A Weekend In Canada, Outside The Shit Show

Sometimes getting away from my homeland is the only way I can take what's happening to it.

All of it is Canada. The history, the people who are here now, the problems we face, the things we do great, the things we do terribly, the Leafs winning last night—all of it is part of our country.

• Chris Hadfield

Erin and I returned late yesterday from spending a much-needed long getaway weekend in Vancouver, BC. We’ve been there a few times previously, and I’ve been there many times over the years. I love Canada, and I’ve often fantasized about moving to Vancouver. It’s a fair bit more expensive than Portland…but a boy can dream, no?

More than any other time in my life, leaving the US feels like an escape. I’ve felt myself wishing that our tickets were one-way and that we didn’t have to return to the shit show we’d left behind. Even being out of the country for three days felt like a breath of fresh air. Sure, the US border’s only about 60 miles south of Vancouver, but most Canadians live within an hour or two of that border. Being in the Great White North was a chance to decompress and leave the idiocy behind. Even if only for three days, the relief I felt was palpable.

Returning carried with it a discernible feeling of unease. And this morning’s news of a mass shooting in Louisville has only confirmed that perception.

Canada isn’t Paradise; it has its own unique set of issues. Like anywhere else, the Great White North deals with race issues and conflicts. Erin and I walked through the University of British Columbia Plaza in Vancouver, where the conflict between indigenous Canadians and Whites is on full display. Canada is coming to grips with generations of brutal repression directed at its indigenous populations, and British Columbia feels like Ground Zero.

The wounds are raw, open, and impossible to ignore. Unlike America, which actively treats it minorities as if their interests are at best secondary, Canada seems to be making an attempt to address their race issues. How well that process is proceeding depends on who you speak to and their cultural background, but there at least seems to be a process in place.

Too much of America is like Tennessee, only slightly more subtle in their disdain for those who aren’t White Conservatice Christian heterosexuals.

There are other issues, of course- political, social, and cultural- and the conflict between Left and Right in Canada can sound not unlike what’s happening south of the border. Still, what’s lacking in Canada is the hostility and the drive by Conservative Evangelicals to force their decidedly un-Christian ideology on the entire population. Instead, reason and reasonability seem to reign, at least compared to their neighbors to the south.

If you’ve watched The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu, the difference between Gilead and Canada feels distressingly similar to what’s happening now. No, America isn’t yet the extreme quasi-Christian autocratic nightmare the fictional Gilead is, but it doesn’t stretch credulity to see that happening in the not-too-distant future.

I feel a sanity and a degree of calmness in Vancouver I don’t feel anywhere in the US. Perhaps it’s me projecting my frustrations and what I want to feel, but when I speak to Canadians, they tell me of their interactions with Americans who are relieved to be free of the shit show south of the 49th parallel.

While in Canada and consciously free of American news for three days, I’ve been able to think about my homeland and where it is today. I don’t think I’m an alarmist when I say I’m legitimately frightened for our future. Instead, I fear that we’re heading down a path leading to a pronounced lack of willingness to countenance the philosophy of “live and let live.”

So many on the Far-Right believe it’s their God-given right to police how others live, act, and think. They firmly believe that White Christian Conservative heterosexuals sit at the pinnacle of humanity, thus giving them dominion over all Mankind.

And this segment of the population, a pronounced minority, honestly believes that their narrow, arrogant, fear-based beliefs provide them with the God-ordained right to impose their intolerant and inflexible rules on all of us. They’re convinced that the Godless, ignorant majority must be brought to heel and forced to adhere to their enlightened, Godly rules.

Never mind, of course, that most of us have no desire and are completely unwilling to living under the bootheels of the narrow, arrogant, and self-righteous American Taliban.

This explains how we’ve ended up with red states banning abortion and some prohibiting abortion drugs. The idea that women shouldn’t be allowed agency over their own bodies is beyond offensive. Still, far too many in the American Taliban consider the uterus to be the property of the State. And that belief appears to be growing.

ALL YOUR UTERUS ARE BELONG TO US!!1!!!!1!1!

Yet, these same people see nothing wrong with allowing anyone and everyone to carry weapons of war in malls, coffee shops, and other public spaces. Because MORGUNZ!!! can only make us MORSAFER!!! Meanwhile, we remain an accidental discharge away from real tragedy.

Not only that, we’ve had more mass shootings in 2023 than we’ve had calendar days. Yet for some reason, the Far-Right continues to consider women’s reproductive rights a legitimate threat…but not Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes prancing around public spaces with weapons of war.

WTF???

It’s a gross absurdity intended to camouflage abject tragedy. It makes no sense, but in America, there’s no requirement that it make sense. Guns have more rights than women and other living things.

And the American Taliban and Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes fail to see the irony and absurdity.

We have major media outlets- I’m looking at you, CBS News and Vanity Fair- giving oxygen to Far-Right trolls (Marjorie Trailer Greene and Candace Owens) who have nothing to add to the public discourse. Except for hatred, ignorance, arrogance, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, and religious intolerance, that is.

The values a significant majority of Americans have endeavored to build- tolerance, inclusion, equality, acceptance, and understanding, to name but a few- have taken a beating over the past few years. Conservative Republicans and Evangelical Christians aspire to drag America back to a time when the country looked and operated like Tennessee still does today. Whites maintain power. Blacks should consider themselves lucky even to be allowed to participate in the conversation. And the LGBTQ community should keep their mouths shut, their heads down, and hope that good, God-fearing White Conservative Christian heterosexuals don’t decide that God’s ordered them to kill everyone not like them.

We’re becoming a country increasingly intolerant of those who think, look, and act differently. We ignore the melting pot aspect of our collective history out of fear of The Other. And we reject faith traditions, ideologies, and political philosophies that don’t dovetail with our own.

We’re afraid to consider that different ideas might present us with an opportunity to learn and grow. Instead, we increasingly see disparate philosophies and ideologies as a threat to our continued existence. And Americans don’t do well with perceived threats, even if they exist only in their overheated imagination.

As I began writing this, I was sitting in our hotel room in Vancouver, watching the pouring rain pound Beatty Street next to BC Place Stadium. The pigeons on our balcony looked like something from a Hitchcock movie as they looked at me like cows at a passing train. I doubt I represented more than a shapeless form behind a glass window. Since I had no food, I was of no value and certainly no threat.

That’s a lot like what Vancouver feels like to me. There’s a lot of activity in the streets; it’s peaceful, and it feels as if no one’s terribly concerned about much of anything. It’s one of the things I love about being in Canada. The people are relaxed, not closed down as they are in so many American cities, and it just feels…different.

I know living here would be much different than being an itinerant tourist living out of a hotel room. Still, part of me wishes our tickets were one way. Returning to our home south of the border and back into the shit show seemed a particularly unappealing prospect.

I suspect my perspective is a bit different from most Americans. I’ve lived overseas. I’ve seen my country through the eyes of those who only know of America from what they saw on their television screens and read in their newspapers and magazines. I’ve had long conversations with people who knew me as the first American they’d ever met. I was their window to a country that in many ways seem mythical and larger than life.

By paying attention to what I heard from these folks, I was able to see my homeland in new and different ways. Some of it was good and made me proud. In one of my iterations, I worked for a non-profit non-governmental organization (NGO) that delivered relief supplies to a country that would become a war zone soon after my departure. My presence there made a difference, and I could see that. I was proud of the work I did and the impact it had on the lives of people I met.

There was also the flip side of that coin. Many people saw me as the face of a country that projected political power from the barrel of a gun- and they weren’t wrong. I did what I could to add some perspective to that perception- “No, I’m not a member of the CIA!”

Perception can be reality, though, and a good part of my overseas experience was invested in trying to be myself and to let people see that an American is…a person, for better or worse.

All of that was before the Internet Age, though, so now the world sees America much faster and more completely, warts and all. And what they’re seeing now isn’t pretty.

America is a deeply flawed and broken nation. To a certain degree, that’s been true throughout our going on 247-year history. Any truly functional democracy is an amalgam of forces pushing and pulling in different directions. Unanimity of thought and direction never is or will be the hallmark of a healthy democracy. Conflict and contentiousness are the lifeblood of what keeps this country moving forward.

The push and pull of competing ideas are necessary to prevent autocrats and despots from muddying the waters and assuming power. And for almost a quarter-millenia, America has withstood the threat posed by various strains of ignorance, intolerance, and illiberalism.

Then, somewhere around 2010, the American experiment began to wobble. The Far-Right Tea Party became increasing popular, and more of its adherents came to power in Congress under the GOP umbrella. The problem with the Tea Party was that it brooked no dissent. Compromise- the essence of representative democracy- was defined by the Tea Party as capitulation. They wanted nothing to do with finding middle ground.

Then Evangelical Christians- who’d seen their power and influence decline since Ronald Reagan left office in 1988- began to see the Tea Party as a means to their ends.

Then, by the time The Former Guy descended the escalator at Trump Plaza in 2015 and promised Evangelicals a seat at the table if he was elected, White Conservative Christian heterosexuals knew they’d found a way back to power.

It didn’t matter that the horse they were backing was the antithesis of someone who might lead a Christ-like life, because Evangelicals cared more than anything about temporal political power. His efficacy as a Christian role model was barely an afterthought.

Since 2016, Evangelical Christians and their political power base- the American Taliban- have successfully increased the political power and influence. With the power of Conservative churches behind them (so much for the Johnson Amendment) and a disdain for the Separation of Church and State, they believe THEY should BE the State.

Will the American experiment be able to survive the anti-democratic and illiberal Christofascist attacks on the values that built this country?

Will a minority of White Conservative Christian heterosexual protofascists be successful in seizing powerful and turning America into something more closely resembling Margaret Atwood’s Gilead?

I turn 63 next week, and I fear for the future- not for myself, because I’ll have shed my mortal coil by the time most of the questions I’ve posed have been fully answered. I fear for my nieces and nephews, who will inherit the mess my generation will leave behind. They deserve better. Alas, they almost certainly won’t get close to what they deserve.

It’s been said that true wisdom lies in planting a tree in whose shadow one knows they will never rest. I often think about that, and I wonder what shadow will be cast by the world I leave behind. As much as I endeavor to find kernels of optimism to focus on, that can seem difficult these days as more and ever greater evils seem to hold sway.

I know that Canada isn’t the answer, and that my battle- whatever that may entail- is here, south of the 49th parallel.

I only wish I could feel that my optimism would be enough.