meant to appeal to the public, promising what the old system could not fully deliver – guaranteed access to affordable health cover and coverage for pre-existing conditions (PECs). But they were wrong about being able to keep your doctor or your old policy if you wanted.
Previously individual policies had to exclude PEC coverage to be financially viable. Yet employer group policies often covered it after a waiting period, but the extra costs were spread over their fellow workers – a real burden on medium and small-sized companies. Under Obamacare, the very high PEC costs are still spread too narrowly – on each of the very few insurers who have agreed to stay as exchange insurers.”
In other words getting a universal system that helps the needy while not degrading treatment is illusory. Alberta is willing to admit that fact. Like agreement on pipelines it will face nothing but headwinds from the diehards (pun intended) who still believe Michael Moore’s fairy tales about a free system in Canada. And will do nothing to bind Canada’s warring factions.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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