Is Canada Brain-Dead?
by David Solway
As we survey the political landscape today, it is hard to escape the conclusion that a plague of mental catalepsy has swept the globe. One recalls the old multi-attributed adage: whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. Clearly, being rendered stupid would be just as effective.
In essence, we note there are two large demographic bodies that resemble one another in the extent of their cognitive impairment: brain-dead politicians and brain-dead electorates. They are not necessarily coterminous. In some nations, one predominates; in others, another. Sometimes the two dispensations are found in sync.
In European nations such as the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, and Romania, and of course in the higher echelons of the EU itself, the political class is plainly suffering from an access of both mental impairment and historical ignorance, receding into the very totalitarian past they were reconstructed to avert, imposing court-ordered repressive measures against public expression, imprisoning dissident individuals, and banning popular rival parties poised to triumph at the polls. The electorates themselves are generally in revolt, joining the surge of populist resentment and political protest.
In the U.S., the situation is somewhat more complex. The MAGA/Republican leadership and its loyal supporters enjoy a visionary lien on a productive and unfettered future, but nearly half the citizenry and its political representatives are firmly embedded in the dark ages of political evolution. The former are, for the most part, sane, intelligent and fundamentally decent; the latter are effectively brain-dead, which is to say, short-sighted, naïve and, frankly, incapable of reasoned judgment. And like their leaders, they are often prone to violence in word or deed. One might say that America is basically two countries, or rather, a cleanly bifurcate nation. In the MAGA wing, both leadership and electorate are vital; in the Democrat wing, leadership and electorate are reciprocally brain-dead.