Is North America capable of waging peace and prosperity?
A modest proposal
Looking over the fence again I have a modest proposal and a totally wild idea. The USA is ungraciously retiring from being the world’s singular rogue super-power and Canada has been along for the ride on the coat tails of the empire. Now is the time to start looking at ways to recover our dignity, honor and prepare for more promising futures. I don’t mean to exclude Mexico, but its two Northern neighbors are more problematic for the world at large and need to change our ways at this point in time.
Sixty years ago our vocabulary included such noble ideas as the American Dream, The Citadel on the Hill for all the world to see(Ronald Reagan, Tommy Douglas). There was John Kenneth Galbraith (a Canadian by birth) and his Affluent Society, and J. F. Kennedy and his silly notions of world peace and harmony.
The war mongers crashed the party, Milton Friedman the neoliberal snake oil salesman arrived on the scene, George Bush Jr and Dick Cheney decided it was time to ruin America and sorrowful Obama arrived on the scene having made promises not kept. Most recently Biden, Blinken and Sullivan, the undertakers, with a cast of demented neocons are driving nails into the Republic’s coffin.
While all of this nefarious nonsense has been blighting the American spirit the world has been changing as it is known to do. Change has an unstoppable momentum… its like trying stop a freight train on a dime— the dime gets mashed out of existence. Empire’s are no more than failed attempts to freeze change in favor of the totalitarian despots who sponsor them. Their delusions of grandeur come at a very high cost to everybody else, the collateral damage is incalculable, and the morbidity palpable.
As George Keenan, American diplomat and soothsayer predicted, it was only a matter of time before the Asian continent with its massive population and growth potential would take its place in the sun. Too many wars later it has done so and the new multipolar world is emerging as it must, as the unipolar world of the last half century has been a consummate disaster.
We are emerging from a dark age and must embrace the future.
With a presidential election coming less than a year away Americans have to face the reality a new president is not going to save the Republic. The office of president has been seriously corrupted by too many decades of service to the Empire. What is going to save America is a whole slate of reform minded patriots. This may require a whole new political party or a constituent assembly to head the freight train in a new more positive and peaceful direction.
Canada being a mimic of the Empire next door faces similar challenges as our system is equally broken. So called “liberalism” is a corpse. We like to see North America as the bastion of social democracy and claim the right to rule the world. As it is, we have abandoned social democracy and become a ghetto of war mongering delusional pretenses and prejudices.
The road to redemption is there for the taking. Fifty years from now these times will be looked back on as a dark age, endless wars, failed empires and barbarism.
We must all get back to courting the dream instead of the nightmare.
History’s Parrot has now published over 200 posts. This is an invitation to take a dive into the archives where what is past becomes the present and the future. Causality and context are our best friends in these dire times.
Perhaps Mexico and Canada but for certain NOT the US.