Crazier all the time? If so, we’d better brace ourselves, the ride has only just begun. After this, my next post on Facebook will be the French translation of the first of four articles that sent writer Asli Erdogan to jail. Accused of being a member of a terrorist organization, you see, for these four articles published in a pro-Kurdish publication.

Her first article deals with the so-called “liberation” of a town. Liberation meaning the rape, torture, and live burning of men, women, children, cats, dogs and all and sundry life forms in the vicinity – save for the “liberators”, this goes without saying.

Ho-hum, or “stunned by horror”  you say? Or: Not for the first time in human history? All of this has happened before, will happen again, let’s get back to more pleasant subjects, life is short, etc.

Long ago – thirty years, in fact although it feels like another lifetime – when I wasn’t writing the Québec Education Minister’s speeches or dealing with the media on his behalf, I dealt with the so-called “loser” files. “Loser” files were the ones up-and-coming political aides stayed clear of – you know, the handicapped, “native people” (re-labelled Premières Nations, which sounds much spiffier), private schools (i.e. Muslim, Jewish or otherwise “other”), and women, of course. The ha-har joke from the up-and-comers being: Lucie just met with a one-eyed, one-legged First Nation woman who’s converted to Islam. I’m sure the humor fells you. Har-har.

Crazier all the time? No. Variations. Someone the other day said two things that matter to me. We were dealing as a group with some of the sadder tales of child abuse that crop up in places where the “liberators” haven’t been let loose yet, and where parents do harm to their children, surrounded by evasive neighbors. The two things were: the child’s absolute need for a space of expression. And the child’s absolute need for his own rituals of forgetting. Forgetting? Yes, forgetting, as in: no longer being controlled by traumatic images. No longer avoiding this place or that other, for fear of re-activating the panic.

So, I will post Asli Erdogan’s first article today, and the others on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.Avoidance isn’t the answer. Nor is the deer-in-the-headlights syndrome.

Fact: the times are crazy. But not everyone is crazy enough to give credence to the crazy-makers.