We Stand On Guard For Thee. There's An Idea.

It might be time for us to dust off that line about how we stand on guard for thee, Canada, at least until the American elections are called. Even that might be too soon to relax our guard.

There are many things going on, mostly unchecked, across the United States that could, if we're careless, spill across our shared border. We treat these contagions lightly at our peril.

Many of us have an image of the U.S. that reflects cross-border relatives and friends or wonderful holidays in Florida or California or Hawaii, the stuff of which memories are made.  My best friend, we've been pals for 50 years, is an American I met at university on his  discharge from the US Army. I absolutely love Hawaii and have many wonderful memories from trips running the Pacific Coast highway on a very powerful motorcycle at speeds that were often rash but indescribably exhilarating. Like most of us on the left coast I feel a true affinity for the people of Washington, Oregon and northern California. I have to remind myself that the America of these memories is not the America of today. I don't know an American relative or friend who disagrees with that.

America seems extraordinarily unstable right now. Social cohesion is rock bottom. It's commonly said that the American people have not been so deeply divided across so many fault lines since the Civil War. Conspiracy theories abound and their adherents exist in an alternative reality. Groups that have two realities, one grounded in fact, the other based on sensational social media drivel, have no common ground on which to debate and resolve their differences. Suspicion and hostility become their bonds.

In many ways America has descended into or stands on the cusp of fascism. The underpinnings of American democracy, which was always less than what most imagined, are/were anchored in their vaunted system of "checks and balances," in which three co-equal branches of government - executive, legislative and judicial - ensured that if one went rogue, wandered outside the strictures of the Constitution, the other two could rein it in. Today the executive branch, the presidency, is rogue. The ideologically groomed judiciary is rogue. The legislative branch, or a powerful part of it, is rogue. Again, America stands further destabilized.

There are two areas, other than industrial-strength killing power, in which America remains unparalleled - inequality and Covid-19 infections. The nation that routinely boasts it has the best healthcare in the world doesn't and it never did. Among the G-7 nations, America has the worst overall health outcomes. There is gold plated healthcare for some but no healthcare at all for many at the bottom ranks.  Meanwhile the American people stand exposed as disparate groups, some of which see pandemic precautions in terms of Constitutional rights and freedoms as infection rates soar.

America that once proclaimed itself the "land of opportunity" now has pulled up the ladders of social mobility and lags behind most European countries. In a healthy society, wealth circulates through social classes. In today's America it pools in the pockets of the elite, like lividity in a corpse.

America's rightwing media, propaganda mills barely disguised as news outlets, incite the spread of fear-stoked hatred of all descriptions - xenophobia, racism, white supremacy and every possible order of bigotry.

With all these destabilizing forces in play there is no end of ways to how the future of America, its economy, governance and its people may unfold, perhaps unravel, in the months ahead nor much chance of predicting where America is heading. I know that America's ills are too deep and many that they won't be healed by the man in Ray-Bans.

Canada is vulnerable. Lockdown or not, our economy is tethered to America's. In many ways Canada marches in lockstep with the United States.  America has unrivaled military might but, as a society, its resilience is lousy, an inevitable result of the breakdown of social cohesion.

Chris Hedges has repeatedly described today's America as having entered a "pre-revolutionary" state. He compares it to a pot of water just beginning to simmer yet you can never know quite when it will reach a full boil.

Much has been written over the past few years about the prospect of collapse both in American and some other nations' societies.  An article in Foreign Policy in March contends that "the real pandemic danger is social collapse." In January, 2018, with no notion of the looming pandemic, a piece in New Scientist questioned whether political strife, crippling inequality and climate change will herald the end of Western civilization. That same month, The American Conservative published an insightful opinion piece, "Underestimating American Collapse." In February, 2019, BBC Future presented a piece on factors currently in play that history shows can gut societies "from the nave to the chaps." The usual villains include climate change, environmental degradation, inequality and the rise of oligarchy, complexity and external shocks (i.e. plagues and pandemics).

It was a Texas newspaper, however, that may have best captured the landscape of the United States, 2020.

In June, 2020, the Dallas Morning News, pondered the rise of 'anomie' - "the division, the economic upheaval, the loss of faith in institutions, the erosion of the rule of law, the collapse of social norms, and the despair so many of us feel."

Perhaps this explains the rising rate of suicides in America, up 35% in the past 20 years, according to the CDC, and in particular it may explain the mass shootings that end in suicide. Anomie might explain why this nation elected a president who has pledged to tear down many of our institutions, and it may explain why so many people consider street protests to be the best chance for change. It might be why many Americans embrace conspiracy theories and myths, to try to make sense out of the disorder. And it may explain why our elected officials, even the ones who are smart, decent people, cannot get a foothold in leading us. The ground keeps shifting.

Americans have lost faith in once-rock-solid institutions that bound us to one another and the world. From the local police department, school district, chamber of commerce and family doctor to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Catholic Church, the Federal Reserve and the World Health Organization, there are few institutions left that have a deep level of trust among Americans.

So when COVID-19 began to spread rapidly, it was hardly surprising that many people refused to believe the news was serious or take precautions for themselves and others. In a few places people even showed up at open businesses armed, in protest against ordinances to stay at home.

...Where Americans once supported both freedom of speech and the rule of law, suddenly, those values seem to ebb and flow depending on the politics and color of the people involved.

Rather than healing the failing nation depicted by the Dallas Morning News, Trump seeks to exploit these dangerous divisions to bolster his chances in the November presidential election. He would gleefully wreck the nation, anything, if it might gain him a second term in office.

My point is that this is no time for complacency. It is no time to blithely assume America will somehow even its keel. The window of opportunity for that may have already lapsed. What we should focus on now are reasonable measures Canada can take to insulate this country in the event cataclysm befalls our neighbour. We need to be prepared to react. We need to be quick and agile.