Inton­ing “absolute­ly” as a response to a state­ment or ques­tion has become as ubiq­ui­tous and irri­tat­ing as scat­ter­ing “like” in sen­tences. How­ev­er, its inclu­sive def­i­n­i­tion of “with­out excep­tion, doubt or reser­va­tion”,  is an ide­al sum­ma­tion of the intractable “think­ing” that plagues our times.

What pass­es for rea­son­ing on the extremes of the socio-polit­i­cal divide, for exam­ple, bor­ders on farcical.
Nei­ther side recog­nis­es there is fun­da­men­tal­ly no dif­fer­ence between left­ist, illib­er­al can­cel cul­ture and big­ot­ed, short-sight­ed right wing den­i­gra­tion of what­ev­er its col­lec­tive mind can label as a dan­ger­ous ideology.
Both tar­get acad­e­mia and the media, and use race and eth­nic­i­ty as incon­tro­vert­ible proof that the world is unfair­ly tilt­ed to the oth­er side.
The extreme right rails against Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty and Inclu­sion (DEI) as a plot to steal the right­ful place of white people.
The extreme left vocif­er­ous­ly con­tends that a white male in a posi­tion of author­i­ty equates with enti­tle­ment, repres­sion and/or insti­tu­tion­alised inequality/racism.
Intel­lec­tu­al gifts, expe­ri­ence and work ethics don’t seem to be major fac­tors in either’s cal­cu­lus of fair­ness or merit.
Their mutu­al intol­er­ance, extrem­i­ty of beliefs and dog­ma are so sim­i­lar they actu­al­ly rep­re­sent the first Amer­i­can mot­to, E Pluribus Unum — out of many, one.
In the inter­est of fair­ness, it has to be admit­ted that Cana­da, the UK and Europe have sim­i­lar divi­sions, albeit in less­er pro­por­tion to population.
Nor (thank­ful­ly, but for how much longer?) is their media appar­ent­ly in such thrall, or state of fear, that they con­sis­tent­ly allow claims by their lead­ers, no mat­ter how dubi­ous, to pass with­out demands for clar­i­ty, let alone proof of veracity.
A sim­ple, but impor­tant exam­ple was Pres­i­dent Trump’s recent asser­tion that Hamas  “…said they’re going to dis­arm and if they don’t dis­arm, we will dis­arm them.”
There are six basic ques­tions in jour­nal­ism. That state­ment demand­ed three of them: Why? When? How?
If any were asked, I’ve yet to read the answers, let alone fol­low-ups to what would no doubt have pro­voked petu­lance, insults, inchoate ram­bling or a com­bi­na­tion of some or all of those, none of which are grounds for accept­ing the dec­la­ra­tion absolutely.
The insis­tence by Trump and his devo­tees that he absolute­ly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize has become so de rigeur, that ques­tion­ing it would be a full-time occupation.
It’s also point­less, since none of them seem to grasp that re-start­ing the Gaza war in any form, blast­ing small boats in inter­na­tion­al waters on the unproven pre­text they are drug smug­glers, pub­licly autho­ris­ing covert CIA plots to over­throw the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, and putting troops on obvi­ous­ly peace­ful Amer­i­can streets, is absolute­ly the way to guar­an­tee a Nobel will absolute­ly not be awarded.
But then again, what’s to be expect­ed when the mind­set of even an oth­er­wise eru­dite columnist’s crit­i­cism of Trump includes the asser­tion that he has shown “…utter dis­dain for our Con­sti­tu­tion and the laws that have made us the great­est democ­ra­cy in the world.”
No doubt the colum­nist absolute­ly believes the last six words sum up the U.S.
So are democ­ra­cies where politi­cians can­not be legal­ly bought with enor­mous cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions, elec­tions for the high­est office are decid­ed by  the pop­u­lar vote, not an unelect­ed, arcane body cre­at­ed when the mere hoi pol­loi were not con­sid­ered bright enough to do the job on their own, sec­ond class in comparison?
Not by a long chalk, in our view. And that’s an absolute­ly you can bank on.

                            SAD  ABSOLUTES

Ship­ping accounts for about 3% of green­house gas emis­sions, a fig­ure expect­ed to rise to 10% by mid-century.
In the face of U.S. pres­sure, the Inter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Organ­i­sa­tion has post­poned a vote on a set of new mea­sures to levy charges on ships based on their emis­sions, and use the mon­ey to fund tran­si­tion to clean­er fuels and help devel­op­ing countries.
The Trump admin­is­tra­tion threat­ened “rec­i­p­ro­cal mea­sures” to off­set fees charged to US ships and “…com­pen­sate Amer­i­can peo­ple any relat­ed eco­nom­ic harm from any adopt­ed green­house gas emis­sions measures.” 
No men­tion was made of the well-doc­u­ment­ed harm, eco­nom­ic and oth­er­wise, that will befall the Amer­i­can peo­ple, and the rest of  us, if that kind of absolute­ly short-sight­ed, self-cen­tered, irre­spon­si­ble atti­tude is allowed to prevail.
The Trump admin­is­tra­tion also can­celled a mas­sive solar pow­er project in Neva­da, a sad com­ment on Amer­i­can non-com­mit­ment to the absolute neces­si­ty of mov­ing to renew­able energy.
And in case that sounds like pro for­ma Trump-bash­ing, we here in Cana­da have our own ver­sion of cli­mate change absolute morons.
In 2018, the Ontario gov­ern­ment can­celled  462.5 megawatts of what it called “unnec­es­sary and waste­ful ener­gy projects” in the form of wind farms.
In 2023, the same provin­cial rul­ing par­ty crowed that it was order­ing 2,000 megawatts of renew­able ener­gy projects to ensure “… long-term afford­abil­i­ty for Ontario’s ratepay­ers and busi­ness­es.”
The absolute­ly cor­rect response to a remark or ques­tion about the world  hav­ing gone mad, is, “Absolute­ly.” 

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