“Batshit crazy.”

That’s a term I’m hearing more often these days.

Individuals are “batshit crazy.” The world has gone “batshit crazy.”

Exhibit A: Vladimir Putin.

The lives of 8 billion people around the world are being negatively affected, to greater and lesser degrees, by Putin’s madness. And no one has the balls to remove him from office. Putin is the most powerful person on the planet right now. Like the song says, “He’s got the whole world in his hand.”

Sure, he’s “batshit crazy.” But what about all the people who enable him? Yup. “Batshit crazy,” too.

Exhibit B: The United States.

Sigh …

Where do we begin? SCOTUS, I suppose. It appears to have gone “batshit crazy,” too. The court has made it quite clear that it is turning back the clock in the United States. It’s doing the biblical thing, much the way the Taliban has brought in an Islamic fundamentalist state in Afghanistan. The recent Roe V Wade ruling in the U.S. sends women a clear message: they must be in subjection to the patriarchy.

Hey, it’s not only conservative men who’ve gone “batshit crazy” in the U.S. Many women want to live in subjection to men, too. Because the Bible says so. They live to service their man, who will protect them. After all, they are the weaker sex. Even hardened feminists are saying “male-bodied people” are superior to women in terms of physical strength. And might makes right in the United States, eh.

It’s a startling admission by feminists and a defeat for women, and it widens a rabbit hole in which women will have fewer and fewer rights.

Will it become as bad for women in the U.S. as it is for women in Afghanistan? Will they be shielded from “men’s work”? Will they have to conform to a dress code? Anything is possible now that conservatives — and the extreme right — feel emboldened in a country that is allowing a few regressive people in the Supreme Court to have its way with the majority. They are the Putins of America, and like the Russian leader they are far from done with imposing their will upon the majority.

Up next, by one judge’s own admission: same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights in general. Gay and lesbian married couples may soon see their marriages nullified, and in some states their sexual relationships could be criminalized. As for trans people — already under heavy fire from Republicans and, again startlingly, feminists and some lesbian and gay people — they face extinction in the United States.

Anti-trans lesbians, gay men and feminists were warned they were siding with the devil when they teamed up with conservatives to wage war on trans people. They were told conservatives hate gay people, too, and would come for them if at all possible. Well, it is more than possible now: it is likely. “Thank you for your service in nullifying trans people, suckers. Now it’s your turn. (Yes, you, too, Caitlyn Jenner.)”

The conservatives and their extreme right counterparts never embraced the Golden Rule. And, sadly, anti-trans lesbian, gay people and feminists forgot about “live and let live,” too, and allowed themselves to be consumed by hate.

What next? What other rights will the few on the top court take away from 330 million Americans? Well, look to the extreme right — and white supremacists — for previews of what’s to come. You know what kind of country they want, and they appear to be well on their way to achieving it.

No doubt, many Americans are considering moving from states with draconian laws in a country that appears to be more divided than ever. But it is not improbable that there will be a civil war in the Divided States of America. There are certainly enough guns in a country that shrugs off the repeated slaughters of schoolchildren by disenchanted people.

Maybe some Americans see Canada as an oasis from the madness, too.

Well, Canada is is not immune to any of it, either. We have an extreme right here, courtesy of Americans and, no doubt, other foreign nations that have been supporting them. We also have a Conservative party that courts people on the right, if not the extreme right — because sometimes it’s difficult to draw a line between the two. Many on the right would happily turn back the clock to a white supremacist country in which abortion is illegal and women are in subjection to men, and LGBTQ people are nullified and imprisoned — if not executed.

Could it happen here? Well, not as easily as it is happening in the U.S. But the extreme right is deceiving a lot of moderate conservatives in Canada. They are lying to them, just as two justices on the American Supreme Court lied to the American people during Senate hearings when they said they would not touch Roe V Wade. The extreme right would rape Canadian democracy and impose a totalitarian regime — and gawd help anyone who is living on government pensions. But in the world of white supremacy, collateral damage is to be expected. During the so-called convoy protests in Ottawa this year — which were fuelled by people on the extreme right in the U.S. and Canada — some supporters were calling for executions once they overthrow the government. They didn’t care about the hardships they were imposing on innocent working-class people by occupying much of downtown Ottawa for weeks on end and blockading the Canadian borders — all under the lie of opposing vaccine mandates. And they’re heading back to Ottawa with the same intent this week as Canadians celebrate Canada Day.

Still, Canadian provinces can do something that American states can’t do so easily: we can secede from the nation. My home province, Quebec, has nearly done so a couple of times. Should the federal Conservative party win an election and pass draconian legislation taking away cherished rights, Quebec would probably leave Confederation after holding a referendum on the issue.

The Conservative party is aware of that, of course, and will try to walk a fine line between courting votes on the right and not dividing the country too much.

So, maybe Canada is a much safer bet for Americans looking to flee their country.

But then again, the Putin factor could make everything else moot. The current ruler of the world appears to have a special dislike for democracy and the West. He even thinks Russia could win a nuclear war, some reports have said. And as one high-ranking Canadian military official implied in an interview this past weekend, we are closer to nuclear war than ever before.

Indeed, Putin is likely to nuke the West, and the West will do the same to Russia. And perhaps to China. When it’s all over, Putin will emerge from his bomb shelter to find he is Lord of the Cockroaches. Sure, he’ll probably regret what he has done.

But the world won’t be “batshit crazy” anymore.

There’s that, eh?

Click, click . . .

— Jillian