Canadians should realize that "standing with our allies" just means kissing Uncle Sam's arse

Former Defence Minister Peter MacKay had an op-ed circulating the other day about how Canada needs to regain the confidence of our allies, with whom we share the values of liberal democracy. Human rights, freedom of speech, a free press, and so on. The “allies” are primarily our NATO partners, the EU, and Five Eyes. While it’s a confederacy of liberal democratic equals, in reality one member is more equal that the others. NATO does America’s bidding and always has. There are no democratic debates within NATO. When Uncle Sam says “jump,” we ask “how high?” According to mainstream Canadian punditry, Canada has not been jumping high enough, and Canadians should be ashamed and resolve to jump much higher. We can worm our way back into Uncle Sam’s good graces with commitments to buy American F-35 fighter jets to the tune of $100 billions, and signing up for a US built nuclear submarine fleet for a few more hundreds of billions, like Australia has done. Only then can we truly stand with our allies in a meaningful way. Before we rally to this call for unbridled military spending, perhaps we should take a step back and ask ourselves exactly what are the values we share with America, the Leader of the Free World. Free elections? “Democracy” in America has become a non-stop clown show. The supreme court decision in 2010 that election financing was free speech effectively sold democracy to the highest bidder. The world’s exceptional nation and exemplary democracy is promising a Biden-Trump contest in 2024. Ponder that. For all the freedom of our free press, most people have no idea about the candidacies of RF Kennedy Jr or Cornell West. Why is that? Could it be that the free press isn’t free to give attention to candidates outside the official narrative? And why is America, the bastion of free speech, determined to forever punish Julian Assange for exposing its record of war crimes in Iraq and other victims of American meddling? “Standing with our allies” is shorthand for following orders from Washington. Vast swathes of urban America today resemble the shit-hole countries of the third world a former president once railed about. The American Empire is in obvious decline. Most of the world does not support sanctions against Russia, and the US-engineered war in Ukraine is clearly failing. America has nothing to teach anyone about freedom, democracy, or human rights. Meanwhile, Canada is facing a multitude of challenges on the home front. Let’s stop pissing away money “standing with our allies” and use those many $100s of billions to look after ourselves.