I'm going to skip most of Zolf's rambling and get right to the climax of his piece.
Anti-Americanism and the Canadian Identity
Still anti-Americanism is very much connected to the Canadian identity. Canadian hatred for George W. Bush and his war on terrorism is massive. Bush-hatred is definitely anti-American. Anti-Americanism has always been tied up with the Canadian identity. Anti-Americanism is dangerous and reeks of racism. Harper has been right in fighting it. The NDP and Liberals are too prone to be anti-American.Anti-Americanism can be racist. It is a disease. It should stop being so essential a part of the Canadian identity.
Emphasis added, of course.
Let's see. Financial mismanagement that has turned a respectable surplus into a huge deficit? Check. Foreign policy that has left Iraq in bloody chaos and made the Middle East, a region that was already dangerously unstable, even more unstable? Check. A War on Terror™ that has made the threat of terrorism even greater? Check. Policies that support illegal detention and torture? Check. A theory of government that asserts unqualified power in the hands of the executive in complete contradiction of the American system of government and the Constitution? Check. I could go on but you get the idea.
And so, the question, Larry: how bad does George Bush have to be before opposition to him and his policies stops being the kind of knee-jerk, racist anti-Americanism you describe and becomes, you know, a position that is at least acknowledged as a reasonable reaction to the last five and a half years? How low are you really setting the bar?
Actually, support for bush II is more indicative of "anti-Americanism." I care about democracy in America. bush II was installed twice via electoral fraud. People who support bush II evidently don't give a shit about democracy in America. They are either gleeful that their boy "won" or they're just too lazy and apathetic to care.
Sad, really.
Canadian hatred for George W. Bush and his war on terrorism is massive. Bush-hatred is definitely anti-American.
Wow, is that ever going to be news to most of the Americans I know.
Rambling is a kind way to describe that essay, pogge. Contradictory, obsequious and historically mangled would be another way. What a frigging mess.
My prediction: the righties will throw off their loathing of the CBC for a few minutes to praise this work of genius.
Kitchen-sink writing again (as in everything but the ...). I'm sad to see this happen to Zolf, who had much better days as a young journalist. CBC would be doing him a favour to end this gig soon.
He mentions Lysiane Gagnon at one point, and it is true: she has been retailing this sort of mindless cant in the G&M lately, if somewhat more articulately. Wente and Gee are not above insulting other Canadians in similar sloppy fashion. Zolf is no threat, but it is bothersome that such dumbed-down rhetoric has any traction at all in the msm.
According to recent polls, a majority of Americans disagree with the direction George's W Bush has taken the United States. This disagreement ranges from the war in Iraq to the continued debacle in New Orleans and his fiscal mismanagement. Some Americans probably even hate him with the same intensity of passion Republicans hated Clinton.
If I share that disagreement why does that make me anti-American? In Mr Zolf’s world is it only Americans who are allowed to disagree with US policies? What a great attitude for a colonial to have. Maybe we should treat US politics like we do the weather? Why should we bother developing our own foreign policy? The Canadian government’s primary concern should be adjusting Canada to fit with whatever happens to be the US political climate. After all, who can argue with a thunderstorm?
I don't even give Canada my unqualified support. A brief tour of the blogsphere demonstrates this country's right-wing certainly doesn't. Why would I be expected to give a foreign country something I don't even give my own?
What a crock. Is somebody getting alzheimery?
This reminds me of the bleating about Canadian anti-Americanism before the run-up to the Iraq invasion. And you know, it's one thing we Canadians can be shamed into silence by, it's the accusation of racism.
Now, with Iraq a disaster and Iran becoming the "new" real goal of the invasion all along, are we being scolded into silence once again by the usual suspects? Since the communication from these people is almost always uni-directional (ie. they never address their transparently weak reasonning...when called on it, they remain silent), I guess we'll never know.
In any case, it's seems pretty darn desperate for Zolf to unconditionally equate hatred of Bush with anti-Americanism and racism. Not to be flippant about advancing age, but I'd find it much more charitable to be able to attribute this to Zolf's intensifying dotage, rather than think there's something more calculated going on here.
At least Zolf stopped at anti-Americanism, more or less.
In Saturday's Post, Andrew Coyne explained that anti-Americanism (a morbidly sophmoric hatred of our own society that characterizes the left, apparently) has been mutating into something 'that might at best be called anti-Israelism, and at times looks alarmingly like anti-semitism. Which brings us to the present wretched state of the Liberal party.'
Of course it does: and on two whole pieces of evidence. Namely Boris Wresnewskyj, whose words revealed a 'habit of mind,' a 'tendency to locate all the blame for the world's ills in a single country,' now attaching itself to Israel instead of the USA; and Thomas Hubert, who is apparently representative of the entire 'left':
'To the left, to Mr. Hubert and his ilk, Israel is not merely 'just as bad' as those who are trying to destroy it, but if anything somewhat worse -- because, one assumes, they are on our side. At least, I hope that's all it is.'
You can just hear the 'hope' in his tone, can't you?
I'm afraid I'll have to reject the hopeful doctor's diagnosis of the 'left,' however and come right out and say that I don't consider Ehud Olmert's policies to be doing very much good for 'our side' (or for any side, for that matter), even though I know in doing so I risk placing on one country all the blame for all the world's ills (global warming, homelessness, malaria, etc.).
skdadl reminds us that, before he reached his current sorry state, Zolf had some much better days.
My question is, if Coyne is this bad now, where's he going to be when he's in Zolf's place?
You just have to look at this through Larry's beer googles. The thinking goes like this. Bush is America. America and Israel are essentially one country. Therefore when you criticize Bush, you are criticizing American and are therefore anti-semitic. It's all so clear.
Since most of the Semites in the world are Arab, it would seem to be the right which is orders of magnitude more anti Semetic than the left. And perhaps the senile Zolf would care to explain to us when "American" became a race. Or, for that matter, when "Jewish" became a race. That's an explanation I would just love to hear.
It's actually encouraging to believe that Zolf and Coyne are the spokesmen for the Canadian right. Although it's pretty discouraging that anyone is sufficiently intellectually challenged to take either of them seriously.
I've never heard it commented upon, but I've noticed some anti-Canadianism in American people.
"And perhaps the senile Zolf would care to explain to us when "American" became a race."
No, no, it is one. Didn't you hear? "American" will be one of the four tribes in the upcoming season of Survivor.
Carlson Tucker is on record calling Canadians retarded. In the movie ‘Jimminy Click in LaLaLand’ Martin Sheen's character likened Canadians to Russians pretending to be Americans. Personally, I have been called a snow monkey and, once, this American girl from Chicago told me her impression of Canadians was that they were jerks. For the record I have only ever seen a snow monkey in a refrigerated pen. It didn’t seem very happy.
Pilgrim, I've noticed some anti-Canadianism in some Canadian people!
Start with Michael Ignatieff's appalling essay in Granta 77 (from early 2002) and then move right of that. Are there any conservatives/Conservatives who actually like Canadians?
skdadl's comment on anti-Canadian Canadians is timely. We currently have a prime minister who is not only unable to say he loves this country, but has made speeches in the U.S. ridiculing us. This is a tad more serious than what any Canadians think of George W.
What a frigging mess.
It's true that this piece is low-hanging fruit. It's so obviously off the mark that it's easy to criticize. But it's just a really blatant example of the kind of only-slightly-more-subtle nonsense we see all the time as evidenced by the Coyne column that Stephen mentioned.
And since the Iraq war was brought up, do you realize that if you opposed it then no matter what your reasons for doing so, or whatever your political philosophy might be, you're a card carrying member of the anti-war, leftover hippie, Neville Chamberlain-worshipping left? I'm sure William Lind would be surprised. The idea that it was specifically that war at that time conducted in that manner and by that particular group of mendacious incompetents is something that can't be credited even by the so-called liberal hawks who are lately issuing their mea culpas and yet continue to sneer at those of us who saw all along what they've only seen in retrospect: that it would do far more harm than good.
Is it any wonder I get cranky?
I disagree. Harper was right to make the speeches he did. I even agree with the OpEd he co-wrote with Stockwell Day warning the Americans Canada’s smug arrogance could be dangerous. Canadians are smug. Smug = Danger. Who doesn’t know the dark side of smug? Jesus might have said that the meek shall inherit the earth, but what he forgot to mention is that the smug will ruin it for them by pointing out global warming has made the earth inhabitable. That’s what the smug do. Ruin stuff. Remember how the smug laughed at Mission Accomplished? Who says a violent insurgency means you cannot celebrate victory? The smug do, that’s who!
History is full of the smug lashing out in paranoid burst of violence. Of the smug and their sneaky ways working to undermine freedom. The smug invented cholera.
Think of the threat in world historical terms Canadian smugness, if not tempered, might have posed to the United States?
Our smugness might have turned to a condescending attitude toward their massive deficit and fiscal ineptitude. Then what? Sarcasm? Outright scorn!!! Unearned pretension!!! The possibilities are infinite.
Seems to me that a lot of the Canadian neocons hate Clinton's guts, and indeed did so when he was president. But hating non-right-wing Americans never seems to be anti-American.
For that matter, last I checked Noam Chomsky was an American, and indeed a Jew. Next time some rightie goes on a Chomsky rant, I think it's time to ask why they hate America--or why they're so anti-semitic.
For that matter, last I checked Noam Chomsky was an American, and indeed a Jew. Next time some rightie goes on a Chomsky rant, I think it's time to ask why they hate America--or why they're so anti-semitic.
Why not? If dialogue with conservatives is going to spin out and devolve into complete and utter nonsense, we might as well help it along. I'm sure, at that point, the sensible conservatives (both of them) will decide that it's time to lead conservatism back to a more reality-based and reasonned public discourse.
Our smugness might have turned to a condescending attitude toward their massive deficit and fiscal ineptitude. Then what? Sarcasm? Outright scorn!!! Unearned pretension!!!
It'll eventually lead to a very nasty and brutal form of aggression that'll become known as the Canadian doctrine of PHD: Pre-emptive High Dudgeon. Oh, the humanity...
skdadl mentioned "Michael Ignatieff's appalling essay in Granta 77."
...all reach into the same treasure house of language, at once sacred and profane, to renew the faith of the only country on earth that believes in itself in this way, the only country whose citizenship is an act of faith, the only country whose promises to itself continue to command the faith of people like me, who are not its citizens."
Truly weird stuff, skdadl.
Can you imagine what Mark Twain would have made of such foolishness?
Here's the link the to Granta article.
Seriously, Ignatieff is deranged.
OK I'm confused. I just read the Granta article linked above, and really found no mention anti-canadianism in it at all, or anti-americanism and its supposed link to the Canadian identity. It seemed to be covering the relationship between american politics and religion by both sides of the political spectrum. That relationship doesn't exist in Canadian politics (at least anymore), or in any other major world democracy to the extent it does in the US. Iggy seemed a little more opptimistic about it than I would have been, but I enjoyed his example of "American Scripture".
So seriously, what does that article have to do with this thread?
That's a good point by Skdadl re anti-Canadian Canadians. I do believe I would agree with Bill Longstaff that Stephen Harper is probably even more anti-Canadian than Ignatieff. I have a copy of the infamous speech he delivered to an American audience in 1997, ridiculing Canada extensively.
Wsam provides specific examples to the little generalization I made. Tucker Carlson is a major offender.
There are other things. Sometimes they dismiss us with amusement. They castigate our health system, which is vastly better than theirs. They think we are the fount of terrorists. We had a stupid thing a while back with seventeen young wannabee sorta-maybe terrorists. Big screaming carry-on on all their t.v. shows about that. It was something our police people had nipped in the bud. But no, Canada bad. Short time later, something a little more serious (maybe) in Britain, which their police people stopped. But nothing but praise for the British handling of the issue. So different to the way they represent a "threat" from Canada.
Back in 2003, when our then prime minister Jean Chretien said no to war on Iraq, their people were furious with ours. People spoke of going to shopping malls across border and having their Canadian license plated vehicles defaced with nasty messages. It's different now, of course.
Why, what a bunch of antiZolfites are posting here! Not to mention antiHarpercrites and even some antiIgnatieffieffieffians!
Bush-hatred is definitely anti-American.
Because... George Bush is America? Did I miss the re-instituting of absolute monarchy in America? Maybe Bush's surely-famous 'L'etat, c'est moi' line?
Oh, wait, that's french; can't have that treasonous language in there...