The Revolution Was A Mistake

An American flag engulfed in flames. Image taken from Accent Banner.

Two hundred and forty-nine years ago today, the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. Following a bloody revolution, the country we know today as the United States came to be. Even today, many Americans mark this day with parades, barbecues, and fireworks.

Of course, I don’t think there’s very much to celebrate today. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed yesterday, and it’s going to kick millions of people off their health insurance, drastically increase the budget for ICE agents to snatch people off the street with no due process whatsoever, and make it even more difficult for the country to do anything about climate change. (Not that we were doing much anyway, to be fair.) And of course, that is far from an exhaustive list.

The more I think about it, the more I think the Revolution was a mistake. And to be clear, I’m not saying this just because Donald Trump is President. Plenty of systemic issues in American society would have remained even if Kamala Harris had won that election, gun violence being an example. 

Even if the general public has forgotten in most of the country, I still recall the July 4, 2022 mass shooting at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois. Some people commented at the time that it was appropriate, given where the country has fallen. It occurred as the country was still reeling from several other shootings, such as the racially motivated supermarket massacre in Buffalo, NY and the Robb Elementary massacre in Uvalde, TX. Are you sensing a pattern here? 

It was the Highland Park shooting that specifically motivated singer-songwriter Pat Benatar to announce that she would no longer perform her most famous song. And I respect her a lot for that decision, but it just shows where we’re at as a society.

Of course, gun violence is far from the only reason I’m not proud to be American, but it’s among the biggest. The United Kingdom, the country we gained independence from, had one school shooting in 1996. Dunblane was so horrific that they simply had to act, and they did. There hasn’t been a school shooting in the UK since. Meanwhile, when the American version of Dunblane happened at Sandy Hook, we did nothing. Indeed, less than nothing, for we have even more gun violence than we did prior to that horrific tragedy.

It’s the same thing with Australia after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre - they passed gun control. Of course, Australia had hundreds of thousands of firearms as opposed to hundreds of millions. I’m convinced that even if the will to pass gun control existed in this country, there would be no way to actually confiscate everyone’s AR-15s. 

But let’s imagine what it would be like if Britain had won the Revolutionary War. Now, we can’t be sure of everything. If Grandma had wheels, she’d be a bicycle. 

If the USA had lost the Revolution, slavery would have been abolished decades earlier. There wouldn’t have been a civil war either, so that would’ve been preferable. It’s often said that the South lost the war, but won the Reconstruction, and that creates many issues that persist to this day.

Now, I’m not going to say that environmental racism doesn’t exist at all in the UK and Commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia. It does. But it’s not to the same extent, and besides, look how these other countries address it.

The bill currently being debated in the British Parliament, which is often referred to as “Ella’s Law” after a young girl who died as a result of air pollution, would aim to address it. The bill has support from many MPs of both the Labour and Conservative parties. I expect it to pass overwhelmingly, because who doesn’t want cleaner air? 

Well, apparently the GOP doesn’t want clean air over here. If this bill were brought up in the current Republican-controlled US Congress, it would never get a vote. And even if it did get a vote, few if any Republican politicians would vote for it. That’s how totally captured by fossil fuel interests the GOP has become since Citizens United. 

And we just accept that as normal. We consider it normal that one party keeps pulling us out of the Paris Climate Accords whenever they retake the presidency. Obviously, this accord has little to no enforcement mechanism, so when faced with a leader like Donald Trump it’s basically toilet paper. But other countries are massively reducing their emissions. We’re the only country where “climate change denial” is even a thing, and the rest of the world is going to pay dearly for our revolution.

Consider also the foreign policy of Donald Trump’s second term. During Joe Biden’s presidency, he was able to repair foreign relations to a great extent. He supported Ukraine without reservation. If they wanted weapons from the United States, they typically got them. It was because of this support that the war in Ukraine lasted over three years as opposed to three days. Compare that to Trump’s attitude toward Ukraine. He’s not only withdrawing weapons that have already been pledged, he might even start sending weapons to Russia. He might literally support Russia materially as opposed to just rhetorically, and that’s a disgrace.

It’s not just Ukraine, though. Trump keeps calling Canada, a far greater country than we are (in large part because they don’t feel the need to announce it all the time) the “51st state.” He’s one hundred percent serious about annexing them. Unlike Vladimir Putin, who claimed until the day before the invasion that he wasn’t going to attack Ukraine, Trump’s not even bothering to deny it! 

Whether or not Trump actually follows through with his threats to Canada is only part of the issue. Even if we don’t end up invading our former ally, and Trump leaves office to hopefully be replaced by a Democrat, I don’t think any country is going to trust us again. Any deal that requires longer than a four-year commitment on our part isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on when the next Republican President is going to go back to talking about invading Canada and Greenland. Prime Ministers of other countries might have varied foreign policy, but much like with climate policy, it doesn’t do a total 180° just because a different party took power.

Of course, one reason for this political stability is the Parliamentary system that Canada and Australia inherited from Great Britain. A system where the head of government is selected from the majority party or coalition in the legislature is far more resistant to political gridlock. Additionally, it encourages the formation of multiple parties, which encourages consensus to a far greater degree than the American two-party system. 

Not every Parliamentary system has ranked-choice voting, but those that do are generally more harmonious. It disincentivizes negative campaigning, which means that you’re a lot less likely to attack another candidate if you’re hoping that candidate’s voters will rank you second. Besides, ranked-choice voting can stimulate the growth of third parties, because you’ll now be able to vote for them without feeling like you’re wasting your vote.

Now, I’m not going to defend everything the British Empire did back in the day. Some of their actions were…not great. And that’s putting it mildly. But when you look at the alternative, which is the shitshow that is the United States of America, I think the healthy Parliamentary democracy we could have been sounds rather appealing at the moment.