Living With Trauma 24

Americans and, by extension, we Canadians, have an incredible sense of entitlement. This has one very simple little explanation. Neither of these countries, as well as being wealthy and privileged, has ever been invaded, conquered or occupied by a foreign power, which is to say, just turn a blind eye to the effects of European colonization on the Indigenous First Nations and my argument will be almost watertight. But both our countries, like Australia and New Zealand, are incredibly innocent, as is England which, barring the German bombings that occurred during both World Wars, was never occupied or successfully invaded. This could well be considered the privilege by default of English-speaking countries. This is not to say that we have nothing to be guilty about, we have lots to feel shame over in all the aforementioned countries. But our ass has never been kicked. We don't know what it is like to be overrun and taken over by outsiders, to have our freedoms taken away, our culture and language threatened and prohibited, our basic rights evaporated. We were victorious in both world wars, so neither do we really know the bitterness of military defeat. This has turned us into well-meaning monsters. I believe that our obsession with individualism, self and our cultural tendencies towards narcissism and selfishness is partly because we have never had our ass kicked. This, I believe, is particularly why the nonsense of individualism has mutated into something so monstrous in the US with its milder version here in Canada. Winning two World Wars hasn't hurt either. Canada might be a fairer and gentler country than our enormous neighbour to the south, but we are still a society of winners and losers. Some of our immigrants here do particularly well because their rapacious ambition would never have got them very far in their native countries but here in the True North Strong and Free it is celebrated that the winner takes all, costing them maybe just a little more in tax dollars than in our fat monster neighbour to the south. I have known my share of successful immigrants. They are insufferable. Especially the ones from the Philippines, and many of those same successful immigrants voted for and support the butcher Duterte whose thugs have already slaughtered in just over a year more than seven thousand other Filipinos on drug charges. Canada is an odd American-European hybrid. Like many countries in Europe we have public health care and a better-than-nothing social safety net. But we are still a country of polite Americans where one is expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and if they don't have a pair of boots then they deserve to die sleeping on the sidewalk. Our current crisis of homelessness is clear evidence of where the winners and losers mentality is taking our society. If we want to see this mess healed then we had better not look to our prime minister. Junior has not yet choked on the silver spoon he was born with in his mouth. I have always found Justin Trudeau's charm offensive to be more the latter than the former and for one simple reason. Our prime minster, being a millionaire, is a member of the One Percent, yet he led this liberal Party to a sweeping majority on the intoxicating alchemy of his sex appeal and his pity for the more wretched folk, not the really poor, but the middle class, and those who would like to join it. (his words, not mine!) Junior is a millionaire, surrounded by other millionaires, such as Stephen Bronfman of the expensive booze fame and chief fundraiser for the Federal Liberal Party and Bill Morneau, the wealthy finance minister who wanted to raise taxes for the not quite rich independent business persons while ignoring his own class, the filthy rich with all their taxable funds squirreled away in Grand Cayman and other tax havens. Our prime minister and his cronies cannot bring healing to the traumatized in this country because they lack the necessary depth and knowledge that only real suffering and disempowerment can bring. They are part of this whole fabric of the culture of winners. They are good only for other winners, other success stories. Ever notice, Gentle Reader, the way we are programmed by national propaganda to remember the wars? We are expected to remember and shed tears only for our own soldiers. That's right, the people who were on the giving end of the artillery. Absolutely nothing is said about the casualties of the so-called enemies, especially civilian casualties. This kind of limited and very toxically selective memory is very typical of those who have not really suffered, or those who have never known disempowerment. To heal the truly broken and dispossessed they are absolutely useless. The real healers of our collective trauma are going to arise from our most disadvantaged populations. That's right. They are going to be people who themselves have been broken and damaged by a vicious and callous society that cannibalizes its weakest and most vulnerable members in order to press on ahead with the engines of progress. Until we can go no further and that day might be coming very soon.