U.S. Cultural Imperialism And The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

U.S cultural imperialism provides the arguments for so-called “objective” (reactionary) think-tanks, and it provides the sand-in-the-wheels used by corporations to defeat most imaginative, liberating, progressive economic, political, and cultural initiatives undertaken on behalf of Canada and Canadians. Most important, it eats the brains of many - apparently thoughtful - Canadians until they become defenders of U.S. takeover out of a belief they are defending open-mindedness, pluralism, equality of opportunity, fairness, and all the things that reject narrow, bigotted, exclusionist actions and attitudes. It even creates people like Rex Murphy - so taken in by U.S. cultural imperialism he seems to become slightly demented when the U.S. is openly criticized. He claims vigour, virtue, and health for some of its worst perversities. How is “the coalition of collaborators” so taken in? That is the burning question. Consider. Canada has a highly educated population. Canadians live in the second largest country in the world - 30 million of us. Our huge land mass is stuffed with raw materials, and we have enough arable land (used wisely) to feed ourselves and others. We have the wealth to maintain a good standard of living for all Canadians now and into the future - and to be of real assistance to the needy of the planet. We should be building Canadian vehicles to world preference. We should have industrial power second to none. We should, just for instance, produce pharmaceuticals for ourselves and the world at humane prices. We should produce most of the food Canadians eat. We should be genuinely helping the needy of the world. Those are only a few examples of what a self-respecting, dynamic Canada should be doing. Instead, we make U.S. cars in Canada. We make, buy, and use U.S. industrial equipment and production. We bring our healthcare system into near ruin buying U.S. pharmaceuticals at criminal prices. We have allowed our food production to be seriously impaired in order to import U.S. grown and processed food. We pump our raw materials of all kinds to U.S. factories so that gigantic profits can go to U.S. enterprise In all our major cities many Canadians live from food-banks, sleep in the streets, and survive under attack from political members of the coalition of the collaborators like Ralph Klein, Gordon Campbell, and Jean Charest. Our foreign aid is an embarrassment and a joke. Are we insane? No. We are the victims of U.S. cultural imperialism and the “coalition of the (Canadian) collaborators” practising the perverse love that dare not speak its name. It is that manifestation I pointed to in the last column dealing with literature and culture. Douglas (George) Fetherling, I said - as intended by Canwest Media I believe - conveys the views of the coalition of the collaborators in dealing with literature. Themes, values, and people in Canadian literature that don’t also appear in U.S. literature are damned as boring, tedious, preachy. The coalition stamp is on such commentators. (1) They accept, uncritically, U.S. culture at its own evaluation. (2) They fight for U.S. cultural dominance in Canada. (3) They reject truly original Canadians - especially those who call into question the quality of U.S. culture. (4) Finally, having formed their own identities upon a love of U.S. culture, they fight tenaciously, nastily, scathingly to preserve their own identities (to preserve, that is, U.S. culture as the basis of reality in Canada). That is why they are fairly placed among “the coalition of the collaborators. Who among us denigrates Canada and sanctifies the U.S. in that most perverse of love relations? U.S. interests in Canada do continuously, as do the poor besotted Canadians with their brains eaten out, who reside in out “objective” (reactionary) think-tanks, in our colleges and universities, in our press and media, and in significant parts of our governments. Consider the clear-speaking Liberal MP, Carolyn Parrish. Re-elected by her Mississauga electors who were not unhappy with her frankness about Canada/U.S relations, she spoke clearly a second time. She expressed the disapproval felt by a very large body of Canadians about the lunatic U.S. plan to build a self-indulgent, provocative, astronomically expensive, and probably useless missile shield. Of Canada’s role Ms. Parrish said: “We are not joining the coalition of the idiots”. The Globe and Mail’s jackboot disciplinarian on The Right - Rex Murphy - leapt to his bullwhip. In a long, long column which includes almost every illogical, irrational, emotionally coercive trick, Murphy claims we owe it to the U.S. to accept any stupid, brutal, brainless imperial move they make. (Globe and Mail, Aug 28, 04,A15) Rex Murphy foams out verbiage in his anger at Carolyn Parrish. One little quotation will be enough. “And the Americans!…Saved Europe, refinanced it with the Marshall Plan, stopped Hitler, wore communism to the grave.” For over-simplification those few statements deserve an Olympic Gold Medal - even though Rex Murphy is obviously heavily high on doses of the drug called U.S. Cultural Imperialism. Let’s suppose, however, that everything Murphy says in that quote is absolutely true. So What? What he says there has nothing whatever to do with the U.S. plan to build a self-indulgent, provocative, astronomically expensive, and probably useless missile shield. What he says has to do with Rex Murphy’s Toxic Right Rage that a mere elected Canadian MP, Carolyn Parrish, has the temerity, the gall, the insolence to name the U.S. missile shield what most Canadians know it is, and to name correctly those who want it developed. When we remember Rex Murphy is a major Globe and Mail columnist, CBC Radio’s host of Cross-Country Checkup, and a commentator with CBC-TV’s The National, we begin to see the extent of the problem we have with the coalition of the collaborators connected to U.S. imperialism by the love that dare not speak its name. Maclean’s Magazine had their coalition member, too. Barbara Amiel was the Maclean’s resident reactionary for many years. She was only dropped when she and her husband, Lord Black of Doublecross Harbour, came into undeniably bad odour.(A major case against Black accuses him and others of “fraudulently extracting excessive management fees and bogus ‘non-competition’ payments from the [Hollinger] company”. Globe and Mail, Aug 30 04 B1) The Canwest media giant - to go further - uses almost exclusively Toxic Right columnists everywhere in Canada. What do we see here? That major Canadian press and media use shrill, strident, reactionary writers to show (it seems) the willingness of press and media to be open and provocative. But not one of the large press and media outlets is open enough to use a single determined, hard-hitting, cogent critic of Capitalism and subservience to the U.S.A. as a balance to all those Toxic Right others. We can only conclude that Rex Murphy and the other Toxic Right journalists are puppets-on-a-string, all of them spokespeople for their sell-out bosses in corporate Canada. But we lament much more the fact that U.S. cultural imperialism has had a farther reach, eating out the brains of many thoughtful, caring Canadians until they become defenders of U.S. takeover and of the Rex Murphys and Barbara Amiels of Canadian journalism. I’d be defenders of those two as well if they were balanced by determined, hard-hitting, cogent critics of Capitalism and subservience to the U.S.A. But until such people as Rex Murphy are decently balanced, they can only be seen as the paid hirelings of a corporate class and governments that wallow like pigs in their subservience to the U.S.A and are willing to pay the Rex Murphys, the Barbara Amiels, and the whole roster of National Post writers to sell out Canada and Canadians. That is the primary task set the coalition of the collaborators: to sell out Canada. In the meantime, may I propose a toast to Carolyn Parrish! ---------- Robin Mathews has just published two new books, George Grant's Betrayal of Canada and a book of poems entitled Think Freedom. They can be had by contacting him by e-mail at rmathews{at}sfu{dot}ca.