03.07.02

BY BRUCE LABRUCE

You must excuse me if I seem a little distracted these days, obsessing as I am about the dreaded "axis of evil." No, I'm not referring to Bush's ill-conceived, anachronistic WWII rhetoric to designate, Orwellian-style, the new batch of bad guys, a strategy that seems to have plunged us all back squarely into a not-very-cold Cold War. I'm talking about the terrible triumvirate of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (Chevron), Vice-President Dick Cheney (Halliburton) and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (Occidental), the three pillars of America's "oil-igarchy" (to borrow Arianna Huffington's nifty neologism) who are hell-bent on securing U.S. oil interests around the world by arming oppressive regimes and maintaining the destabilization of historically conflicted regions. (Do I have to name them? Algeria, Angola, Burma, Iraq, Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Indonesia...)

To be fair, while Rice was a director of Chevron and Cheney CEO of Halliburton before joining Bush's highly lubricated cabinet, Rumsfeld made his fortune in the morally unimpeachable sphere of pharmaceuticals, and has only been in the business of supporting oil companies since becoming the chief architect of America's war on terror, recently supplying the Colombian army, for example, with cash, training and military hardware to defend the Occidental oil company's pipeline against the leftist guerrillas in the midst of a civil war that has been flaring for decades. No wonder I can't get any sleep.

Increasingly, it's a case of the old Woody Allen joke, the one about not being able to have fun if you know there's one other person on the other side of the world who isn't having a good time. I guess that's why people went so nuts when the Canadian hockey team beat the U.S. in the Winter Olympics. Everyone was just looking for an excuse to have a good time.

Actually, I call them the White Olympics. Not just because of the snow, mind you, but because practically everyone you saw at the games, except maybe for the Northern Alliance luge team, seemed to be as white as the driven Miss Daisy. Whiter, even, than Steven Spielberg's shiksa wife and daughter in that frighteningly Aryan-looking Gap ad. Whiter, I say, than your teeth after using those new Crest Whitestrips that are soon to be endorsed by none other than your favourite figure-skating duo, Salé and Pelletier, the whiter-than-white couple who became so famous so fast that they were awarded a gold medal for sheer celebrity. Whiter, finally, than the miles of salt fields you must drive through to get to Salt Lake City, where the games were significantly held, a state not known for its ethnically diverse populace -- Karl Malone notwithstanding.

I have a theory. The reason everyone made such a big deal about the White Olympics this time around is because the white race is on its last legs, like Elvis Stojko. I've been reading an amusing book called The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington, which seems to be on everyone's must-read list since 911 called us. In it, the author maps out how Western civilization is slowly on the decline, both in terms of population, controlled land mass, and cultural and religious influence.

The author regales you with fun facts, like how only 7.6 per cent of the world's population speaks English, compared to the approximately 15 per cent who manage Mandarin. He's pretty good at editorializing, too, as in the following passage: "Only naive arrogance can lead Westerners to assume that non-Westerners will become 'Westernized' by acquiring Western goods. What, indeed, does it tell the world about the West when Westerners identify their civilization with fizzy liquids, faded pants and fatty foods?" He's also, as you may have noticed, quite alliterative.

The only other explanation I can think of for the White Olympics being so grotesquely overblown is that, with global warming, there soon may not be enough snow to warrant such an extravaganza. Sub-Saharan Olympics, anyone?

I guess I'm a pretty bad Canadian. I don't care for hockey, and I loathe ice skating -- all that spinning, spinning, spinning, and those tacky costumes. When I witnessed hordes of drunken hockey fans flying their Canadian flags up and down Yonge Street, I thought about how quickly Toronto's cosmopolitan veneer can peel away, how even the most urbane Torontonian reverts to quasi-philistinism at the mention of hockey gold. And I don't think Salé and Pelletier should have been given that stupid medal, either. Their almost sub-illiterate musings on U.S. talk shows has set back the international Canadian image further than even a hundred screenings of Men With Brooms could do.

But don't despair. David Frum, a Zionist, neo-conservative Canadian speechwriter, came up with the term axis of evil, and President Bush was wearing a Roots jacket during his national address at the White Olympics. Our international reputation -- as a toady to American interests -- will probably remain intact.