TORONTO – Call me cynical but I stopped believing that “unplanned events” happen in politics, unless they are occurrences in Nature that may descend upon the “best laid plans of mice and men.” I am also not a conspiracy theorist. In this context, what is unfolding in the American electoral process will have its “trickle down” impact on Canada, and elsewhere. 

Part of the reason for this resides in the fact that, at 342 million people, the biggest Middle Class anywhere, a 21 trillion-dollar economy and a Military that dwarfs the next eleven Powers beneath it on the scale of size and strength, the USA merits everyone’s attention. It is, effectively, the World’s Policeman. No nation can afford to ignore its domestic dynamics.

Moreover, its governance system of “checks and balances” essentially means no-one is ever certain of who is “pulling the strings.” Furthermore, the tendency to refer to the Judiciary in virtually all cases of relative importance has made that institution more activist than in the past – even as the USA is one of the most litigious societies in the world.

All this notwithstanding, Tuesday’s resignation by Kimberley Cheatle from her post as the Head of the U.S. Secret Service for what seemed blatant indifference to warnings of an assassination attempt on the life of Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, must surely shake the confidence of everyone in the American political system. At a minimum, the trend toward polarization of thought cannot be healthy.

Increasingly, “freedom of the press” to examine and evaluate objectively against arms-length criteria is frowned upon. As strange as it might seem, what is “tolerated” – thankfully, barely – is the freedom to heap scorn and derision on a position not consistent with your own. Civility in discourse and debate on issues of public consequence has virtually disappeared: candidates are “liars”, “thieves”, “felons”, “DEI candidates” or some exponent of “extreme/alt …” purveyors of undefined catastrophic evil.

The surfacing of Kamala Harris as the candidate “preferred” by Democratic Party has only added fuel to that fire. Even the European political Superstructure seems to be drinking from the same chalice. As reported elsewhere in our pages, Brussels (seat of the European Union, and never too kind to Italy) has opined on the Italian State interference in the freedom of the press supposedly enjoyed by the national television network.

It may be sarcasm carried too far to question whether their objective might have been better served had they selected as a better target for their concern the politics of our own CBC.

It is nonetheless fascinating to follow the overtly partisan displays of opinion published by the American media, and the lachrymonious “tut-tuting” of our own smug Press and Media, as respond to every new twist in the election cycle in the USA.

At the Corriere, we ask ourselves how otherwise responsible businesspeople, professionals and politicos are free to slander and defame people with whom they have a disagreement on ideology.