
It is an astounding feature of the contemporary international political scene that almost no coverage of American affairs, including in most of the President Donald Trump-hating American media, reports or comments in a way that is even slightly relevant to the unfolding facts in that country. Unlike all other important countries except Britain and Canada, the United Stares has had the same political institutions for over 150 years. For over a century it has operated on a scale that the world had never imagined to be possible. It is a fantastic success, but it is not at all the shining “city on a hill” derived from the Sermon on the Mount and much bandied about by President Ronald Reagan. It is not at all like Canada and Britain only more populous, and its culture and institutions are only superficially similar.
It is a democratic meritocracy, but a tough country of profound inequalities, great garishness, extensive corruption by British and Canadian standards, a dysfunctional and profoundly unjust justice system and an inordinate amount of it is slums, strip malls and potholed roads. Its strength and its weakness is that it is a jungle — this produces immense productivity, competitiveness, fermentation, ingenuity, creativity and high achievement in almost every field, but it also grinds millions of people to powder needlessly. It is in this context that the current American political drama must be seen. The British and Canadian media are even more hopeless than usual reporting about America, as I have remarked before. The Financial Times this week, with almost impenetrable obtuseness, declared that the Justice Department’s withdrawal of charges against Gen. Michael Flynn is the “politicization of justice.” Last Saturday in the Globe and Mail, my accomplished and politically centre-left friend of over 50 years, historian Margaret MacMillan, lamented in an opinion piece about the coronavirus that President Trump is too incompetent to deal with any crisis, a widely held but uninformed opinion. On Thursday in the same paper, John Ibbitson quoted Canadian academics who claimed that Trump has “given up,” and that “irrational” people had taken over the Republican party in a “fearful, angry, insular, nativist … coup.” This is just drivel.
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See Also:
(1) Heads Exploding in Washington as Trump Fires State Department IG
(2) Was Obama systematically spying on everyone who could threaten his legacy?
(3) ‘Obamagate’ Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory, It’s A Huge Political Scandal
(4) Beyond Biden, Brennan, and Clapper: How Grenell’s satchel tells us this is on the right track
(5) WSJ Columnist Notes the Obvious Reason Why the Left Goes Ballistic Over Anything AG Barr Does