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Peacetime Concerns
Health, employment, and education are Canada’s primary concerns leading up to the January 23 election. (My primary concern is that Stephen Harper keeps on creeping out the majority of Canadians with his fundamentalist America-centric views and never, ever, ever get elected. But that’s neither here nor there.)
Anyway. Health, employment, and education. And I thought, “When’s the last time Americans had the luxury of those concerns?” From 1945 to 1950, during the most conspicuous period of American peace, an alarming number of women went insane from isolation and boredom. Families imploded quietly. The Korean War soon followed, then the Vietnam war - and all those kids who’d watched their valium addicted mothers fall apart suddenly stood up and said, “Um…NO,” and okay, they also did acid like they used to eat Pez, but for a little moment America…tried…to change.
Then someone in government said, “Hey, I have an idea. Remember that Cold War thing? Let’s start talking that up again. Let’s have a war for free. Let’s scare the fuck out of a bunch of little kids and their parents and gain back the control we lost back in the sixties.” And that was the country I grew up in, a country waiting, waiting, for nuclear war. Christmas was especially frightening for me, because I was sure that the Evil Russians would attack on Christmas, becuase no one would be expecting it. I woke up once at 3 a.m. to the sound of thunder and was sure that the bombs had finally started to fall. I wrote letters to Ronald Reagan and the San Jose Mercury Times. I was always afraid. But I really had no idea what kind of fear lay ahead, that terrorism would rear its head in the form of a new president and a gradual eroding of the separation of church and state (a law I heard about for the first time and EVEN IN the middle of my religious phase I applauded) - listen, people, it’s not the fact that they want to teach creationism, it’s the foundation they’re trying to lay for the future.
These are the things I think about when people say, “Oh, but don’t you feel any loyalty to your country? How could you just leave like that?”
My country?
For me, the concept of patriotism has always been an alien one, rather like believing in God, except I went through a religious phase as a child and never once felt anything for the American flag. It’s akin to being born to a monstrous mother and being told you should respect her anyway and stay in the house until you’re blue in the face from screaming and trying to make her stop burning down the neighbour’s houses and eating kittens raw for breakfast when this little old woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly lives right next door and keeps inviting you in for tea and cookies.
And then one day when your mother is away, fundraising for Focus on the Family, you walk out the door, your husband on the left and your son on the right, and walk up that cobblestone path and knock on the door. And the little old lady lets you in.
Patriotism was an alien concept until I stood in a room full of people with my hand over my heart and tried my best to sing O Canada. But I was crying too hard.
Stephen Harper’s policies are regressive but worse, he has rediculous hair! Someone get that man a stylist, STAT!
Policies by Pat Buchanan, hair by Lego.
I have spent all of my life in Canada. My parents came here, escaping from an eastern European country. I grew up always being told to be grateful for what I had here: freedom of speech, democracy, etc. I have always understood that because it had always been explained to me what I, in turn, escaped since my parents left Europe before I was born.
Canadians are naive. I remember sitting in high school history class. The teacher was trying to explain the difference between democracy and communism. He told the class that citizens in the U.S.S.R. were able to choose from a variety of potential leaders just as we were here. He then asked how the two countries differed. None of the kids in the class answered. I sat there, shocked and disappointed at the idiots sitting around me. I finally answered that all of the candidates in the U.S.S.R. were from the Communist Party. It didn’t matter who you voted for…the Communist Party would always rule. It was the answer that the teacher was looking for but the students were still out to lunch.
We have a variety of different parties to vote for but I have become highly disillusioned. I used to vote for the underdog. My theory was that the party in power had screwed around with us for long enough. The party I wanted was always third in the running but I felt that if more people thought the way I did they would get voted in. Ha!
Now, I would still like to vote that way, in the hopes that that party would get in but now I know better. Sadly, now I vote so that the party with the greatest damage power does not get in. It is a very sad way of thinking. I can’t see the positive side to any of the parties but I look to see who will do the least amount of harm. Sigh.
Harper creeps me out.
“Patriotism was an alien concept until I stood in a room full of people with my hand over my heart and tried my best to sing O Canada. But I was crying too hard.”
Well, damnit Sage - now you made ME cry.
Kathy - we look at voting the same way. ultimately, it’s not the guy supposedly at the head of the party who is *actually* in power, but the numb-nuts we never see on air. I have a friend who thinks Harber is awesome and will do so much to change this country “when he gets elected”.
Oy.
The Power of Nightmares looks to be a really great BBC documentary on just this sort of thing. Click the link to watch the video.