Ejaz Butt for Mayor

Ejaz Butt for Mayor.

I was watching a Youtube video about the Soviet Union's solutions to the homeless crisis. It contained some unexpectedly fascinating details. The video was something I intitally hesitated to watch in case it was just another exercise in wokery, but I watched anyway and I am glad I did. Because of my 'fringe' perspective, I often find things that other people would view with the utmost solicitude, strike me as being hilariously funny. Like the experiences of divorced couples in the USSR.

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"The housing reality for divorced couples in the Soviet Union was notoriously difficult due to extreme housing shortages and wait times that could span 10 to 15 years. Because the state rarely provided a second apartment in a timeframe that matched the emotional reality of a separation, divorced couples were often trapped in the following situations:

Forced Coexistence: Former spouses frequently continued living in the same unit for years after their divorce.

Subdivided Spaces: In many instances, they were forced to share a single room, separating their personal lives with nothing more than a hanging bedsheet or a repositioned wardrobe.

Complex Living Arrangements: Some cases involved one or both former partners entering into new relationships, with the new partner moving into the same divided space. This setup trapped families in an inescapable cycle where legal divorce did not lead to physical separation, creating a high-stress environment that the state did not have the infrastructure to resolve."

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Seriously. When you consider the misery some people are forced to endure as a result of political interference, it's not really funny. But, if you have a hint of Monty Pythonist appreciation of the absurd, you just have to fucking laugh at it all. (When you consider that "the state can be, and has often has been, in the course of history the main source of misery and disaster.")

And people beg for this shit.

Imagine that. Trying to get to sleep while your ex-spouse is on the other side of the blanket with his/her/her?/his? new partner doing, well, whatever is that people do these days when separated by a curtain or something. (Smoking?)

I have often been faulted for bringing politics into any conceivable discussion. How many divorced couples, (please pardon my biggoted assumption that only couples are impacted,) were inclined to trace their pain back to government policy?

I've noticed the same propensity among chicken dancers. They keep voting for the people who are fucking them up the ass!

I saw the same pattern of unacknowledged costs emerge during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Respecting high stress environments it reminds me of the reports of increasing domestic violence as a result of dysfunctional families being locked down together. Legislated cabin fever.

There was also a report on increasing stress on fire departments as a result of more people cooking at home.

And so on...

And speaking of being trapped in forced situations, how many people in Hamilton currently face the same circumstance due to the cost of rent? One way or another, communistic central planning, whether by the dictatorial Soviet dictator model, favoured by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or by the more weasely Mark Carney, is bound to have the same results. Well-placed individuals, like Pathways Project investors, will be handsomeley rewarded. Everyone else will be fucked up the ass... even the chicken dancers who are cheering it on.

Carney's Canada

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"So, here is the question that the Soviet housing system ultimately asks, not of the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, but of us right now, wherever we happen to be standing, when a government promises that something essential will be provided for free, and the official system for obtaining it becomes so slow, so opaque, and so captured (Think: migrant hotel owners?) by those with the most power that ordinary people begin paying for it through other means entirely. through time, through connections, through corruption, through desperation. At what point does the promise itself become the lie? And how long exactly are people willing to wait before they stop asking for the apartment and start asking a different question altogether?"

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This evening on CHCH 'News' - "Job cuts at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton prompts union rally."

Also from that report:

ER Wait times 2024-2025 - 33.6 hours.

Five years ago - 30.8 hours.

How long exactly are people willing to wait before they stop asking for free colonoscopies and start asking a different question altogether?

Let me rephrase the question from above:

"So, here is the question that the Canadian system ultimately asks, not of the Canada, which no longer exists, but of us right now, wherever we happen to be standing, when a government promises that something essential will be provided for free, and the official system for obtaining it becomes so slow, so opaque, and so captured by those with the most power that ordinary people begin paying for it through other means entirely. through time, through connections, through corruption, through desperation. At what point does the promise itself become the lie? And how long exactly are people willing to wait before they stop asking for when Carney is going to deliver a better life and start asking a different question altogether?"

So, why Ejaz for mayor?

Because his prescriptions can hardly be worse than those of the other candidates. I know Ejaz, personally. And I can guarantee, that if Ejaz Butt were to become mayor, the hilarity of Hamilton politics would probably gain world wide attention. And, like the German POWs tossing the grand pianos into the ditch... if you know the country is fucked, why bellyache about it? Get drunk and join the party!

Addendum

Nikita Khrushchev’s mass housing project, launched in 1954, was a massive state initiative to resolve the Soviet Union's severe post-war housing shortage by providing every family with its own apartment. The program resulted in the construction of prefabricated concrete panel buildings known as Khrushchevkas, which were designed to be quick, cheap, and functional, featuring five stories (the maximum height allowed without elevators), small kitchens (6 m²), and combined bathrooms.

Between 1954 and 1964, when Khrushchev was ousted, approximately 54 million citizens moved into these new homes, a number that grew to over 127 million in the following five years. The buildings were originally intended as temporary housing with a lifespan of 25 to 40 years, but many remained in use for decades due to chronic housing shortages. In recent years, cities like Moscow have initiated large-scale demolition and resettlement projects for these aging structures, while other regions, such as Tartu in Estonia, are retrofitting them into energy-efficient "smart homes."