Too many headlines and recent news stories have begun with, “Imagine if Obama or Biden had done…” …fill-in-the-blank with anything the current US administration has done/is doing.

One side is outraged, the other side is smug.

There is nothing new about double standards. They exist as part of any social system, from who gets into the club, to who gets the promotion, and recently, most egregiously, who gets to vote. Double standards exist because they can.

Think of Hillary Clinton who was dragged through the mud and name-called over her emails; now we have Signalgate, a genuinely serious violation of national security. She was right when she called Trump supporters “despicable” and she paid dearly for that comment too. Now the despicables hold the power and double standards are playing out everywhere.

Like the smaller kid finally punching his bully in the nose, Barack Obama asserts that change requires deliberate action and not passive expectation. Pushback is growing every day against double standards, against the mind-boggling level of incompetence, against the blatant lying, and against the galling mean-spirited displays of power. Those are the stories I look for and the communities I’m looking to support. For all the shocking videos of masked ICE agents arresting someone, there are videos of neighbourhoods pushing back, crowds confronting ICE agents, and signs going up, “ICE Not Welcome”.

If one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, then so be it.

I never meant for this blog to become so politically opinionated, but the times, they have a’changed. I’ll have more to say on this in subsequent posts. In the meantime, let’s take a break to enjoy the Victoria Day weekend.

Keep your joy.

Anne Milne is an every Sunday blogger, unless it’s a holiday weekend. Or summertime.

Photo credit; CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com.