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CounterPunch
September
20, 2002
Lessons from
a Cynical Master
Jean
Chretien's New York State of Mind
by
NORMAN MADARASZ
'Only in Canada' is not the jingle for a beer ad. Perhaps only
in Canada can one say without smudging one's conscience that:
"Still, the planet actually is becoming a fairer place,
if slowly." (Toronto Globe and Mail, editorial comment on
"Jean Chretien's radical chic", September 13).
And only have neighbors in such good
standing as Canadian leaders had the privilege of being left
out of the US/UK tandem to spread hate, death and terror. In
the months after September 11, Canadians complained bitterly
of being forgotten by their southern brethren in their expression
of thanks and recognition for the support brought to the dead.
Their Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, led these voices.
Canada has often been sidelined as a
partner owing to an undeniable tendency among Liberal Party Prime
Ministers to be unabashedly against the long arm of American
militarism. Liberal PMs have gone on to reject US foreign policy
dictates. Simply witness Canada's prosperous relationship with
Cuba. Or glance at another of the late former-PM Pierre Elliot
Trudeau's ice breaking acts, which was to meet with Mao half
a year before Kissinger even hinted to Nixon that such an encounter
could only enhance his own stature internationally.
Yet upon hearing what Jean Chretien declared
in an interview -- shot in July but only broadcast by the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation's English-language television network
on the eve of the 9/11 commemorations -- , most Canadians froze.
It was as if Chretien had broken a taboo, in the not unsubtle
manner he often uses to great effect. What he drew was a link
between intensified world poverty, the arrogance of US power
and the September attacks. And he stammered this in his distinctly
upper-Saint-Lawrence French-Canadian drawl.
Many political analysts in the US claim
that in the course of his first term an American President focuses
primarily on his congress' re-election, followed by his own.
Under such pressure four years can be a short term, indeed. Policy
planning looks easy in comparison. By contrast, the second term
is left for the President to leave a stamp, or stain, on history.
This specific ambition for a Canadian
Prime Minister is reserved for the third term. Pierre Trudeau,
Canada's philosopher PM, led the country from 1968 to 1983, with
a short halt in 1979. (These things happen in a parliamentary
system that affords minority governments.) He spent his last
months in power globe hopping in a determined effort to bring
peace to a world faced off by Reagan and any of his short-lived
Russian Communist Party cohorts. Trudeau was steering his rudder
at a time prior to Gorbachev and 1989, a time when two nuclear
powers daily threatened to blow each other up and the planet
along with them.
Whatever the success of his campaign
Trudeau did renew the picture of commitment to peace again. Peace
had by then been relegated to TV 'Remember the sixties' programs.
Canada itself had lain low on the topic after greeting an estimated
30,000 Vietnam War draft dodgers above the 46th parallel in the
course of the seventies. So, shortly after the UN mobilized the
world in 1982 to demonstrate in favor of disarmament in NYC,
Trudeau seized the opportunity. His journey had stop-overs on
all continents, having him don the traditional dress of Bedouin
tribesmen here, and meet with Communist apparatchik there. The
most memorable shot was his dismal departure from Washington
D.C. amidst a verbal scuffle with Ronnie Reagen.
No historian can fail to be thrilled
by Marx's astute comment on historical repetition. A historical
event first occurs as tragedy, then as farce. If Trudeau's 1983
venture did not end in the type of tragedy whose meaning is the
only one still known to most North Americans, he clearly butted
heads in brilliantly idealistic fashion against the inertia of
world power structures. In hindsight, the world showed readiness
for some profound change as the democracy movements in Latin
America and then in East Europe were soon to bear.
Current Federal PM Jean Chretien is the
veteran politician on the G8 scene. A Liberal party member to
the marrow, he was Trudeau's protege and anti-separatist henchman
in Quebec for its referendum in 1980. Twice re-elected, he has
set a record for most terms served consecutively in Canada's
short 135-year history as an independent nation. With the failure
of every new attempt by party lieutenants to oust him, Chretien's
tenure takes on a character of tyrannical rule, albeit a benevolent
one.
Do Canadians actually support him, despite
his missteps and the alleged influence-peddling in his home riding?
With growth expectations yet again gliding above the US', what
a deeply materialist social democracy like Canada votes for is
economic prosperity. It falls far less for populist banter. After
swankily axing his star ex-finance minister, Chretien has been
the man around every corner to take credit for the boom.
Where he has failed miserably has been
on the social frontier. A balanced and surplus budget has led
to salary stagnation, weakened the Canadian dollar internationally,
and, especially, has doomed the country's health care system
to a propensity for privatization. There may be less Canadians
unemployed, but the reason why so many young professionals are
fleeing south to the hi-tech jobs allowed them by NAFTA is that
they are paid less at home (in terms of purchasing power) than
they were two decades ago. In fact, most of the time one can
only wonder how the most social-democratic of G8 nations could
have changed course so drastically in its economic vision. The
virtual monopoly by two right-wing business groups over the country's
media outlets provides prompts for a quick and effective answer.
Canada, like most countries that adopted
the Washington Consensus doctrine on market liberalism, now looks
wistfully at a largely privatized state. Canadians themselves
clearly believe that the American way of life is better and more
exciting_whatever that means_than their own, or the Scandinavian
lifestyles of Norway and Sweden to which they are most akin.
To keep the perplexed puzzled, the latter two have usurped Canada's
position from the leading position of the UN Human Development
Index, one that turned the maple leaf from red to gold for eight
consecutive years.
Toronto and Houston may be similar indoors,
but on the outside Canada is a cold country. Throughout the 20th
century, with the advent of progress in energy and insulation
technologies, cold countries were the ones to most thoroughly
give their populations equality and parity in purchasing power.
Now with global warming, Toronto tourism entrepreneurs are already
half-mockingly projecting a future of cruise ship tours steaming
through the North-West passage and Arctic circle to explore the
planet's newest hot spots.
It is not a crime, or act of treason,
to be a socialist in Canada. Admittedly, it gets the casual designer-set
intelligentsia upset. This is why there is something quite humble
and natural to Canadian social commitment which is not subjected
to the constraints in the south of having to ply ironically in
self-defense under threat of civil disturbance.
Sure, Americans take turns bashing Canadians
for readily loving the benefits of the market economy, while
rarely ever admitting it. Further still, an interminable line
has been repeated by the US since WW2, and uttered again recently
by the current US Ambassador, to the effect that Canada ought
to built up its arms supplies. As this would consist of buying
more heavy-gear material from American industry, Canadian nationalism
has seen through the menace. But contrary to past comfort, such
indignant isolationism actually proves that Canada's humbleness
is vanishing from the horizon.
In 1999, Canada and Brazil started having
it out over the success of the latter's regional jet industry,
spearheaded by Embraer. Canada's Bombardier is one of the most
successful transport corporations in the world. Starting off
as the maker of the 'skidoo' snowmobile, it has expanded into
subway cars, trains and aircraft. Bombardier also has been good,
very good, to the Liberal Party.
The Canadian federal government went
after Brazil on the 'illegal' subsidy front, clearly countering
their usual commitment to stimulating growth in the developing
world. In the same stroke, it swiftly forgot the subsidies Bombardier
swallowed on its way to being no.1. Brought to the WTO the litigation
was bitter. It first saw Brazil on the accused and guilty bench.
But over a year later Brazil's fate switched sharply thanks to
Canadian fumbling with a NAFTA ban on Brazilian corned beef,
and finally by the Federal government deciding to provide cheap-interest
loans to future American buyers of Bombardier RJs. Brazil ended
up marching out victorious from the WTO amidst this not unsubtle
aping of US-style aggressive trade posturing.
The incident dampened Canada's international
reputation. Still, responding to a very vocal civil society lobby,
the Liberal Party has often paraded around as the G8 government
most inclined toward debt relief for the poorest countries. Two
years ago, beaming through his budget surpluses, Finance Minister
Paul Martin had proposed lifting the debt from the extreme burden
suffered by some African nations. It was a lot of talk, of course,
cynically bouncing off the deaf ears of his counterparts.
This is mainly why it is so hard to read
anything more into Chretien's own commitment, voiced at the U.N.
on Monday September 16: "the continued marginalization of
Africa from the globalization process and the social exclusion
of the vast majority of its peoples is profoundly contrary to
the global interest. Helping Africa get on it feet is in our
interest from the perspective of our common humanity. From the
perspective of creating a more prosperous world with new markets.
And it is profoundly in our self-interest from the point of view
of our own security." At least he was honest enough to use
the term "self-interest".
Yet there is nothing shockingly new to
this commitment in the course of Chretien and the Liberal party's
international stance. One's ears have to be attuned to both the
skeptic's rejection and the pragmatist's dead-ends. Chretien
seemed to have had a similar aim in mind during the G8 meeting
Canada hosted in the month of July. With the meeting over, and
the small number of protesters pepper-gazed by the RCMP, the
CBC held an interview with the Prime Minister whose answers were
nonetheless controversial.
Were it not for the CBC, Canada would
be a carbon copy of the US. In a move which can only be Machiavellian
in intent, or Gramscian, the public station withheld on broadcasting
the interview during the summer months. At that time even the
sparse crowd who does watch its news programs would be lounging
away, sucking back at the brews and beating off mosquitoes in
Cottage country. Instead, the CBC waited for September. The impact
the interview would have could not have left its producers unaware.
That's because during the interview,
Chretien draws a direct link between the state of world poverty
and 9/11.
His statement was undoubtedly loaded
for a leader of a developed country, and intimate ally of the
US. Chretien spoke out against the arrogance of might: "You
cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation of the
others (sic). And that is what the Western world -- not only
the Americans but the Western world -- has to realize."
Feeling chatty, he went on to reveal his hobbies: "It's
always the problem when you read history -- everybody (sic) doesn't
know when to stop. There's a moment when you have to stop, there's
a moment when you are very powerful." To top things off,
he gave the golden boys on Wall Street a lesson in moral philosophy:
"I said that in New York one day. I said, you know talking,
it was Wall Street, and it was a crowd of capitalists, of course,
and they were complaining because we have a normal relation with
Cuba, and this and that, and, you know, we cannot do everything
we want. And I said...if I recall, it was probably these words:
'When you're powerful like you are, you guys, it's the time to
be nice.'"
And then the bomb fell: "And I do
think that the Western world is going to be too rich in relation
to the poor world. And necessarily, you know, we look upon us
being arrogant, self-satisfying, greedy and with no limits. And
the 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize that even
more."
Canadians were deeply affected by the
September 2001 attacks. Though 24 Canadians perished in New York
City, a whole nation grieved and trembled from fear. I would
like to pretend that the latter is a caricature, but it is close
to the truth. While there are no clear stats on this, I would
not hesitate to say that a higher proportion of Canadians have
visited the Big Apple than of any other nation, including perhaps
the US itself. Canadians are in no greater mood than Americans
to hear what might be the broader historical and social-political
backdrop to the attacks.
As militarized a society as the US is,
its power lies primarily in corporate coercion. We catch casual
designer suits, MBAs and Nikes buying out the little guys much
more than medals and Westpoint beating on the bullies. One step
removed, Canadians perhaps have a better chance to assess how
they are witnesses before history and historical repetition.
They can have an easier go at inching out from the determinism
of 'it had to happen, because it happened'. It is important to
realize that the 'world's only superpower' is an imperial power,
and its vector, at least most of the time, is the suit tie and
Adidas chevron instead of the tomahawk missile. After all, these
are symbols the Canadian business class has partially left as
its own imprint on soft imperialism for their colleagues of the
Washington Consensus to appreciate.
Toronto's Globe and Mail referred to
Chretien's comments as "a little radical chic for a new
century". As surely as Chretien's comments were drawn out
of context -- uttered after the G8 Africa file, and not specifically
in reference to 9/11 -- they betray far more cynicism than anything
radical. They show just how intricate a cynicism is woven into
today's political language. Intelligently, it resembles Secretary
Powell's trendy militaristic humanism, as easily dictated on
MTV as to the War Party.
Forget Machiavelli. Today's leaders and
influence-peddlers speak Diogenes' tongue in Athens, B.C. Lantern
in hand, they wander the streets in broad daylight claiming to
be seeking a man. If there is any sense to lend to Thomas Friedman's
recent hurrah of 'going our way', it has to be this one. It is
only from up-on-high that he can giggle in his glide in the comfortable
superiority of a Stealth bomber. Above is the only place apart
from heaven itself that the ten of thousands of Iraqi deaths
are blotted out, the only realm from which all human grief and
suffering vanish. Up-on-high beamed straight into your living
rooms.
Chretien may not be terribly welcome
in the parlors of D.C. But in terms of Canadian political life,
his policies have only reinforced an economic plan clearly recognized
by the Washington clan, endorsed as the right way, the best way.
With the poor lining up out of 'self-interest' behind the pearly
gates, little Chretien can say from behind its shut doors can
shift the implications of his speech. That's because, as ardent
students of the Vatican know well, today's democracies use the
promise of brighter days ahead. It has become the key excuse
to policies that have made avowals of 'the rich only get richer,
and the poor only get poorer,' also uttered by the PM, the keenest
way to claim that the situation's beyond all control.
This is nothing new for cynicism at its
core, just that now it's the lingo best suited to painting it
all white. Now there's something chic: some postmodernist politics
for lives no different than deaths. It might just have been a
thought in Jean Chretien's New York state of mind.
Norman Madarasz
is a Canadian Philosopher. He welcomes comments at: normanmadarasz@hotmail.com
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September
18, 2002
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun
of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
September
17, 2002
Adam Federman
All
That Matters is Oil
Linda S.
Heard
Paranoid
Americans
Hussein Ibish
The Incident
at Shoney's
Francis Boyle
Is Bush's
War Illegal?
Let Us Count the Ways
Heidi Lypps
Bush's
Crackdown on
Medical Marijuana
Riad Z. Abdelkarim,
MD
Why
Do They Hate Us?
September
16, 2002
Wayne Madsen
The Shoney's
Snoop
America's Horst Wessel
Tariq Ali
Debating
Daniel Pipes
on Bush's Wars
Ahmad Faruqui
American
Primacy at Bay
Kurt Leege
Voices
for Peace
M. Shahid
Alam
A New Theology
of Power
Robert Fisk
Bush's War
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Dave Randall
Mad, Mad World:
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Resources:
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By
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by Alexander
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and Jeffrey St. Clair
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