I step off the airplane into
the California sunshine and am welcomed by the sweet voice of America’s senior
citizen diva, Barbra Streisand. She is singing, through someone’s car radio, Don’t Lie to Me, a new song she has
written to protest the Donald Trump presidency.
“Why can't you
just tell me the truth?
Hard to believe
the things you say
Why can't you
feel the tears I cried today?”
It is an arrival moment that
reflects the anguish of this country and its divided people.
This is a country at war. It
is a civil war in which cannons are replaced by angry shouting and outright
hatred.
The battles are not over pieces
of ground. They are cultural battles driven by fears of change and loss of
status.
Like Canada and some other
countries, the U.S. is being transformed by growing population diversity and
the swelling influence of educated, liberated women. Unlike some other
countries it is not handling it well.
Change has created a culture
of grievance in the U.S. The white, male privileged class is grieving its loss
of power and control. Dissenting movements such as #MeToo are grieving and
fighting attitudes toward women and the male dominance of society.
The brutal storm over the
elevation of the dyspeptic Brett (I Like Beer!) Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court
pushed the anger and disunity in this country to stage centre. It also
highlighted the political polarization making compromise and working together
for common good an impossibility.
“The country is gripped by a climate of
division and distrust rivalled by few other moments in the recent past,” the
New York Times reported recently.
One columnist, Thomas L.
Friedman, wrote last week that he began his journalism career covering civil
war in Lebanon but “I never thought I would end
my career covering a civil war in America.”
It is not uncommon to hear or read opinions
comparing what is happening today to the events leading to the 1861-1865 American civil war.
Historian Joanne B. Freeman
wrote recently of how the U.S. political scene today is similar to the 1850s when
Congress became embattled by the slavery crisis that caused Americans to fight
each other roughly 150 years ago.
“In 2018, a crisis over different fundamentals —
immigration, the rule of law, the status and safety of women and people of
color — is doing much the same,” she wrote.
Most worrisome is the state
of the U.S. Congress, which was designed by the founding fathers to be an
oracle of debate, compromise and consent. It has fallen to the level of a
cockfighting ring.
Writes Ms. Freeman:
“A dysfunctional Congress can close off a vital arena
for national dialogue, leaving us vulnerable in ways that we haven’t yet begun
to fathom.”
If Californians are worried about all this, a visitor
would never know it. Things are cool and relaxed here.
The autumn sun is warm and bright, the end of the fire
season is in sight and there have not been any recent earth tremors. Also, Fleet
Week activities have just ended after providing a relaxing distraction from the
nation’s problems.
Fleet Week is a celebration of the country’s naval
forces. People stroll, sit and picnic along the beaches of San Francisco Bay
while watching warships steam under the Golden Gate bridge and the Blue Angels
aerial acrobat team performs loops and dives overhead.
Relaxed though they may be,
people in this part of California cannot avoid the signs of turmoil.
Sunday I went to the
historic Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland to see Fahrenheit 11/9, the anti-Trump film by Michael Moore. The marque
announced that the theatre will not enforce the film’s R rating prohibiting
anyone under 17 from viewing it.
Accompanying the
announcement was the following sentence: “Political discourse must not be
stifled.”
After leaving the theatre I
realized the importance of allowing all teenagers to see the film. Today’s
teens are the ones who will have to work to put the ‘United” back into the
United States of America.
I also realized the
importance of the film to Canadians. We need to learn from America and clean up
the way we do politics to ensure the same things don’t happen to us.
No comments:
Post a Comment