The following is a guest column. The views expressed are the author’s own.
Guest Column by Darrell Dunn, Publisher, The Weekly Bean.
I never thought I would reach the point where I would begin to hate the United States of
America. Not my cousins. Not the many wonderful people I have met over the years. Not the
land, the historic sites, the great cities, or what the country once aspired to be. I do not hate its
history — good or bad — nor its institutions, its lessons, or the leadership it has produced over
the years.
America is flawed. There is no question about that. Given the circumstances of its birth as a
nation, perhaps that should not surprise anyone. Yet one of its most admirable traits was that,
throughout its blemished history, it at least attempted to acknowledge its shortcomings and strive
to do better. Expecting perfection was always unrealistic.
The debate over how we govern ourselves stretches back to the beginnings of human society:
people gathering together for survival and trying to determine how to coexist. Communities
formed around agreed-upon rules — lists of “do’s” and “don’ts” accepted by the majority. If you
did not agree, you were excluded from the group, or perhaps became supper. Over time, those
groups evolved into families, clans, tribes, kingdoms, and eventually nations. The principle was
simple: strength in numbers.
The United States of America represented a unique twist on how a nation could organize itself.
Rather than vesting ultimate authority in an emperor, king, queen, or pope — a sovereign
accountable only to themselves — the American model placed sovereignty in the hands of the
people through the Constitution. The Constitution, not the President, was meant to be supreme.
Make no mistake: governing America has always been something of a rodeo — loud, chaotic,
and deeply polarized. Like Canada, the United States is a federation in which states retain
significant authority while the federal government manages broader national issues. Tensions
between the states and the central government have always existed. Indeed, the Civil War itself
was fundamentally a conflict over slavery: the South insisting it had the right to enslave human
beings, and the North rejecting that claim. The rhetoric may have centered on “states’ rights,” but
the reality was about preserving absolute power over an entire race of people.
As modern societies have grown more complex and diverse, deciding who governs us and how
we are governed has become even more contentious.
America accomplished extraordinary things during the twentieth century and became a world
leader in ways that benefited much of the planet. Many of those achievements occurred because
Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency found ways to work together. Not because they liked
one another — often they did not — but because governing required compromise and
cooperation in pursuit of the country’s broader interests.
Then came the political shift of the 1990s under Newt Gingrich. The “good of the country”
increasingly gave way to “the good of the party,” and obstruction became a governing strategy:
block everything the other side proposes, regardless of whether it might actually help the
country.
The latest incarnation of American leadership has pushed that philosophy even further — from
“the good of the party” to “the good of me.” In the process, America has begun to resemble an
out-of-control addict, consumed only with grabbing whatever it can for itself while bullying and
berating anyone unwilling to comply. Those traits are embodied in one man who appears to
believe himself beyond convention, restraint, or accountability.
Canada has begun turning toward other partners. Other nations are building new alliances and
relationships. Divorces are always messy, and America is beginning to pay the price for its
narcissistic tantrum. Many within the MAGA movement who helped place him in power are now
starting to experience the consequences of their own political choices, and it is a sad thing to
witness.
I cannot, and will not, visit a neighbour who seems determined to follow a self-indulgent,
hubristic, bombastic, and abusive path toward geopolitical self-destruction. And in the end, I find
that I no longer particularly wish them well.
Read more: Guest Column – Justice: The System We Starve Until It Fails
