Canada has clearly lost control of its hinterland.

Has it? Was the vast and ancient boreal forest itself ever really in our control? Maybe the only power we ever had over it was to destroy it. We exercised some restraint in using that power; we did it only slowly. Just one of the things that will lead to our ruin. Jared Diamond may have classified some more of them, but the people who most needed to listen to him were happy to disregard the warning with whatever spurious criticisms and rationalizations came to hand, motivated by emotional rejection of the obviously correct parts of the thesis. Maybe I’ll live to see the collapse after all. Timed it just right I guess. As our various systems of government, including a lot of corporate management, get more and more complex, inflexible, and disconnected from reality, it becomes increasingly easy to imagine people walking away. Voluntarily or otherwise, looking for something else. Scrounging to survive on whatever is available, outside the system. Visible as beggars on the street, or invisibly hiding out wherever they can find shelter. The ever-growing social hinterlands, the disregarded underclass of America, also sometimes threatening to catch on fire. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is still in the news seemingly every time I look — and that’s in Canada.

Eh well, whatever. It’s just a feeling I get sometimes.