Anchor to anchor, NBC’s Tom Brokaw told the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge on Monday that the U.S. is deeply divided between two candidates with “vastly divergent views.” My problem is, I don’t see it. On Iraq, George Bush wants to stay and win. John Kerry — wants to stay and win. They differ only on how it’s going. On same-sex marriage, one is against it and wants a constitutional amendment. The other is against and doesn’t want an amendment. So why are we told there is a gulf, and why does each side seem to truly feel they are battling the devil on the other side?

It gets more confusing when you consider the animosity between liberals and conservatives. Something as mild as universal health care isn’t even on the table in this great fracas. But there’s no doubt most Americans believe they are in the vortex of an ideological war.

The claim may serve one purpose. By implying a state of conflict, it diverts attention from the crucial fact of U.S. politics: a massive national consensus about the right to project U.S. power anywhere, its imperial — project. Think how pervasive that assumption is. More like recognizing a fact than a right. U.S. troops in Iraq, Somalia, Korea, never seem out of place. They sit on the borders of declared enemies, like the former Soviet Union, Iran or North Korea; yet if those countries had forces ringing the U.S., it would lead to war — and almost did in 1962. The best asset of a controversial policy is for it to appear uncontroversial. So no questions are raised, or are quickly marginalized, on both the left and right.

But really, why call that consensus the crucial fact in the U.S.? Doesn’t it just belong to “foreign policy,” one of many issue areas? That may be so in a place like Canada, but a foreign policy based on the right to go anywhere and subjugate anyone is different. It touches and distorts every value in a society: from the nature of democratic process to the personalities formed in kids. It affects the way all citizens, in every sector, see themselves and others. The declared motive doesn’t matter: spreading democracy, plundering resources, doing God’s will. It will breed attitudes about power, inequality, the absolute truth of one’s ideas; it affects economics, culture, everything. How does it do so? Seymour Hersh, who exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam 35 years ago, said this week that the mother of a U.S. soldier told him: “I sent them a good boy and they gave me back a murderer.” It happens that way, and in other, subtler ones.

It can happen to any nation, once it takes on such a role. It has transformed Israeli society, especially since the conquest and occupation of 1967. That Canadians do not generally betray such attitudes has nothing to do with us being better people. It’s because we haven’t been given imperial experiences. In cases where we play analogous parts, with aboriginal peoples, for example, we don’t measure up well.

As for the “bitterly divided” U.S. election, try this. Imperial policies beget a kind of domestic imperial politics, which is not about resolving differences via democratic debate, but is modelled on conquering versus conquered, rulers versus ruled, winners and losers. Things get tenser when the empire itself is challenged and, most of all, when it bogs down as it has in Iraq. If the imperial mentality makes people haughty, mean and unwilling to deal with contradiction, then a threatened imperialism will make them more so, because now they’re scared and their basic sense of superiority and power is under stress. And so the current “season of mean” in the U.S. All the normal political nastiness gets augmented.

Many on the left are nursing a certain whimsy about John Kerry in office. “My guess is,” wrote my friend Linda McQuaig, “he would behave less aggressively in the world than Bush.” I respectfully scoff. My guess is, in the Kennedy or Clinton mode, he’d be as or more aggressive, as he has promised. But I also think the theopolitically blinkered Bush team is more likely to lead us all into nuclear catastrophe than the “reality-based” John Kerry. For me, global incineration is the tipping point. I’m hoping for a Kerry win.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.