State of the Nation
Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2018 8:55 pmFor a large number of young people, the internet has rendered national loyalty obsolete, in the sense of having a shared cultural identity. Some four-hundred pound hacker living in his mom's basement has more in common with the proto-fascists running Russia than they do a young, urban transsexual who wrote a PHD paper about colonialism in South America between 1797 and 1834. On both the left and the right, ideology has eclipsed shared citizenship as a source of cultural pride.
Now, I'm a proud Canadian, in that Canada is a place that has rules that I am more or less okay with, and I grew up here, and the country is already established, and I tend to like other people. But I'm not invested in the idea of Canada as a political entity, really. If Quebec leaves tomorrow, I don't care. The only things I really care about are pragmatic - we can be one country if it makes sense economically to do so. Those kinds of considerations. In other words, I wouldn't want Quebec to leave just because it doesn't make sense to do so right now.
But if we were to reorganize political boundaries so that, say, the Great Lakes provinces and states were a country, I wouldn't be opposed to that, and Quebec doing their own thing seems a bit wiser.
The point being that national ties are decreasing all the time. I strongly suspect that the increase in ethno-nationalism is a direct reaction to this trend, as instinctive conservatives and older people flock to an understanding of the world based in racial and cultural homogeneity. It is a comforting thing when the world is changing so rapidly, to imagine that you can go back to some idealized version of the past, where "common sense" prevails and drastically divergent views on society, law, politics, identity, etc. don't exist (or at least have no platform). These desires are sometimes racist and oftentimes not, but they exist primarily because the nation state has become increasingly gutted as an institution, and has utterly failed to adapt to our new reality.
It isn't that nation states have less authority. They have more authority then ever. But what does it really mean to be a Canadian when your f**k gay ass hockey teams can't even bring home some gold? Why even bother goddamnit?
Now, I'm a proud Canadian, in that Canada is a place that has rules that I am more or less okay with, and I grew up here, and the country is already established, and I tend to like other people. But I'm not invested in the idea of Canada as a political entity, really. If Quebec leaves tomorrow, I don't care. The only things I really care about are pragmatic - we can be one country if it makes sense economically to do so. Those kinds of considerations. In other words, I wouldn't want Quebec to leave just because it doesn't make sense to do so right now.
But if we were to reorganize political boundaries so that, say, the Great Lakes provinces and states were a country, I wouldn't be opposed to that, and Quebec doing their own thing seems a bit wiser.
The point being that national ties are decreasing all the time. I strongly suspect that the increase in ethno-nationalism is a direct reaction to this trend, as instinctive conservatives and older people flock to an understanding of the world based in racial and cultural homogeneity. It is a comforting thing when the world is changing so rapidly, to imagine that you can go back to some idealized version of the past, where "common sense" prevails and drastically divergent views on society, law, politics, identity, etc. don't exist (or at least have no platform). These desires are sometimes racist and oftentimes not, but they exist primarily because the nation state has become increasingly gutted as an institution, and has utterly failed to adapt to our new reality.
It isn't that nation states have less authority. They have more authority then ever. But what does it really mean to be a Canadian when your f**k gay ass hockey teams can't even bring home some gold? Why even bother goddamnit?
