The toxic stupidity of Canada's American Empire Loyalists

You know who I’m talking about. They occupy the strategic heights in PolySci departments across the land. They bombard us daily with op-eds across legacy media about how essential it is for we dullards to wake up and smell the Russian coffee Putin is brewing for us. Yup, Bad Vlad is gearing up to give the Free World a nuclear-strength coffee enema the likes of which we can’t even imagine! That’s why we Canadians must buck up and spend hundreds of billions of dollars so we can once again stand tall among our allies in the Free World. Yes, it’s true we face some budget challenges… We can’t afford to house our burgeoning unhoused population. We can’t afford to train the doctors and nurses we need to maintain a robust health care system. We can’t afford post-secondary institutions without exploiting hundreds of thousands of foreign students with extortionate tuition fees. But all of those frills count for nothing if our allies can’t depend on us. After all, what’s the point of housing, health care, and education if we don’t have Freedom and Democracy? And, according to the experts, that’s exactly what’s at stake if we don’t stand up to Putin (and China and Iran and everybody else on Uncle Sam’s shit list) NOW! Consider this prime example of pro-NATO propaganda; Here’s how Canada can meet NATO’s 2% target. Massie and Lagassie posit that one way we can effortlessly ramp up military spending is to simply super-size our current equipment orders. For instance, our F-35 purchase of 88 fighter jets is 50 less than the 138 we ordered almost half a century ago. Shouldn’t we be going bigger instead of smaller? No wonder our allies sneer at our weakness. They can’t afford housing or health care either, but at least they’ve got their priorities straight! That’s why we should go big. Let’s order 188 F-35s! That’ll show we’re serious players in the global war of democracy vs. autocracy. It would also go a long way in erasing the shame associated with fielding military fleets that, according to Massie and Lagasse, struggle with maintaining 50% serviceability rates. In other words, we are a laughing stock because only half our gear is ready for action at any given time. Or would it? Google “serviceability of F-35 fleet” and see what comes up. This “cutting edge” jet fighter platform has been flying since 2006. It’s never seen combat unless you count bombing runs over Gaza. The only way they’ve ever met or surpassed 50% serviceability is by fiddling their stats. They don’t count planes waiting for software and hardware upgrades – that’s now hundreds of new F-35s parked in the Arizona desert waiting. Definitely not ready for action! Overall fleet-wide serviceability is around 30%! And we’re not even considering the current debate among experts about whether manned combat aircraft are obsolete, the cavalry horses of the 21st century. By all means, let’s heed the siren call of our American Empire Loyalists. Let’s bankrupt the nation so we can stand with our allies… we’ll be standing in the rain beside some Latvian airstrip, waiting for our planes, when the only ones that show up are Russian. But at least we’ll be standing with our allies.