AMERICA’S IMPERIAL WIZARD VISITS CANADA

John Chuckman

We are getting stories about increasing anti-Americanism in Canada, mainly coming from sources that are the Canadian equivalent of the Voice of America. They are pretty much the same people who told us we must support a friend who goes to war, neglecting to distinguish the case of a friend who has gone stark raving mad and decided to burn down someone else’s house.

I think you can only have anti-Americanism if you first have Americanism, which is certainly not the same thing as simple love of country. Americanism is a cult centered on a belief in national exceptionalism. In modern times, there has been no better representative of the cult than George Bush, its current Imperial Wizard. Everywhere he goes, he projects the self-satisfied image of an America happy to dump its untreated effluent into the world’s supply of drinking water so long as Americans themselves feel they are doing the right thing.

If you want to understand why George Bush is responsible for any increase in the world’s stock of anti-Americanism, here is a brief summary of his recent visit to Canada. If you can believe it, the visit was intended to heal the rift over Canada’s not signing on for the needless killing of 100,000 Iraqi civilians. (For the latest revelation of American behavior in Iraq you might want to see: http://ancapistan.typepad.com/photos/navy_seals_torturing_iraq/navyseal8.html )

Bush went to Canada’s capital, Ottawa, where his advisors were so fearful he might face catcalls by a few Members that he did not address Parliament, having been formally invited to do so. Maybe it was just that the electronic communications gizmo he wore on his back during the Presidential debates was out of order, but I think it more likely he was displaying the behavior of all bullies who have no tolerance for anyone who questions their posturing.

Security was so tight during the visit that some Members of Parliament were refused entry into the building for lack of a special one-time security pass, an act which actually is against the laws of Canada. Americans never hear of the grotesque measures taken when Bush travels abroad. After Bush’s stay at Buckingham Palace in London, the Queen was horrified by the damage done to the Palace grounds. They were left looking like the parking lot at a Walmart two-for-one sale.

In Ottawa, thousands of demonstrators outside were kept away from Bush’s sight, a practice followed wherever the Imperial Wizard travels.

Instead of addressing Parliament, Bush’s staff suddenly decided to bundle him off to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Did we hear that right, Halifax, Nova Scotia? Why in God’s name would a President go there? Could it be because it’s a quiet, quaint little city whose officials would be swept off their feet by such an unexpected event? Could it be that going there with almost no notice assures you a lack of organized opposition? And it just might be the kind of place you go when you have very little to say.

It took a while for Air Force One to take off for Halifax, Canada’s weather not being totally amenable to the Imperial will, but I’m sure Bush spent his idling time productively, perhaps watching old episodes of Cops on the plane’s splendid entertainment system. We can just be grateful that Imperial Vice Wizard Cheney didn’t tag along for the trip or they never would have made it to Halifax. Cheney never goes anywhere in the U.S. without a fleet of ambulances and chase cars, lights flashing and sirens blaring, just in case his heart implant ever fails during vitriolic speeches. Precious stuff, being Imperial Vice Wizard.

Bush’s stated purpose in going to Halifax was to thank Canadians who were so helpful to large numbers of American air travelers stranded by 9/11. Canadians were indeed helpful at that awful time, but Bush’s visit and pat few words of thanks came 3 1/4 years after the help. Not to mention the fact that Bush went to the wrong place, Halifax being roughly 600 miles by air from St. John’s, Newfoundland, where the bulk of Americans were actually stranded, receiving remarkably generous and kind assistance Bush never acknowledged until the day he wanted to avoid Parliament.

In the course of all this heady activity, Bush offered nothing for the legitimate grievances Canada has over high-handed American trade practices. On the issue of soft-wood lumber, American claims now have been rejected by every international tribunal governing trade. The WTO only recently declared America’s actions in violation of the organization’s rules. It’s been years of pointless grief for Canada’s industry and years of American home buyers paying a premium price for home-grown lumber. But, no, you wouldn’t expect a gracious concession, America is going as far as it’s possible to go in seeking an extraordinary tribunal for its imagined grievances, and who knows after that? I may be wrong, but I just don’t think you build friendships that way.

Bush deliberately brought up a subject that members of Canada’s government had every reason to believe would not be brought up on his visit. So much for courtesy and thanks. Bush brought up his addled anti-missile defense scheme and embarrassed the government by speaking publicly about it. Again, that is hardly the way to build friendships. But Canadians are used to this kind of behavior. Paul Cellucci, Bush’s Ambassador in Ottawa, has set a world record for diplomatic rudeness and sticking his nose into Canada’s internal affairs. If a diplomat from any country at a Consulate in Texas acted the way Cellucci does, he would simply be lynched. Canadians are too decent and polite for that, but I think they can be forgiven for being dismayed and disappointed.

Canada’s head of state, as opposed to its head of government, is the Governor General. The current holder of the office is Adrienne Clarkson, a distinguished Asian Canadian. It was said that at the official banquet, Ms. Clarkson kept a noticeable distance from Bush. After all, the last time Bush’s father had a meal with an Asian, the Prime Minister of Japan, he puked all over the front of his suit. (Thanks to columnist Jan Wong for this last observation)

AMERICAN PSYCHO

John Chuckman

No, I did not read the book, but what words more perfectly describe George Bush making one of the oddest speeches ever made at the UN? There he was – with his designer suit, costly watch, and constantly-manicured haircut – stone-faced and unrepentant for the violent destruction he caused, for his obvious lying, and for his rage against the thoughtful objections of others. Actually, unrepentant seems an inadequate description, unaware or uninterested being closer to the mark.

The matter and manner of Bush’s speaking are always an ordeal for thinking people. He seems convinced that every audience deserves the same approach given the pathologically credulous at a revival tent meeting.

But he outdid himself this time. His description of anti-social behavior on a global scale as support for the world community must have provided a sophisticated audience interesting dinner topics. One can imagine the bons mots around the subject of the world’s most incorrigible, obvious liar claiming he defends UN credibility. As with Dostoevsky’s Father Karamazov, it was as though all his recent vicious and disturbing behavior had simply never happened.

Of course, he sees the UN as good for a big handout towards the financial and human cost of rebuilding the waste he made of Iraq. This may seem odd for one of those “we ain’t a gonna pay no damn UN dues” types, but, remember, psychopaths are complete narcissists.

But a handout is not Bush’s critical need. Facing an election, he is looking for ways to deflect growing criticism and doubt from American voters. Americans have been remarkably quiescent over the dirty wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because they cost so few American lives and provided a reassuring sense of the nation’s vast capacity for revenge, even if they killed mostly innocent people and few or any of those associated with 9/11.

But night after night of car bombs and dead American soldiers on television have a way of changing perceptions. America’s press, “embedded” with the Pentagon long before the term was invented for the Iraq war, often poorly reports around foreign policy, but it simply cannot resist blood-and-ambulances stuff with real American victims. With this continuing week after week, it is likely more Americans will see the Iraq war for what it was – nothing to do with justice or democracy or rights or even terror – but one more kill-a-commie-for-Christ campaign, only on a vast scale with high-technology killing and no commies. And, as with all previous such holy wars, it just happens to serve the interests of America’s utterly selfish foreign policy.

The UN is widely misunderstood in America, a circumstance people of Bush’s leaning have always diligently cultivated, and its involvement on any appreciable scale gives Bush something external and vaguely-disliked to manipulate in explaining all the violence and confusion yet to come as a people revolt against conquest, occupation, and misery.

International involvement gives room for maneuver, wiggle room, and can be twisted with words to serve many purposes, including the claim that it vindicates Bush’s wisdom, all those do-nothing, effete foreigners finally coming to recognize the threat of terror – and, yes, he once again with unblinking dishonesty linked terror with Iraq during his UN performance, terror being, with the bitterest irony, Bush’s best ally in garnering votes. Iraqis fighting back with limited means against the world’s military and technological Frankenstein naturally has to be called something else, so it is called terror, just as violent resistance to endless occupation and abuse in Gaza and the West Bank is.

Psychopathy likely is one of those many glitches in the gene pool, an evolutionary trial-and-error that served a useful purpose before modern urban society, psychopathic warriors being valued for their ability at defending early human settlements and terrifying potential enemies. Probably most of our legends of monsters such as vampires or ghouls derive from human experience with all-too-real psychopathic personalities.

Psychopaths are valued to this day as torturers for secret police, assassins, and dirty-tricks operatives for intelligence services. Police and prison-guard services who are careful about their hiring screen out such people with tests (there are extremely reliable ones), since psychopaths are naturally drawn to work where others will be at their mercy.

As with many mental disorders, from depression to schizophrenia, there appears to be degrees of psychopathy. The father of the late Jeffrey Dahmer, a man who killed, consumed and memorialized portions of his victims in his Milwaukee apartment, wrote a courageous book after the discovery of his son’s horrific deeds. He recognized in retrospect signs from his son’s childhood that something unusual was developing. He also, very importantly, recognized that there were uncomfortable thoughts he had had as a young man which now might be understood as a milder inclination in the same direction.

Politics with the power of elected office and the glow of press attention surely is a draw for at least the more moderately afflicted. There is reason to believe that psychopathy helps explain the careers of some horrible and bizarre politicians. The example that leaps to mind is the late Senator McCarthy. Yes, he was a nasty drunk, but lots of drunks function in politics without becoming destroyers of others’ lives. The great Winston Churchill, for example, couldn’t get through a day without his brandy.

How do you get rid of a political psychopath like Bush? Well, I hope the Democratic party doesn’t see its only option as simply running another one. The Democratic contenders include at least a couple characters who might well qualify as having the disorder.

The armed forces have always been natural repositories for these dark creatures, the work of killing and the skill of being able to do it with relish making good fits. We have a general who suddenly discovered at nearly sixty years of age that he is a Democrat. What that means in the context of the general’s military experience, which includes probable war crimes and extremely hazardous judgments in Serbia, is not clear.

We have a Senator who always smilingly supports death, whether as part of American foreign policy, Israeli foreign policy, or in prisons.

Maybe that’s just how it has to be in a vast bloated empire that pretends it represents principle. After all, you need to keep all those disagreeable foreigners in line. Statesmen and humanitarian leaders aren’t very good material for the job.