Victimization, Shame, and the Politics of Division

The Politicians You Elect Are The Politicians You Deserve

When I was growing up, Canada Day always made me proud to be a Canadian.  Internationally we were seen as welcoming and polite, if a little boring (sorry about that).  Internationally we were the peacekeepers, and if we were a relatively minor power, we were respected on the world stage.  In fact, Lester B. Pearson, who would eventually go on to be Prime Minister from 1963 to 1968, along with UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld are considered to be the fathers of the modern concept of peacekeeping.  

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Taking advantage of this reputation, it was frequently said that Americans touring Europe would slap a Canadian flag on their backpacks to guarantee a friendlier welcome from the locals.  Things have changed.  When I read the news or talk to friends overseas, I find that this sense of pride has diminished and that we are more divided than we used to be.  Pride in our country is declining.  The same apparently is true in the United States.  Why?

To say that the last few years have been difficult is an Olympic-level understatement.  Covid, inflation, and divisive politics have all weighed us down.  While we are not the first people to face hardships, something feels different.  Some would argue that it’s social media or the 24/7 news cycle that has played on our collective and individual psyches.  

I have a different theory; I believe our “leaders” who seem more concerned with garnering votes than with helping us are the problem.  This was not always the case.  There have been instances, rare perhaps, but frequent enough that we remember them, when politicians sought to unite and occasionally inspire us.  The gold standards are, of course, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Kennedy.  In each case their nations faced a challenge and, in each case, they chose to unite and inspire:

Franklin D. Roosevelt

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

Winston Churchill

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

John F. Kennedy

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.

On occasion, we have also witnessed battles that pitted optimism against pessimism.  The 1980 US Presidential Election was one such occasion.  On July 15, 1979, Jimmy Carter delivered a televised speech that would come to be known as his “malaise” speech.  In it he talked about a threat to American democracy:

I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

Contrast this with Ronald Reagan’s nomination acceptance speech:

I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose. The time is now, my fellow Americans, to recapture our destiny, to take it into our own hands.”

Is it any wonder Reagan carried 44 States?  Four years later his campaign would strike an even more optimistic tone with an ad that proclaimed that “it’s morning again in America.”

Today’s politicians do not seem to measure up.  Rather than inspiring or uniting, they seem to choose the easier path of division, grudges, and guilt.  On Canada Day, as I skimmed my Twitter feed, I was treated to the following tweet from NDP leader Jagmeet Singh:

For those who are not on Twitter, you are likely unaware that Mr. Singh is well known to tweet his support of nearly every ethnic and minority celebration that occurs during the year.  The following is a short example:

• Eid

• Indigenous People’s Day

• Pride

• St. Patrick’s Day

• Yom Kippur

Congratulating people on days that are culturally and religiously important to them would appear to be a commendable effort on his part.  Unfortunately, it is transparently political and, what’s more, it is selective.  While individual groups are held up as deserving respect and celebration, we Canadians as a whole are not.  On Canada Day, the one day that we all share, we are not advised to be proud, as we should be, but are instead lectured on our collective guilt.  Guilt for sins that were committed by other people.

Mr. Singh is just a recent and obvious example of this political strategy.  Instead of working to inspire and unite us, politicians now seek to divide, to stir up the base through accusations of crimes, real and imagined, to convince us that we are all victims of our fellow citizens and that they and only they can get us the justice we so desperately need.

Once upon a time, politicians used speeches to call citizens to duty.  Calls founded on optimism.  They challenged us to be better than we thought possible and assured us that the strength was within us to succeed.  They told us we were strong and bigger than our problems and that together we could overcome them and build a better country.  Those days seem to have passed.  

Instead of encouraging us to find our inner strength, they tell us we are victims.  Victims of our fellow citizens.  Instead of the politics of optimism, they give us the politics of guilt, the politics of victimization, the politics of shame.    

We deserve better.