LIfe During Wartime - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin
It has been a while since I’ve taken on a tough topic and the reason, frankly, is that I just haven’t had it in me. As we at The Citizen work to combat homophobia, racism and the rise of toxic nationalism (or, in Alberta, nationalism so strong that they want to leave, or some such trash), it’s upsetting to say that the dark side seems to be winning.
With that being said, it’s been a while since I’ve called out a goof of a councillor, a business putting profit over decency or those determined to devolve our world into a place devoid of compassion, order and empathy. I’ve barely bothered to write about one of the most vile specimens to ever slither into this world. But, as you see the world kowtow to Donald Trump and his people cheer him at Monday’s College Football Championship game in Florida, it’s hard not to be disappointed.
That’s because one man alone can’t do what he has done. He has to be enabled and whether that’s by the Americans who saw fit to vote him in or the sycophants who continue to abdicate any and all responsibilities to their constituents or the world at large, they have all played a part. Speaking to someone earlier this week, he said there is a theory out there that Trump didn’t make this America, but that this America, as it drifts under control of the ultra-rich, has made Trump. Perhaps that is true.
There are others who are now expressing buyer’s remorse on their vote for Trump; that this is not what they voted for. Well, morons, if you didn’t think this was what you voted for, you were not paying attention in any way.
It pains me to write this column. Over the years, I have visited the U.S. a lot. Beloved family lives there, but, like so many of us here, it’s hard not to paint the entire country with the same brush as so many either cheer the work of the dictator-in-training or simply step aside.
This year, the U.S.A. marks its 250th anniversary. I remember hearing that in my travels and thinking what a shame it was that Trump will be at the helm as this great nation marks such an important milestone; just how unrepresentative he is of what that country is. Now, it’s safe to say, I’m not quite so sure.
It feels, to a certain extent, that this is what America has been this whole time and that it just hasn’t had the leader to unleash it; that they’ve been convinced, against their will, to tamp it down and that they’ve finally elected the “let ’er rip” guy and couldn’t be happier.
Reading and watching documentaries lately about the American jail system, the fight for civil rights that never seems to end, American intervention in Vietnam and elsewhere and the battles its leaders have waged on truth-tellers like journalists and other progressives, it’s hard not to think that America has duped the world and that the truth is now coming out.
In polls, with few exceptions, you can see Americans warming up to whatever Trump says over time. It may seem outlandish at first but either he grinds them down or convinces them - whether it’s Venezuela, Greenland, Canada or beyond, the American viewpoint is increasingly that of a sociopathic bully, seeing the world not in terms of who it can help, but rather what it can pillage and who it can hurt.
It sounds harsh and it guts me to write it, but as the days go on and many there are yucking up the party and cheering on the destruction of families who don’t look like them or come from where they come from, the rest of the world, especially us in Canada, is learning what it’s like to sleep next to a spider - to borrow a sentiment from Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl - that can, and likely will, strike at any time, all to the chants of, “U-S-A! U-S-A!”