Who's more brainwashed, Americans or Canadians?

Big Macs, Big George, big Enron angst and a hope that out of this mess will people will come to recognize we need more than markets and marketplaces

The Straight Goods Cyber Forum
with Larry Solway

Commentary:

  There is a major food court in the building where I live. You have a choice of everything from Island foods to Thai to Chinese to schnitzel. Everything smells good. Everything tastes great. The people eating there have fun. But it all changed the day McMenu arrived.
  I'm not getting my knickers in a knot over dopey consumerism. This is about how smug Canadians are when we compare ourselves to our neighbours. "Those Americans" can hardly walk and chew gum at the same time. They give George Bush an 80 percent approval rating because they can't think all at the same time about the testosterone of Afghanistan and their own private exclusively American-way war against the forces of evil while keeping an eye on Bush's shameful association with Ken Lay, the double-talking president of Enron, or Bush's "Pro-Life" statement that will surely signal the repacking of The Supreme Court.

We buy Big Macs the way America buys Big George

  But hey Canadians, that's America for you. It's The Emperor's New Clothes with George W. The Democrats, who face a critical off-year election in November, can't afford to attack him for fear of losing the momentum they got from climbing aboard the campaign against terrorism. The media have simply formed a cheering section in which not one seems ready to take a chance of offending their readers.
  Nothing he does is wrong, in spite of the outcry around the world over such measly items as criminalizing prisoners of war by calling them something else. They cheer for the macho blustering of Rumsfeld and his sneering at prisoner-of-war claims. (That is set to change as even the U.S. realizes it can't take the high moral ground and abuse it at the same time.)
  My point about MacDonald's is that we are really no better. One of my sad moments was today as I walked through the food court and saw the line-ups for some of the most ordinary hamburgers ever made. It's all about hope. It's all about sheepish obedience and submission to consumerism and the force of advertising and marketing.
  We buy Big Macs the way America buys Big George.
  The horrible grim reminder that people have stopped thinking is their apparent disregard for the take-no-prisoners free enterprise of Kenny-boy and his horde of energy manipulators. The Enron scandal, and it minimizes the felony to settle for so easy a word as "scandal", is that the entire fabric of America adventurism should be under attack. In a stinging piece in the Washington Post last week the question is put clearly: if the Republican right is so in love with Family Values and Right To Life and Apple Pie Innocence, how come their ethics don't extend to honesty in business? The Enron collapse is not a political or business scandal, but a collapse of conservative values.
  Now I gag over the results of the latest Ipsos- Reid poll. It tells me 40percent of Americans are indifferent to Bush's ties to Enron and 54 percent disagree with the statement that he is "too close to Enron". Last week on The West Wing, the new reality of U.S. politics-make-believe and a Democrat in the White House we heard the question: "Why do they hate us?" It was all about a presidential speech before the United Nations that vilified enemies of democracy and included "terrorist Muslim fundamentalists". There was a big fight over this inflammatory comment, which led to the "mea culpa" question of why they hate us.
  Why do we indulge in the mindless pursuit of a cause for hatred and anger? Both are usually neurotic ways to deflect anger at the real targets: poverty, autocratic governments, and ignorance and have no real basis in fact. Looking for "why" someone detests you, and trying to modify your behaviour, one must always take into account that the hatred is more pathological than real; that it is fed with mother's milk and represents an unquenchable need to scapegoat those "responsible" for your own sad and sorry state.
  If anything good comes out of September 11 it will not be vengeful masculinity, it will be recognition that government DOES have a part to play in the protection of Americans and private business can't handle public welfare issues like airport security or the destruction at Ground Zero.
  If anything good comes out of the Enron debacle it will be a dawning in the American psyche of the reality that markets and marketplaces do not determine the quality of life we are entitled to. Or that our lives must not be held captive by corporations and their ambitions.

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