Restart again - with a couple thoughts

After much goading from friends of mine from other terra firma locations, I am really going to get back into posting - really!

A couple thoughts have been entering into my head the last couple days. The first, is that the Canadian election is now less than 1 week away. I believe that the Conservative (read right of Euro conservatives, but usually left of American Republicans and sometimes even some Democrats) will take power. The pounding of the drums from Western Canada that there should be a Conservative majority, I think is increadibly unfounded, and frankly dangerous at this time.

The massive Liberal majorities caused an atmosphere of corruption opportunity and to say that the Tories would be any different, needs to take a swim in the Rideau Canal in the middle of January (like today!). I seriously hope that there will be a minority government, with the left-sided parties (NDP & Bloc on social issues-not separation issues) holding the balance of power. I think we need to have the balance to keep the "tough conservatives" - who often like their American counterparts still poop their pants at the prospect of the latest boogeyman under their beds (Cold War Communists = Phoney War on Terror Terrorists) - from engaging Canadians in a unneeded dose of silliness. Nevertheless we shall see. And I need to figure out where to vote today since I can't get to the polls next Monday.


The other issue I've been pondering is if the "light on the hill" of America has dimmed itself to a point where it can't return? Right now we're in an emperical denoument, similar to inter World War Britain, as China is taking up the torch of leading global empire (with India catching up, but not there yet). I think that Americans as a whole haven't grasped the fact that their power has waned, that they're tremendously leveraged financially to pay for the Whitehouse's real life game of Risk and that they'll never get it back.
The funny thing when the Soviet Union fell, ueber Patriots in the US called themselves the 'winner'. Sure, of a multi-trillion dollar phoney war of realpolitik, markets, hegemony and military "big stickism". But at the same time, America as she wanted to be known also died. The economic battles that the US could have against China are hardly able to happen now with the death of many Rustbelt towns, the retiring of the Baby Boomers, and the unwillingness or inability (despite all the Viagra and Cialis commercials) to copulate a new generation.

Pax Americana is fading like a star after a violent supernova. Sinopax is what my generation and at least the next couple will have as the global superpower.

Though the economic power of the US is fading (albeit slowly), it could remain a moral power (especially in the light of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the US). However, that's been lost currently as well - with the current Whitehouse occupants striving toward the very Stalinist ideals that many thought America abhorred. Strange times my friends. Strange times...