What a Collapsing America Means for Canada (And the World)
The Siege of Canada is Just the Beginning of What America’s Far Right Wants for the World
See that picture above? That’s far-right wing American pundit Tucker Carlson encouraging the Canadian “Freedom Convoy.” That’s a tiny taste of what’s in store.
Right about now, if you’re Canadian, you’ve got a job to do. No, I don’t mean putting on a toque and shoveling some snow. I mean understanding American collapse. Americans don’t understand it at all, which is why they don’t know what to do about it — and that goes for more less all of them, from intellectuals to politicians to the Average Joe. If you’re Canadian, you’re going to need to do better than that.
Because the truth is that Canada is at severe risk from a collapsing America. See how the Trumpists still haven’t given up when it comes to ripping apart what’s left of America? The “truckers,” by which I mean far-right wing agitators, who are inspired and incited and egged on and funded by the American hard right, aren’t going to stop here. America is like a great wounded animal, dying, lashing out in terrible pain and despair.
Unfortunately for Canada, it’s right next door. It isn’t going to stop here. This is just the beginning. But you suspect that already. So why is the American right interfering in Canadian politics and life? Why is it trying to destabilise…gentle and wise…Canada?
What did Canada ever do? Ah, my friend. All you did is exist. Let me explain, and we need to start at the real beginning of American collapse. The hate and stupidity? It’s all a symptom, secondary. I want to begin by teaching you why America is really collapsing. Then we can figure out what it means for Canada and everyone else.
Let me begin with a seemingly anodyne fact, but one which in truth is going to explain everything. America has the world’s highest rate of consumption. It’s 80%. 80% of American GDP is consumption. That means that 80% of every dollar isn’t invested, it’s just consumed. Americans spend it on the stuff they’re famous for: big houses and huge cars and whatnot. And the now legendary bills, too, like a million dollars for healthcare, but I’ll come to that.
Why does that number matter? Well, first let me put it in perspective. Canada’s rate of consumption is just 55% of GDP. That is a huge, huge difference — one of 25%. In other words, America consumes almost as much, per person, as two Canadas. Now. You might sense already that something is very, very wrong with a country that consumes at 80% of its economy.
But what is that something, exactly? Well, if 80% of an economy is consumption…then it can never really be at full employment. Because by definition, people are consuming way, way more than they are producing. The imbalance is too grave, too great. Imagine it in your own life. You have to earn a dollar to spend it. That is not what happens in America, really.
That number, an economy with a consumption rate of 80%, explains why millions of Americans have, as we economists say, “dropped out of the labour force” over the last few decades. Think of all those Americans left in abandoned, neglected Rust Belt towns, where all the factories closed and the mills shuttered, never to reopen. What were they to do? The answer turned out to be: nothing. There were no jobs. That is why the middle class imploded, the working class sank into poverty, by the 2010s.
To really understand this — and you must understand it if you want to really know how America collapsed — just think about what defines America for a second. What is it? Well, it’s the fact that Americans have always wanted other people to do their work for them. That is what slavery was all about. It’s what segregation was about. The American economy has always been premised on the idea of someone else doing the heavy lifting and hard labour. That is precisely how America got rich — all those stocks which began to be “traded” in New York’s nascent “stock markets” were capital earned on the backs, essentially, of slaves. No slaves, no American economy growing wealthy, no America as we know it today. But it didn’t end there, this way of life of getting others to do your work for you.
Who does American’s work for them (in the modern context)? Well, it’s China. China is there supplying America with everything that it overconsumes — from cheap electronics to the junk sold on Amazon to food and clothes and so forth. America struck “trade deals” with China in which the Chinese were massively underpaid to supply America with all these basics.
Americans happily voted for it, seduced by the old economics, the time-honoured social contract, in America, at least, of “hey! Let’s get those guys to do our work for us! We’ll pay them as little as possible! And we’ll get rich!”
There was only one problem with this, and anyone could have seen it coming. If China was going to do all of America’s work for it…what were Americans going to do? You see, this isn’t the age of slavery anymore. Even Americans still needed to earn a living and have jobs. But they made this fatal choice, so very much in the spirit of slavery — those guys will do our work for us, and we’ll exploit them to the bone! And so Americans were left without jobs, because now China (etc) was doing all its work for it, but unlike in the days of slavery, Americans still had to earn a living, but now what was there to do?
Hence, the middle class collapsed, and the working class imploded. That’s not some kind of fiction — by 2011, the famed American middle class was, for the first time in history, a minority. Students of social collapse, like me, shuddered at seeing this number — because it alone predicted what was to come next.
Fascism. By 2016, America was firmly in the grip of a neofascist politics. Trump had emerged as a demagogue, and ascended to the Presidency. Think of it. Donald Trump, of all people. That is how bad things had gotten in America — and it was, and still is, about economics, about a nation falling into poverty, because its fundamental choices of political economy were self-defeating. Americans had grown poor because the idea of getting others to do their work for them had seemed like a wonderful idea — but it had only left them without jobs, opportunities, income, stability, upwards mobility. Instead, Americans found themselves living worse lives than their grandparents.
And they needed someone to blame. Sudden, rapid declines into newfound poverty like this? They produce tidal waves of rage and fury. Demagogues emerge, who provide the people with scapegoats. The people, blinded by rage, befooled by despair, fuel the ascendance of the demagogues, believing in the scapegoats.
That was America during the Trump years. Trump offered Americans a certain predictable set of scapegoats — which are usually a society’s most hated classes, already considered subhumans. In America, that was Black people, Latinos, Jews, Muslims. Trump attacked them all, viciously. In return, he formed a bond with Red America that is unshakeable to this day. He gave them someone to hate, and blame for their woes, and a way out of their misery and fear — even if it was all an illusion. That is the demagogue’s trick.
So far, we’re more or less at the story of Weimar Germany becoming Nazi Germany. A nation imploding into poverty. The rise of demagogues. The search for scapegoats.
It’s the next part that should worry Canadians — and everyone else. After all this comes the search for lebensraum. In German, for the Nazis, that mean “living space,” room for the pure-blooded to live. Hence, they invaded Poland and then Europe. Lebensraum, of course, isn’t so much about literal room as it is about power, domination, and control. Of what? Resources.
Let’s go back to Weimar Germany, and it’s parallel with America. Germany was a nation which was accustomed to relatively high living standards. And so in the inter-war period, when living standards fell dramatically, thanks to war debts, the shock was immense, in both economic and psychological terms. Exactly the same is true of America.
What did the Nazis do? They offered the German people an endless series of scapegoats, to maintain power, to keep the Big Lies alive — and they set out on a quest for absolute domination over Europe. Why? Because, again, Germany was accustomed to relatively high living standards, and now the only way to have them was by force.
Are you seeing the parallels yet? Let me make them clearer. No, I’m not saying America’s going to invade Canada tomorrow. In fact, it already did, unless you think the American far right funding and inciting an occupation and blockade of its capitol and major trade routes to the point that a state of emergency is declared doesn’t count as a kind of invasion. It’s not a military invasion — but it’s exactly the kind of thing America’s done for decades to poorer countries, like Chile and Nicaragua. Funded and organised and even armed its far fight.
Do you see the slightly chilling lesson here? America has had no problem whatsoever funding and fuelling the hardest of right wing politics in nation after nation. The only real difference is that those nations weren’t rich (and largely white) ones. But now? A desperate America will stoop to anything to gain control, domination, and resources. Because it needs them, like Nazi Germany did before it, to maintain the living standards it was accustomed to, but can no longer have, at least peacefully. Now it’s Canada being destabilized, not Nicaragua or Chile. But the principle — and history — is one and the same.
At the same time, Canada is a convenient scapegoat. Cross an imaginary border, a bridge, a line nobody can see — and suddenly, you’re in a gentle and wise nation of, by and large, kind and nice people, where everyone can have things like healthcare and education and safety and shelter, at least to a degree unimaginable in America. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that the far right in America hates more than that. Because to it, the idea of true equality — that everyone can have healthcare or an education — is the deepest kind of affront to supremacy there can be. Those dirty, filthy people get healthcare and education in Canada! The hated ones!
What a terrible and awful nation it must be.
That is all why the “truckers” — the far right agitators — aren’t making some kind of democratic protest, in an attempt to be heard. They are literally trying to stop Canadian democracy.
That is not going to end. This is only the beginning. As America collapses, it will lash out at Canada in more extreme, violent, and angry ways. And not even just its far right. Americans are easily fooled people who don’t think much, and are fond of violence and bullying. The average American will come to see Canada as something much, much less than a friend. impoverished, desperate Americans will come to be jealous of Canada’s standards of living, its resources, its levels of investment. And inevitably, more and more, that jealousy and resentment will make Canada a target: it will spill over into the kind of far right wing interference that Canada’s already seeing.
Just as America’s destabilised country after country before, only never a rich one — an impoverished, desperate, fascist America will almost inevitably try to destabilise Canada, in a bid for resources, labour, capital, anything to prop up its imploding living standards.
By the way, I know that sounds mean and a bit harsh and a bit much. But it’s going to be true. That is what poverty does to societies, and that is what fascism does to people. I have seen many societies implode, but I’ve never seen a society implode and not lash out in waves of violence and try to seize whatever it can from those nearest to it, even if they used to be friends.
Taking what’s not yours is fascism at the micro-level: the SS officer lives in the house once owned by the Jew, who used to be his friend, colleague, co-worker, drinking buddy. But it’s also fascism at the macro level. Scapegoating, the seizure of resources, the targeting of resources, labour and capital, which is what Nazi Germany did to Europe. See how the two are linked, very much the same thing?
Right now, America’s far right is taking Canada’s security, it’s trust, it’s togetherness, optimism, confidence, stability, or at least trying to. Next up comes its democracy. Then come its labour, capital, and resources. That is how fascism works at the level of “foreign policy.” And fascists? They never, ever give up. See Trump still doubling down on the Big Lie of the stolen election? America’s far right, now fixated, is not going to stop coming after Canada now. This is a beginning, and I’ve tried to tell you exactly why and how history got America here. Let me tell you what happens next.
Trump will be re-elected, and his next great scapegoat — one of them, at least — is going to be Canada. He is going to need a new set of scapegoats, to keep stoking the fire of anger and rage, to keep the Big Lies going. Canada is a perfect target, because to a fascist, a social democracy — especially a working one, a successful one — is something that is the hated enemy. It is dangerous precisely because it sets an example. This, too, is a lesson of the Nazis.
You see, for social thinkers like me, Canada and America offer a natural experiment, an almost perfect one, something that’s incredibly rare. Two neighbouring nations, divided by nothing but an imaginary line. What made one successful — and the other implode? America chose the path of capitalism, individualism, greed, and selfishness. Canada chose social democracy, collective investment, equality, justice, and kindness. Thanks to visionary leaders like Pierre Trudeau, Canada went down Europe’s path, not America’s.
But to this rising generation of American leaders and power brokers — figures like Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Glenn Youngkin, and of course their father figure, Trump — there is nothing more odious than all that. Function, successful social democracy. Do you see how they are all open admirers of…Russia? Age-old political allegiances are shifting. To this new generation of American conservatives, and to their tens of millions of grass roots followers, who believe everything they say unquestioningly, Russia is a friend. Because it is what they want to be: a neo authoritarian-fascist state…
Seeking lebensraum. See what Russia’s up to in Ukraine? That’s the search for lebensraum, too — power, control, domination, resources. The American hard right openly admires this Russia. Considers it its friend.
Guess who that is going to make its enemy? Europe. And Canada.
And unfortunately for all of us, this wing of American politics is winning, and it is going to keep winning. You can see Biden’s Presidency tanking hard, by the day. You can see Trump rising again. You can see the average American swinging hard, hard to the right, like in Virginia, where soccer moms threaten to shoot up schools, radicalised by Big Lies.
Why is that? I’ve already explained it to you. Remember 80% consumption? How it ties back to slavery — let’s get other people to our work for us, so we can sit back and enjoy? How that left America without jobs, an economic base? And without jobs and an economic base, you don’t have anything left to invest in things like functioning healthcare systems, which creates a vicious circle — then you get million dollar medical bills on top of having no job and no future. And with no future, you turn to demagogues, who are scapegoating the hated for your woes, telling you your blood is supreme, feeding your ego, soothing your despair with Big Lies.
America is collapsing, and it’s not going to stop collapsing. Just as I predicted it more than ten years ago — and everything since has played out just as I said, with eerie accuracy — that same prediction holds just as true now. American collapse is going all the way. That is because the choice of political economy America made was fatal. It can’t be undone, reversed, stopped. America is not going to survive, as we know it — as a democracy, as a liberal nation, as a modern country. It is destined to end up like Russia, a nation imploded in on itself. It is repeating the path of Weimar Germany becoming Nazi Germany — a nation indebted, lashing out in vicious, violent rage, at its nearest neighbours and former allies and friends.
Unfortunately for Canada, that’s you. Canadians need to begin understanding all this — and I mean seriously, really understanding it, the way I’ve tried to teach it to you, in hard terms of political economy. Canada needs to protect itself from American collapse. So does the world, but Canada needs to start first, because, well, it’s the closest. But the game of fascism’s foreign policy as lebensraum and scapegoating has already begun, and for a fascist America, the target is Canada.
No, obviously, that doesn’t mean with guns, don’t be foolish. It means things like being aware of the problem. Having strong enough norms and values — a real commitment to the Canadian way of coexistence and tolerance and diversity and kindness — to survive whatever hate America tries to export. It means things like regulating the internet. Nipping extremism and fanaticism in the bud, instead of letting it fester. It means redoubling a commitment to the strong social systems and robust public goods which have made Canada such a success. It means even deeper bonds with Europe — who, with Canada, will, in the future, be a collapsing America’s scapegoat and enemy. And it just means sticking to that most dangerous weapon of all. Canadian niceness.
Let me tell you as someone who has lived in both places, for many years. The true antidote to American stupidity and violence and bigotry and hate and selfishness? It’s Canadian niceness. I really, really, really mean that. I’ve lived it. Nobody can fight nice and win, and the only thing that can fight hate and stupidity — and win — is niceness. Do you know why Americans hate the idea of being nice so much, why it’s such a taboo in their culture of brutality and greed, why if you call an American nice, it’s an insult? It’s the one thing they’re scared of because they know it has the power to set them free.
Don’t let them turn you into them. That’s how they win. I know that might sound easy. But it’s not going to be. Because niceness is the hardest thing of all when your society feels like it is under attack. And that is where Canada is right now. It’s already under siege from a collapsing America’s far right. What happens next? As the far right takes control of a fascist America, what it wants from Canada, and tries to do to it, only gets worse — much worse — from here.
Umair February 2022
