Jean
I was reading a article this mourning and thought you might want to see some of it.
It sounds like it could be talking about the US.
We have developed very similar circumstances over the decades and brought most of it on ourselves.
The Upside to Canadiansâ View That âCanada Is Brokenâ Is That Most Are More Indignant Than Resigned.
Imagine living where two-thirds of the inhabitants think âeverything is broken in this country right now.â Then imagine it being good news. Because, according to a new Leger poll, if youâre a Canadian you do⌠and it is.
Obviously, it would be better to live where the vast majority did not think things were broken, if they were correct. But itâs hard to think of a place where they would be correct. Given flawed human nature, government and society have always been in bad condition everywhere. Indeed, most people through most of history have rightly believed they lived somewhere that everything was broken and, worse, could not be fixed.
Iâve twice referred on this topic to Austria-Hungary, which crumbled in 1918 and only lasted four years, as with the Ottoman Empire that bit the dust four years later, because its neighbours were terrified of the mess it would create when it crumbled. (I donât normally quote Hitler except to warn about how evil people think, but his âMein Kampfâ ridiculing of Germanyâs pre-Great War ally as âthis mummy of a stateâ is memorably bang on.)
If you read the newspapers, including foreign news, you see that most people today live in places where they would have to be insane not to think everything was broken, probably irreparably. I donât want to single out, say, Mali or Syria, because there are so many others, like Putinâs Russia. And it wasnât better in the old days in, say, Mexico under Porfirio DĂaz, or Russia under Aleksandr III or Ivan the Terrible.
Nor, I might add in this context, is The Woman Kingâs glossy portrait of life in 19th-century Dahomey credible. But it is instructive to think about the late Roman Republic, in which people like Cicero were delivering Philippics and moaning âO Tempora O Mores.â
Nowadays I do not think our very broken schools are teaching kids who Cicero was or what was bothering him. But he was very popular in the 18th century, more than during his first-century B.C. lifetime, because many people saw signs of serious trouble around them and were determined to do something about it.
Which is why this poll result is good news. Again, it would be better if Canadians were rightly pleased with the state of affairs. But as things stand theyâd have to be insane, and the most alarming possibility would be to live somewhere like Camazotz where propaganda plus mental decay produced a demented conviction that everything was fine. Instead, when politicians brush aside complaints that things are broken, we apparently brush them aside. Phew.
To inhabit a regime where things were so bad you werenât allowed to complain would also be terrible. And many do. Remember the old joke about a pollster saying, âExcuse me, Iâm surveying public opinion on meat shortages,â and an American responds with âWhatâs âshortageâ?â a Soviet with âWhatâs âmeatâ?â and a Chinese with âWhatâs âpublic opinionâ?â (And you can, or once could, add an Israeli, Bostonian, or some such going, âWhatâs âExcuse meâ?â)
Obviously, Canadians know what all these things are, and itâs good. Moreover, weâre angry that things are broken, which is also good⌠up to a point. Itâs very dangerous to sink into rage and paranoia over such conditions. But almost anything beats sinking into resignation, which is what happened in most places over most of history.
General JosĂŠ de la Cruz Porfirio DĂaz Mori, for instance, was President of Mexico for seven terms between 1876 and 1911, basically the real-world âAutumn of the Patriarch,â a period of hallucinatory stagnation in which time itself seemed have stopped. And then it restarted with a hideously violent revolution, underlining the terrible human cost of situations so bad the populace succumbs to fury, despair, or a toxic mix of the two.
In Canada we havenât. Not even with a major public sector union deciding nowâs a good time to demand a 47 percent raise over three years. Such a thing needs to be hooted off the stage, especially given that the public sector is the most conspicuously busted part of our society nowadays. But it almost certainly will be, because Canadians havenât given up or broken down. We want better and, crucially, still believe in it.
It wonât be easy, and we canât go blaming others. Not even for electing these politicians; we did it to ourselves. And social disorder, increasing rudeness, lack of self-restraint, these mores didnât fall from the sky or the Peace Tower. We embraced radical personal liberation, from social institutions, individual character, and ultimately reality itself and, just as Cicero warned, collapsing political self-government is driven by the collapsing personal kind.
Which is very bad. No question. Weâre in a mess we made. But weâre upset, indignant, and, I think, determined, rather than bitter, resigned, and malevolent. Which is very good.
END
Larry
PS
A young lady made this comment in response to the article. IMO it was well written
Trudeau and Biden have both been able to do maximum damage in as short a time as
possible.
Sane and sober people notice these things.
Although I must admit the Biden regime has done it in record time here in the states.
But Trudeau was the shiny thing and so many thought that was all good and fun until the hammer fell and they were robbed and jailed for protesting.
Now they want your guns, Canada.
That will not end well.
Same as it ever was, tyrants gonna tyrant and once they disarm you itâs all over but the gulags.
Freedom is always one fascist leader away and I think both countries need to take a hard look at what is happening and change things fast.
Law and order, borders, strong leaders for a moral outcome.
Or chaos reigns supreme.
