Thank you for this Spoons. Much more eloquent than the "FUCK YOU"s welling up when I read some of the replies here on this thread and others.
As a poster from Texas, I get it. I really do.
Not everybody matches the stereotype. Not even remotely. And there are plenty who actively fight against the bigots and idiots.
But there’s more than a small grain of truth in there, nonetheless.
And while it is never comfortable to be tarred with the same brush as those folks, at this point in history, there’s a bit more harm in getting defensive over it than in understanding that some level of internet grousing is more than warranted and then to help folks figure out how best to direct all that anger and frustration rather than repeating “we’re not all like that” until blue in the face.
No, even in Alberta there is no large scale support to make the entire nation of Canada into the 51st US state. But there’s still more than there should be. By a disappointing margin at that.
Sometimes I think that whole multi universe theory is true and somehow we got stuck in the dumbest timeline of all.
Sorry Canadians our incoming president a f**king moron, I tried to stop it…
Just off the last couple of days Facebook and WhatsApp:
Gun “rights”
More restrictive immigration (less brown people)
More integration (less accommodation for non-English speakers)
More free market “options” for health insurance (one of them is a doctor married to another doctor and refers to themselves as indentured servants)
Less taxes generally, but especially fuel taxes
End “special status” for Quebec (I don’t know what this means) or “second class citizenship” for Anglophones in Quebec (don’t know what this is either)
Doctors in Canada are mostly self-employed or members of entrepreneurial practices and are very well compensated. Most of them understand the American health care landscape and are grateful that they don’t have the quagmire of American insurance companies to deal with. These two sound like a couple of rich fucks who just want to be richer. They are less interested in healing the sick than in arbitrarily hiking their fees to whatever the “market” will bear.
Quebec is officially recognized as a “distinct society” and enjoys special privileges as such. Anglophones in Quebec suffer blatant language discrimination.
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Anyway, Canadians are so incredibly keen on joining the US that we’re currently looking at options for cutting off oil, gas, and electricity to the US if the Orange Buffoon doesn’t smarten up:
We know that Fox “News” is purely performance art, and that this asshole most likely doesn’t actually believe this, but it fills me with dread that he can say it with a straight face, knowing perfectly well that millions of his idiot viewers will take it as gospel, and start parroting this line to everyone they know. “We should annex Canada, they’ll love it!” will become part of the MAGA catechism, right next to “Lock her up!”
It’s not just Fox News, and it’s not recent. I’ve had American business associates and even a few relatives (I was married to an American) ask why, with such an easy path to moving to the US, I don’t want to move there and gain citizenship.
They simply cannot conceive why anybody who was offered the chance to go to the US and become American, would not take it. They really do believe that everybody in the world wants to be American, and cannot believe it when non-Americans say they don’t.
This is part of the whole mindset of “American exceptionalism” and the willful ignorance about the rest of the world that goes along with it.
Actually, I think he does. You have to be pretty much brainwashed in right-wing MAGA bullshit and faux-patriotism to survive as a Fox News host. In the exchange between Fox News host Jesse Watters and Ontario premier Doug Ford, Ford reiterated his support for an economic trade deal between the two countries but firmly rejected any notion of a political union, which Watters simply could not understand. The conversation ended with Watters saying something like “then I guess it will have to be a hostile takeover”. Which tells us all we need to know about why Canadians want nothing to do with the American mindset.
There are the ignorant in every country. Just because they are doctors doesn’t mean they have any perspective about their own system and how it compares to others. But we live in an age of ignorance where those who shout loudest and most often win.
Well my family has doctors on both sides of the border and they are ALL greedy as all hell. ALL they talk about seems to be taxes and investments. They are all much richer than we are (and we are quite well off, easily in the top 10% of household income), but the American doctors seem much richer than the Canadian ones. Of course they are not in the same types of medicine (primary care vs specialists vs surgeons) so it is hard to know. There is a discussion elsewhere on these boards about Primary Care Physician compensation in the US, and the numbers being quoted seem incredibly low compared with the lifestyles of doctors in my family (none of whom are PCPs). None of the doctors I know are making less than $400k/year, but they are working in some of the most expensive parts of the country (New York metro and SF Bay Area). I know for example that the rent in the building the psychiatrist lives in is $9000-$12000 a month.
My family is chock full of greedy racist fucks, so these folks are nothing special.
Jesse Watters doesn’t want to be an American citizen, either, when it comes down to it. He wants to be a Commander in Gilead.
He’s such a complete mannequin I can’t imagine that he’d survive the political infighting or go very long without being caught out violating their moral strictures that he’d end up on The Wall
Stranger.
Canada (and then Australia) have much higher rates of “net immigration” than the US - those who would stay given the choice minus those who would leave.
The myth of the militia lives.
You mean, with ridings?
No, you want territories that parliament can tax without representation.
My idea of imperialism may be on the old-fashioned side.
Some places just need a spankin’
I have a friend who’s a dual citizen. She moved back to Canada some years ago and refuses to set foot in the US ever again. She’s one of the few Americans whose judgement I would trust.
Quite relevant:
My Drift into Quiet Anti-Americanism: I fought a war alongside the US and learned a few things
From a never-Trump American citizen POV, what troubles me is how much I agree with this (as in, completely). Trump is trying to paint his opponents as anti-American, knowing that most humans are nationalists. Democrats who want to win future elections have to find a way to remain pro-American. Donald is not making it easy.
A majority of voters didn’t see through the obvious bullshit this time, I have no hope they will in the future.
There is a lot to be said for this. But, while somewhat reassuring for Canadians, and for parents of American soldiers, it’s not totally reassuring to me.
If Trump is playing nationalist checkers here, he may correctly see stirring up unfulfilled irredentist dreams as turbocharging emotions needed to keep his MAGA movement strong.
Decade after decade of comparable threats against Taiwan hasn’t hurt the PRC government’s popularity one bit — to the contrary. And the longer the dreams of expansion continue, the more chance that Trumpian chickenshitism would transition into real war.
I have to agree with this. My family doctor for 40 years (until he retired mid-covid) told me that he absolutely could not imagine practicing in the US. Not that he didn’t complain about the paperwork Quebec insisted on. And he was an American, from Nassau county on Lon Gisland (that’s how it sounded when he said it). He had come to McGill for his bachelor’s, stayed for med school, married a local girl and spent his entire career here.