How's it goin', eh, and happy Thanksgiving to everyone north of the border!
I'm currently ensconced on the couch in Vicki's living room--my home-away-from-hell--lappie on my thigh, foot on the coffee table, enjoying another beautiful fall day in Nova Scotia.
All of the stores (except for the convenience stores) are closed; people are either having dinner with their families today or on the way home from dinner (for those with families in different parts of the Maritimes and the rest of Canada), and it's just a lovely, quiet day.
No football on the telly--THAT is a happy thing, and such a change from the Hallmark-holiday that Thanksgiving has become at home, the tryptophan coma before the Xmas shopping madness known as Black Friday.
I'm fairly disgusted with my homeland and have been since November 7, 1980 when I swore out loud for the first time in my life without caring who heard when I opened the door to head out for school and read the headline that Ronnie Raygun had been elected president. I mean, we were in the shitter long before then, but, Christ... I mean, I was 13. I knew he was full of shit and Carter was being fucked with a spiked stick by the Republican party (and it was proved later on that George Bush and company set that poor bastard up--he got left with Nixon & Ford's mess, did his best, and got fucked by the Republican propaganda machine. They had learned after the Kennedys and MLK that assassination was a bad idea. I think he's had the last laugh). Now people are trying to canonize him. I mean, I remember Reagan: he was an IDIOT. A MORON. He made no sense and talked out of his ass--I can't believe people were surprised about the Alzheimer's.
How many people know or remember that Reagan started out as a Demoncrat and switched parties when he couldn't get elected?
I may be one of the few people from my generation NOT nostalgic for the 80's. I remember the 80's. John Hughes's films were cool, some of the music was the balls, SOME of the fashions were cool, but for the most part, the 80's sucked ass. All the shit that's going on now--the massive poverty, homelessness, veteran's issues, political corruption... right now, watching the news is like watching a bad rerun of the 80's, except the weapons are uglier, and it's our asses on the line in Afghanistan, not the Soviets.
Oh, yeah--and the Rolling Stones STILL haven't fucking retired (GIVE IT UP, YOU OLD FUCKS!!!! YOU'VE TURNED INTO THE MOULDERING BONES!), and Aerosmith needs to.
No one is afraid of nuclear war (although they should be), but everyone is afraid of environmental disaster. Too late. Not only has the horse left the barn on that one, the damn barn's been burned to the ground. Cocaine has made a comeback (maybe it never left; I wouldn't know, I've always been scared SHITLESS of the stuff); you don't hear much about crack, but then there's crystal meth. And heroin. Although I don't think heroin ever really faded. I wonder, though, with the war in Afghanistan, if we're going to see a resurgence of opium dens. I know it's not as easy to smuggle as it was back in the Vietnam era, but there's always a way for a determined businessman. (No, I'm not interested--my drug use extends to the occasional bit of weed [a pinch of hash in there is OK, too, so long as I don't have to drive any time in the next twenty-four hours; that shit is POW'FUL!], and I'm good. I'm old; it doesn't take much to fuck me up.)
There's no such thing as a free election, anywhere--it's finally dawned on most of America that the game is rigged and was from the beginning. The corporations own Washington, the bureaucracy has grown so monolithically huge that there is nothing short of a fast-moving, 99% lethal (Captain Trips, anyone?) that can clean up that cesspit.
In short, we're fucked.
I've been coming up to Canada for about seven years now; I hit Nova Scotia twice a year to hang with my best friend and other friends. I love it in Nova Scotia--it's like stepping back in time about twenty or thirty years in terms of attitude. People aren't so fucking uptight and self-involved. There's actually a sense of community.
I'm ready to repatriate (if McCain and Palin had won, I'd have asked for political asylum). There is a part of me that wishes New England had seceeded back during the War of 1812; the economic power of the Maritimes would be VERY different if we had. Times are not easy here, economically--highest taxes in Canada, poorest earners. The Maritime provinces have also suffered the greatest loss of soldiers in the Afghanistan War (contrary to what most Americans thinks, we ARE NOT fighting over there alone; there's a reason Canada and the UK aren't too happy with us. When we went unjustifiably into Iraq, we left our allies' asses hanging in the breeze. There's a special place in Hell waiting for W & Cheney. With extra boiling oil and BBQ sauce). Like the US, for many folks, the military is the only place to get a job. The difference is the ethnic make-up--there are a lot of educated, white people in the Canadian military.
I'm not going to start sharing stories from the Canadian Forces--I've heard enough of the bitching from folks--but I will say this: Canadian soldiers don't lose three rifles in one year. Yeah. Wanna know where the military stuff on the black market is coming from? *whistles*
One last thing about the Canadian Forces: you want to know how Veteran's Day is supposed to be celebrated? Come to Canada (or at least, Nova Scotia): the whole damn province shuts down for the day to celebrate Remembrance Day and pay tribute to those who have given their lives for their country. It's a somber, moving day--at 11:00 a.m., there is a moment of silence. "In Flanders Field" is read (on the pop music station, for fuck's sake). The sacrifice is honored, and not with car sales.
Prices are high up here. I hear one more fucking American bitch about the price of gas, I'm going to smack them right upside the head. On Thursday night, I went out to refuel the Blue Bomber because gas prices change at midnight; they sell gas by the litre up here (roughly four litres to a gallon). The price jumped from $1.04 to $1.10 PER LITRE. The equation looks like this: 4 x 1.04 = $4.16 PER GALLON. I paid $2.50 per gallon when I filled up in Boston before I left.
Yeah. And it's even higher in Europe. We have NOTHING to bitch about at home.
And I think that's why I'm ready to leave. I love my home--I love living in Boston and having the world at my fingertips. I haven't stopped loving the Constitution and believing in the Bill of Rights. I'm sick and freakin' tired of the idiots and their false, flag-waving patriotism. The slogan, "America-love it or leave it!" is the antithesis of the the spirit of the Constitution. And most of these idiots don't have a clue about history, American or otherwise. Of course, they don't teach proper history in school, so how the hell would any of tghem have a context in which to place our current state of affairs?
What I can't stand at this point are other Americans. Somehow, in the last 50 years, we've gone from being a hard-working, reponsible, committed people to being the biggest spoiled, entitled brats on the fucking planet. We want it all, we want it now, and who fucking cares if it gets paid for on time? The world OWES US.
No, it fucking well doesn't. Like it or lump it, we are all one race of people--we're all human. Doesn't matter what color you are, who you call God (or if you even believe in a Higher Power), if you've been kidnapped by aliens of the saucer or pick-up truck variety, which way you vote, YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING. You end up in a hospital, so long as the blood type matches, it doesn't matter where the donor is from or what they look like. I'm sick and tired of being embarrassed to be American when I go abroad--of having to apologize for the idiots on the TV who make the rest of us look like morons, whether it's our heavily censored, ridiculously biased news they're seeing, our crap TV shows, or even crappier movies. And we won't talk about some of the music... *slams head on the desk*
I realize that I'm lucky--I work in an oasis of liberals, the People's Republic of Cambridge. As much as I bitch about the hippy dippy crunchberries I'm surrounded by, I am profoundly thankful for them because at least I know not everyone is going to vote Republican. I don't know if I'm going to my high school reunion; I'm afraid of being lynched for still being a Democrat, and when I hear the line of reasoning... I have to shake my head. I'm the fucking Neopagan--I'm the witch. I live a far more Christian life than the church-goers, and I don't even believe in the divinity of Christ. Boggles the mind.
I am afraid of my country. That's the reality of it. I am afraid of the hysteria that's brewing, the tension, the silliness, the utter lack of anything that resembles sense, and the fact that people accept it.
Makes me crazy.
So I'm ready to repatriate--I had three great-grandparents come from up here; if it had been my grandparents, I'd be all set. I'm ready for a change.
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