When governments become dogs of the mangers.
An enduring crisis of betrayal and abandonment
My blog in many ways is a lament for my country and civilization that has walked away from democracy and values once embraced. Now we suffer the servitude to war, chaos and the degeneracy that goes with it.
My blog is also a pitch for the essential multipolar world that is emerging as the only viable alternative for planetary survival.
I am also a self-declared internationalist as this is where the world’s future is going to be decided. War cannot be a part of our future as the world is at an historic pivot point where the barbarism of war just accelerates the demise of planet. We must accept that we are not masters of this finite planet but custodians of it and renounce our self-destructive appetites.
When we see warfare as our savior there is something desperately wrong.
The rest of the world does not want war. They want to escape the folly and degeneracy the collective West has created for ourselves. They see us for what we have become, where we cannot— we are the blind led by the blind.
There was a time when political parties and their leaders commanded some respect but as democracy declines so does the quality of leadership and the integrity of political parties. It is also of concern that the media declines to the point where it is no more than cheerleader, propagandist and apologist for the decline.
We are at a time when political leadership in the West has been dangerously debased and to follow politics is to see the pathos. Chaos reigns supreme, against a back drop of endless war and violence at a time the world community should be pulling together for better futures. The threats we face are of our own making and no amount of scapegoating will change this.
At a time in world history when we need to do politics better the West has become a chaotic anarchy. There are many reasons for this precipitous decline, but the most important is we have abandoned our democracies. Democracy is a process by which we govern ourselves and where we don’t maintain the process and its values we slide into the anarchy we are experiencing. Where there is a power vacuum other ideologies, like fascism and neoliberalism take root and fundamentally alter our societies to the point of destroying them.
The problem for Western civilization is our leadership are the children of spite and refuse to accept responsibility for a fifty year old tyranny of their own making.. They are not leaders but accomplices, bought and paid for facilitating the collapse of the West, refusing to accept history’s harsh edict that empire’s die from the moment of birth, victims of human folly and corruption.
Who stole the cookies? Western elites, as they stand over the broken jar gobbling the last cookies, telling endless lies while trying to claim innocence— a pathetic sight indeed!
The prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau is surrounded in controversy. This isn’t the first time, and he is under great pressure from many quarters to resign. Over the 9 years he has been prime minister it has been a series of gaffs and scandals some of which should have seen his resignation or at least censure from his party caucus.
Trudeau won a majority in 2015 not so much on his or his party’s merit but voters desire to bury the the Harper government which was systematically dismantling the country. Harper was driven by his doctrinaire conservatism and homage to the US Republicans. Trudeau rules with benign neglect and virtue signalling with his party groupies to US Democrats. When the likes of Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton arrive in town it is a festival of obsequious adulation.
Trudeau has always been long on the celebrity that comes with politics but short on the focus and work of being an effective leader. For the past eight he has used his prime ministership as a bully pulpit where his ministers rarely appear in public speaking for their departments.
As a compulsive narcissist he is not there to serve the public or national interest. His only interest is self interest. His wonky agenda rolls on with the tacit support of a burned out Liberal party refusing to hold him accountable. Their first allegiance is to pensions and perks before responsible government and political integrity.
His is very much a dog in the manger government, a neoliberal placeholder where his party holds power in a system that is broken, with only 32% of the popular vote where and the opposition Conservatives have 34% of the vote and far fewer seats. He refuses to bring in electoral reform that would re-democratize the country. The Liberal party has promised for over a hundred years to bring in proportionate representation.
Like their American equivalents Canada’s two major parties are in full retreat from actual governance and supplicants to the elites they serve. They are the drones of empire sacrificing their populations to wage war on the world.
Where Western governments use to mediate between public and private sectors they have collapsed into the predatory arms of corporate capitalism and the fascism that goes with it, reduced to barking dogs in the manger.
When French philosopher Simone Weil wrote her book, on the abolition of all political parties she pointed out that parties ultimately become self-serving totalitarians.
She also wrote The Need for Roots, as the dogs in manger continue to rip them up.
“History is among our most precious treasures. It is our essential anchor. It is our village green, our corner tavern, and each generation writes it to reflect how those alive understand it. History tells us where we are in the human story and what we, alive now, must do to advance this story as others have delivered it to us.
Do we have to continue on in the direction of those who came before? Do we have to turn in a new direction? These are the kinds of questions history hands us.
Let me go out on a limb here. To tamper with history is among the gravest of sins against the human cause.”—- Patrick Lawrence American Journalist
In case you missed it:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/simone-weil-the-iliad
Here's this by Simone Weill.
Thanks for the essay and recommendation (although I can't afford to shop on Amazon).