Saw a picture the other day of an Albertan wearing a baseball cap with Let’s Make Canada Great Again emblazoned on its peak.
I suppose it’s not surprising that a Trumpian brand of nationalism is spreading north of the 49th. There will always be a segment of the population drawn to what is essentially a fascist ethic. It’s sad to see, though. Our saving grace – for the time being – is we don’t have an egoistic personality of Trumpian MAGAtude to incite Canadian worshipers to the kind of nonsense exhibited in Washington DC recently.
Before the madness takes root here, we should consider what the historic ‘greatness’ this Albertan proclaims consists of, then compare it to a version of greatness that isn’t a lie.
When, in the mid-16th Century, Jacques Cartier ‘claimed’ the territories he had explored for King Francis I of France, he was ignoring the fact that the land was already occupied. ‘Ignored’ doesn’t quite describe the Eurocentric hubris and nascent French nationalism of that historic moment. The fact that the land was already inhabited simply didn’t occur to him, which is tantamount to saying the original ‘owners’ were not really considered people.
That to me is not a mark of greatness; it’s a mindset that resulted in despicable acts of genocide by colonizing nations the world over. ‘Greatness’ today – true greatness – will be the successful reconciliation, and genuine recognition that we have much to learn from and share with resurgent First Nations across this land.
The name ‘Canada’ is a Europeanization of the Iroquoian word kanata, meaning village. It’s a crowning irony that the very hunting-gathering cultures our Canadian ancestors almost destroyed, and which still face pervasive discrimination to this day, gave our country its name.
Having confiscated huge swaths of ‘free land’, including approximately 25 million square kilometres in North America, the world’s colonizing nations prospered during the transformation of the global economy in the 18th and 19th Centuries. And the economic ‘greatness’ of this continent and the European homelands of its settlers, was in large part due to the vast resources that could be extracted, grown and eventually manufactured here.
Most colleges already have numbers along with literacy applications, but teachers remain for you to their very viagra online own gadgets for you to occur on top of interesting training pertaining to other subject locations. Therefore, ED, or male impotence is buy cialis mastercard an intimate relationship dysfunction or a mal-behavior of libido of human being, and development or maintenance of an erection incapability of male organ is relating to satisfactory performance of physical intimacy. Above mentioned herbs like punarnava, try address cheapest generic cialis varuna, shrigu, apamarg etc. are described from ancient times in our ayurvedic medicine system. A study conducted by Columbia University monitored 152 men suffering from impotence Men working in a factory or pilots should not take Kamagra Oral Jelly before going to their workplace Kamagra Oral Jelly is a brand name for generic levitra online Sildenafil Citrate Oral Jelly.But plundering, not living in harmony with or even sustainably managing the land, was the order of the day. As the industrial and consumerist revolutions took off, fuelled by an insatiable greed for more and more ‘raw materials’ clawed and hacked form the motherlodes appropriated in North America and all over the colonized world, the toll on the environment became increasingly ominous.
So the ‘greatness’ of North America has been based in part on the economic equivalent of an environmental reverse mortgage taken out on our continent… oh, I forgot, it wan’t really our continent to begin with, so in truth it’s a reverse mortgage taken out of other peoples’ land. Any way you look at it, the ‘greatness’ we’re so proud of in that equation is unsustainable, and to think of making ourselves ‘great again’ through that kind of rapacious appropriation doesn’t take us to paradise. It’s a fool’s dream.
So what could that misguided Albertan possibly aspire to as a form of ‘greatness’ not morally corrupt and environmentally disastrous? What would give us true pride?
Never in the long record of evolution has there been species that could consider its actions and circumstances, look into the future, and consciously proclaim: ‘What we have done and are doing is neither morally acceptable nor sustainable.’ Humanity is the first life-form that can deliberately adopt an ethic that goes beyond the cruelty and ultimately self-destructive impulses summed up in the phrase, ‘survival of the fittest’, or more aptly in the 21st Century, ‘bloating of the richest’.
Our only chance is to adopt lifestyles and technologies that allow us to live in harmony with each other and the environment, and which prove what intelligent, morally upright creatures we really are. That’s something no species or civilization has ever attempted, and – as with every historic challenge – it requires courage, vision and generosity of its champions, the true hallmarks of greatness.
CraigSpenceWriter.ca