For some time it has felt like we've been watching American society disintegrating before our eyes. Growing up here in Canada, I always looked to the United States as the paragon of freedom, democracy and all that is good and right, but as I got older I began to realize that I had been falling for propaganda, and that America was specifically not designed to be the classless society it purports to be. (Insert "People's History of the United States" book report here.)

Don't get me wrong - America still holds a certain fascination for me, and I have a sincere love for my American friends and distant relatives. I also jump at any opportunity to travel there and experience that "down home" hospitality any chance I get.

But at the risk of alienating my American friends, the underlying message of the Ray McGovern video has remained the same since the country's founding despite any democracy rah-rah PR, which is simply: "Don't f*ck with power."

This is not America, nor am I sure it ever was.