Americans Voting for the Sizzle

A poster for Joe Dante’s 1987 political satire The Second Civil War. 

In the 1987 film, The Second Civil War (a film first created to stream on HBO), slick lobbyist Jack Buchan (the late great James Coburn) instructs the U.S. President (the fondly remembered Phil Hartman):

“No disrespect sir, but the American people vote for the sizzle, and not the steak.”

This late 1980’s dystopian satire* was set forty years in the future (the mid 2020’s).
Unfortunately, no network has had the nerve to brush the cobwebs off of this film.
It’s a comedy about immigration, and we can’t do comedies about immigration anymore!
The main plot is this: the Federal Government orders Idaho to accept one million Pakistani immigrants.
The Idaho Governor (Beau Bridges) objects, and a second Civil War results.
(My husband and I own a DVD of the film.)

Speaking of “sizzle,” one of the reasons that Trump was elected in 2016, was that people were tired of voting year after year, and seeing no real change in our unjust systems.
On November 18th, 2025, survivors of Epstein-Maxwell abuse gathered outside the Capitol.
They spoke of being ignored by five different administrations.
Several women mentioned contacting the FBI, and the Justice Department, and not being listened to because mere women were accusing rich and powerful men.

1939’s The Wizard of Oz, with the Wizard (Frank Morgan) revealed from behind the curtain.

Trump reminds me of the big green head in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz.
Trump is the head, and the people who wrote Project 2025 are Professor Marvel (the person behind the curtain).
Trump has never been an “idea man.”
When pressed for an agenda, he rails against his enemies, blames other people, and lies that he has a “concept of a plan.”
During his November 2, 2025, 60 Minutes interview, with Norah O’Donnell, Trump actually said that he didn’t know the billionaire cryptocurrency founder (Changpeng Zhao), who he’d pardoned just a few days before!
Does Trump truly believe that ignorance makes actions OK?

I’ve been unable to trace it back, but a few days after Trump took office, in 2016, one pundit said that he’d never realized (until that election) how many Americans simply didn’t care if the world “blew up.”
I keep going back to this memory over the past nine years.
Why did so many people want something (anything, anyone) to shake up the status quo?
Weren’t they worried about the nuclear football?
Couldn’t they see that Trump just cared about himself?

An “old” Italian-American saying.

Is America mainly a nation of gamblers?
I guess that would make sense.
Most of our ancestors—at least the ones who came here willingly—gambled with their lives as they made their way to these shores.
They gambled that the ads published in European newspapers (promising streets paved with gold) would be accurate.
They gambled on surviving, as they traveled from Boston to California in wagon trains.
Men and women gambled that they wouldn’t die of diphtheria, or dysentery, or scarlet fever.
Women gambled that they wouldn’t die in childbirth, or starve to death. 

Why are Canadians not gamblers?
Why are they not as divided, and not as violent, as Americans?
Is it because most of their population came to Canada for safety, and for land?
Is it because Canada’s population is so much smaller in proportion to its’ land mass?
Is it because the Canadian climate is colder?
Is it because Canadians are more likely to be bilingual?
(The official languages of Canada are English and French.)

Is Canada so different from the US because Canada has never been dependent on slavery, and the tainted wealth that slavery brought?
Upper Canada ended slavery in 1793.
It’s estimated that there were only about 4,000 African slaves in Canada, when Canadian slavery was totally abolished in 1834. 

Volume 5 of the 1997 Collier’s Encyclopedia (page 268, in the “Canada” article) postulates that: “Canadians have shown a persistent desire to not become Americans.”
While Americans talk about being “a melting pot,” many Canadians have viewed their country as “a mosaic.”
Canadian citizens (except Inuits, and other native groups) have been encouraged to keep their ethnic individuality.
I much prefer the concept of a mosaic, over that of a melting pot.

Of course, like all countries, Canada has not been free of ethnic conflicts, or of racism.
Native groups have been oppressed and discriminated against.
In the 1990’s, French-Canadian citizens still tended to make less money than non-French-Canadian citizens.
Although most Canadians consider themselves “middle-class,” there are still class divisions, as well as a gap between the rich and the poor.

Americans have long been different from Canadians, however, in that they tend to be more materialistic, more violent, and “better” risk-takers.

Although the giant lumberjack, Paul Bunyan, is part of both American and Canadian folklore, he originated in Canada.

Another difference between the U.S. and Canada is that there were no “heroic thieves” (like Billy the Kid, and the Sundance Kid), or a “Wild West,” in the Canadian national mythology.
Instead, Canada was the place where Paul Bunyan was born, and wild creatures like Sasquatch or Wendigo roamed the forests.

The question comes down to this: Are Canadians generally a touch more conservative, less materialistic, and less “sensation-seeking,” than Americans?

* The Second Civil War (the 1997 HBO film), is close in title (at least) to Alex Garland’s 2024 thriller Civil War, that starred Kristen Dunst. Although the two films have a few things in common, they are polar opposites in terms of sensibility. Both films are about another Civil War, but in the current time period. Both films also feature news journalists (and a U.S. President) as main characters.