My daughter is scared.
Scared enough that she thinks we should move to Canada. Let me explain to you why she came to that conclusion to the best of my ability. But first let me tell you a little something about her so you can understand why she is so upset.
My daughter is a bright, happy outgoing generally optimistic person. She makes friends easily, and is one of the first people to befriend someone who is new to her school or people that others consider misfits or outcasts. When she has felt that other kids were being bullied or wrongfully accused she has stood up and defended them with far more courage than I ever did when I was her age.
She also openly defends her liberal political beliefs against the majority of kids who come from conservative families, and she does so with well reasoned factual arguments. She loves animals and is an ethical vegetarian: i.e., she first refused to eat meat beginning when she was six because it involved the slaughter of animals. When she was nine in 2004 she went with me to Cincinnati to canvas for votes for Kerry in some of the worst slums and projects I have ever seen.
Despite suffering from ADHD (diagnosed when she was seven) she has managed to overcome the limitations that condition places on her to become one of the top students in her 10th grade class. The classes she takes include Honors Chemistry, Honors English, Honors Pre-Calculus, Advanced Placement World History, Art and Latin. In addition to maintaining a top grade average she participated in Junior Varsity volleyball (practice or games 6 days a week), and participates in two after school clubs: Chemistry Club (last year she was the only Freshman member of the club) and Japanese Club (her ancestry is half-Japanese through her mother).
Last night after my daughter finished her homework early (a rare event considering her usual workload), she and I watched a movie, just to spend some father – daughter time together. After the movie ended, we switched back to the television which just happened to be set to Lawrence O’Donnell’s new show “The Last Word.” I was about to change the channel to something else when she stopped me because the video of Moveon.org activist, Lauren Valle, getting manhandled, thrown to the ground and having her head stomped on by Rand Paul supporters was being shown.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “That’s wrong! Why are they doing that to that poor girl? Why are they beating her? She wan’t doing anything to them!” (Pardon me for paraphrasing her words here; she was quite upset and in shock at witnessing the video and I can only approximate what she said from my poor memory, but that is the basic gist of her comments).
I explained as best I could that the supporters for Rand Paul were treating her this way because she was a liberal activist for Moveon.org who opposed his candidacy. I told her that Ms. Valle was beaten up because the Rand Paul supporters didn’t agree with her political views.
I explained that Rand Paul was a Tea Party candidate running as a Republican and that they consider liberals and Democrats and especially President Obama to be the cause of all the country’s problems. She knows about the Tea Party because some of her relatives on my side of the family attend Tea Party rallies. I also explained that many right wing media outlets, bloggers and commentators were downplaying the incident and that quite a few of them even went so far as to claim that Ms. Valle was at fault and deserved to be beaten up.
“That still doesn’t justify what they did,” she said. “That was horrible. Those are evil people.” She couldn’t understand why these Tea Party supporters of Rand Paul hated this poor woman so much that they considered her a threat and their enemy. “Don’t they know she’s an American, too? That she had a right to be there just like them?”
Then she started asking about [name deleted], her favorite [relationship deleted] who is an avowed Tea Party supporter. “Do you think {name deleted] has seen this video?”
I told her I didn’t know. “We should call [name deleted] because I know [name deleted] is a good person. I just didn’t understand how good people like her [favorite relative on my side of the family] could support this.” So I tried to provide some context, much of which she already knew.
I talked about how Fox News and other conservfative media outlets has been demonizing liberals with hate speech for years. We talked about Glenn Beck (now being shown on the O’Donnell show pretending in a televised skit to give Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a glass of poisoned wine) and others had gone out of their way to make outrageous claims about Democrats and President Obama.
How they claimed that Obama was a Muslim and a Socialist and a fascist and was out to destroy the white middle class (all lies, many of them contradictory and irrational). I told her of how many right wing pundits used language to incite people to violence like Bill O’Reilly who constantly referred to the recently assassinated abortion provider, George Tiller, as “Tiller the Baby Killer” on his TV show. And I told her of James Adkisson and Byron William,s right wing extremists whe were inspired by these right wing hatemongers on Fox News, to plan violent attacks on liberal groups, and in Adkisson’s case actually murder a member of a Unitarian-Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee because they were a liberal church.
I also talked about the massive outpouring of hundreds of millions of dollars of cash donations from wealthy and anonynmous corporations to run attack ads against Democrats, because of the recently decided Citizen’s United decision by the Supreme Court. I told her how these organizations were supporting the most radical Republicans, the ones with the most extreme views about government, civil rights, etc. I also told her of the ads Sharron Angle and others were running, using menacing images of Latinos to suggest that white families were in danger. ” They’re really dong that? But that’s racist!” she cried. All I could do was nod my head in agreement.
I guess I went too far in providing her all this information because when I was finished she told me she thought we should move to Canada. “They have health care up there for people, right?” Yes, they did I told her, better health care than we do. “Well, then we should just go.”
I said that would be giving up. That we needed to stay and fight for what was best in America, and fight for our values. That if everyone did what she suggested the people left behind would suffer more. I told her that, believe it or not, things have been worse before.
But she was in despair about the state of our country. “I just don’t see how things are going to get better,” she said. “I don’t see how one person can make a difference, not when so many people are so full of hate. Hate for people like me.”
I pointed out that Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement had changed our country for the better at a time when no one thought that would ever happen, and that it was still possible for good people to stand up for what is right and make a difference. But I’m not sure I convinced her. She went to sleep but not before asking me if Vancouver would be a good place to live.
“They have Japanese people there, don’t they?”
But that was last night, and she was in shock after having seen that video. I’m hoping today that she’s calmed down after a night’s sleep and isn’t so afraid of what’s happening in her own country, because though she has reason to be afraid, I don’t want the best person I know to ever give up on her homeland.
Not yet anyway. Because we are going to need all the smart, brave and compassionate liberals we can get in the years to come if we are ever going to change the direction this nation is headed.
just don’t go to toronto (apparently, they just voted in a full-on RWS tool for mayor), and the prairie provinces are very conservative too. Hit Vancouver/BC or Montreal. It’s cold, but people are much nicer and waaaaaay more civilized than they are here in the US.
They dress better too.
but they seem to send all their comedians south to us.
That’s a common a knee-jerk joke about Canadians, but I don’t see what it’s supposed to mean in this context, except as a put-down, eh?
i don’t think it’s meant as a joke. Canada has awesome comedians, and we really DO get a lot of candadian comedians down here in Stupidistan.
Oh, OK. We send them to help you laugh at your plight?
i don’t think it’s a matter of “sending” so much as “touring.” kind of like the bare naked ladies, bryan adams, and crash test dummies.
although i couldn’t blame the canadian government for throwing bryan adams out of the country and telling him to never return. that “summer of 69” song was just awful, a shameful blot on your national reputation.
Totally agree about “Summer of 69”, and not just for the sake of international harmony.
Maybe Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, k d lang, Arcade Fire, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Feist and the Broken Social Scene, the Wainwrights, Alanis Morisette, Nelly Furtado, Sarah McLachlan, etc., etc. will make up for that a bit, depending on what you think of them. And I won’t mention Celine Dion, if you don’t, OK? Or Nickelback.
i think that Bryan Adams has been more than atoned for. And let’s not forget the new pornographers!
Does anyone actually still listen to nickelback? they are just awful.
what i really like about canada is that a significant portion of airplay has to be filled with canadian artists, and that the government gives substantial arts grants to musicians.
I also love the way people dress, at least in Montreal, much more stylish and European than here in the US. Better manners in general (although the drivers in Montreal are terrifying).
Yes, the New Pornographers! I heard they were blocked from performing in a town somewhere down there because of their name.
Here in Vancouver we dress more informally than in Montreal, what with the rainforest and mountains out our back door. But the southwest BC climate is the mildest in Canada. And the drivers are better, although I admit that’s not saying a whole lot.
i swear to god, even the bums are well-dressed in montreal.
i really wanna get out to V/BC. I hear it’s great.
You’d be very welcome. Here are some webcam views, for now. Enjoy while you can, we’re due for more rain tomorrow!
http://www.jericho.ca/webcam/webcam.html
http://www3.telus.net/earthone/webcam.html
http://www.vancouver.com/webcam-display/35_vancouvercom-north/
Oh no, we keep plenty of comedians for ourselves. Irony is key to Canadian cultural survival.
The prairies aren’t solidly conservative. Calgary just elected a new mayor of South Asian heritage who also happens to be Muslim. And Saskatchewan was the birthplace of Canada’s universal health care.
Besides, Canadian conservatives are often to the left of US liberals.
But I’d still recommend Vancouver. More than half of us here are other than Caucasian, and more than half from all backgrounds have a first language other than English.
You know, I look at this stuff in two ways.
First I look at it as a math problem. What can you get done in Congress if you x number of votes. The answer after next Tuesday is going to be jack shit.
Second I look it as a cultural problem. What happens when a party comes to power that is oblivious to facts, completely in the thrall of corporate ideology, nativistic, xenophobic, and racist in character, and convinced that violence is the way for America to negotiate with the world?
If it’s just Congress, we can live with that, probably. But what if it moves into the White House and takes over the Pentagon?
That’s when Canada would look like a better place to me.
Everyone finally figures out you don’t f*ck with real progressives, that’s what!
The White House, Congress, etc are irrelevant except as symptoms. If things go as the yappers predict on Tuesday, it will be because the majority of American voters are some combination of dumber then dirt and psycho. You can change who’s in power, but you can’t change the defect-level of the American voter and the system that exalts ignorance over all else.
Canada has been a far better place to live than the US for a long time. Previously that had to be contrasted with the costs of moving to another country, especially one with different institutions (i.e. there are certain skills that are just not applicable in Canada due to differing politics). But those costs are becoming far more worth it.
Wow, it would have to be that bad in the US for Canada to look better? We wouldn’t want you to go to all the trouble of immigrating if you didn’t really want to be here. Maybe it’s best for everyone if you stay where you are.
My daughter and yours could be best friends. Mine is a year older than yours, but with a similar academic and activity record. When she was 14, she wrote an essay on why Proposition 8 was wrong and why the hateful people who promoted it were wrong. This is who she is, and she saw that video on Olbermann last night. Her reaction was the same as your daughter’s: outrage first, then fear.
She and I are going to take self-defense classes together, because we refuse to let the fear win. I hope your daughter feels the same way.
C’mon up. At last report, people from the US are the fifth largest group of newcomers to Canada (after China, India, the Philippines and Pakistan) — a million of you in the last ten years, more than at any time since the Vietnam War. Your best and brightest are choosing Canada, and we thank you.
See ‘The quiet Americans who are Canada’s invisible immigrants’
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/the-quiet-americans-who-are-canadas-invisibl
e-immigrants/article1697253/
After Bush’s ‘re-election’ in 2004 many of us, including myself, realized where we really were & investigated going expat in Canada. The best & the brightest are indeed OK, but, unfortunately, those likely to suffer most here under GOP/corporate governance — poor, poorly educated, without connections of any type, in less than optimal health — can basically pound sand.
It’s just not an alternative.
I’d love to be corrected here, obviously!
Kids are so sensitive. Adults forget how deeply they feel. They also don’t have the benefit of experienced long-view perspective, so the picture you paint is apt to look almost completely, immeasurably dark. There’s just Now & nothing other than Now. No tomorrow, no change really possible. It’s terrible!
Let her chill out a little now & have some fun, see beautiful & interesting things, engage in something engaging & constructive. Hopefully that will help even out the picture.
There’s more besides evil, even when it surrounds you. Which, as of yet, it has not, for most of us.
all of this is reminding me that I have to make sure my ex is willing to sponsor christina and me when/if we decide to leave.
You might consider submitting an application now, just in case. There’s a multi-year backup. If you’re granted permanent resident status, you can always decide not to act on it.
Here’s the CIC website: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/index.asp. And here’s the self-assessment test for the skilled worker category: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/assess/index.asp
“I don’t want the best person I know to ever give up on her homeland.”
Why, exactly? Some kind of “sinking ship” heroic pose? I honestly don’t understand the sentiment. I can understand fighting against an invader, but what’s the point in suffering the consequences of what the damn fool majority of your countrymen do?
I guess this is where the term “bleeding heart” comes in. Trust me, I’m about as far as you can get from patriotism and nationalism; I see America and it’s just where my stuff is. Really, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I don’t like my family because it’s dysfunctional; my dad’s a misogynist; there’s constant fighting and arguing and violence; they’re both religious fundamentalists who see anyone other than their own religious kind as “evil;” and frankly my stomach hurts every second I’m in their house. Not to mention they spied on me when I was in college on the internet and tracked me. I deleted my Facebook profile because of it.
My degree gives me a great deal of mobility, and I could probably easily leave; not to mention I can get dual citizenship in Italy.
But, part of you wants to stay here to try and make people’s lives better right here rather than leaving them. Now I’m going into the Peace Corps within the year, assuming I’m accepted. I don’t know if I’ll stay in that line of work or just come back here and use my degree for what it’s supposed to be used for. Whichever it is, it will still be with the idea of making people’s lives better. And Europe/Canada have their own problems and could see improvement, it’s far worse here, and as an upper middle class straight white person, my life won’t be any different in the US or Europe.
My 11 year old expressed his concern as well. Sometimes I think that I blather on a bit too much in front of him, that I should let him be a kid just a little bit longer. Other times, not.
Your daughter is right. But Mexico is warmer. They also have universal health care, and Americans will feel more at home there because Mexico is much more violent than Canada.
And corrupt. See Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2010: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results
You have an awesome daughter, but you already knew that. I don’t know how many times in the last 10 years that I’ve thought about moving to a more progressive country. Especially when I see the craziness within my own Democratic party. I certainly can relate to your daughter. I am curious, though, how the Tea Party family member things about that assault.
Great, you reminded me of this song, which always reminds me of the Panamanian candidate who was beaten by the Noriega-backed “dignity squad” while the police looked on.
I guess he deserved it, too, for opposing the will of the people.