«Don’t say that!"

When a sentence didn’t need a warning label that read:

“This statement may contain traces of truth.”

Yeah, it sounds exaggerated.
Or is it?

Baron Muenchhausen himself has complained many times that his reputation is being diluted by amateurs. He insists on keeping the exclusive rights to keep being the lying king.
Good luck with that, Baron.

As Canada’s northern neighbour to the self-proclaimed “United States of Everything,” we inevitably catch a cold whenever the elephant sneezes.
Pierre Trudeau once put it perfectly:

“When America sneezes, Canada catches a cold.”

At the time of writing, America has been closed for forty long days.
Government shutdown. Doors locked.
Which means millions of Americans are left without basic public services.
Forty-two million people—many of them children—depend on food assistance, called SNAP.
Well then… we Canucks wish you good luck, folks.

But the real sickness isn’t administrative—it’s linguistic.
The words. The tone. The way people in power talk.
You see an official step up to a dozen microphones, opens the mouth—and something resembling words spills out.
Those words travel into ears, into minds—and barely anyone reacts anymore.
Even when the sentence is a blatant, quantifiable lie, no one flinches.

Muenchhausen must be proud.
His brand has gone mainstream.
Lies now come with long, well-trained and long legs—perfectly capable of outrunning the truth. Not a single pants gets on fire anymore.

Holy smokes.

How, exactly, are parents supposed to explain this to their kids?
That adults on TV lie for a living and get away with it?
That consequences are optional?
That creativity now means inventing reality?

The shock has faded.
The open-mouthed disbelief of a few years ago has been replaced by tight lips and clenched jaws.
Outrage still exists—but now it’s internal, simmering somewhere behind the ribs.

Still, not everyone has given up.
There are brave journalists, honest politicians (that’s not a lie), and ordinary citizens who still stand up to this culture of fabrication.
But there are too few.
When the majority stays silent, silence becomes consent.
And history has a very precise term for that:

“Germany 1933. It didn’t end well.”

So where did humanity take the wrong turn in this over-informed age of enlightenment?
When did common sense check into intensive care?
And why did human decency take a sabbatical?

Wait. It’s not all darkness.
Hope, as always, is out there—visible in the streets.
People, young and old, are painting signs, joining hands, marching side by side.

The sight of 2,600 cities across the “United Protests of America” under the banner “NO KING” was breathtaking.
Seven million citizens got up from their couches and took to the streets to demand humanity and truth.
That’s just the visible peak; many more joined in spirit.
And their effect? Loud, positive—and undeniably real and peaceful.

Protest, in a democracy, isn’t a nuisance. It’s a feature.
It’s protected, essential, even sacred—so long as it remains peaceful.
Those seven million people turned democracy into a kind of modern Woodstock, where the stage was the street.

Oh yes—Democracy is fragile when confronted with fascism or autocracy.
She’s not used to rough handling anymore.
Eighty years of peace have made her comfortable—maybe too comfortable.
But now she’s awake again, alert, aware of what’s at stake.
People can feel it: what they stand to lose if democracy walks out—or lies down.

Take a breath.
Hope isn’t gone.
Human beings are not built to surrender.
Quite the opposite—we are wired to rebuild.

So… let’s grab some cardboard.
Let’s make a few signs.