A Tall Skinny Guy From Illinois

I watched the inauguration this morning. Me, and a few billion other people were interested in seeing this transition take place in the USA. I won’t go into my dislike for the Republiklan and Dubya because that’s been spelled out by a lot of other commentators.

America is a conundrum of sorts. I like Americans. They are open minded and friendly folk. At least the many I’ve met fit this description. The people of the USA are as nice as any you might meet, anywhere. There is also a societal thing about America that I can’t figure out. As individuals, you can’t find nicer people, but as a society, I have issues. The entrenched mentality of “every man for himself” and mistrust of government that pervades their society is hard to fathom. Stuff like their gun culture and their unwillingness to create a universal health care system make me scratch my head.

I think I’m qualified to speak about this, because I’ve spent some time living in the states. Back in the late eighties, I took up residence in Texas for a couple of years. Other folks had always spoken about how weird Texans were, and I found them to be very warm hearted and interesting people. Like anywhere else, there were rednecks as well as worldly and well educated people. Not unlike Ontario except we don’t speak with a drawl. I also met some people who had an unhealthy contempt for government of all kinds, and found it worrisome. One guy in particular had a gun collection that could have outfitted a small army, and he had enough ammo to kill every man, woman and child in town several times over. He said he kept this because “the government tells me I can’t have these things.”

The American people know how to work in cooperative ventures. The whole of their society is greater than the sum of it’s parts. Over the course of the twentieth century, America changed the world. Nobody can do that alone, and in the post depression era, men like FDR transformed the government of the USA into a galvanizing force for good. A cursory glance at the history books will instantly prove that an involved government isn’t always a bad thing. It wasn’t a collection of individuals, but a cooperative society that did it.

The last few years have really shown how the American people have abandoned that view. Their zeal to deregulate banking and industry has caused all sorts of problems, not just for America, but the whole world. The government has been starved of resources to do what should be done and the results are telling. Witness the banking meltdown and the overdone consumerism that imperils our environment. Some healthy government regulations could have saved a lot of the current misery that abounds. Dogmatism and pragmatism are always at odds.

It’s a breath of fresh air to see America choose a man like Barack Obama to lead them. Here’s a guy who has worked inside of government from the municipal level all the way to the Senate. He knows the positive effect that government can have on the day to day lives of people. He has arrived at a time where the government has to step in  to fix some serious mistakes and become more involved in the day to day lives of Americans.

Self reliance is all right and fine, but Americans are going to have to reexamine their dogma. Mr. Obama’s call to reinvent America will be an empty statement unless America thinks about the whole of their society rather than the selfish desires of it’s individual members. Me, and those few other billions of people can only wish Barack Hussein Obama luck in his quest. Perhaps a little of his cooperative vision could rub off on Canada.