Off With His Head

I was never much of a fan of Canada’s first prime minister after Confederation: John A. MacDonald. I’ve always preferred founders like Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, Samuel de Champlain, and Wilfred Laurier. You know, the good guys. Regardless, on hearing that MacDonald’s statue was torn down yesterday, my first thought was: I guess this is what globalization means in 2020: everybody has to have the same food (i.e., American food), everybody has to have the same culture (i.e., American culture), and everybody has to have the same politics (i.e., American politics). Aren’t we supposed to be a distinct society?

We have no special loyalty to the past here in Québec (that’s an English thing). We gleefully change names and take down statues to suit our changing conception of who we are. I actually love it and find it remarkably healthy. But we change the names of the streets and buildings legally. And we remove and replace statues legally. We elect governments and they get grumpy hungover city workers to do it. This wasn’t that. This was a couple of vigilantes taking the law into their own hands.

Why bother having democratic elections and the rule of law if highly motivated special interest groups can simply impose their will on the rest of us by force? Why not just solve all of our political disagreements through street brawls? You know, the old-fashioned way: Might is Right. Oh wait, I remember . . . because living in a place where all political disagreements are solved by street violence fucking sucks! Look, MacDonald was a total douche and I really won’t miss his statue. But if we lose our mostly peaceful way of dealing with political differences, I’ll miss that a great deal.