The United States, the southern neighbor of Canada -an immense
border of thousands of miles in length- is in turmoil, writes professor Homer-Dixon.
There is major social division. There is major trouble. There is a possibility of a civil war
because the divisions seem to be unbridgeable. Canada, he urges his readers, isn't prepared for
this, hasn't understood how serious and dangerous the threat of a disintegrating United States
capitalism would be for its northern neighbor. I want to stress this article's appearance because
it gives you a glimpse as to how a growing part of the world, not just in Canada by a long shot,
is viewing the decline of a system here in the United States, and much of what I'm about to
tell you is the evidence accumulating that is making people like professor Homer-Dixon
reach these conclusions. And it's also explaining why the authorities running major media
in many countries feel the need to provide space for this perspective to get aired. You'll see
it sooner outside the United States than inside and that too is a kind of evidence for decline.
We have a systemic problem here in the United States. That professor from Canada Homer-Dixon
has a point. It's falling apart. The inflation, or the lockdowns, or the supply chain disruptions-
all of them are signs of a system that cannot cope with the kinds of problems we, as a species, have.
We're going to be vulnerable to viruses in the years ahead. Are we going to live like
this indefinitely? Are we going to listen to people who tell us that's what we must do:
we must learn to live with the disease? That's awful. That's like telling poor people you must
learn to live with your poverty. No. That's not the only option. That's an admission of failure.
When you have performed this badly as we have as a nation, there ought to be the deepest
kind of self-criticism. What went wrong? How is it possible for a country four times larger than us-
China- to have had one percent of the deaths from this disease that we've suffered?
What could be more urgent? What is more profoundly required of any economic system, capitalist or any
other, than to take care of that public health? If you don't guarantee people that they're going to
be healthy and alive, you're proving that you're not an adequate economic system. We've already had
little proofs over the years. The spectacle of a few people becoming billionaires while masses
of people can't earn enough to have a decent living. That's a sign that it isn't working.
The fact that we have people with many houses they visit a few times, a few weeks a year,
while we have millions of people that are homeless. This is another sign it isn't working
real well. Because you know, providing people with adequate food, adequate shelter, adequate
clothing- those and public health- those are the basics. Systems that can't do that are screaming
to be recognized as being systems that have to be fundamentally changed because they're not working.
Again, professor Homer-Dixon in Canada figures it out. He gets it, and increasingly,
newspapers and television commentators and media around the world are recognizing what will become
a bigger and bigger story in the months and years ahead. What in the world happened in 2020 and 2021
to make for such a display of inadequacy, incompetence, insufficiency screaming at
us from an economic system that couldn't prepare for, cannot cope with and cannot even help people
out after two years of the dilemma that they're in? Hitting the American people with an inflation
as the dessert after the horrific meals of 2020 and 2021, with covid and the unemployment.