Let’s Save Canada Part I
In my last piece I described the feedback loop that is destroying the U.S. By this I refer to a cycle of negative actions and reactions that perpetuates itself by means of any energy whatsoever poured into it. ALL attempts to stop the loop make the loop spin faster leaving the persons stuck in it perplexed and despairing. There is probably a point of no return with such loops and I suspect the United States has reached or is imminently reaching such a point. This means that however the loop resolves itself the United States may not survive that process in anything resembling its current form (even if it surmounts its current crisis and manages to have a tolerably peaceful election- as Biden’s lead widens the odds for this have slightly improved). This has dangers, obviously, for Canada just one of which is that the crash, when it comes, will send people flooding across our border. If a Georgian and a New Yorker arrive, both fleeing chaos, we have no moral right to choose between them on any other basis than human need. Will they bring their enmity across the border and fall to fighting up here? Will radicalized Americans arriving in numbers further polarize OUR political culture? Will we be able to convey to them that Republican and Democrat are not fixed ontological categories that govern all time and all space? Well, to be frank, this will happen whoever crosses the border from the sheer power of media and the internet. Intellectually there is no border and the break- up of the US will at most intensify a polarization that is as alive and well up here as it is down there.
It is important to understand how
polarization works and what its effects are. Polarization shreds civic ritual.
The polarizers, of course, think that is a good thing as they believe all civic
and domestic rites to be an empty, hypocritical mask. They are often correct
about this though hypocrisy remains the tribute vice pays to virtue. We must
always keep in mind the man who said he came not to bring not peace but a sword
but, on the scale of relative goods, hypocrisy is a crucial social resource
without which a society can barely function. We know from Burke’s meditation on
Marie Antoinette’s gown that appearances, and keeping them up, are essential to
projecting the image of order.[1] Certain
appearances are constitutive of a civilized state of affairs. Consider
politicians Smith and Jones, the bitterest of rivals. Suppose Jones suffers a
severe stroke leaving him paralyzed. Privately, Smith is pleased as punch at
the discomfiture of his hated rival and pours himself a celebratory drink. In
public though, Smith sends prayers and condolences to the Jones family who
thank him even though they know full well he is chortling with glee behind
closed doors. This is because death is a basic human situation with prescribed,
scripted responses. These responses are modes of respect that reinforce the
message that we are all human no matter what our rivalries and differences.
Children still bury the worst of parents and few (outside ICE perhaps) even
think of starving the children of their enemies because the care of children is
morally basic. These gestures, and their ‘sincerity’ scarcely matters as they
are impersonal and universal, maintain the social continuity of feeling without
which, as Plato reminds us, the polity scarcely exists.
If one removes these gestures one
quickly develops an empathy gap and an empathy gap is a disaster for any
society. If a society is divided into TWO groups between which there are no
ritual gestures of respect, if is divided into TWO circles of people who feel
each other’s pains and joys as their own, then that is not one polity but two.
The instant a flood in British Columbia fails to evoke a response in people in
P.E.I is the instant the country of Canada ends. The instant the head of one
party openly and publicly celebrates the death of another that is the end of
civil politics and the beginning of a state of war. Of course, if war is what
you want to declare then I suppose that is one way of doing it. This is because
one has raised the principle of faction above the principle of society. There
may be situations where this is justified and I have no interest in raising a
sterile, academic question such as whether one should mourn Hitler or celebrate
the demise of Stalin. I simply point out that social excommunication (which is
what a refusal to mourn amounts to) is a grave gesture that should not be made
lightly. Social excommunication of a public figure is especially grave as that
figure may embody the aspirations of a large following who would take such an
ostracism as applying to THEM too. Thus, Biden, who is after all ahead in the
polls, would probably be foolish to send to potentially wavering Trump
supporters the message that their deaths would be a cause for indifference or
even glee. After all, in a fascist movement the supporter IS the leader by way
of a deep though vicarious identification. Liberals often fail by not realizing
that certain words or gestures invoke tribal, defensive reactions as Hilary
Clinton found to her cost.
Of course there may no preventing
feedback loops and their consequent empathy gaps from forming. There is
probably one forming in Canada now though I persist in the optimistic belief
that it is not so far gone as the American one. In my previous piece I noted
that once a feedback loop fully forms it is nearly impossible to break. In the
early stages though, it might just be possible. The means by which it may
possible are actions that do not feed the loop. These, alas, do not include
the ‘calling out’ and ‘naming and shaming’ that some seem to think is the royal
road to progress. These acts feed energy into the loop and are for that reason
largely useless gestures however gratifying they may feel in the moment. We
need an act that does the opposite, an act that bleeds energy from the loop and
makes it slow down and ultimately grind to a halt. Such acts would be radical
and unforeseen gestures of solidarity. In Canada we have the capacity to
perform such acts. WE have a social democratic party that has, unlike its
rivals, the will to redistribute wealth and resources from one part of the
country to another. The empathy gap in this country falls on certain
socio-economic and cultural fault lines.
One of them is rural and urban.
Attacks on ‘tax and spend liberals’ actually resonate in isolated places where
people see little for their taxes. There is no use preaching social democracy
to people who are a hundred miles from the nearest clinic or who have to wait
two years for back surgery. Isolated people do not have the services social
democracy preaches about and, far more important for our immediate problem, do
not believe anyone thinks them worthy of such services. Plus, they tend not
believe promises only actions. This is not simply a matter of meeting the
material needs of rural and small town people with poor services. This is
another liberal error. Addressing material needs must be done in such a fashion
that it is received as a gesture of respect. Such a gesture is what people seek
first and foremost and know that the rest will be added unto them.
Conservatives win in these areas because they have cornered the market on
recognition and respect: they rob rural people of services while flattering
their sensibilities on cultural matters like guns because when people have
little else they cling to their pride and the material objects that embody it.
Gifts given from a standpoint of assumed superiority are not gifts at all. So,
how about we equalize matters in terms of medical services (especially mental
health!), child care and internet? How about we commit to local green economies
which will free people from dependence on the ecologically and socially
destructive Tar Sands? Plus, how about we do these things not grudgingly and condescendingly
but as things we are proud as Canadians to do?
There is also secular/non secular gap
in this country which cannot be ignored in a country where only 35% of the vote
can elect a Prime Minister beholden to a radicalized Fascist base (if he is not
an outright Fascist himself). The farther ends of this divide are locked in a
perceived ‘culture war’ where what is stake, is, once again, respect and
recognition. The non-secular minority thinks they are losing this war and that
their enemies are out to rub their noses in this fact. However well intended WE
think they are things like pride parades are perceived by THEM as insults and
implicit threats. People who are at the receiving end of perceived insults do
not, as liberals and progressives fantasize, go off in a corner and die. They
retrench and radicalize. As they do so they become more and more impervious to
dialogue, reason and even plain common sense. Indeed, they become paranoid and
dangerous and see the machinations of Satan behind every rainbow sidewalk. For
reasons I have laid out elsewhere they also become obsessed with Islam. There
is no point in objecting how false and imaginary these perceptions are. They
are a baked in political fact and something needs to be done about them. Plus,
it has to be said that progressives absolutely do despise Evangelicals and
other religious conservatives exactly as much as they are despised in turn.
This is the effect of the empathy gap. Evangelicals constantly post stories
about religious persecution of Christians in the third world and elsewhere.
Part of the reason they do this is that they know progressives will respond
with disdain and indifference (which by the way they ABSOLUTELY do). This
justifies all their paranoia and reinforces their conviction that far from
being too wide the empathy gap is not wide enough.[1]
Here I must say that whoever decided
to use the phrase culture war to describe our cultural conflicts needs to have
his corpse exhumed and burned. Metaphorical wars become literal ones because metaphors
impose their own logic. What to do about this given that many of the cultural
demands of religious conservatives cannot rationally be met because they are
incoherent (as the demands of the resentful often are)? How, for instance, are
demands for ‘religious liberty’ to be reconciled with a cultural crusade
against Islam or the policing of external religious differences in dress? One
cannot say yes to a simple demand to assert Christian supremacy whether
confessional or, as in Quebec, simply ethnic and racial. This of course, is a
seemingly intractable problem according to our current construction of
secularity. I am often told for instance that Canada is a ‘secular’ nation though
legally this is false. Does something on this front need to change? I think it
does though I have by no means worked out what this change ought to be. This is
a problem that is, of course, best tackled after other fundamental inequities
in our society have been addressed. Indeed, after that the problem itself may
appear in a new and more productive light. At any rate, we have a significant
chunk of people (a minority but minorities can make revolutions just as much as
majorities can) who, for whatever reason, do not think that our traditional
constitutional defenses of religious liberty are enough to secure their place
in the nation. As a consequence of this fear, they engage in actions and
discourse that will, in fact, make their worst fears self-fulfilling prophecies.
A Christian school on their resume will absolutely get it quietly thrown in the
trash if Christians as a whole come to be perceived as extremists and finding
legal redress for this will be protracted and difficult when it’s an unstated
understanding rather than something people explicitly say.
[1] I
have noted on a number of occasions the meme like assertion in left leaning
publications that Burke was some sort of 18th Century Bill
Barr. There are advantages to actually reading the authors one talks about and
in this case one finds that Burke, far from being a proto Fascist, understood
perfectly well how legal and constitutional order is undermined by
ideologically driven cabals who dream of unfettered
power.
[1] I
have noted form talking to such people that they are constantly trying to confirm
their suspicions about you by maneuvering you into a place where they can perceive
you as denying empathy and go off satisfied that liberals REALLY DO hate them
and that they are therefore justified in ignoring their arguments.
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