It was good while it lasted, one last refuge for men; or, at least, boys growing into men, with all that implies:
End of an Era: Boy Scouts of America Officially Changes Name to Embrace Inclusivity After 114 Years
I was a guest at a couple’s house recently, south of the border (that is, the U.S.), and on the dresser in the room was a picture of their son as a high school eagle scout, badges galore, square of jaw and keen of eye, clearly formed into his early manhood by his tenure in the Boy Scouts. I fear such photos will soon be extinct, as future Boy Scouts – pardon me, Scouts of America – will not be what they once were. But that’s presuming the Boy Scouts – or the society formerly known as the Boy Scouts – have a future, and I would bet against it.
The same, sadly, goes for the good old Mounties, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada’s long-standing, iconic, federal police service. Founded in 1920, which makes them 104, their run was just a decade shy of the Boy Scouts.
What was their motto, ‘they always find their man?’. Whatever you might say about criminals on the lam, it seems they cannot find any men to fill their ranks, and no wonder, for the headline says it all:
“RCMP guide supports employees changing their lived gender identity.”
Their ‘lived gender identity’. How does one unpack that phrase with any sense of metaphysical reality? Like so many things in this fractured Dominion, we may need to start from scratch, as medicine, education – even sororities – and, now, policing descend into insanity. Our last, least worst hope seems now to reside in hitting rock bottom, also known as reality. Like Humpty Dumpty – who also refused to see things as they are, but only as they he wanted them to be – what a fall that will be.
Funny how Monty Python saw all this coming a long time ago, even if, back then, they still had the Mounties on the right side.