This was all brought on by happening across one quote where Bono said it was hip to bash America and that he did not like it. (Which sort of goes to show my mind works, or ruefully, doesn’t.) It’s also precisely what he doesn’t want to talk about, so take this as a way of dropping it off the air, before getting there.
I do not respect the USA because it is the existing template for the total destruction of life as we know it, (nevermind the nuclear WWIII part, this would even be excluding their perpetual penchant for war; that might only be another symptom). That is my only bone to pick with America; unfortunately it’s a rather large one. It is not bloody “hip” to “bash America”. (Yes I’m quoting someone Mr. Bono Sir.) It has to change, or else.
It is the most terminal entity in existence just by this fact alone: that even in 1998 when I went to school it would have taken three earths to elevate everyone to the level of the North American consumer. (Canada has only as many as exist in California mind you. We’re actually a little worse as consumers, which to my to mind boils down to two factors, resisting the freaking cold, and the factor of globalized shipping on a territory of our size given our population density and distribution; -it’s the factor of fuel and freaking packaging (Duh), which is out of control. Most of the tree denudation goes to paper and cardboard. -Oh, and toilet paper, paper towels, disposable diapers and feminine hygiene products, those US inventions which are the epitome of a wasteful society and treated as fully “normal” when they are fully insane.) I think now the stat is it would take FIVE earths, but I would have to fact check. Canadians are even worse as consumers because we emulate so closely the American model in a situation where it is even less feasible; we do so without question.
It’s all so basic. You either downsize or live within your means. You can probably make me feel better about it, but nobody is going to change my mind on what the USA really stands for on this planet, as in the very seed of our collective destruction, as in Christ’s words to the “lukewarm” –“I will spew thee out of my mouth”. Yes. Vomit. You have to vomit up toxin, disease, dis-ease. Christ’s words were for the majority of Christianity today, and America is the center of Christian Empire today. How sadly it represents. -Secular surely. Not the majority, probably. Its Christian revivalism is regression instead of progression, so even that makes it worse instead of better, not facing the real dragons, not examining themselves. Within both its secular and religious quotient, the USA has a critical mass (a giant heaping bulk) of the lukewarm being led around like giant consumer oxen unconscious of the evil in their economy. But were there enough Christians reacting in a conscionable way to wars and human suffering, reacting to protect the planet, valuing our resources, resistant to absorbing the fundamentals of consumerism (utterly antithetical to Christianity) instead of assimilating them, America would not be run/led by the nose by the critical mass of the lukewarm.
The US economy is now predicated on the growth of warfare; it’s the inherently impossible structure of the economy, dim bulbs, not being characteristic warmongers, that is the essential problem, and how they predicated their economy on war materials, which in turn began based on the necessity to forcefully enforce the inequitable distribution of resources for the exact same fictional exponential growth predicated economy (17:15) –It’s the economy, stupid. And to presently maintain this fiction of “growth” it must utterly exhaust natural resources, completely exploit workers, industrialize agriculture to the point of unlimited cruelty, etc., and even cannibalize itself.
The inherent expected growth model of the economy in essence is predicated on the total destruction of the planet; by the US’s very centrality on the world stage as they presently stand they are set to take the world down. It is not their fault for being the king of the heap at the moment, but is questionable whether anyone else could have performed the position any worse in their deliberate intransigence and fealty to the falsehood of infinite (growth) economy on a finite earth, a pretense deliberately maintained so a glorious infinitesimal (essentially non-Christian even if they espouse it) minority could make a s***load off it before the caddy-shack rolled off the lemming cliff, as they’d be rich enough to segregate and maintain, safely removed from their own constructed cataclysm anyhow, and the economy unconstrained by ethics engrained them to succeed in this manner as its own ultimate epitome, their answer unto no one but themselves.
(Obviously China was and could be far worse. Russia/communism was and could have been worse too, but their even being portrayed as a contestant was also myth, and just as Russia’s vying was mythical and a really a product of the US hegemony (even in the sense that their vying might have been more based in fear). China is not king of the bloody heap either (though they could eventually turn the trick on US assistance). Even China’s ascent is being fed by America’s mindless bloody debt and mindless bloody consumerism.)
The USA is an entity that is so utterly “king of the heap” that even its own monsters, its own enemies, are a product of itself and wouldn’t exist without or beyond it; it is that self-defining and that oblivious to itself, the core of what I don’t respect. It cultivates the war on terror quite deliberately to provide the pretext for its globally implemented warfare, when it is really just a pretext for its own economy and profit and continued grasp for hegemony, and they sought this resulting pretext themselves for this very reason. They also fed it; it was blow back in every sense of the word. They are their own enemy and their own destruction in every sense of the word, representing this seed in all of humanity at its most amplified at this moment, everything portended in The Garden of Eden –since the dawn of our time itself. Everything self-defeating about humanity, our inherent fatalness to ourselves, lies crystallized in a terrifying, wonderful beauty in the American Empire. It’s not because they’re “evil” per se, it’s only to the extent that they are ourselves, and we are. They are the full augmentation of the extremes of our interior conflict, but what they indicate in this fullness is our collective end, not our survival; that the end argument falls on the side of death and not life lies captured there.
It might help you to realize that when it comes to the USA, a significant quotient of Canadians have something of an Irish complex. (I’d estimate 25%.) I mean look what their bloody consumption has done to our country. It’s been decimating. It’s such a bigger neighbor it actually manipulates and modifies our society for its own use and ends, constantly undermining to make us more like them, only in one interest alone, -to take our resources, because without our resources, they wouldn’t even have their nuclear bombs (we’re the source of the enriched uranium), let alone….-get it!?!? We’re their biggest oil exporter, lumber source, the list goes on. -And on. Without our country for the taking, they literally would not exist. The smart among them know it. And they’ve always known what they had to do about it. Canada? It’s like standing at ground zero watching their f***ing mess for years, watching it completely f*** over your country.
So now it’s the tar sands. Don’t even get me started on how that bloody federal gov’t got into power, except that they’re Bush’s wet dream and it’s pretty obvious, since the US Department of Defense is the tar sands biggest client, who was supposed to get in power. It was not quite legitimate, and things like this have been manipulated into place for years elsewhere. Even the amplified division of the country with Quebec separatism, there’s whole books on how this was deliberately exploited and manipulated by the US, the whole divide and conquer routine, and this group among others was adroitly employed to this effect during the 1988 free trade election by the US. In effect the PQ (Parti Quebecois) betrayed the country at that crucible because they were never interested in the country in the first place, so they had no problem in this instance serving US interests, who’d helped cultivate them to begin with. So let’s not get started.
We are not connected because we’re “friends”. We’re only “friends” for the taking. It’s only to get the resources. It is not a relationship. They’d do whatever they had to subvert this country for that end, and they do so all the time. They have to just to “subsist”. If we can even call it that, as I think the “relationship” between Canada and the US crystallizes the inherency of the fact that the economy is not benign. It’s vampirism at its very essence; their very existence at what they assume to be “normal” and their inherent “right” involves the draining of someone else, and that’s even at the very best of times, with their “best friend”. It is those "friend" relationships you need to examine in identifying the true nature of an entity's existence. In this instance "friendship" is simply the most viable pathway in order for both elites of both countries to fully exploit Canada's hinterland. If we stood up they would not respect us, and they don’t. Never have. We are far more screwed by the fact that we happen to exist next door, and it is part and parcel that this has contributed to defining us, both antithetically and in the many instances independent definition or independence was overtly subverted by the bigger neighbour, throughout history. It’s so inescapable it’s in the very definition of the country to the extent of how we love and emulate them, in no small part because they had to make sure of that. I’d say all their hard efforts in covert modification and manipulation of the Canadian identity and relations are reaping their fruit today. That and we’re being defeated by the divisions in our own multi-party system in being ruled by what the majority of Canadians do not want at the moment, at a crucible moment by someone who happens to be the perfect template of what the US actually wants for our country far more than we do. Such is the existing falsehood of even what we perceive as our best existing relationships, played out on a very large scale indeed, whose banquet table is the Earth itself.
It is the Earth that is going to vomit us out. We’ve become that antithetical to Creation itself.
Maybe the biggest probability right now is the expiration (think melting exhalation) of methane clathrates (hydrates); it has a certain inevitable ring to it. After all, that would revert Earth’s atmosphere to something far more synonymous to Venus, which is actually the closest planetary equivalent we have to “the lake of fire and brimstone”. For those in the know, that is the literal term the Bible uses for the place of eternal damnation, which only exists at the moment of final judgment, not before. The Bible at present asserts that no one exists in hell, and this is the actual translation of what we today equivocate with the Christian notion of “hell”. Imagine that. Ta-da! The Christians are right; we really are going to hell. It’s just that it’s going to happen right here, on earth. And Christianity will be forced to regard itself as the vanguard in letting that happen, even though they were the ones right about, “the wages of sin is death”. So let’s hear it once more, for the sacredness inherent in human life eh? Ha-ha-ha. (This is really true. The biblical usage of “hell” actually translates from the Hebrew “sheol” which has no more or less import than Hades in being the realm of the spirits of the dead, i.e., as a realm it’s pretty neutral. The place of final judgment and eternal damnation is the “lake of fire and brimstone”, as yet unopened for business.) The place of eternal damnation in the Bible accords quite interestingly with the prospective outcome of methane hydrates emissions on Earth, brought on by global warming from our own emissions. We were warned, in other words.
Maybe it won’t be the hydrates, but right now I have a bad feeling about this one. It’s going to re-balance somehow, the Earth, and however that happens, whether fast or slow, whether anticipated or not, it’s going to be very very ugly. It still remains a physical fact that the USA’s growth model is inherently impossible on this earth, unless say, there only existed the USA (in terms of the number of human consumers at that consumer level, a totally off hand estimate), and then they wouldn’t get to extract and exploit nearly so much. The Europeans may possess much the same model, but they are considerably more flexible in pulling away from it; they at least make some surface attempts at balance. For one example, they are not so in thrall of the free market fiction to treat illness for profit, bottom line. (-Oops.)
And finally, I’m even handed, I readily “bash” everyone. Canada is so far into the vortex by virtue of being next door we are deliberately subverted into becoming a mirror of what exists down south and more regressive than we really are, which has probably never been more exemplified than at the present moment by the ruling party. The wages of this assimilation are adroitly captured by the fact that as consumers, Canadians are even worse than Americans. Not to mention the wages of becoming the tar sands exporter for the US Department of Defense, the tar sands’ biggest client. We will fart the worst now too (that’s when foreign (US) corps are not just leaking), and now in terms of regression, we’re becoming even worse than Americans, in no small part thanks to the ruling party and what particular pit they crawled out of, both politically and now geographically, beyond aptitude into some new realm of self-realized reflective irony (made complete with the derailment of bitumen solvents for pipeline transport over Calgary’s river flood, though this was a very real price-tag of the industry) the grand scale see-able from space debauchery of what was Canada (on view for a second time, the first being “Beautiful British Columbia’s” 300,000 hectares plus size clear cuts of original Old Growth forests, and oh yes, no, this ain’t good; it’s a toxic disaster beyond any we’ve experienced just waiting like a ticking time bomb). In an equity based bashing scenario, I reserve the right to “bash” America; they only get the most because they are the most. That is fully legitimate, and maybe it’s high time you (Bono, and everyone of this mindset) recognized the root basis for this. It is not the least bit due to fashion, nor is it passing. It is the most fundamental debate of our times and that debate lies at the crux of our own much needed self-examination. So let’s turn it to something positive, instead of bashing, which inherently we know full well will not work. Because scapegoating in this scenario is absolutely out of order, just as much as ignoring reality is. I will try to become more careful as I know I am too emotionally involved. I will try, but I will not keep my mouth shut. I really do view the relationship between Canada and the US as their fangs in our jugular.
The closest dynamic that reflects the US/Canadian "relationship" is that between a woman partnered to a potential spousal batterer, who has no choice but to know the danger. The fundamental mechanism is fear. As Canada has witnessed the bloody history of how the US punishes those who do not do what it wants (by allowing the untrammeled rape of their natural resources for American use), and is forced to watch the "partner" became steadily more lawless and more violent to others, Canada is dictated by the underlying fear, in a totally inequitable military situation and a population ratio of 10 to 1, that if she does not cooperate in her rape (the rape of resources), she will suffer the same fate. The optimal option for survival is submission. The majority of the planet feels the same way. This is the fundamental reality. So you see I am really quite toned down in comparison to my actual viewpoint, but know far better than to view them as being to blame for being the present “king” of the mere scrabble heap that is humanity, the apex of its failure as we are only capable of defining ourselves by this puerile game of who is “king of the hill”. Its predation is defined by the predication of the fictional economy, purely structural, devoid of ethics and utterly devoid of emotion. Besides being inherent, it absolutely cannot afford either, for it would look infinitely, exponentially worse than Dorian Gray when he actually saw his true visage.
We’re all the same. It’s all of us, and all these seeds were in evolutionary competition, existent because they served us (anthropologists can readily tell you it’s the exploiters who win out), until now when we got too big and too successful. They were ironically based in our own existence, which if left un-modulated by societal ethics, (the equivalent of being fully secular in the sense of being devoid of religion and its codas as they have guided us throughout history). It is not in any way to blame secularism, but recognize that when reason became divorced of morality as purely a structure we employed, and fundamentally led to compartmentalization (when we aren’t and cannot be, and are even more potentially heinous as entities within these devoid structures), that really let Pandora’s genie out of the proverbial bottle. If we had successfully modulated ourselves by actually being (in the West) a Christian society when we arrived on top, we might have actually saved ourselves, which I view as the essence of this tragedy, which is in no way implying I agree with Christianity’s blame of the very same, because at present they are simply plucking the mote out of their brother’s eye while avoiding the beam in their own (Luke 6:39-42).
Christianity’s fundamentals had, and still have, all the existing counterpoints, with the only evolution that was needed being the full assimilation of the holistic planetary worldview, which Christianity has often emulated and has fully within its potential. It is Christianity that inherently possesses the credos that have always existed as a totally counter to consumer society, still taught today. The only fount for this within secularism is environmentalism. The trenchant division of these two actually co-existent worldviews is the greatest successful artificial ideological divide employed to immobilize our society today in the typical divide and conquer, which is how Christianity at present is being employed by the USA for the Godless motive of its fictional economy/forced imposition of its inequitable consumer society and funnel distribution on the entire planet. The US employs Christianity for detriment as a Trojan horse to scapegoat and recruit for its resource wars all at the same time, frontage of the highest order, and for the deliberate regression of its own society within its own borders towards fascism for the exact same end, in an attempt to ideologically justify unlimited warfare outside its borders for the sake of unimpeded resource exploitation within the minds of the so called “governed”, to allow tacit complicity with what their own ethos actually identifies as utterly heinous, by its own articulation of the complete opposite. It is in the context of Christianity that the Orwellian treatise presently exists at its most successful.
It’s curious how its defeat came at the hands of secularism (which unleashed the elements of an economy without ethics as fully rational, ignoring the full unleashing of human greed) –while ironically Christian self-defeat at their own hands within the society came out of their assimilation of this at the same time they defeated themselves by regression as protectionism in reaction to the secularization of their society. They were too fully assimilated to segregate the right things, and chose the wrong things as rearguard, as the ruling elite used them as just another device to buttress the failing empire's inevitable collapse thanks to not being based in reality (the false economy).
In effect they just became the worst of the oxen, the biggest existing impediment to societal reform where it was most needed (as well as secular scapegoats for the "economy", as the secularists blamed Christian fundamentalism for the rise of what was in fact the amoral secular development of the economy). The historical pattern of Christianity’s impact in terms of combined progressiveness and reform and contribution and charity has been deliberately obfuscated within its own culture to remove its teeth, its ability to modulate society (think Martin Luther King, and note the striking parallels in legal preventions employed here and much later in the Walbran and Clayoquot in BC (-not to mention…). It was here secularism was an effective device to render toothless in divide and conquer, as well as the Christian reactionism this elicited vise versa that we are now witnessing in the USA. The internal division is just as important, if not more vital, to USA's planetary abuse, as the international pitting of Christians/Jews against Muslims.
It was humanity’s inherent inbuilt failures that failed Christianity and made it an abusive power, not the other way ‘round. Actually it’s a little easier to blame religion. Which is why, in retrospect, Christianity will be forced to regard itself as architect in the greatest (probably final it will be so utter) collapse of mankind, even though at essence, it wasn’t them, just the sum whole of humanity. It’s interesting. Christianity is the worst most interesting paradox right now. Want to turn it around? I do, or we will lay Christianity in the grave alongside the US Empire, even though it survived Rome.
-There. -Expiated. (This was written shortly before April, 2012)
