Disservice to the Discourse

I've already tipped my hand about What Is America, by Ronald Wright.* (To recap: I'm not a fan.) But after hearing comments about this book at a book club meeting over the weekend--a book club that contains perfectly lovely, educated people--I want to explain why I think this book does a disservice to American-Canadian political discourse.

For those of you who haven't read the book, here's what you're missing. The author, born in Britain and now a writer and lecturer in Canadian universities, puts forth the following argument: “[T]he New World made the modern world and now threatens to undo it” (p. 1). After a short introductory chapter, he chronicles the various waves of European contact, colonization, and/or settlement of North America through the centuries. Written before Barak Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination and published before he won the 2008 election, the book ends with the suggestion that the best hope for real leadership now comes from the European Union.

Wright tells an ugly story. The continent's history is one of greed, conquest, and relentless domination of the indigenous people. It is a story of people--Europeans, some Spanish but mostly British who become Americans--who use and abuse natural resources until they are spent, and then move on to take advantage of the next resource. It is, in short, a story of people. And it's a story that can't continue in this way. There are precious few “new resources” left on this planet.

I don't dispute the story Wright tells, even as he moves into recent events. I agree that George W. Bush was a disastrous leader and that his “war on terror” has been terrifying indeed. Two years after Wright finished his book, we're watching President Obama struggle with an obscene tangle of economic, political, and social consequences of the Bush administration.

But I still say that this book does not provide any benefits to the political discourse in Canada about the U.S. and the Canadian-American relationship. I think this book, and others written on this same pattern, in fact harms that discourse, for four reasons.

1. Readers deserve a book based on scholarship they can see and trust. This book doesn't make its case. It is set up to look like a carefully researched history--but it's not. The subtitle, “A short history of the new world order,” also suggests history. The book includes 226 pages of text and 142 pages of notes and bibliography. It has all the earmarks of a history, but not the substance. On close inspection, the book doesn't add to the base of knowledge. The information in the text itself was part of the university courses I took in 1982 and before. The notes show that many of Wright's “sources” are not original; they're quoted in someone else's analysis of empire in the U.S. (for example). That's not good, convincing scholarship. Other notes fail to provide a source for the statement in the text. Many contain information of only distant relevance to the material it's supposedly supporting. Many statements of statistics have no footnote at all.

Therefore, it's not a book that can be taken seriously for its scholarly approach to its material, even though the information in the book may well be new or shocking to Canadians. In fact, because the information may be new to Canadians, it should be available in an academically rigorous (yet, ideally, readable) book. Canadians readers would do better to take Wright out of the loop completely and read a few of the books cited in the bibliography.

2. Readers deserve to be told the truth about themselves. The kind of “history” in this book just allows Canadians to feel smug--mistakenly so--about their own past. Although Wright says “the America of my title has two meanings: the great republic most of the world simply calls 'America' and the American landmass as a whole” (p. 12), he focuses mostly on the “great republic,” and secondarily on ancient civilizations in what are now Central and South America. Precious little of his attention goes to Canada--though comments at the book club discussion suggest that perhaps it should have.

One comment at the meeting: “I've always been proud that my ancestors came from England to North America in the 1600s....and now [after reading this book] I'm so glad I don't have dual citizenship.” But until 1815 (or arguably 1776), Canadians and Americans were all British (except for those who were Native or from another European country). In fact, you could argue that Canadians weren't truly Canadians until 1867, by which time the pattern Wright describes--killing off or exploiting Native peoples and taking their wealth and land--had been in full force for nearly 400 years. The 140 to 200 years in which the two countries have had decidedly different histories total only two-fifths to one-fourth of the total time Europeans have been taking advantage of this continent.

Another comment: “I don't know how they [Americans] live with themselves.” The context for this statement was the treatment of native Hawaiians, particularly the last monarchy in the 1880s. Nowhere in the book does Wright mention Canada's 20th-century residential schools for Natives. And he dispatches Canada's history of western expansion and its relationships with Native peoples, including the war against Louis Riel, in two sentences with the remark that the processes in both countries “were all quite similar,” although there was “less fighting” in what is now Canada (p. 166).

Although Canadians are apparently Wright's intended audience (given the Canadian publisher), Wright does not effectively address his Canadian readers. He doesn't actively engage them in reflecting on their own history as part of the North American continent. Canadians could perhaps learn about their own history from the new biography series at Penguin Canada, Extraordinary Canadians.

3. Readers deserve a thorough, useful discussion of the major themes in a work. Yet Wright is ignorant of the history of religion in North America, beyond reading about (not direct reading of) the Puritans and beyond extensive quotation from Jon Krakauer's recent book about Mormonism.** Although Wright correctly identifies religion as a major cultural force in the U.S., he allows for no nuance in religious belief. “One in two Americans rejects the evidence for evolution; the rest of Christendom gave up fighting Darwin a century ago” (p. 16). I suspect this statistic comes from a general survey about religious belief, not specifically about evolution, but it's impossible to know--Wright gives no source for this statistic. (It's not even footnoted.) Wright seems not to understand that it is possible for (North) Americans to identify themselves as BOTH Christians AND scientists. He doesn't even acknowledge, much less explore, the deep divisions in mainstream Christian denominations in the U.S. For the past 150 years, progressive believers have struggled with fundamentalists, like those whose views Wright dismisses as archaic, over issues such as racial equality and marriage rights. These struggles form an important part of the culture and politics of the U.S.--but to Wright, they don't exist.

Another comment at the discussion: “What scares me is that someone who believes in an afterlife has his finger on the trigger of a nuclear device.” Wright's dismissal of nuance in religion lets his readers conclude (or continue to believe) that anyone who believes in an afterlife necessarily holds Earthly life less dear and is thus on the verge of annihilating the planet. Wright, like anyone else who writes about culture, politics, or society, had the opportunity to challenge the fundamentalist atheism of this comment, yet he didn't. Instead, he limits his consideration of the religious history of the North American continent to those aspects of Christianity that he seems to find puzzling or frightening.

Without a more complete picture of the role religion plays in the U.S., across faiths and denominations, and considering how each intersects with political and social perspectives, readers can't fully understand North America's present, much less engage in its future.

4. Which brings us to the future. Readers deserve a book that goes beyond fingerpointing. But in this book, Wright offers no real solutions--he doesn't even offer questions. Yes, Bush's administration was a nightmare for Iraqis, Afghans, and uninsured Americans, for starters. Yes, the North American continent has a long and sordid history. To which I ask: Now what?

Wright offers very little in response. The positive alternative he cites as the next possibility for “the world's best hope,” the European Union, is “discussed” in less than three full pages (pp 223 – 226).

The sad thing is, Wright missed a golden opportunity to speak meaningfully about the future to Canadians--who live in one of the countries that still has, arguably, a “frontier.” Canada's economy depends largely on its natural resources. Technology will continue to make it easier to extract oil from tar sands and to find and extract natural gas and minerals from previously inaccessible regions. In the next half-century, climate change could drastically alter the Canadian landscape, expanding the amount of arable land and triggering an influx of settlers from the south.

What if Wright had, from his expertise on the perils of colonial expansion, considered explicitly how Canada could create a different future? How could Canadians apply his accumulated knowledge, and the knowledge he draws on, and avoid perpetrating the mistakes of the past? Would it be possible for Canada to be the next “world's best hope”? Wright apparently didn't even entertain the notion.

Another comment from the discussion: “Why should we read books like this, that just offer apocalyptic views of the past and no hope for the future?”

My answer: we shouldn't. Instead, we should demand rigor from our writers, avoid national smugness, embrace nuance, and look for solutions instead of endless analysis. We should should read original sources, learn our own history, reject fundamentalist beliefs in whatever guise they come, and apply what we learn from the past to the future.

That's the biggest disservice Wright did to the Canadian-American discourse: He had the opportunity to write that book. And he squandered it.
~~

* Wright, Ronald. What is America? Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2008. Page references are to the hardcover edition.

** Krakauer, Jon. Under the Banner of Heaven. Rev. Ed. New York: Anchor, 2004.