>Doug:
>> Because, to paraphrase Sonic Youth, it's hard to understand the exact
>> dimensions of Canadian hell. There seems to be less poverty, less
>> insecurity, less inequality, less militarization, less incarceration,
>> and more political freedom than down here in the imperial heartland.
>> Ditto the rest of the second-tier imperialist countries.
>
>Doug, sometimes you surprise me. The above seems to imply that any country
>that lifts itself above poverty and inequality does so as a part of a larger
>imperial project, and by implication, on the backs of "non-imperialist"
>countries (whatever they are, I presume these are those countries that have
>neither means nor opportunity to pursue any imperial projects worth
>attention). By implication, the only "ethical" (i.e. outside the imperial
>project) way is abject poverty cum foreign occupation.
That's not what I said or meant at all. To listen to Canadian nationalists, they're suffering under the yoke of American imperialism, but that suffering is very hard to see. There's more material deprivation a half mile from my apartment door in Manhattan than I've ever seen in Toronto. The poorest urban neighborhood in Canada, Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, really doesn't look that terrible compared to, say, much of Newark.
Also, though you frequently hear U.S. leftists say of North-South relations, "We're rich because they're poor," I think that that's a harder case to make than they think. So I'm not sure what you're arguing with.
Doug