Yes, I know, I blather on and on about Jeff & The Dog more than a new parent shows off pictures of their baby’s first blink. I know it gets old and I promise to start blogging about other, more interesting stuff… Next time. Promise. This is important tho, so suck it up and bear with me, okay?
When I was a little kid, I watched television as much as and even more so than the average 1980′s North American rug-rat. Given I was growing up in Ontario, pretty much 90% of that television was coming from the good ol’ USA. Given the constant inundation of American commercials and tv shows with the requisite Reagan-era flag-waving, my six-to-ten year old self wanted nothing more than to move to California and buy a convertible and a gun.
Not even kidding here.
I didn’t even know where I wanted to drive to, and definitely didn’t want to shoot anyone. It was just drilled into me that to have a great life, I had to be American, preferably in Los Angeles, and have cool wheels and a semi-automatic.
(It goes without saying that I have since learned L.A., a place Jeff has visited often and actually where he was born, is a cesspool of poverty, violence, environmental blight, urban sprawl, over-population and general human misery. Your move, Los Angeles Tourism Bureau!)
My point is, I was indoctrinated, like every other kid watching American television since the 1950′s, to think that America was the land of the free and home of the brave, attractive people eat at Burger King, the A-Team never actually kills anyone with their assault rifles, stayed tuned for more commercials populated with nothing but white people, and the hero always gets the girl and never, ever gets the guy. Even more sad, is that this pattern hasn’t really changed between the 1950′s and today.
In contrast to this, last week I applied for a new BC driver’s license and changed my last name to my husband’s, and nobody damn well batted an eye at me.
I messaged my cousin Pat a few months ago on Facebook in response to an update she’d put on her page, agreeing with her about an observation she’d made about her life since moving to the US. I don’t remember the wording, but the gist of it was, “the reason why most of the world loathes the US isn’t because it’s the richest country in the world, or works to influence through government action or the media. Individual Americans can be fantastic people, but the US as a nation and as an institution is a big, dumb, loud hypocrite. It’s like the loudmouth party guest who talks with his mouth full while simultaneously claiming to be egalitarian and telling a joke involving the “n-word”.
My overlong point? Jeff could get an incredibly rewarding and well-paying job in the United States, where the cost of living is lower and the pay is higher, as long as I didn’t come with him. Because the current (African-American) President of the United States has decided that civil rights are a states-only issue. Louisiana is probably wondering how they can leverage that so they can get back to lynching, preferably involving the current (African-American) President of the United States. Did I mention hypocrisy? I coulda sworn I did…
“My people” won the right to marry after a few years of active lobbying, and the debate over it from beginning to end, while contentious and occasionally bigoted, was nonetheless polite and mannered. Nobody threatened to kill their elected officials or people on the other side of the fence. Politicians didn’t run for office on the argument that they’ll revoke people’s human rights “because the Bible says so, and well, I didn’t read it but neither did you and we hate those people so let’s just say the Bible says we should.”
Bottom line for an overlong, rant-y post:
