The fear that drives a nation

(Oh no I’m on my non-writing bullshit again. Buckle up for nation state psychology theory!)

A government sets its course of action with a series of policy decisions that (hopefully) are well-thought out and integrated to benefit the population they represent. There should always be a coherent positive vision that the government in question is trying to achieve. But in addition to that, I suspect that there’s a core fear that shapes a government’s planning. Sometimes they share that fear with other similar nations/provinces/municipalities, like Western Europe’s fear of invasion from the Soviet Union. So, I’ve spent literally minutes thinking over what the primary fear of a few major countries are right now, and how that fear shapes their policy.

U.S.A. fear: China becomes hostile

It’s hard to pick out a clear policy vision from the U.S. right now, since their president constantly “floods the zone” with poorly explained and hastily put together announcements. There is a distinct chance that it is just random policies crashing into each other. But for the sake of argument, I will assume that there is a coherent concept. I tend to ignore almost everything the president says, and instead look at what the vice-president and the Secretary of State say. And based on what Vance and Rubio have said repeatedly, the threat of China invading Taiwan is the primary fear that they have. That invasion, which China has been threatening for years, would suddenly cut off the worlds supply of semi-conductors and advanced computer chips. America would need to defend Taiwan to protect the chip supply, which would mean a hostile relationship with China. Chinese exports to the U.S. would be stopped. If this is the premise that shapes your government’s view of the world, then you’d make it a priority to decouple your manufacturing from China. By applying massive tariffs to Chinese goods, you’d be signaling to your domestic producers that they need to make new plans based on limited access to China.

And hostilities with China would mean conflicts in adjacent regions, as China attempts to gain control of sea lanes. To prevent that, you’d want to have better control of your neighbouring territories like Greenland and Canada. China, or their effectively proxy state of Russia, would attempt to claim the Arctic as theirs, bringing the threat of Chinese troops much too close to the U.S. Keep in mind that there is considerable evidence that China has considerable influence over the current Canadian government, and that government has shown a suspicious lack of concern over Chinese Communist Party interference in Canadian affairs.

Canada’s fear: We’re going to run out of people

It’s a little bit more difficult to pick a primary fear for the Canadian government This is a government that has been driven by emotion and vibes for 9 years. Progressivism is a feelings-based ideology. But I’ve settled (for now) on the fear of depopulation as the primary fear. Total fertility rate in Canada is below the replacement rate of 2 babies per woman, as it is in most countries. Even the African countries with high TFRs are seeing a decline. And a nation that has a low TFR has massive problems on the horizon. Society depends on new humans to take on the burden of supporting the old ones. Without enough babies being born, you run out of workers and money. So, they decided to massively increase the number of people coming into Canada.

They could not speed up the legal immigration pathway to a sufficient level to meet this goal, because of the onerous process and lack of state capacity. But they could relax the enforcement on asylum claims, and increase the number of international students and temporary foreign workers allowed. This created an alternate path to permanent residency that was much quicker and easier than legal immigration. Foreign national comes to Canada on pretense of working or studying, then claims refugee status when their temporary permit runs out. That gives them about 2 years before their refugee claim is processed, and during that time they can move freely about the country and simply disappear. The Canadian government has admitted that there are tens of thousands of non-citizens that the government has lost track of. Add to this number of new residents, the increase in legitimate refugees brought in by the federal government. This increase in refugees may satisfy their Progressive Guilt/Savior complex, but the practical effect has been a housing and healthcare supply crisis.

Russia’s fear: We are no longer relevant

Russia has been more of a mob boss than a nation in the last decade. No grand vision, and only a sad trace of their previous Empire. As China has become ascendant, the importance of Russia as a geopolitical force has steadily decreased. Even the threat of their nuclear arsenal has become stale. So they now claw and scrape at Ukraine in an attempt to revie the Russian empire. In actuality, they’ve weakened themselves into a client state of China, a slightly more prosperous version of North Korea. The danger they pose is limited to their immediate European neighbours, and that threat could easily be nullified if/when Europe decides to protect itself.

Europe’s fear: Change will bring chaos

The European Union is defined by a love of restrictive regulations, and a fondness for censorship. At the root of both of these impulses lies a fear of the uncontrolled. Europe sees itself as a finished product, and anything new must be brought under control and kept from upsetting the established order. And anyone who questions the status quo is a “far right” agitator that must be kept from participating in public discussion. This leads to a stifling of technological innovation, weakened democracy and a slow, managed decline of society. In attempting to keep their nations frozen in a state of near-perfection, they are atrophying into irrelevance. This approach has been made possible by a complete reliance on America to provide military deterrence to Europe’s enemies. This was a necessary position after World War 2, when the nations of Europe were in ruins. But it led to learned helplessness in the last 20 years, and a deliberate lack of investment in their national defense. Poland has changed its course, being fully aware that Russian aspirations always include Poland. But the EU is designed to make change difficult and time-consuming, and your enemies will not abide by your regulated timelines.

Hardboiled or Noir?

Did you read the title of this post and wonder “what the hell is he talking about? Are those even real words?” Well I don’t blame you. The whole sentence fragment sounds like nonsense.

But they are real terms, used to describe types, or ‘genres’ of Crime fiction. Normal people don’t describe books using genre classifications, but publishers and literary agents lust after them. So authors desperately trying to woo the industry and get it to pay them some sweet attention (and cold, hard cash) will shout out their genres to anyone who will listen.

My new book, Falstaff Gets Found, has a number of genre categories it could grease its way into. Crime? Yes. Detective? Yup. Thriller? I think so. Erotic? ….no, not unless you’ve got some really weird kinks and I do NOT want to know about it.

I’ve narrowed it down to either (or both) of the Crime subcategories of ‘Hardboiled’ or ‘Noir’. In part because I love the idea of these genres. Both came into existence in 20th century America, though you can always find an ancestral book or film from Europe that could be called the true start of the genre. Regardless, the two came into popularity in the U.S. of A.

Hardboiled was a product of the dirty thirties, the period between World War 1 and World War 2. It has tough men fighting against dirty criminals and corrupt cops. The hero takes his lumps, but ultimately he perseveres and saves the day.

Hardboiled man shoots the news. Who could blame him?

Noir emerged at the end of World War 2. It paints a world where no one is innocent, society is infested with liars, cheats and general scum. Even the heroes are flawed and morally questionable, trapped by their own weaknesses in a world that simply doesn’t care.

Driving in a Noir movie is dangerous stuff. Turn on a light, Robert!

To be honest, John Falstaff is a noir ‘hero’. He’s a coward, a junkie, and a liar who is hiding from his past and the guilt he can’t escape. He fails routinely, usually due to self-sabotage. And there are no good people in this story. Some aren’t that bad, but some are real stinkers.

And yet, these awful, miserable wretches keep trudging forward. They find solace with each other. Maybe, some day, they will find some grace. That’s the door I’m leaving open for John. I don’t know if he’ll ever step through it.

A new age of empires?

(I know I should keep my non-writing thoughts to myself, especially the spicy ones. My website should be gentle and kind, filled with posts that inspire people to buy my books. But I love my opinions: I LOVE THEM. Even though I do not research them, and I will change them at the drop of a hat. So if you’re put off by rash geo-polical rambling, please skip this post.)

After World War 2, there was a consensus in Western civilization that empires were inherently wrong, and would be relegated to the past. Europe as a whole had been in constant conflict between competing imperial powers for a couple thousand years. This was a chance to stop the cycle of military buildup, confrontation, and destruction, and they took it. Not that Europe had much choice. They graciously allowed the U.S.A. to be the guarantor of peace on the continent and they put aside their territorial grievances through complicated diplomacy instead of warfare.

Both sides of the political spectrum agreed to this change in perception. For example, the U.S. Right referred to the U.S.S.R. as the “evil empire” while the U.S. Left called all American interventionism “imperialism”. And for decades, that consensus has been dominant. (Imperialism was re-labeled Colonialism in recent years, but the sentiment is the same.) The U.S.S.R. collapsed under its own weight, the natural death spiral of all aging empires. And the former Western empires slowly divested themselves of their territories and colonies.

But there was a mistaken assumption that the negative perception of empires as outdated and wrong meant Imperialism was dead would be forgotten. The idea of empire in the West was alive but in a deep sleep. And in such sleep it dreamed darkly. The dream of empire surfaces into our collective consciousness occasionally. Remember when women on social media were astounded that men think about the Roman Empire frequently? Well they ain’t thinking about Rome because they love the look of togas. (Full disclaimer: I am one of those dudes that thinks about Rome almost every single day).

But the opponents of the West did not sleep. ISIS tried to build a multi-national caliphate, and continues to use horrifying, brutal violence around the world. Iran manipulates the Middle East via its murderous puppets like Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah. Russia launched its bloody war on Ukraine, while working to undermine other Eastern European countries. Africa is in a continual upheaval as nations, tribes and religious factions fight for dominance. China took Tibet, and now looks to reclaim Taiwan.

This is the world that America finds itself in. My guess is that they are sincere when they talk about the imminent danger posed by China. And in a scenario that has the U.S. in direct conflict with China, there is currently a possibility that the U.S. loses. They don’t have the capacity to rapidly scale up their ammunition and war machine production to match China’s massive manufacturing advantage.

And now they have a presidential administration that rejects the established political consensus. They feel like their allies take them for granted, and are more liability than asset. These U.S.’s “allies” have let their own militaries atrophy, spending the bare minimum on national defense while talking about how important they are to America. Europe should have been building their armies over the last 4 decades, but it was easier to let it slide and assume America would save them. Every flavour of Canadian politician has underfunded the Canadian Armed forces, despite being told time and time again by every American administration that we needed to start pulling our weight.

So they are taking matters into their own hands. The tariffs are meant to force reshoring of manufacturing and self-sufficiency. They believe that Greenland is a strategic asset that would be beneficial to be under control of America, as an example. They don’t care that you think empires are bad. In a speech about space exploration, Trump used the phrase “manifest destiny”. This is the belief that America has the right to expand and take over the continent and beyond. In other words: an empire.

I don’t want you to mistake this half-baked analysis as a glowing endorsement for America’s actions. Everything the Trump admin does is sloppy, rushed, and needlessly cruel. I don’t think the tariffs will work, and the will cause a lot of financial pain across the globe. But its unhelpful to think all of these decisions are being made on a whim to suit the demented dreams of one crackpot. There is a vision behind it all, and that vision is shared by all the people involved in the Executive branch.

As an aside, the China threat theory explains some of the harshness towards Canada. Canada has a worrying inability to free itself from Chinese government influence and interference. We have illegal Chinese police stations, voter/citizen intimidation, and thriving Chinese organized crime syndicates that include Fentanyl production and distribution in their portfolio. Our Federal government has been alarmingly resistant to addressing these issues. Add to that our lax border control and inability to keep track of non-citizens in our country, and you can see why America doesn’t see us as their super-best friend anymore.