…. ‘cause our daddy takes us to hell …
Good morning friends. My name is Mark, and I’m a bank manager. It’s comforting to see you all here and know I don’t need to struggle alone.
I’m going to start my address in French, OK? Ahem:
« Alors, le President ! Ostie qu’il m’énerve ! Les nouilles ne sont pas toutes dans la soupe, heins ? »
Oh, brother. Let me be clear: It’s so good to get that off my chest, but in French for safety.
Canada is here to tell you that the world order that was like an eighty-year long weekend is over. Gone are the days when we could just throw a steak on the barbeque and think, “Supply chains? All taken care of! Defense? Daddy’s got our backs! Flip-flops? We wouldn’t wear anything else!”
Remember? We were like middle-power children borrowing pocket money from mom and dad so we could buy them Christmas presents and they could pretend to be surprised. And it was so full of promise! Soon we’d be lounging by the pool with our smartphones and get AI to do everything. It was like, we were Gina Lollabrigida and politics was the help! Politics was—easy!
Well, you know what? That order is ruptured. Ruptured! Let me tell you a story about that. Are you sitting comfortably?
Once upon a time there was a hockey player. And that hockey player copped a flying puck in his testicles, and they ruptured—just like the current rules-based world order! And suddenly he saw the light.
But that just turned out to be his eyes going all oogy from the puck in the testicles.
Well, I repeat, and will continue to repeat: we can’t rely on that any longer. I know, right? Do you see my point yet? That’s right! Blindsided again!
Speaking of Thucydides, a wise hockey player once said
“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Friends, that’s the way it is, and if you thought that’s the way it’s always been because that’s the way it was, you gotta admit: we were all wrong, because if ever and ever a wiz there was, it’s not the way we pretended it was! Because, because, because….! Because, because….! Just like Thucydides said. Isn’t that something , eh?
Let me tell you a story about that. No wait, please come back, I have so many stories for you!
Alrighty, then. This story, well, it’s a story about how Vaclav Havel once told a story—and let me be clear about this, this is when he was just a writer so like not important or in charge of anything—about a green grocer who put a sign in his window every morning.
And the sign in the window read, “We thought you were only goin to do bad shit, or, in French, merde, to the brown people in the shithole, or merde-hole, countries, we didn’t think you’d do bad shit to Europeans. What the, excuse my French, goldarn heck!?”
That’s right—It was a pretty big sign. Very. Good! You know, I think you’re getting the hang of this!
Did you know Thucydides was European? Well, you better write it down because it might be on the test.
Friends, it’s high time we took that sign out of the window and replaced it with a sign that says, “Anyone wanna trade some coal or aluminum for these healthy power-greens? Or, OK, then lend me a quarter so I can phone China, collect?”
I’m calling on you, as fellow men with a banking problem, to realize that power is asymmetrical —and tariffs and supply chains and threats and unpredictability, blah blah blah—in case you hadn’t noticed, only go one way when there’s certain world leader who I won’t mention that’s a few cheese curds short of a full serving of poutine. That’s French, by the way.
Now speaking of the little people who aren’t bankers at Davos, we’ve made big strides in Canada. And the biggest stride, so I’m going to mention it first, is: We’ve lowered taxes! This would be a great time to applaud!
Thank you! So now all the people living in tents in the snow can feel good about their retirement funds and investments in the economy.
And because we’re all team players, we’ve abolished trade barriers between provinces, so we can shove a pipeline all the way to British Columbia, which keeps the First Nations in employment wiping the oil stains off seagulls with a face cloth.
And I almost forgot: I’d like to acknowledge that the ground we’re on belongs to Europe on account of all those pickaxes we shoved into it. Namaste.
And our new deal with China will soon flood the market in Ontario with a ton of guaranteed non-tariffed human-rights-based world order type stuff, plus 24/7 surveillance and cheap EV’s. They even promised not to suck up Taiwan like it was a big plate of moo goo guy pan, and I know we stand together in totally believing them, at least for the time being.
Take that!!, world leader who won’t be named, and I’m sorry I can’t make it to your Peace Bored meeting thing. It’s not that it’s wrong, it’s just it’s my book club night. Also I’m setting an example: as soon as I’m off that plane I’m totally down training for guerrilla warfare—can’t decide between cyberhacking or suicide bombing, tomato, tomato, pronounced differently.
But it’s great to know after all that that strategic alliances are still asymmetric.
That’s why building little separate fortresses isn’t, as Thucydides once said, optimum. That will only turn us into a bunch of weak, suffering little separate fortresses who suffer separately, and we all know, and I think this was Vaclav Havel, that it’s undeniably better to build strategic alliances so we can all suffer together in one great big humungous fortress.
And as Thucydides once pointed out, that’s a sweet little block of ice ya got there, pity if anything happened to it.
Finally, it behooves us to remember that Athens, that once great democracy, wanted the teeny little island of Melos, for strategic purposes, sounds familiar, eh? but the Melanias resisted. That turned out to be a real big hockey puck to the Melonian testicles, because—the Athenians invaded them and murdered every single male and enslaved the women and children, then occupied Melos.
Let me be clear: Melos was annihilated.
And that surely should give us, as that great man Thucydides once said—hope.
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