Thoughts from the road II

'I hope you have enjoyed your stay in Germany, Mister…Bradshaw. And that you'll return again soon.'
'It's not very likely.'
'You did not find our country beautiful?'
'Yes. I found it beautiful.'
'A good journey, sir.'
'There was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies, and there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. It was the end of the world. I was dancing with Sally Bowles. And we were both fast asleep.'

Every time I leave the States, I think of these lines from the end of Cabaret. It becomes more strange every time I return. This time, what I noticed most of all were all of the magnetic yellow ribbons on cars. Either yellow or red, white and blue. Most of them said, 'Support our troops.' Some of them said, 'God bless America,'

I've never been really comfortable with such ostentatious patriotism. It troubles me greatly the assumption necessary to assume, as Ben Folds so eloquently puts it in his song 'All U Can Eat', 'Well, God made us number one because he loves us the best.' Of course, the next line in the song is, 'Maybe he should go bless someone else for a while and give us a rest.'

There were four people walking through little downtown Bellows Falls, Vermont, today, holding signs protesting against the war in Iraq. They were all clearly of retirement age. '2 Years + 2 Many Lives = 4 What?' (Today being the two year anniversary of the start of the war.)

It occurred to me that perhaps the reason that Americans are so willing to present a belligerent face to the world perhaps has ntohing to do with an overwhelming superiority of strength. In general, it seems that wars don't worry the American public. Vietnam is perhaps an exception, but it was many, many years before Vietnam became a strongly divisive issue that the majority of Americans were against. The reason that Americans have no problem with wars is because they are never fought at home. Yes, we had that War for Independence and that Civil War (oh, and let's not forget the War of 1812, when the Canadians burnt the White House). In general, though, wars are fought elsewhere--besides the fact that those three wars are so far in the past as to be part of myth more than anything, at least for the average person.

Europe, on the other hand, has had more than its share of wars fought in its own backyard. Indeed, for most of the twentieth century, Europe either was a battleground or a potential battleground. When you fight two horrendously destructive wars within a generation of each other, and then spend the rest of the century poised rather uncomofortably between two enemies who are staring down the barrels of their nukes at each other, well, I suspect that you don't enter into war lightly.

For Americans, though, war has always happened somewhere else. It's never really come home. September 11 was supposedly the day that war came home. But it wasn't really. Since then the American public has been further dumbed-down into a suspicious and jumpy collectivity. For a nation built by immigrants, there is such suspicion of foreigners now that bodes rather ill for the future--not that there isn't plenty of other to bode ill for the future of the nation.

Shortly after the election, I bought a Canadian flag to sew onto my knapsack. Mostly because I was so deeply ashamed by and saddened for my country. This week was the first time that I've been back since the election. I never perceived Bostonians as an unfriendly bunch. Granted, being on the subway with my enormous luggage and knapsack probably was a bit annoying. Damn thing was heavy, crammed with books and not very easy to manoeuvre. Such glares I got.

Yet I can't help but wonder if it had anything to do with that Maple Leaf proudly sewn to my knapsack.

I'm on the bus home, somewhere between St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Montréal. It will be wonderful to be back. Yet the end is so close. Montréal has been a wonderful home for the past four and a half years. It will be hard to leave, especially to return to the Empire to the South. But life seems to be leading me straight into the heart of the storm.

My friend who I'll be living with in Portland this summer told me that she wept the night of the election. I remember being to shocked to do much of anything.

Spring is coming, though. The snow is melting. Soon, things will begin to blossom. Life always renews itself.

I think I'm finally ready to admit that I can no longer call myself staunchly anti-American. While I very much disagree with the current government and the current state of the nation, I have come to realise that the United States of America was founded on great promises. I love Canada very deeply and, who knows, I may some day return to stay. But I was born American for a reason. I can't just run away from that. I have to do what I can to turn the country around.

The iceberg is clearly there and large ships are not easy to turn quickly. But, as Harvey Milk once said, 'without hope, life is not worth living.'