“I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful, but they should be grateful to us. Canada lives because of the United States."
“Remember that Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Russia and China are described as our great “adversaries.” In this rivalry of “great powers,” the United States is supposedly defending the entire free world from conquest by the eastern powers.
I think it is very much in America’s interest to project this reality. A world on the precipice of war doesn’t have time to collaborate on a better future. Preparing for imminent conflicts from every direction does not allow for solar panels or housing projects. Conquest, industry, the extraction of mineral wealth! Rare earth! Oil! Supremacy in AI and Drone Manufacturing! Nuclear Submarines! Those things are valuable in a world at war. A world at war will suspend the liberties of free people in the name of security. A country at war will conquer its neighbor in the name of defense.
This is also the world described in 1984. Orwell’s London is under endless martial law because of “wars” with Russia and China. The citizens of Oceania (as the the American/English dystopian state is called) must be super patriots at all times to support the war effort. The war will never end, because the entire system of power depends upon it.
So, who should Canada be grateful to again? Certainly not to Trump. It was the generation before him (now old and passing on) that fought in World War II. While his peers were dying in Vietnam, Trump dodged the draft. While his peers were fighting for the end of segregation, Trump was being groomed to assume a real estate empire from his family. While Trump’s peers risked jail to build a better world, Trump was fighting his first lawsuits in court to deny black people the right to sign leases in his properties!
It is Donald Trump who needs to learn gratitude! His generation pilfered the Earth while the one before actually fought and died in the name of freedom.