A Trucker Government

"Our world is becoming unhinged. Geopolitical tensions are rising. Global challenges are mounting. And we seem incapable of coming together to respond," dit Antonio Guterres aujour'hui. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas, après Camus.

Eh bien. No matter. the U.N. Secretary General said it, and we believe it to be true. But to be said at the U.N., where what is said never registers as what the tenant is thinking, only the landlord?

It's hard to say when the U.S. began seriously fiddling with its own hinges. You'd have to pick a perspective to account for all the hinges you'll miss.

You could say that the Constitution Americans hold up and wave about when not shouting "Lawyer!" is an idealistic, if not at times diabolical, hinge-fiddling document that carries with it enough perceived justification to raise an army and, with only the most superficial or schadenfreudian of reasons, blow apart that document, not to mention the person holding it. Have you looked at the first ten amendments to its Constitution (passed in 1791), also known as the "Bill of Rights"?

Here's "Amendment II":

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The relationship between what is promised in that amendment and the "Star Spangled" picture playing in your parents' head as they storm the Capitol, " ... the bombs bursting in air ..."

A national anthem with the word "bombs" in it!

In Canada we had truck drivers and their families storming Ottawa, where, once in possession of its streets, they stopped their rigs in a gridded formation, hopped out and ran around like the opening credits to Dog the Bounty Hunter. For days those air horns, and somewhere sitting in a circle with their arms crossed a gaggle of mostly Albertans under the impression the Trudeau government was preparing to surrender the country to them. And then what? A trucker government? A trucker corporate state? And the rest of us hiding in the woods, attending Holly Schmidt's pay-what-you-can fireweed seminars, waiting for Mad Max to free us?