2025 Thinky Bits: Cancel culture, elbows up, right-wingers riding democracy like a bus & left-wingers cue the circular firing squad
Some pensive if controversial op-eds, analyses, broad looks at philosophical, cultural, political issues from the past 12 months
Here is 10 of the more wide-angle, 30,000-feet, ponderous pieces published in 2025. These are looks at news stories and issues we all face with a perspective many haven’t considered before.
1. 'Bullshit' could be the world of the year
As someone who loves language and has no problem with honest use of what our mothers might call swear words, I still pause at the word “bullshit” but Harry G. Frankfurt’s 2005 pocket book On Bullshit by Princeton University Press analyzes the term in a post-modern way that gets to the nub of something important.
This isn’t a glib use of the term, this is a thoughtful analysis of information and communication that permeates our world and, frankly, just stinks.
2. Performative Indigenous land acknowledgements
Do you want to touch this one with a 10-foot pole? No, but it’s worth talking about.
Performative Indigenous land acknowledgements cause a crippling cognitive dissonance
3. Trump & Bibi, oh boy
Democracy is great until it isn't.
Right-wing leaders are riding democracy like a bus, until they get to an authoritarian destination
4. The new philosphers
I truly believe that in our current world, the comedians are our new philosophers, the best of them on the front lines of the culture war, pushing buttons, crossing lines, making everyone uncomfortable in a critically important way.
Silence the comedians: The first rule of fascism from Goebbels to Putin to Trump
5. 'Boo' to cancel culture
Remember when Chilliwack mayor's radio show was cancelled over use of 'R-word' on air to describe U.S. complaints about wildfire smoke? The folks who tipped me off to this incident with their hair on fire did not enjoy my approach to the subject.
6. Elbows up
One year into the pandemic, Canadians were dripping with self-imposed colonial shame. Now our elbows are up waving the flag.
Canada Day 2025: From collective colonial shame to 'elbows up' in four short years
7. Frequency illusion
This one was a little abstract, but is a philosophically and psychologically interesting way to see the world.
8. Circular firing squad
This unsurprisingly had many on the far left, you guessed it, circling their figurative firing squad to attack heretics to their progressive purity. Part of this thesis was turned on its head by the BC Conservative Party in 2025 as they too started eating themselves in complete contradiction of my claim that the right does this less. What can I say, maybe I’m wrong(ish)?
Monty Python & the circular firing squad: How the left eats itself in pursuit of purity
9. Rearranging deck chairs
The Fraser Valley has more people than ever and fewer news media outlets serving those people. And with changes across the board in 2025, turns out Something Worth Reading is the only locally owned and operated media outlet in the Eastern Fraser Valley. The area is served by a radio station with an online news magazine and a community newspaper, the former owned out of head offices in Kamloops, the later in Alabama.
Filling the news void: Media deprivation in 2025 hits communities across Canada, stifles democracy
10. Burgergate
And in truly serious matters, have you ever had a fast-food burger that looked even vaguely like the marketing photography? Here’s my in-depth analysis of the best and the worst.
Burgergate: Sneaky sandwich shots or fraudulent food photography?
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Paul J. Henderson
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