Dear Friends and Family,
Happy 2024! In 1837, in the farming communities just north of the bustling industrial city of Toronto, in what is now known as Ontario, the Upper Canada Rebellion broke out. Canada did then what it still excels at today: it crushed all dissent.
When you hear the term “oligarchy“, you probably think of Russian business magnates who post-Soviet who rapidly accumulated and consolidated wealth and power during the post-Soviet years. But Canada the same thing was happening. The Family Compact, a tiny group of closely associated country-club types, had all the power, while the bread basket of Canada lived in poverty. Sound familiar?
When you hear the term “farmers’ revolt”, you’d be right to think you were looking at a headline from 2024.
When you hear the term “revolving door”, you probably think of business executives and lobbyists going to work as legislators and government regulators, and vice versa. The very same thing was happening nearly 200 years ago, right here in what the hundreds of thousands of Iranian immigrants, many of them my friends and neighbors, call “The Promised Land.”
One thing I can promise you if you come to Canada, is that you’re going to part with your money faster than you ever thought possible.
This is the Many Flags Newsletter, where we discuss Flag Theory and what it means to us (Hint: it is not about being a perpetual traveler, nor is it about shirking civic duty; at least not to us it isn’t). Subscribe and join the conversation as we discuss one American family’s quest to put Flag Theory into practice—what’s going well, what the next steps are. Thank you.
Sincerely,
The Flag Theory Newsletter