March 1993.
Something seems familiar about the transition from a Cold War sickness to an ethnic turmoil sickness in the world at large. I try to remember what it is that it reminds me of. Then I know: the time when I finally emerged from a bladder infection just to be immersed in an intense digestive disorder, probably caused by the antibiotic that cured the first complaint. The feeling is one of desperation at the chain propagation of adverse circumstances. What will curing the second disease produce? A third one?
Outside, the snow and ice of this long winter will not go away, though it is already late March. The Blizzard of 93 hit us last week, but even that was not this winter’s last call. The blizzard was like the Gulf War, but now we still have Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Angola, Somalia, Sudan…And now an internal crisis in Russia. Will the Cold War return? The nuclear weapons are still in place and still targeted. It is like the bladder infection returning while the digestive distress is still raging. I could not stand more antibiotic. This is truly, truly desperate.
Yet I did pull out into the sunshine of full health. And spring will probably come, if the long past record of the seasonal cycle is any guide. But in world politics there are no precedents, only raw reality.
I feel small and helpless and vulnerable, but I will not give up. What else is there to do? It’s not over till it’s over.
June 1993.
The weather is gorgeous, but my despair continues. I am a political orphan. The NDP that I have always favoured with votes, membership, and money, has turned into another God that failed. Bob Rae in Ontario is going down the same Mulroney-Reagan-Bush-Thatcher path of neo-conservatism as all the world’s politicians, even – especially – in Eastern Europe, even Sweden…If this is the end of history, it is the end of all aspirations to a just and sustainable society – yes, probably the end of human history on Earth, in the non-Hegelian sense. How can we louse up like that?
The Tory convention is over and Kim is our new woman Prime Minister, but she is a non-feminist woman and a helicopter-lover. I couldn’t care less, it no longer concerns me. How can I possibly vote in the coming election? I am a motherless fatherless orphan wandering in the wasteland, singing my old sweet song that nobody listens to or even remembers.
The Canada that I have known and loved has been almost dismembered. My favorite night train to Ottawa is gone, the Post Office has become inefficient and expensive with new machines and will probably be privatized, many of my favorite CBC radio programs are gone, the baby bonus was abolished, there is increasing talk about charging user’s fees in the medical plan (my own daughter-in-law Merrill is writing Ontario government briefs in favour of it), they may run out of money in the old-age security pension plan, they got rid of the Science Council, the Economic Advisory Council, the Institute for International Peace and Security. The policies are oriented toward debt repayment, export competitivness, privatization, fighting inflation – exactly like the “structural adjustment” of the IMF and World Bank plan for Jamaica, only we are doing it to ourselves. We are turning ourselves into a Third World country, under Tory leadership with Liberal and NDP connivance.
The United Nations which I have always supported has turned into an obedient tool of Pax Americana, and its peacekeepers are killing civilians in Somalia. They call it “Operation Renewed Hope”. George Orwell would enjoy that. Canadian peacekeepers in Somalia are shooting local people because they (the Canadians) are racists and neo-Nazis. (This is the responsibility of Kim Campbell’s department.) Where, o where can I turn?