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
“After every armistice, you want to put us away in mothballs, like the fleet. When it comes to a little dying you’ll be sure to put us in a uniform…” Seven Days in May
In the 1964 political film Seven Days in May, a rogue Director of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff conspires to launch a coup against a failing president who’s just signed a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets. The plot is uncovered by a Marine Corps colonel, and the coup is barely averted with all the conspirators apprehended.
In 1964 the notion that the loyalty of the military/ intelligence services might be compromised was a hot topic in the days afterJFK’s assassination. After calming down in the Reagan days— remember Woody Allen’s revolution spoof Bananas?— it has now returned.
How likely is a military/ intelligence coup? Loyalty of troops has been crucial in many coups and insurrections around the world. Famously the socialist regime of Salvador Allende was crushed in 1973 when the Chilean military staged a bloody coup. Allende and thousands were murdered as General Augusto Pinochet took over the country.
Still, the conceit in Western nations has always been “It can’t happen here”. The institutions of government are believed too strong and independent to allow themselves to be taken over by their militaries. The chattering classes prefer to see their military as Stanley Kubrick did in Dr. Strangelove— bumbling buffoons, lackeys led by General Buck Turgidson.
Certainly in Canada, where successive Liberal government culminated with Justin Trudeau, the Kubrick model is closer to reality. DEI hiring, cuts to budgets and a slavish reliance on America to protect Canada for free have produced a Canadian military with more in common with HMS Pinafore than Vimy Ridge. From the world’s third-largest navy in 1945, Canada is now a boat that can’t float.
But something seems to have changed with the Tuesday murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. It seems a massive provocation by people who want to destroy the American society. It’s not helped by the voices on the Left claiming he brought it on himself with hate speech. @punishedmother “Maybe Charlie Kirk shouldn’t have spent years being a hateful demagogic fascist and this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he should take some personal responsibility.It will take careful leadership to prevent this boiling over.”
This growing intolerance between the political sides exposed yet again by Kirk’s assassination has made people consider the Armed Forces’ loyalty in a crisis. As in, who has it? (In pacifist Canada the current clash of cultures is that support of the military might be necessary in resisting the conservative right. Despite Bill C-23 disarming Canadians the unarmed Left might face a large, well-armed rightwing population brandishing weapons.)
In a divided America think of Tom Cruise’s JAG character in A Few Good Men confronting hardened Marine commandant played by Jack Nicholson— and you have the conflict. “You can’ t take the truth!” Fighting generals are a thing of the past when Democrats are in power. Successive presidents have used DEI to create desk generals and commanders who reflect good taste over good planning.
This DEI mission creep in the military was one of Donald Trump’s strongest planks in defeating hapless Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Canadian Liberals, meanwhile, managed to dodge their pathetic defence shortcomings only by making the 2025 election all about Trump and a 51st state, not defence or Chinese influence.
There has been evidence that some at the highest levels of the U.S. military, CIA and FBI have already shown a bias toward Democrats. In the waning days of Trump 45 Chief of Staff Mark Milley told the Chinese leadership— America’s No. 1 global rival— that he would personally tip them off if Trump launched a surprise attack on China.
In another time (or movie) Milley’s treachery would been seen as treasonous, punishable by a life in the stockade or, possibly, execution. In the hands of the DC Media Party, however, Milley’s partisan gambit was buried in the run-up to the 2020 election. As with the concurrent Hunter Biden laptop scandal, the story was made to disappear in a welter of Trump demonization and legal harassment
Now we must wonder again. Sadly for Harris, Milley and Team Obama, the Democrats were thrashed by the Trump agenda. POTUS 45—now 47— quickly began replacing lifetime loyalists in the military and bureaucrats, stifling for now the urge to purge,
Again this scenario was unthinkable a generation ago, a plot in a movie. But the governments of Barack Obama and Joe Biden (Trudeau in Canada) have created a social schism that has turned politics into a blood sport. As we know there were two attempts on Trump in the election campaign by deranged radicals. The defeated Democrats’ obsession over who controls the Supreme Court and Congress in Trump’s presidency, the repeated comparisions to Hitler, are producing greater and more strident anything-is-accepted calls from the radical Left to take to the streets and pursue civil disobedience.
In Canada Mark Carney’s Elbows Up gambit is dissipating rapidly since the election, producing active discussion of separation in Alberta and Quebec (again). This raises questions about what the military might do in the aftermath of a vote by either side to leave Canada. Might they intervene? Would they stand aside? Will tanks roll to protect a Carney Canada?
No doubt Charlie Kirk’s death will be mobilized by both sides in their appeals for the loyalty of the military should a civil war break out in the U.S. Get your generals in a row. MSNBC’s Jen Psaki has declared Trump’s tribute to Kirk “an escalation” Says legal expert Jonathan Turley, “We are already at political assassinations, so I am not sure how much more room for escalation there may be for Psaki or MSNBC.”
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.
There is much talk about the Canadian identity in these days of mass immigration , diversity and refusal to integrate. The 1970s were a simpler time for such rumination on culture, however. Riding the new global identity of Pierre Trudeau (soon to be regretted), the times were fired by the 1972 hockey summit win by Canada over the Soviet Union.
The series contained many of the self-held perceptions of the nation. Plucky underdog. Tenacious competitor in global affairs. Limitless possibilities. All seemingly rolled up into two weeks 53 years ago this month. Many of these notions were still manifest in the 2025 federal election when Boomers had a conniption fit over Donald Trump and withdrew into their Elbows Up phase.
So it should come as no surprise that one of the stars of that 1972 team was goalie Ken Dryden. While not being dominant throughout against the shifty Soviets, Dryden peaked at the right moments (in tandem with Tony Esposito) to snatch the eight-game series at absolutely the final possible moment.
It’s hardly an exaggeration that, while a number of the Canadian players lost their minds in the tense fortnight, Dryden carried himself with cool dignity. There were no Phil Esposito jeremiads. Not Jean Paul Parisé stick wielding. No Bobby Clare two-handers to the ankles of his opponents. Just the emerging figure of the lanky goalie resting his chin on his stick as he waited in the net for Kharlamov and Yakushev.
For the generation that watched him develop he was likely the quintessential modern Canadian. Son of a charitable community figure. Educated in the Ivy League. Obtained his law degree. Served as a federal cabinet minister. Author of several definitive hockey books (The Game is perhaps the best sports non-fiction in the English language). Executive of the Toronto Maple Leafs. And more.
He was on the American telecast of the 1980 U.S. Miracle On Ice at Lake Placid. And the radio broadcast of the 1976 Canada Cup. Ubiquitous media source. Loyal to Canada. And crucially, a son, husband, father and grandfather. If you’d created a model for the citizen of Canada of his times it was Ken.
He could be cranky and verbose, yes. His books often took issue with the state of the modern game. Concussions. The Trap. Excessive goalie pads. But his defining moment may have come in 1973 when, upset with Sam Pollock’s contract offer, he left the Montreal Canadiens to finish his law degree in Toronto. It’s important to note that his reputation at the time was a goalie carried by the Jean Beliveau super teams. Yet the Canadiens allowed 56 more goals in the 1973–74 season than they had the year before with Dryden. Plus they lost in the semifinals after winning the Cup the previous spring. Karma.
When he returned the Habs ripped off four consecutive Stanley Cups. Phil Esposito praised him as that “f’ing giraffe” who stole at least two Cups from the Bruins. He retired for good in 1979, and the Canadiens didn’t win another Cup till 1986. Which enhanced his reputation. His combination of tenacity, independence and integrity made him many fans. And launched a generation of goalies who broke the mould.
So his passing in the year that Boomers exercised their cultural privilege one last time is a fitting codicil to an era that held so much promise and has ended in a lost culture and renewed talk of separation in Quebec and Alberta. Many have emotional memories of Dryden, and social media has exploded with them on the news Friday of his death at 78.
For us, our quintessential Dryden moment came in 2001 at the NHL Draft. We were working for the Calgary Herald, he was an executive with the Maple Leafs. As we arrived at the Miami airport in a torrential rainstorm who was standing in the car rental lobby but the unmistakable No. 29? As fellow authors, we’d met many times, and we had quoted him so often we can’t count the times. So there was no fan-boy encounter.
This day he was a lost soul whose car rental had fallen through. Could we give him a ride to the media hotel? Sure. The company was welcome. As we rolled along though the pelting rain, searching for the right highway (this was pre-Waze) we talked about family and background. How were my kids? How was his wife now that he was hearing it from Maple Leafs fans?
Above the machine-gunning of the rain we then pivoted to hockey. He wanted to know what was going on with the Flames (they were mediocre at the time). And he wanted to talk about the state of trap hockey which was then choking the art of the game. Where was the beauty, the artistry in a league dumbed-down by clutch ‘n grab?
After chatting and squinting through the sheets of rain for 45 minutes we finally arrived at the hotel in Sunrise. As we walked into the lobby Ken thanked us for the ride and gave us $40 for gas. Media colleagues watching the scene were flabbergasted. Ken had a reputation as being frugal, and here he’d readily given me $40! U.S.! What could this mean? Did we get as scoop they’d have to chase. Ken blandly shooed them away, saying he had to check in.
We didn’t get a hot tip on a story. But we did get several gems to use in our next book Money Players, a finalist for the 2004 Canadian Business Book of the year. We meant to thank him for the material. Somehow the moment was never right. Now we won’t get that chance.
We might say the same for Canada. Somehow the moment was never right. Now we won’t get that chance. RIP Ken.
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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