It could never happen here, right?
Then again, I never thought I would see what we witnessed in Washington last week
During the 1960s and early '70s, it was de rigueur to hate the United States because of the Vietnam War, the Kent State and My Lai massacres, the presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, deadly forays into foreign countries and the killings of John F. Kennedy, his brother Bobby and Martin Luther King.
My classmates — categorized as hippies, mods or rockers — had nothing good to say about our southern neighbours. “Consumeristic,” “shallow,” “uncultured,” “ignorant,” “cruel” and “militaristic” were the words used by young Quebecers to describe the world's most powerful country.
But I would remind my friends that the United States was also a progressive, dynamic society. The 1960s also saw passage of the Voting Rights Act, the contraceptive pill liberated women from unwanted pregnancies, man walked on the moon, men and women frolicked around in the mud at Woodstock to the heavenly sounds of the decade, the Civil Rights Act was passed and the Gay Liberation movement was born in New York during the Stonewall Riots of 1969.
Even the 25th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which we've been hearing about so much lately, was adopted in 1967.
I have always felt admiration for the American republic and the entrepreneurial spirit of its people, and have not been shy to say so. No country on Earth has accomplished so much in a mere 244 years of existence, despite such structural flaws as systemic racism, a penchant for isolationism and a passion for money at the expense of basic human needs. I love the United States, warts and all.
Plus, U.S. politics are thrilling, even when presidents appear dull at first. Think Jimmy Carter.
I have travelled extensively up, down and across the United States. I once stayed at a dude ranch in Tucson, Ariz., where I learned to race barrels and pet tarantulas. At night, we would congregate around the fire under the desert sky to listen to cowboy poetry. It was my best vacation of all time.
But I have not set foot inside the United States since 2016, when Donald J. Trump managed to convince a sufficient number of Americans that he would Make America Great Again. Little did we know his rallying cry — borrowed from a British Conservative slogan in 1950 — would drive millions to promote, embrace and tolerate sedition.
On Jan. 6, incited by the president himself, a mob tried to take over the Capitol as Vice-president Mike Pence was preparing to declare as official the results of the Nov. 3 election.
Earlier that day, Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, even tweeted her support and her love for MAGA people, adding “God bless each of you standing up or praying.”
Most of us find it difficult to imagine a mob marching to the House of Commons or to the National Assembly with violence and destruction in mind. We have had big demonstrations, even terror attacks in Ottawa and Quebec City. But we have not seen anything that threatened to bring down a democratically elected government and replace it with an autocratic administration.
It could not happen here, right? Well, who knows. All it took was one man and his sycophants to turn the greatest democracy on Earth into a bowl of quivering jelly. One man and four years.
I thought I knew the Americans. But never in a million years did I think I'd see 74 million of them vote for a man as flawed as Trump, especially after enduring four years of lies, corruption and grovelling at the feet of some of the worst dictators of our time.
I never thought I'd see an angry mob invade the grandiose Capitol building in Washington.
Like France, the United States was born out of a revolution. Canada is not a revolutionary nation: it is not in our DNA to march, armed, to confront our representatives.
May it stay that way forever.