On the Atwood piece. It seems to me that what we learn from it is this, and is too little:
1. Margaret Atwood really likes and has learned a lot from American literature and movies. Also, she acknowledges a feeling of kinship.
2. She has certain feelings about America's "Iraqi adventure" being "a tactical error," but chooses not to discuss them so that she can get on to...
3. The U.S. "gutting the Constitution." This is a large conclusion of hers, which leaves out the Supreme Court review that will take place in this country of all relevant statutes. And it is probable that the ultimate judgment on the recent "innovations" in our handling of individual rights under conditions of extreme threat will be undone by courts in the future, if not by the current courts. There is a history of which Atwood may not be aware of measures passed under conditions of perceived threat being later undone. Canada, with its relaxed attitude toward immigration and the political activities of persons disposed to do injury, if not to Canada then to the U.S., does not offer serious examples of how to deal with threats and injuries as extreme as those the United States has suffered. Canada is lucky.
4. Margaret Atwood's economic worldview is that huge US deficits will ultimately destroy the dollar and inflict severe damage on the US economy. She may well be right. What she's leaving out is that all the other nations of the world, Canada included, have constituted for years a gigantic cheering section for the US to continue to perform as the economic locomotive that pulls up the rest of the industrialized world, with its history of buying more than it sells. She may be right that this is an unsustainable paradigm. However she does not tell us what the alternative political and economic paradigm that she endorses will be, though it will presumably be one that allows the other nations of the world to compose themselves differently, in a way not reliant on the US locomotive, while providing air conditioning.
[Note: This post is in no way to be taken as a defense of the shortsighted policies of the current administration regarding environmental regulation. Atwood could have done much more with that one.]
Edit: What I think Atwood is really expressing is that she thinks the world is in a big mess right now and she wants somebody, ie the US, to do something about it, or to stop doing something, or something, to make it better. |
