Margot Kidder reflecting on the DNC Convention: My Fellow Americans: We Are Fools
JULY 29, 2016
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My Fellow Americans: We Are Fools
There is something I am going to try and explain here after watching the
Democratic National Convention this evening that will invite the scorn
of many of my friends. But the words are gagging my throat and my
stomach is twisted and sick and I have to vomit this out. The
anti-americanism in me is about to explode and land god knows where as
my rage is well beyond reason. And I, by heritage, half American in a
way that makes me “more” American than almost anyone else in this
country except for the true Americans, the American Indians, am in utter
denial tonight that I am, as you are, American as well.
I am half Canadian, I was brought up there, with very different values
than you Americans hold, and tonight — after the endless spit ups and
boasts and rants about the greatness of American militarism, and praise
for American military strength, and boasts about wiping out ISIS, and
America being the strongest country on earth, and an utterly inane story
from a woman whose son died in Obama’s war, about how she got to cry in
gratitude on Obama’s shoulder — tonight I feel deeply Canadian. Every
subtle lesson I was ever subliminally given about the bullies across the
border and their rudeness and their lack of education and their
self-given right to bomb whoever they wanted in the world for no reason
other than that they wanted something the people in the other country
had, and their greed, came oozing to the surface of my psyche.
I just got back from a rather fierce walk beside the Yellowstone River
here in Montana, trying to let the mountains in the distance reconnect
me to some place of goodness in my soul, but I couldn’t find it. The
scenery was as exquisite as ever, but it just couldn’t touch the rage in
my heart. The visions of all the dead children in Syria that
Hillary Clinton helped to kill; the children bombed to bits in
Afghanistan and Pakistan from Obama’s drones, the grisly chaos of Libya,
the utter wasteland of Iraq, the death and destruction everywhere
caused by American military intervention. The Ukraine, Honduras, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, you name it — your country has bombed it or
destroyed its civilian life in some basic way.
When I heard all the Americans cheering for the military and the
pronouncements of might coming from the speakers in the Wells Fargo
Centre, I loathed you. I loathed every single one of you. I knew in my
gut that what I was taught as a child was true, which is that YOU are
the enemy. YOU are the country to be feared. YOU are the country to be
disgusted by. YOU are ignorant. And your greed and self-satisfaction and
unearned pride knows no bounds.
I am not an American tonight. I reject my Puritan ancestors who landed
in this country in 1648. I reject the words I voiced at my citizenship
ceremony. I reject every moment of thrilling discovery I ever had in
this country.
You people have no idea what it is like for people from other countries
to hear you boast and cheer for your guns and your bombs and your
soldiers and your murderous military leaders and your war criminals and
your murdering and conscienceless Commander in Chief. All those soaring
words are received by the rest of us, by us non-Americans, by all the
cells in our body, as absolutely repugnant and obscene.
And there you all are tonight, glued to your TVs and your computers,
your hearts swelled with pride because you belong to the strongest
country on Earth, cheering on your Murderer President. Ignorant of the
entire world’s repulsion. You kill and you kill and you kill, and still
you remain proud.
We are fools.
Margot Kidder is an actress and activist in Montana.
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