Perhaps my conributions to CC have become boringly predictable....
The nature of this and several other threads at Canadian Content (This one is titled "International Politics") are product of events and circumstances that have occurred and are occurring around the world. There is a particular emphasis on the perturbations of the interrelationship between the United States and the rest of the world, that's got far more to do with the United States than it has to do with MikeyDB or Canadian Content.
From the dark day of 9/11 onward the world changed. What changed was that the United States was attacked by radical extremists and in response to this event, the United States in the person of George Bush began building walls. What didn't change was the "Ugly American".
It would be convenient no doubt if everyone else in the world accorded this criminal event of Sept.11/2001 and the American administration's response to the attack as the seminal reason or tipping-point in how non-Americans regard the United States. It isn't. America has behaved very poorly for a very long time. Americans have (as have Canadians) become so content and mollified at enjoying a life-style and a "quality of life" that relied on injustice and moral turpitude for its maintenance that whatever either an American administration or a Canadian government does in the exercise of enhancing and furthering this imbalance could be ignored so long as Americans and Canadians were kept complacent ...fat and happy....
The events of 9/11 and the reaction by the United States and its people demonstrate an attitude and a character that's long existed among the American people. History is the chronicle of a people and a nations fundamental character and rapproachment with the planet and the neighbors with whom a single nation shares the planet.
Regular, "normal folk" have seen behind the curtain and these glimpses have simply confirmed to me what I has an individual believed for a long time. Regular folk have seen lies and corruption from "big-business" from Canadian and American governments and watched as various chickens have "come home to roost.....
A far greater number of Americans and Canadians don't have the capacity nor the intelligence to simultaneously integrate and understand the the dynamics at play behind that curtain. Some like those who watch in horror and dismay as bridges collapse and space shuttles explode, as cities devastated by natural disasters writhe in helplessness ignored and disowned by Washington, while billons are spent prosecuting a war predicated on a hoax or at a mimimum, a pack of exaggerations and lies and young people are retured home in bloodied body-bags begin to understand that the events that capture their attention on the TV and in the headlines aren't evidence of a morally sound or even "just" society.
A recreational internet 'forum', a venue for opinion and superficial banter perhaps ought not be the canvas upon which attitudes are born or where understanding can be achieved.
Canadians have witnessed the sham of Canadian justice, from Air India and Maher Arar to Steven Truscott. Americans have watched as their constitution and their justice system is reduced to parlour games and sound-bytes....
What some would have everyone believe is that these dynamics arose over-night, that the corruption and disingenuous quality of our political systems is a "current event".
That simply isn't the case.
Still other's would pretend that the individual is exempt, somehow not included as part of the dynamic that builds to eruptions of violence whether that's war between states or violence in the streets. This isn't the truth either.
Postmodern mankind isn't prepared to consult the historical record so mistakes keep getting repeated and the cyclic nature of human conflict simply continues.
Many folk are unprepared to entertain the idea that there is something terribly wrong in our societies and that expressions of greed and corruption are somehow isolated to the wealthy and the powerful. The reality is that human vision has been blinded by the very same inducements to forego justice and integrity in people's daily lives as those events and conditions that raise ire and concern erupt from our social institutions and governments.
Our appetites are sated by the industrialist and political henchmen, but their actions are symptomatic of a much greater illness and unpreparedness to deal with reality.
Canadian Content isn't likely to be 'the' vehicle or any vehicle for that matter in inviting individuals to consider anything much "deeper" than juicy media tid-bits that titillate the voyeur and entertain the simple minded.
Feel free to ignore history.
Feel free to forego synthesis and by all means, accept and revel in your choice to ignorance over critical enquiry.
My posts are boring because an unwillingness to entertain any alternative to the 'story' you've enthusiastically embraced translates as simply a review of conditions and circumstances you've already known and are aware of. The reason you pretend otherwise is because you lack the capacity and the temperament to acknowledge the truth. You're happy in your ignorance and complacent with the conditions that will in a short while, begin to bring your greatests fears home to you in ways you've never imagined.
I withdraw from Canadian Content, not because you've offended or angered me, but because you're quite frankly not worth the effort.
" implied.
Ain't THAT the truth....