longer.blue

Just as an introduction, I am Canadian. (This will probably be a bit of a disjointed rant, so bear with me) I know my (CDN) governments for the last few decades have sucked in terms of supporting our military. We have for a long time just assumed that as long as we had a basic military that could support others, and/or provide peacekeeping forces that would basically be enough, since we had the biggest, baddest military force as our neighbour and best friend. That is on us. And I think most Canadians will accept that we fucked up there. However, what I really would like to raise is that, in at least my opinion, the world looked towards the USA as a generally stabilizing presence in the world. Yes, you could always pick at many, many incidents in which they over-reached, but, in general their power was stabilizing and allowing the rest of the world to move forward in peaceful, and socially progressive ways. This has all turned upside down. Not just with Trump, but with the extreme concentration of wealth in a handful of tech oligarchs. Those of a certain age may have read William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer. This comparison is less about the tech, but rather that what he got wrong was that in his book, the Japanese Zaibatsu’s have, in this current timeline, been replaced by Silicon Valley Tech-Bro’s and Fascists. The fact that there are many Tech Companies (With ‘Multinational Presence’) with more revenue than many countries leads to those companies truly believing that they are beyond national control. In fact, I truly believe they consider themselves the equals of nation states. The fact that there are individual people (not corporations or countries) that have a net worth of multiple hundreds of billions to a trillion or more of USD makes an absolute mockery of normal human values. Now you have a President that is actually a convicted felon, an alleged pedophile, arguably suffering from dementia/Alzheimer’s, and may in fact be compromised by Russia. His recent actions regarding Russia and Ukraine, specifically cancelling the sanctions, likely directing the crippling of Starsheild, and making a, literally pointless diesel deal with Russia has turned, even more than the tariffs and his (dumbass) 51st state rhetoric, me and people I know so far against the USA that I have a very hard time believing that our relationship will ever be the same. I don’t know what the future will bring, but I hope that there are rational USA’ians of sufficient numbers to try to put a stop to the current insanity running in their executive branch, and the other houses of legislators grow the spine necessary to fulfill their roles. The current world situation leaves me with nothing but dismay that between environmental issues, geo-political issues, and the rampant excesses of the current version of capitalism, we will end up with a horrible near future.