And so we start the journey through 2023. Some might call it the annual resetting of the circle of life.
All told, 2022 proved a horrific year with few, albeit, crucial shafts of warm sunshine to protect our souls from hiding our heads in fear and shame. One might even say it was a year of two’s. We shall not see such a plethora of two’s for another two hundred years — 2222 — if the human race should survive. Indeed, as we face the inevitability of a cataclysmic erasure of our species on earth if we do not get our planet’s atmospheric temperature under control, the response of the world’s political leaders remains consumed by finger pointing, foot dragging and backyard protection.
And isn’t it ironic, that we finally woke up to the comedy of having the price and amount of global oil and gas production firmly in the hands of Mohamed bin Salman Al Saud, the Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, with Vladimir Putin, President of Russia and his only true friend, pulling the puppet strings behind his back. China will start to mess with this in 2023.
Then, of course, the Russian bear went on the attack in February past. Pepper-sprayed by NATO in Ukraine, but still on the rampage, Putin utterly seeks to obliterate Kiev, Odessa and Kherson, just as the allies did to Dresden and Berlin in World War II. We will fight to the last Ukrainian to save democracy as the USA did to Britain during the last World War until the Axis attack on Pearl Harbour. Where next will Putin strike — from Kaliningrad, its Baltic Sea Fleet headquarters, against Lithuania perhaps? It’s going to get really messy.
Overall, we are embarked on a continuing period of economic and political instability. Indeed, the mood globally reeks of universal skepticism about the trustworthiness of any of the world’s political and business leaders. Nationally, our fractured view of what Canada is and the future of Quebec within Canada will continue to haunt us.
Still, there are glimmers of hope. Canada’s premiers and prime minister have started to come to grips with the overall impact of our undisciplined, politicized immigration practices, starting with the catch up needed to modernize and nationalize our healthcare system. Education services and the role of cities will follow.
Offshore, the USA is recovering from its flirtation with a megalomaniacal autocratic federal government. India and its Asian neighbours are seriously developing the capacity to match and compete with China’s staggering economic juggernaut and Emporer Xi Jinping’s supply-side and economic global supremacy no longer seems inevitable. The horrors of Nazism and Russian thuggery during and after WWII will sustain European support of Ukrainian independence. The Middle East, Africa and South America will remain consistently unstable. The United Nations Organization will provide essential and useful humanitarian services while remaining politically irrelevant.
All of this makes our current provincial government’s Quebec-inspired Sovereignty Association actions petty silly. Surely, as Canadians, we are better than this. Don’t forget to vote in 2023.
