The Sad Saga of Canada-US Politics
Our only "exceptionalism" is our arrogant and bloody intransigence. We are not the center of the universe, just along for the short ride like everybody before and after us.
"We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing."-- Gore Vidal
The worst parts of American politics are creeping into Canada. Here’s why—Toronto Star, November 5th 2024
As a Canadian blogger I don’t spend much time following my country’s media. It is censored, parochial, and trashy.
The Toronto Star is a major Canadian daily newspaper corporate owned and government subsidized. It is also a mouth piece for Canada’s governing Liberal party and the author of the article, Susan Delacourt is well known to have close ties to the Liberal party.
I read the above article with some interest as I wanted to hear her version of why American politics are creeping into Canada, especially when the tumultuous American presidential election is being decided today.
I should also let it be known that after years of following Canadian politics I have moved on to becoming an internationalist. As a peripheral adjunct to the American empire what happens here is of little consequence. Like all other NATO countries Canada blindly accepts and accommodates the empire’s every wish and liability. Like the empire’s homeland, the Republic, the costs are both demeaning and ruinous fiscally, morally and socially.
As the West is determined to burn itself down with endless war, moral and fiscal penury, and collapsed democracies, the Global South is rapidly moving forward to a more promising and just future via BRICS, where 80 countries are on the waiting list to join.
To read the duplicitous Canadian MSM becomes a yard stick for just how divorced the country is from the real world. Canadians are thoroughly indoctrinated to hate Russia and China and politicians spend too much time complaining about foreign interventions in our affairs when we are not even a sovereign country and an adjunct to the world’s most interventionist power.
Delacourt makes the glib conclusion that it is because of “polarization” when it is much more complex and ominous.
The real reason elections are so close is they are really stalemates where voters have no real choice so they simply park their votes with one party or another. One of the most common complaints I heard in our last federal election was ”There is nobody to vote for.” What they were really saying as that no party had a distinct platform giving voters real choice.
There is no real choice because neoliberalism calls for the denigration of government and this has resulted in the erasure of party identities where all sing from the neoliberal song book of deregulation, privatization and free reign predatory capitalism,up to and including endless warfare. Fifty years later governments are in the cold embrace of corporate capture where they are bought and paid for and democracy is a mere pretense. Just as Americans don’t want to see their country as an oligarchy, Canadians don’t want to see we are a colonized satrap. Our political parties are clones of their American counter parts.
This is born out when Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May calls for Jill Stein as US Green Party leader to withdraw from the race and endorse Kamela Harris’ failing campaign. Stein is a capable candidate and could win enough votes to see Harris lose to Trump. Trump, for better or worse, is the only option to Harris who has run a disgraceful campaign. Foolishly, May has inserted herself into the US election as part of a desperate coalition determined to defeat Trump at any cost, so much so that the nefarious Dick Cheney is endorsing Harris.
Larry Fink of Wall Street, and CEO of BlackRock has announced the election will make little difference, as he and his fellow oligarchs well know as they own the political parties and foreign wars are really corporate wars where BlackRock is heavily invested in Ukraine.
We are also living Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Inc where inverted totalitarianism prevails and only the trappings of democracy remain.
When the article title says the worst aspects of American politics are creeping into Canada, the tense is dead wrong as our politics have been owned and controlled for too long. Like a lot of other countries, namely European, we have been riding the coattails of the empire for too long. Neo-colonization leads to a smug complacency not affordable in today’s world
Delacourt in her brief article infantilizes her readers by reducing it to a single causation when it is a complex issue with deep historic roots; where lack of context becomes a form of censorship and the truth is smudged out.
The Prophecy of History and some historical roots
If we take a close look at the political cartoon at the top of the page, it was published on July 22nd 1870, three years after Canada was confederated as a nation. The cartoon is very prophetic as the USA was already a well established Republic with the Munroe Doctrine 1823 a part of history where the US claimed its dominance of the hemisphere. The cartoon is very poignant as Uncle Sam is ever ready to offer his adoptive services as the mischievous doting uncle.
From the time of Confederation to 1945 Canada maintained a close relationship with Britain fighting its wars, a member of the Commonwealth, pledging allegiance to the King, not having full sovereignty until 1931 and and a written constitution until 1982.
After 1945 Canada emerged as a prosperous beneficiary of the war much like our southern neighbor. Canada supplied armaments, thousands of aircraft and troops. Canada was positioned for a prosperous future but faced a crisis of choice —how independent would it be of the USA— colonization or a sovereign nation. Canadian political elites could not resist the lure of continentalism and being a “ branch plant” economy to the US. Economic union became inevitable and the collapse of political sovereignty followed.
In 1970 NDP leader David Lewis wrote his book Corporate Welfare Bums. This book recorded the rapid ascent of corporate power in the country, its growing influence on government, and as a consequence speeding the integration of the US/Canadian economies.
In 1965 Philosopher George Grant wrote his Lament for a Nation predicting with great prescience the complete colonization of the country. Suggesting we may or may not apply for formal union. The colonization is now complete.
Similarly H. T. Wilson wrote his book Retreat From Governance as he saw government become more and more redundant.
In 1991 Mel Hurtig wrote his book The Betrayal of Canada. In 1993 David Orchard wrote his book The Fight For Canada in 1993. To no avail as the FTA and NAFTA were signed completing Canada’s economic union with the US.
As John Foster Dulles ( US Secretary of State from1951 to 1957) noted to get control of a country’s economy is to own the country. This was the mad era of “free trade” agreements which were actually corporate constitutions intended to dominate national economies. Canada’s sovereignty was in an irreversible death spiral.
Today the integration is complete short of formal union as the forces of neoliberalism have delivered Western governments into corporate capture, where politicians have had their identities and integrities erased. They are clones of their American counterparts, fighting and financing the empire’s wars. Canada like all other NATO member states is being cannibalized by the ravenous appetites of the empire next door as corporatism reigns supreme over all.
Cooking the books, being historically illiterate and willfully ignorant
George Orwell cautioned too many decades ago we are losing the ability to tell the objective truth. We surely are when reporters fudge the truth, we are historically illiterate, and politicians are practitioners of wilful ignorance, which is negligence leading to pure criminality.
Where we cannot reference the truths of our times we are listless societies adrift in the doldrums.
Where Gore Vidal coined the term the .“United States of Amnesia“. We have gone so much further as the civilization of wilful ignorance out of tune with our times, our true history and lying ourselves into a dismal isolationism.
Our only exceptionalism is our arrogant and bloody intransigence. We are not the center of the universe, just along for the ride like everybody before and after us.
Mother Earth is 4 billion years old, and I wouldn’t blame her a bit for revoking our tenancy.
"Exceptional" or exceptionable??? And the more the Yankee 'patootie' is kissed, the more arrogant they become.