Like many Canadians I have relatives in the U.S. and have pondered what makes us different in a meaningful way. The events of Friday at the Elementary school in Newtown really put that into perspective once again for most Canadians. When I was a boy in the 1970's we once traveled to Oregon to visit my dad's cousin who lived on a beautiful acreage and had kids my age. It was amazing, and so different than my suburban world in Canada! For one they had a pool, which I thought was the height of luxury, there aren't a lot of private pools in Alberta where we have a 3 month warm period followed by a never ending winter. As I mentioned earlier it was also in the country, which was kind of amazing too, full of trees and critters that we do not have on the high plains, like tree-frogs, that my 2nd cousins liked to blow up with firecrackers. Oh yeah, it was also around the 4th of July so there were a lot of dangerous fireworks for kids to play with, which would be totally illegal back home for anyone to possess. My world was all about putting something like a frog or other curious beastie in a jar or something and studying it, these kids just wanted to blow them up. Ok, so that's a different approach to nature and what I was taught were all God's creatures. The thing I remember most, second to running into a patio door and getting a bleeding nose was a little deer that ran through the back yard, those of us from Canada were all "ohh look how cute" and the Americans were all "get the gun!" Which I never understood, since you live in the country and seeing deer would be one of the benefits? I always thought it illustrated a huge divide in American/Canadian thought process.
The shooting in Connecticut seems to have a lot of Americans asking what is wrong with our culture? Is it the American culture of violence? And as a Canadian I would say yes it is, obviously we have guns in Canada and a lot less violence, my relatives in Saskatchewan have tons of guns for hunting yet no mass shootings. America was conceived in violence and buoyed by slavery which later became a Civil War which later became a war of Civil Rights which later became a Culture War until you elected Barack Obama which we (around the world) hope is a signal that the war-on-everything culture is ending!?!?!? In contrast, Canada was conceived in compromise, yeah we had some small wars in the 18th Century, but we could never make all the Quebecois speak English and be loyal to the British Monarch so we just said fine, we can handle that we'll just be officially bilingual. We didn't have a War of Independence, we just asked the British if it was OK if we ran everything over here on our own and 120 some years later wrote a Constitution. We didn't ghettoize people or certain groups of people, we had periods of racism but everyone seemed to get over it in a generation or two. We did treat the Chinese pretty bad for which we said sorry 90 years later and we also interned the Japanese in WWII, for which we also said sorry and if memory serves me right from High School History, we got the idea from the U.S. anyway! Our history as Canadians has been mostly peaceful and full of compromise.
How does one tell a Canadian from an American abroad? Well, the Canadians will be the quiet ones minding our P's and Q's and maybe trying out our P's and Q's in the native language of whatever country we're in and your average American will be talking loudly, drawing attention to themselves and probably not using P's and Q's in any language! Of course there's always exceptions so spare me the hate mail please! So many Americans act like they are here to cure the world of a lack of McDonalds and a lack of American English and oh yes a sense of American Justice. When 9/11 happened it was the time to talk of war, War on Terrorism and war in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was no hesitation, When mass shootings happen a lot of Americans say now is not the time to talk of gun control, because emotion might take over? I guess we should wait until the time we are desensitized to the idea of 6 year olds being shot to death, which might come with 100 hours of news coverage. Or so the pro-gun lobby hopes.
One hopes that this is "the tipping point" in American culture and it very well may be. The idea of 6 year old children, the most innocent of society, being shot by a lunatic is beyond the pale. I'm sure a lot of us, desensitized to violence in the Middle East, took notice of the Assad regime in Syria when they shot small children execution style in the head. It goes beyond language and culture, it is beyond the pale for all of humanity. In some ways I think we could comprehend the motive of the loner bullied teenager, angry at society character shootings like Columbine. Then the Tuscon shooting of a sitting Congresswoman which got politicized by the right but there was no motive except schizophrenia, and I'm not sure why the Aurora shooting didn't start a gun control debate since they were just watching a movie? It was in the summer during an election year? No one wanted to talk about it? There was also a shooting at a Sikh Temple that summer that went fairly unnoticed, I'm sure many Americans think Sikh's are Islamic and didn't care? There was the shooting at an Amish School a few years ago but I wonder if many think it's not our culture so we can't comment? But this Newtown shooting is kind of too much to bear for all of us, I barely like children and am completely upset! As Oprah used to say "This is going to be BIG!!!", on that Friday the Networks suspended regular daytime programs for about 4 hours, Saturday Night Live did not have a comedic opening but rather a children's choir dedicated to Newtown, Football teams held hands on the fields in moments of silence, we haven't seen something like this since 9/11. Also the time of year, a week before Christmas, it's pretty heavy. We can all imagine that the parents have bought gifts already, made Christmas plans, have brothers and sisters and grandparents and everyone else in their entire extended families that will not enjoy the most festive time of year. Given most people's adoration of Christmas, a shooting of children at this time of year almost anywhere in the world is enough to send most people over the edge! So, yes, I totally believe this is the tipping point to some form of gun control in the U.S.
I am hoping the Americans go through a period of introspection right now, it's the Holidays so maybe they will be doing more visiting with each other and less watching FOX News? Introspection, check it out, it's a non-American idea the rest of us do in the world. With rights come responsibilities, the 2nd amendment does not give the right to bear as many arms as humanly possible. Maybe you should just remove it from your Constitution? Like the Slavery part? and the Prohibition part? The right to life and liberty in our times seems to be trumped by crazy people who have access to military style weapons. You can't have a society where people are afraid to be in a public place so my guess is that life and liberty will win out in the end. Is it time to cling to the 1700's or time for some Hope and Change!?!?!?
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