The American Boogey Man

IronDuke

Ancient Mariner
This post is a little something I wrote last night for my blog....I thought I'd share it with you toughtful ladies & gentlemen.

What is a Canadian? Think for 10 seconds before you read on. Come up with an answer.


I bet you though instantly “not American!”. Admit it. This will be important later.

This July 4th, I’ve been thinking about the relationship between Canada and the Great Republic with which we share a border. My fellow Canucks seem to think they know quite about the Land of the Free, and often deride Americans for lacking intimate knowledge of the Great White North. I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re a bit unfair to the Americans. In fact, I see Canadians, myself often included, as being arrogant, disdainful, and downright snobby when it comes to the Yanks. It’s not the way one civilized nation should act to another, and it’s no way to treat a neighbour and, ostensibly, a friend. Hating Americans is the only thing Canadian bigots have left, now that Indians, Jews, blacks, and homos are all considered protected.

Americans are neither stupid nor uneducated. They’re human beings, just like us, and I’d wager we’re more like them then we care to admit (and that’s not a bad thing!). They are generally ignorant of Canada, but not any more ignorant than they are of any other country on the planet. Why? They can afford to be. As the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, they don’t need to be bothered with the rest of us. Economically, culturally, and technologically, the United States IS the centre of the world. Sure, we know lots about the USA. The key difference is that we HAVE to. We are the periphery on this great World Island. The USA is the centre, and (as the old saying goes) all roads lead to Rome. What would compel the average American to look to the periphery, unless his interests were directly involved?

Why is it that every time we want to criticise something, or put an end to some government policy, or just plainly make an ass of ourselves, we make allusions to it being American? I was listening to CBC Radio last week, and they were interviewing a city councillor from Toronto about whether the city will allow fire fighters there to put yellow magnetic ribbons on the trucks saying “Support Our Troops.” The Toronto guy said this was an awful thing to do, a way of dumbing down debate on the merits of the mission in Afghanistan, and, most ghastly of all….it was “a practice they started in the United States!” (He said it as if an American idea would give us all herpes or something.)

When the Conservative Party of Canada released attack ads on Stephane Dion this year, the Liberals (and many independent voters too) raised a hue and cry not because the Tories had sunk so low to insult the intelligence of the nation and were obviously running scared of Dion’s record. Oh no. The Liberals, my own party, attacked the Tories because the commercials were “U.S.-style attack ads.” So attack ads are ok, as long as they’re not U.S.-style? Is that the political equivalent to violating the Geneva Conventions on rules of war or something?

Is “like they have in the United States” such a horrible, deadly thing? They seem to be getting on pretty well south of the border, all things considering. Whenever we want to shut down debate on an issue or take the moral high ground in an argument we always seem to resort to the American Straw Man.  We have all kinds of these ad hominem attacks against our maligned neighbours. Check letters to the editor in just about any major newspaper in Canada. Check the condescending way our national media talks about them. Talk to the average Joe Canuck on the street. They all have some weird fascination with proving to everyone (but mostly, I think, to themselves) that they’re better than the American Boogey Man.

It probably has its roots in the very thing which created the Republic – the Revolution. Upper Canada was founded by a bunch of guys who had just gotten the shaft from a second bunch of guys for picking the wrong side in a war. The Loyalists, or Tories as they were called at the time, fled the retributions being handed out to people who had supported the British, and when they settled in Upper Canada, they had a lingering and omnipresent distrust of all things American. This distrust has manifested itself in different ways in the past twenty-two decades, but mostly today it’s an irrational hatred and spiteful disdain for the people from the place. This Tory fear of the American bogey Man was exported around the country as it grew, but remained strongest in Ontario (and thus it permeates all official “national” media….it never was very strong in Nova Scotia, given that most residents of the province had sympathies for the Rebels in the Revolution, and on numerous occasions before and after Confederation tried to join the Republic. Moreover, the Bluenosers actually aided the New Englanders in the 1812 War….a different history produced a different mindset – go figure.)

Are Canadians so insecure in our own identity that we’re afraid of being swallowed by the Yanks? What do we have to prove by reiterating the fact that we’re not Americans? I don’t go around thinking “Gee, I’m not an astronomer, a Jew, or a professional peanut farmer. I’m glad I know who I am!” Why do we define ourselves instantly as “not American”?  I’m sure our history, culture, and even our food is different enough that we can do a little better than that.

So next time you sit there driving your Chevy in your blue jeans & t-shirt, listening to your Rock & Roll, drinking the coca-cola you bought at McDonald’s, think twice before spitting at the American on the radio. He’s just a little different.
 
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