Commentary
Authorities snatching dissidents in broad daylight, then prosecuting them interminably until they are inexplicably tossed back, is among the familiar state habits that mark totalitarian-authoritarian life.
Writers such as Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, and Vaclav Havel sought to show as equally remarkable, precisely because it goes so unnoticed, the blinding effect such state conduct has on the wider population. Injustice afflicting individuals is shrugged off because the collective is conditioned to live life with heads down.
The curiously Canadian version of this phenomenon is to stand the normal course of cause and effect on its head. We do not live in an authoritarian, much less totalitarian, state. Yet despite the abundant means of democratic resistance available, we live much of our collective life with our heads down as if we wish to condition the state to become the authoritarian Leviathan that, so far, it is not….