There was an analysis floating around today that the US has a bipartisan consensus on overseas military intervention because it's a status apportioning mechanism for their imperial elite. Seems entirely plausible.
Canada is sort of an imperial remnant, structurally; not quite an empire as such but with a lot of the problems associated with moving an established imperial establishment off a local maximum. (Severely exacerbated in this case by the degree of compulsion, the extent of the culpability for the disaster, and the mammonites; they've managed to cripple everybody's repertoire of possibility pretty thoroughly these last couple generations.) (and having gone first for once; Harper thoroughly expended all existing stocks of Canadian goodwill, standing, Pearson's diplomatic legacy, etc.)
So, anyway -- moving off the status quo means the whole thing attacks you. Moving off the status quo means you've got to survive the US response. Moving off the status quo means accepting responsibility to do to mammonite cultural transmission what happened to the Cathars. It's a big job and nobody has the conceptual framework to imagine that it's preferable IF they've managed to become even a peripheral part of the existing establishment.
(And our media environment and degree of overwatch means it's really hard to get philosophical alternatives circulating; anything that starts getting taken seriously gets drowned, more than it gets countered, but it does get drowned.)
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There was an analysis floating around today that the US has a bipartisan consensus on overseas military intervention because it's a status apportioning mechanism for their imperial elite. Seems entirely plausible.
Canada is sort of an imperial remnant, structurally; not quite an empire as such but with a lot of the problems associated with moving an established imperial establishment off a local maximum. (Severely exacerbated in this case by the degree of compulsion, the extent of the culpability for the disaster, and the mammonites; they've managed to cripple everybody's repertoire of possibility pretty thoroughly these last couple generations.) (and having gone first for once; Harper thoroughly expended all existing stocks of Canadian goodwill, standing, Pearson's diplomatic legacy, etc.)
So, anyway -- moving off the status quo means the whole thing attacks you. Moving off the status quo means you've got to survive the US response. Moving off the status quo means accepting responsibility to do to mammonite cultural transmission what happened to the Cathars. It's a big job and nobody has the conceptual framework to imagine that it's preferable IF they've managed to become even a peripheral part of the existing establishment.
(And our media environment and degree of overwatch means it's really hard to get philosophical alternatives circulating; anything that starts getting taken seriously gets drowned, more than it gets countered, but it does get drowned.)