What Colour is Your Lieutenant's Toque?
I have a co-worker who is British, spent some formative school years in Virginia USA, and agrees loudly with the War on Terror, George W. Bush, and Stephen Harper.
He is very fond of saying, loudly, that we are all Americans. By "we", he means Canadians. Like me. He does it to provoke an argument, but he also seems genuinely to believe that people like me, people who grew up in Northern Ontario, in a border town no less, who exhibit every stereotypical Canadian anti-Americanism, who despise George W. Bush - mostly BECAUSE OF his War on Terror, and who despise Stephen Harper even more for his bootlicking toadyism of all things Republican and his not-at-all hidden agenda to break up Canada into a collection of tinpot provinces to be assimilated into The Great Satan - are just pretending to believe ourselves to be Canadian, to believe ourselves to be living in a country called "Canada", to believe ourselves to have fought in two World Wars for King and country such that we established ourselves as a Nation, separate from Britain, and certainly not a satellite of the United States, with its late entries and latter day Cold Wars and nuclear weapons and C.I.A. dirty tricks all over the world that come to nothing except death and resignations.
He's not alone. Many, if not all, of our rightwing pundits would agree with him. But that's because they're traitors and would probably be hung from the highest treetops if they expressed those same views in their beloved America for their country of convenience - Canada.
Americans cannot abide traitors to their brand of kneejerk Patriotism. To the point where even knowing the President is a corrupted scab of a barely biped isn't enough to tempt the most powerful newspaper in the world - The New York Times - to defy his Declaration of Invasion and take him to task with what it suspected to be the truth. Oh no. That was left up to OUR left, thank you very much. No problem. We're free. And apparently, the REAL home of the brave. And we put up with our Rightwing American Wannabes because we are Canadians and know that, were the Democrats to win the next election, cease and desist in this ill-conceived (for everybody except the individual leaders of the American Administration who will grow rich off it) War on Terror, and legalize Same Sex Marriage, the weasels would be singing a different tune. Suddenly, and this is if that Alberta Separatist Reformer, Stephen Harper, was still Prime Minister of Canada - they'd be resoundingly Canadian, urging him to reconsider the Firewall Letter and really put the separate, but equal, stamp on a federalist Canada vis a vis the United States.
And that this all might well come to pass in fairly short order seems not to have occurred to the Canadian Right. That the United States could well leave us behind in Afghanistan and stuck in Unhipsville with our Christian Evangelical Reformer of a Prime Minister while they catch up to the New Millenium and Diplomacy and ALL THAT JAZZ, seems to not factor into their treasonous ways. And, trust me, when I say "Canadian Right", I'm not even talking about the Conservatives of old. I'm talking about all those Reformers in our midst, the current New Conservative Government of Canada, its media cheerleaders at Canwest/Global, all those narrow-minded stupids-at-large and LOUD Yankee Lurvers who vote for the assholes because they've left the Conservatives, the Liberals, the NDP - to park their idiot votes with a bunch of people who are really, truly, deeply awful - JUST LIKE THEM.
Myself, should the Democrats win the next American election, I look forward to never hearing from the likes of David Frum ever again for the rest of my life. I am, as a Canadian, so embarassed by his tenure in the United States, as if he is the best and brightest we have to offer, as if... he has ANYTHING in common with ME and the Canadians I hold in "regard" - to put it Canadianly, because we don't want anybody getting a big head and thinking they can make it in New York or L.A. or worse - Washington - that it kind of makes me want to stop buying Vanity Fair and start buying... well... let's see.... what is the Canadian equivalent of Vanity Fair? Certainly not Macleans. It's been taken over by Ken Whyte - the worst of the American Wannabe Right-R-Us Clattering Chaps.
But it is quite something to have a Brit tell you loudly that you are American. That there is no difference between you and Americans. That you are the same people living in the same country - America. I don't know how you would react, but I react with a rage most people reserve for people who walk beside each other on the sidewalk and not single file like you're supposed to except instead of seething quietly and crossing the street, I explode with Canadianism.
It really is quite something. But I do have a deep and abiding contempt and loathing for the British, as well, so, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. They DO underestimate Canadian-ness - don't they, though - the Reformed Rightists? What it is to be so essentially Canadian that only when some British blowhard calls you an American do you rise to the fore? They really don't get that about Canadians. Personally, I have no objection to defining what I am, Nationally, by what I am not. I like it, in fact. It gives me a certain Canadian satisfaction, a Citizen-of-the-Worldliness. I am quite pleased in defining myself by what I am not. It is, to me, our strength, a right royal strong point, something to rest assured in that we are not that kneejerk powermonger south of our border. It's better than Okay. It's good enough.
Do I feel superiour to Americans because I am Canadian? Yes. One need only to look at the geography of the situation. We're on top. Big, cold, hard rocks - on top. They are two-thirds tropical. A ridiculous country, really. I mean - who can't live under a peach tree?
You know, I watch their tv, movies, I read their magazines - but I'd go to war against them, too. Just so long as you know. But first I'd storm our own Parliament Hill and ship our Prime Minister and his Cabinet down to Washington so they couldn't turn over our Army to the Yankee Bastards. That's how much I really don't like this government. I literally would want it "to go down" in a National crisis and be replaced with a guerilla government. Of actual Canadians.
Don't call me American. I don't like it. It brings out the Canadian in me and you really don't want to go there, girlfriend.
