A defining (for these times) speech by the Canadian Prime Minister. See video.

PM Carney has walked through the rupture in the (now) old world order and declared a path to a new pattern of alliances and agreements that decenter the U.S. and draw stability from complex arrangements crafted by the “middle powers” of which he sees Canada as one.

As the U.S. president and his enablers steadily destroy system after system, making the U.S. federal government an untrustworthy, vindictive actor “from sea to shining sea”, whatever future we might have imagined for our families and communities is disappearing as well.

Americans have been largely future oriented, taught that, while not ever perfect, we could move steadily closer to our values and intentions laid out in founding documents.

We were progress oriented in our thinking, believing in a dream and our ability to move toward it. The dream – a set of freedoms, an approximation of a meritocracy, economic possibility at the individual level. Whether or not that dream would materialize for everyone, for many of us, it was that dream that pulled our work forward. We worked as if it were true. We protested and legislated and marched and advocated as if it were true.

We mourn the loss of the dream. Our 250th year will mark the death of that dream.

Some say it was never true nor going to be, that it was made up to subjugate and keep us striving. Working. That the U.S. has always been deeply, intentionally flawed, offering nothing but aspiration and perspiration for most, hollow in between. As deeply flawed as we were, we are profoundly unprepared for what we have become.

I do not think any of us are at all prepared.

I wrote this for me.

                     Love Angela