Why It's So Depressing Listening to these Trained Apes

 

Jagmeet, Justin and Erin* have taken full advantage of this election campaign to convincingly demonstrate their inability to lead Canada over the next four years.

If this summer taught us anything, surely it's that the next four years will be fraught with perils that may reveal our breaking points are much nearer than we imagine.  Those who study these things agree that really dislocative events come on suddenly and when a society is at its zenith.  Boom and Kaboom.

This draws me back to Andrew Potter's op-ed in the Globe on August 20.

Potter cites the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19, the faster than expected collapse of Afghanistan, and rapid onset climate change as examples of crises we're just not prepared, perhaps no longer able, to deal with.

What these and other looming crises have in common is that they are marked by a failure of some combination of political conviction, state capacity and collective action. We have lost the ability to solve big problems and meet big challenges, and there is every reason to think this is only going to get worse.

The way Western governments struggled to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic has been basically one long case study in seeing all of these trends at work. ...But even when governments were moved to action, they found themselves hamstrung by a population riven by tribalistic responses (such as to mask mandates) and magical thinking (such as with anti-vax beliefs). We are, increasingly, a society unable to confront and rationally address the problems we face.

It is looking like we have reached the limits of our capacity for global collective action. The fiasco in Afghanistan has revealed the UN and NATO as highly ineffective organizations. Free trade has been discredited, geopolitical tensions are rising, and the world is retreating into protectionism and mercantilism. It’s been nearly 30 years since the Earth Summit in Rio led to a groundbreaking climate convention, but we are no closer today to taking meaningful action on climate change.

For the past 200 years or so, the relentless pace of innovation and discovery has made us rich and comfortable in ways that our ancestors would find miraculous. To them, our age would look like one giant and seemingly endless party. Except all the evidence points to the party coming to an end. This doesn’t mean the apocalypse is nigh, but it does mean as an increasing number of major problems go unresolved, life will get more and more difficult every year.

Weak leadership, existential threats and an increasingly restive, pugnacious, even ungovernable populace, what could possibly go wrong?  Adding insult to injury we're forced to endure layer upon layer of bromides in this pointless election campaign.  

Jesus, take the wheel.

* Annamie, irrelevant

Comments

  1. the salamanderSeptember 7, 2021 at 12:37 PM

    .. what ? The moveable feast is over ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. TrailblazerSeptember 7, 2021 at 4:47 PM

    Is it weak leadership or have they been superseded by the corporate money men?
    How do you offset the demands and influence of Gates , Bezos and our home grown Pattison?

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibSeptember 8, 2021 at 7:32 AM

      There's no way of foreseeing how these things play out until change is underway, TB.

      Delete

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