The Tortoise and The Hare: The Civilizational Collapse Version
Canada, my home country, disappoints me no end. It has, over the course of my life — the correspondence is so clear that I sometimes believe I may be responsible for it — turned decisively toward the soft despotism of democratic socialism, the relativistic nihilism of multiculturalism, the personality cult normalization of the multi-generational Trudeau dynasty, the most laughable excesses of progressive identity politics, and…well, on and on. Today, however, against all odds and in spite of the better judgment of many years, I find myself willing, albeit only provisionally and halfheartedly, to speak of my nationality with a modicum of pride, if only in a relative sense, namely that at least I am not an American.
For — and this is really saying something — no country in the so-called free world is more ill-governed, more unprincipled, or more absurdly idol-worshipping today, than that very country which was, for over two hundred years, the beacon of liberty and last true hope for the survival of what is best about modern civilization. Now, by contrast with her charmed past, The United States of America is a clown show, though a distinctly unfunny one. Selling out and antagonizing every one of her natural allies, while appeasing and none-too-secretly playing off to the very worst and most dangerous of her, and the entire West’s, natural enemies, America has not merely forsaken her historic role and (if you will) God-given mission, but has turned herself into something very close to a full-on enemy and naysayer of Western civilization. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping must be — no, they certainly are — sitting in their palaces, surrounded by moats of blood, thinking, “With enemies like America, who needs friends?”
Donald Trump, in my judgment, has never read a book. However, if I am wrong, then one book that he is alleged to have read is My New Order, a book of Hitler’s speeches from the 1930s. Perhaps, if a peculiar interest in that period of world history did indeed pique his minimal attention span at some point, he might have focused a little closer to home and read a book about the effects of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Or, assuming my judgment of his actual reading history is true, perhaps he might at least have been enticed into watching a one-minute YouTube video of Thomas Sowell explaining said history:
In any case, the tariffs Trump is currently imposing and threatening to impose are not merely stupid from an economic point of view, but, in the main, deeply damaging to alliances with America’s most politically friendly trading and military partners. And his ongoing and repetitive rhetoric — just jokes, his minions will repeatedly tell us — about turning Canada in the fifty-first state only reinforce the extent to which Trump is more than happy to give his lord and master Vladimir Putin everything the latter could hope for, as quickly as possible.
For what it is worth, there was a time in my life when I might not have thought my country becoming the fifty-first U.S. state was such a terrible idea, and there were certainly times when I entertained the thought of becoming an American myself, by more orthodox methods. Those days are long gone now. But, to repurpose a famous line by Ronald Reagan, I must note that my soul didn’t abandon The United States of America; The United States of America abandoned my soul. Donald Trump, incidentally, is not the cause, but merely the clown mask, of this betrayal.
Godspeed and good riddance to her. Given my druthers, I will remain a provisionally-proud Canadian, thank you, since the immediately looming alternative would be even more frustrating and embarrassing — a bit like purchasing season’s tickets for the Montreal Expos and then waking up the next day to learn the team has been sold and moved to Washington, D.C. Or like having bought a ticket for the next sailing of the Titanic at the very moment she was striking the iceberg.
Who could have predicted that Canada would cling to its existence as a viable modern democracy and semi-legitimate rhetorical opponent of tyranny longer than the U.S.? I, at least, would not have predicted so. And yet here we are.
