The Mexicanadian Threat

European and Middle Eastern countries are often bounded by hostile neighbors. The Battle of Britain was a turning point in the Second World War. Yet if the English had lost the Germans still would have had to cross the Atlantic to invade the United States. Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle imagines the colonization of America by the Axis powers. In Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, it’s a homegrown fascist backlash that makes the country vulnerable. But before we feel a smug superiority to the geographic turmoil abroad, we should be aware of the threat of invasion from the South or the North, from Mexico or Canada, who someday may turn into the equivalent of the Axis powers. While the landmass of Mexico or Canada might not rival Russia, China or even India, they are both greater than Japan, Italy and Germany, our enemies during the second world war. Why are we being complacent? Why are we not arming ourselves against an invasion, particularly by the Canadians? Back in the 50’s there was a popular television series called Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. The series was a thinly veiled manifesto of Canadian superiority. Remember Canada boasts Alice Munro one of the greatest short story writers in the world and lest we forget Dan Aykroyd emanated from Canada. The Canadians will start by taking over organs of culture like The New Yorker, where many of Munro’s stories have appeared, and SNL which Aykroyd once dominated and before long their will be mounties and dogsleds lined up along our borders. It might seem like an unholy alliance but who is to say that one day Canadian short story writers and humorists won’t join forces with the followers of Mexican culture heroes like Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz. In a deadly pincer movement Canadians and the Mexicans will place their puppets in The White House.

The Labyrinth of Solitude

Modern technology challenges the notion of place. If we are constantly plugged in to an electronic universe, we are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. What difference does it make if you are at the Taj Mahal or the Parthenon if you are returning emails on your Blackberry? Of course, the same can be said of the printing press and the telephone, but the speed and intensity of modern technology fractures the integrity of the individual ego, defined by the boundary of the epidermis. It is not unusual for a busy individual to be the recipient of hundreds of emails a day, and these, together with the plethora of other information sources, have left in their wake a refugee, a spiritual wanderer increasingly deprived of the usual attachments by which identity is defined. And yet, one is never alone.

   

Now, let’s look at this from the point of view of the pre-Socratic stoic philosophers. The Eleatics  (Zeno, Parmenides, Melissus), as they were called, believed that the world was unchanging and that the seeming flux was all an illusion. Zeno’s paradox, starring Achilles and the tortoise, is the most famous example of this conundrum. Essentially, the rabid Facebook addict or the individual who has invented an avatar for an online game like Second Life, sits alone in his refuge, attempting to respond to all the messages he receives. He is in constant communication with numerous people all over the world who he rarely, if ever, sees, and who he scarcely knows. In the fifties, people left lewd messages on the inside of toilet stalls. After they dropped one load, they left another in hieroglyphic form. Do these early forms of “cave painting” tell us something about the sources of our modern electronic miracle? Has the high tech world of interactive communication freed us, or merely created a new form of solitude? Perhaps the Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz was right when he compared solitude to a labyrinth.