One Quote About the United States By a Canadian Has Hit A Sore Spot For Many Americans

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Okay, so I am on a Canadian kick, so to speak, recently.

I usually take at least one trip to Canada each year. And while I actually was physically in Canada earlier this year, technically, when my son and I ushered in the new year at Niagara Falls, it nevertheless feels like that will likely be the only time that we will have been in Canada this year. The border has been closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, and a majority of Canadians favor keeping the border closed.

Frankly, can you blame them? When you see the circus that has been going on inside of the United States from the outside, it hardly can be surprising that people in other countries would want no part of that. After all, the vast majority of countries in the world now have put travelers from the United States in a red list. Again, can you blame them? And Canadians - who I would argue know Americans more intimately than any other people in the entire world, including Americans themselves (because of a collective lack of objectivity), are not wrong to keep their borders closed with people who do not seem to believe in or respect science.

I mention my own personal belief that Canadians know more about Americans than Americans themselves do. This is because Canadians live in a land that literally borders the United States. Indeed, over 90 percent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the American border, and a vast majority of Canadians have been in the United States. Moreover, they get many of the same exact television programs, including the news, that Americans get. Many, if not most, probably know Americans. They also know their own system, and can see the one that Americans have built for themselves, and are currently living under. Can you seriously blame them for not giving up what they have to follow the American example?

Yes, Canadians know America, and Americans. They know the television shows and they know the lifestyle, because their own is similar in so many respects. Indeed, on many levels, Canadians and Americans are almost like twins separated at birth. Yet, they have gone in a very, very different direction. Canada has been on the rise in recent decades. They have consistently enjoyed one of the very highest standards of living in the entire world, having surpassed Americans in term of overall standard of living decades ago. The cities there generally have less crime, because the poverty levels generally are not as grotesque as they have become in that period among Americans, especially in the cities. Again, more than any other people in the world, as a group, Canadians know Americans, and understand what is happening here. And they have rejected it, and with good reason.

Moreover, more and more Canadians are speaking out about all that is happening inside of the United States. They see what is happening here with horror. And many of them have come to an inescapable conclusion: that the United States is in a serious downward spiral that, for all intents and purposes, probably is leading to a historic decline of a once incredibly dominant superpower. There was once a time when Americans by and large proclaimed themselves as the "shining city on the hill," the glittering example of what a country can become. Now, the horrific news coming out of these not so United States is being viewed as an example to the world of what not to do.

Here is a recent quote by a Canadian pubic radio journalist, who expressed his opinion on what is going on within the United States, which he refers to as the "U.S. empire." This quote by Paul F. Haacker, who is apparently a public radio journalist somewhere in Canada. This opinion may very well be shared by a growing number of Canadians, and I have heard some people express similar things, albeit often in more diplomatic language. If you click on the link down below, you will find an obviously dissenting American perspective, who basically says little more than that this guy should shut the hell up. But in fact, what he says is telling, and feels closer to the truth about where the United States now stands, and the direction that it feels like it is going in, than anything that any so-called  elected "leader" has to say about it:

“Here in Canada, many of us believe we are witnessing the fall of the U.S. empire. Would a civilized country limit health care or food assistance for the poor; leave crops rotting in the fields; destroy the educational system; target women and attempt to eliminate their reproductive rights while refusing to help resulting babies; abuse desperate immigrants; pretend to believe in Christianity while perverting and debasing its tenets; and refuse to protect the Earth from destruction? The world is watching.” 

– Paul F. Haacker

The Public Radio Journalist’s View of the United States by Justin Katz  on June 20, 2018 in Media, Politics - Opinion

http://oceanstatecurrent.com/opinion/the-public-radio-journalists-view-of-the-united-states/