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10/19/2004: This bothers me....
since in my personal experience of Canada and Canadians, they are the nicest, most polite people on Earth. If they resent us, we're really assholes; there's no doubt on Earth about that. From Brian Leiter:
The Coming Election, as seen from CanadaMy last visit to Toronto, I spent the last hours of my trip wishing I didn't have to return to the U.S. (and I was still living in St. Louis at the time). If I could feasibly emigrate there permanently (i.e., had the finances to pull off the move, knew I had a job or other means of support, and knew that the Canadian immigration authorities would grant me landed immigrant status), I'd do it. Without even thinking twice about it.
A Canadian who is earning an American law degree, but spending a term at home, writes:
"I'm studying law at the University of Toronto for a semester, and have been discussing the election with professors and other students. Not surprisingly, the Torontonians I've spoken to (and indeed a sizeable majority of all Canadians) are resolutely anti-Bush, but they don't share your optimism about the outcome.
Most have adopted a fatalistic attitude about the whole thing.
"Bush's international misadventures have gravely damaged a cross-border relationship that was strained to begin with. Canadians have always been vaguely resentful of the United States as a country, as much for its heavyhanded trade policy as for its cultural dominance.
"They have long harbored a morbid fascination of a country that is like them, but not like them; indeed, the Canadian identity has more to do with NOT being American as anything else. In the past, this attitude toward the United States has manifested itself in cultural protectionism, and a smug attitude of moral superiority.
"But all of that has festered into something nastier during Bush's regime. Canadians now distrust not only the American government, but also, to a troubling extent, the American people themselves. They sense something deeply corrupt about a people that would even entertain the thought of returning Bush to office. They have begun to ask themselves seriously whether Americans are really much like them at all. Canadians are used to labeling Americans as ignorant, arrogant and chauvinistic, but these epithets aren't softened by chuckles and eye-rolling like they used to be.
"I've been telling people here that the election isn't a foregone conclusion, and that Bush may well spend the next four years as Brush-Clearer-In-Chief. But I don't think that anything short of a Kerry win will convince them. Canadians simply don't trust Americans' capacity to make the right choice. That being said, if voters do repudiate this grubby criminal gang on November 2, I intend to show staid Toronto what to do. If you see TV footage of Canadians dancing in the streets, well, that was my idea."
Len on 10.19.04 @ 12:25 PM CST
