The Sickness of Canadian Anti-Americanism

To me my point has been proven with out me having to respond anymore this is a sickness, and all you have to do is look at the posts above me and see that I am right.

The Sickness of this post.

This is for the original poster, ManifestDestiny.

You wrote that your post was for Steaker and Bill_Hicks but you did not take them to task for what they wrote. Your post is really for Mark Kingwell in particular and for Canadians in general.

You claim to have been engaged in doctoral studies at a fine Canadian university yet, in your post, you have not shown yourself to be capable of the intellectual rigour required by those studies. In your second post on this thread you admonish members to "Prove your points with facts", yet you have not done this much.

But let's get started...

You wrote, "Canadian anti-Americanism has always been a perfect reflection of the pathological nature of anti-Americanism as a whole", but offer not one shred of evidence that Anti-Americansim is extreme, excessive, or markedly abnormal. It is a baseless assertion.

You wrote, "...in Canada [...] anti-Americanism has literally defined the national identity and culture of this country – and in the most repulsive and embarrassing ways."

Again, you offer not one shred of proof. It is a baseless assertion.

Your second paragraph begins, "This reality... ". This reality? You've offer no proof at any point in the article so it nothing more than a baseless assertion.

Next, you quote Kingwell's example of moral courage and attack it with the following:

"Suppose this scenario occurs during the Second World War and the other eleven people want to stop Hitler in his tracks and to prevent the Nazification of the world and the mass genocide of Jews. Would exhibiting your “independence” for the sake of fulfilling your little-brother complex be a mark of “moral courage”? "

That is intellectual dishonesty of the worst sort! What a pathetic and telling example this is! First, you have obviously fouled your exampled by inserting, "for the sake of fulling you little-brother compex". Therefore courage, moral or otherwise, has nothing to do with it. Second, by conflating anti-Americanism with hypothetical refusal to stop the Nazi's you are committing a grave intellectual crime.

You follow this stinking rot with the following assertion, "Many Canadian nationalists think so." What follows has nothing to do with Nazism or Nazi history, rather you try to defend it by writing extensively about Canadian nationalists during the cold war! You don't offer even one single iota of evidence as proof of you assertion. You owe an apology to this forum and the nationalists that you attacked (even though tellingly unidentified by you) for your outrageous assertion.

You wrote, "The analogy I use above perfectly suits the embarrassing and immoral behaviour of Canadian nationalists throughout the Cold War, especially under the leadership of Pierre Trudeau, when anti-Americanism was seen as being more cutting-edge than confronting and fighting the genocidal Soviet regime."

Genocidal though the Soviet regime was, they are more accurately described as homocidal.

You criticize these Canadian nationalists for not looking out for the interests of those under attack in the Soviet Union - half way 'round the world? No, they chose to be concerned about a much closer, more palpable, real threat to Canadian Sovereingty.

There is a lot of evil in this world and Canada is not acting irresposnsibly simply because we don't act according to your priorities. The bottom line is that the Soviet Union was made in Russia and it was your responsibility to end it - not ours.

Let's continue, "While Kingwell conspicuously avoids the issue of how bearing the mark of 'moral courage' translated into many Canadian nationalists engaging in Gulag denial during the Cold War... " Kingwell's piece was about, “What distinguishes us from Americans”, so it's conspicuous in your mind only.

You wrote, "... Canadian nationalists who demonized the United States, and exonerated the Soviet Union, in the Cold War, for the sake of anti-Americanism, were completely wrong."

Again, you provide zero evidence that this was done "... for the sake of anti-Americanism... ".

"Yet no apologies are forthcoming. "

Wah!

Sorry.

"But at least we now understand why Canadian “nationalist” writers and historians, such as John Warnock, Donald Creighton, and James Minifie, wrote interpretations and histories about the Cold War that demonized the U.S. and left names such as Joseph Stalin in the footnotes. "

You've done nothing to help us understand anything. All you have done is complain.

"As a Russian émigré, I am not humoured by Kingwell’s assault on historical memory; I am not humoured by Gulag denial just as a Jewish person wouldn’t be humoured by Holocaust denial."

What assault? How has Kingwell assaulted anything? You offer no evidence.

Gulag denial? You've writtten that at the time certain writers and historians left names in the footnotes but not that they denied the existence of any gulags. Even if they did, at the time, deny the existence of gulags, do they still claim that the gulags exist? Again, you've provided no evidence.

"While I was engaged in my doctoral studies in history at York University in Toronto, I would confront many of my colleagues about this issue. Why, I asked them, were they reluctant to face the errors of Canadian nationalists vis-à-vis the Cold War? Were they not aware of how the documents from the former Soviet archives were discrediting almost everything Canadian nationalists had said about the Cold War? My colleagues’ favourite response was to shrug their shoulders and to dismiss my arguments as being too “hung up” on “the past.” The Cold War “was over,” they told me, and it was silly to chase down “old ghosts”. My “obsession” with the Soviet archives, they patiently explained to me, was analogous to “necrophilia.” And these were historians. "

Dude, I hate to be the one to tell you but they don't like your style. If your post is any indication of how you 'confront' colleagues, then I would be just as likely to say what they did just to shut you up. Stop confronting your colleagues.

No, before you go blasting me, I have a personal connection to Russia and Stalin's atrocities. My ex-wife is Russian and she would have had two more aunts and one more uncle if they hadn't froze to death as little children when her father's family was forcibly shipped from the far east to the Krasnodar region by train. Stalin and his criminal gang have the blood of 20 or 30 or 50 million people on their hands. Does anybody deny that these days? I haven't heard one word like that - except in Russia.

Moving on...

"The only historical necrophilia they supported, it seems, was the variety that found more sins of American foreign policy and capitalism -- not of socialism."

Surely that must be a mistake. The Soviet Union was a communist totalitarian state. If that was not a mistake then how dare you equate the Soviet Union with countries like Sweden. Read what you write before you embarrass yourself like this again.

"Since Canada had a bilateral defence alliance with the United States for the defence of the North American continent, Diefenbaker’s inaction left an enormous gap in continental defence. "

Uh, right. There was a huge gap in continental defence because there was no defence to missiles in 1962.

Again, trying to conflate Kingwell's piece with Diefenbaker's decision is intellectually dishonest. You already state that Diefenbaker's decision was about not being pushed around so it had nothing to do with moral courage and can't be used to attack Kingwell.

"There is nothing “moral” about Canadian anti-Americanism. And nothing logical either. "

My God! The baseless assertions just keep flowing, don't they! Where is your evidence that there is nothing moral or logical about it? You haven't shown anything! I can assure you that my Anti-Americanism is completely moral and logical. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is illegal. It is the greatest war crime of all. Canada's enabling of this war crime is immoral and reprehensible.

"In Canada, of course, it has always been legitimate to be a bigot, as long as it involves hating Americans."

Another outrageous and offensive assertion that is completely without merit. On what do you base this assertion? You've provided nothing in your post to justify it.

" Let’s be serious: why would Americans in Los Angeles and New York City need to know anything about Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, or about anything else Canadian?"

Again, how can you embarrass yourself like this? Canada was, until recently, the largest trading partner of the US. It behooves any population to understand the coutries with which they do business in order to a well-informed electorate. Americans are currently expressing a strong desire for something like universal health care. It behooves them to see how their nearest neighbor approaches the challenge.

There, I have just demonstrated two very good reasons why Americans would need to know about anything Canadian and demonstrated, again, that your post is nothing but baseless assertions, insults and not worthy of what we in Canada think of as debate.

"Perhaps, instead, it would be wiser for us to focus on giving up on clinging to the ingredients of our “moral courage”, which includes the joke of bilingualism – English Canada’s last pretence of possessing any unique characteristics whatsoever."

What in the world does biligualism have to do with moral courage? You've shown no link. This is just utter nonsense, trying to conflate apples with oranges to prove a point that can never be proved.

"Let’s admit it, without bilingualism, English Canadians would no longer be able to say, "We’re not like those Americans," without someone else rejoining: "Oh? And how is that?" And there will be no answer, because there will be nothing to say. "

I have something to say, and a lot of other posts have something to say. We are not like 'those' Americans because we are compasionate - universal healthcare. We could go on and on.

"If we just manage to get over our little brother complex..." I, for one, don't believe we have a little brother complex.

"... then maybe we will also one day no longer have to victimize ourselves with those torturous and emotionally-excruciating conversations about Margaret Atwood and Pierre Berton, in which so many Canadians attempt to show their un-American stripes by discussing novels that no human being outside of Canada has ever heard of, nor would ever read under sane circumstances."
Oh, seriously. You were a Ph.D candidate? Talk about emotional nonsense. This does not deserve the slightest scrutiny by anyone except a psychologist.

"Indeed, if we purged ourselves of Kingwell’s mark of "moral courage", Canada’s celebration of mediocrity and, more importantly, its exoneration of evil regimes and mass murderers around the world, would finally come to its long-awaited conclusion."

Canada's celebration of mediocrity? Where? Show me evidence of this celebration.

Show me Canada's exoneration of evil regimes, if you can.

So far, the only celebration of mediocrity that I have seen clearly prooved is your post.

You posted it, then wrote three more posts before you denied writing it. Why should we believe you? You never bothered to attribute it to the real author. Isn't there a word for that? Plagiarism, perhaps?

Nevertheless, the post is so full of holes and it's clearly not satire, it's nothing but angry, baseless assertions and you ought to be embarrassed for posting it in the first place.

Dude, do you want to end up in court? I can prove I lived in Brooklyn. I can prove it till the cows come home. I can prove it with rent receipts and driver's license and paystubs and phone bills and on and on and on.

Yes, I think 9/11 was an inside job and I am sorry that your friends and cousin died.