Building Resilience in the American Furniture Industry

I've never forgotten those comments, and I remember his stories about growing up and participating in knife fights between Arabs and Jews. That was the world he came from. That was his previous life. And he brought any preconceptions he had with him to Canada.My wife and I have two children and four grandchildren. Religion has never been an issue for us. Nonetheless, finding someone to marry us back then was no easy task. My parents knew this Reform rabbi and urged that we see him. We did, but he refused to marry us. We ended up getting married by a United Church minister, and if that makes it null and void after all these years, I'm a monkey's uncle.Over the years, I've heard everything. That Jews have half of the world's wealth. That the slaughter of six million European Jews was a total fabrication. And the age-old plot to take over the international order. Finally, individuals believe what they want to believe, and there is always a clear link between ignorance and what is viewed as truth. As ignorance rises to unprecedented levels, truth becomes the proverbial first casualty of conflict. The truth is that there are many uneducated people out there. But is anti-Semitism—let alone anti-anything else—such a serious issue in Canada today? Relatively speaking? I guess not.I do media seminars and will conduct an actual interview to demonstrate everything. One example is when Avi Lewis interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali on his CBC show On the Map years ago, following the publication of her best-selling book Infidel about her life as a Muslim woman to widespread acclaim. The host asserted that Islamophobia was widespread in North America and that Muslims, especially those here, felt under siege. But Ali disagreed.

"I think it's highly exaggerated that Muslims 

living in America and the West are under siege," she told the crowd. "If that's the case, we've seen organizations under siege in the past, and they usually depart. "I don't see any American Muslims leaving and returning to any Muslim country."She also added this gem: "I don't have the same luxury that you do. You grew up with freedom, and you can spit on it because you don't know what it's like to be without it."Touché.There is a lot of knee-jerk reaction in the country now about Jews being persecuted. Black people are under threat. Muslims are under siege. What do you have. Again, according to the report, everyone and his or her brother is under siege. Fine. Aside from First Nations citizens, we are all from somewhere else, therefore if you truly believe that, I recommend comparing Canada to where you originated from.But people do not do that. They just like to complain. Of course, anti-Semitism was once a more serious issue in Canada than it is now. What's the difference now? Two items. First, Donald Trump's accession to the White House made bigotry, and thus rampant ignorance, fashionable and even praised.Second, and in parallel with number one, we have the ease with which nutbars spread the word, and I blame social media, the social-media giants that can't police themselves, and the government for allowing it to happen. 

However, the government rarely, if ever, leads. 

It follows and reacts, and even then, you're lucky. There was no January 6th storming of the Bastille—or the United States Capitol in Washington—until technology enabled it.Despite the benefits that the internet and social media provide, I believe the overall effect is detrimental. Harry Rakowski wrote an outstanding post on the problems of social media for The Hub, stating that Facebook "prioritized profits over the safety of its users and facilitated misinformation, hate, and calls for violence on its platform." He went on to add that disinformation was beneficial to the company's bottom line, and that it "gets six times more views than the truth."It's like Big Tobacco. We realized cigarettes were harmful to your health and caused lung cancer. However, smoking was once socially acceptable and even promoted. Just look at any old film from the 1940s or 1950s. Finally, science took over, and we discovered the truth, but at a high cost.However, there is a deeper issue with social networking. Our generation lacks social skills. 

Furthermore, I question their ability to conduct meaningful study

It appears to me that the more information available to the public, the more uneducated they become. Why? When information is easily accessible, people become lazy and complacent, which is where true racism thrives. Today, we are yearning for folks who speak the truth and are not scared to do so, but this requires two commodities that appear to be in limited supply.Honesty and guts.When George Willtoday's dean of conservative columnists, started his newspaper column more than 40 years ago, he asked the dean of his day, William F. Buckley Jr., how he came up with topics for his own twice-weekly column. Buckley replied, "The world annoys me at least twice a week."As someone who tries and fails to avoid the various things that irritate me on Twitter every day, I've decided to take a different approach and write a piece once a year when I'm motivated by great and important causes.