I am from Canada, and while the flag could go either way for me, mounties, even in their blood-red uniforms do turn my stomach. (Paintings by Kent Monkman, showcasing the “Sixties Scoop”

Our past further back has not been much help.

In addition to the physical appropriation of land was the colonial effort to eliminate the transmission of cultural identity, traditional skills, and connection to the land. Beginning in 1883 (while this was the date of the first federally established church school, similar institutions existed as early as the 1830s, years before Canadian federation) Indian Residential Schools (IRSs) were established in Canada (as were American Indian Boarding Schools in 1862). Children were forcibly removed from their families and were institutionalized in IRSs with the explicit goal of ‘taking the Indian out of the child’. These mandated church-run IRSs endeavoured to save the souls of the ‘savages’ by immersing them in Euro–Christian beliefs and eradicating access to traditional socialization values, language, practices and ways of life. By the 1930s, roughly 75% of First Nations children attended IRSs, as did many Métis and Inuit children. The last of the IRSs was closed in 1996, but by then several generations of children had experienced the mistreatment that abounded in these institutions.

Then to really prove we could be as evil as everyone thinks we’re polite, we added this gem to our crown.

“It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so closely in the residential schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian Problem.” -Duncan Campbell Scott to BC Indian Agent Gen. Major D. MacKay.

And there are those who say it is in the past, and everyone is crying over things from long ago, yet 1996 is not so long ago for Residential Schools, and our police deny any ongoing wrong-doings. I for one do not feel patriotism for our past, though I have some small hope for our future.

To what would you assign their disturbing success?

I have to ask: What success? They did typical fascist bullshit: They had an economy so bad they had to invade new countries just to loot them to pay for their horrific economy. They picked fight after fight of the smallest kids in the neighbourhood they could find until they met those kids big brothers and sisters. They required fucking slave labour to try to meet their wartime goals because they grossly underestimated just about every single facet of running a country. They privatized state-owned industries, crippling longterm wealth for their people, they instituted tariffs (sound familiar?). Pay remained as bad as they it had been in the depression because while their wages were raised, they were forced to constantly work overtime for no additional pay. Their military was the majority of their economic spending, and they used deficit spending because they were going to literally plunder the countries around them to pay for it. Sound like solid long-term planning? They killed or jailed anyone in the trade unions, and due to their insane tariffs and you know, generally being the worst people in history, lacked incoming trade so things like poultry or clothing was in short supply for the average person.

Then it took thirty five days for the Nazi German army, along with the Serbian and Soviet armies, to conquer Poland. For every success in the early war they had embarrassing fumbles. They lost entirely because of how fascists work: they need to invade more countries to pay for their insane military spending, make bigger and bigger enemies, then get beat by those enemies, then later people claim they ‘could have if…’

Yeah, they could have done just fine if they hadn’t been fascist. All of their failings fall to being fascist.

And the first world war, are you kidding me? Are you seriously suggesting their insistence on investing in overseas colonies while fighting against the British was a brilliant plan? In both wars they were led by colossal morons who constantly underestimated their opponents, while in the second world war in particular having the worst spy agency of any nation. Their insistence on torturing, raping, and murdering everyone they came into contact with meant they just got the answers they wanted to hear, instead of the actual truth, and were constantly on the back foot. Their evil, cruel, and twisted nature was their own downfall; the insistence of their superiority, as you are doing now, is the very reason they failed.

and very nearly won.

What the actual fuck are you talking about?