The Tea Party is Coming

Recently, I've considered writing about how I first came to Canada, my motivations, and how I felt after I came here.  It happened a long time ago.  Most of the issues are now forgotten history.

Then I run into a member of the Tea Party on the internet.  All the "Love or Leave It" meanness returns. But then it's just tribalism. Us against them.  It exists everywhere.

I have at times been in a Facebook group, "Americans in Canada".  I thought it might be interesting to share histories with other Americans who came to Canada.  Unfortunately, the conversation tends to be from young women who married Canadians, moved to Canada, and are homesick. What can I say?  It's a form of grieving.  Hang in there.  The posts tend either to consist of what they miss from the U. S. or their sensitivity to Anti-Americanism they find in Canada.

Anti-Americanism?  I have to think, "Have I experienced that here?"  Well, maybe.  I've always just laughed it off.  It's perplexed me more than offended.  And I've never really believed it, seeing all the travel and vacationing that Canadians do in the U. S.  It doesn't begin to compare with all the racial remarks that Canadians make about other groups that have immigrated to Canada. But if you're young and alone and been raised in the U. S. culture of seeing your history as heroic and virtuous, rather than self-interested, casual remarks can injure.

But the Tea Party is something else.  Yesterday, I followed the remarks of a Tea Party member (self-described) from Michigan, who was immigrating to Alberta to be with her Canadian husband.  She claimed to know everything about Canada.  After all, she had grown up in Detroit, able to see Canada.

She began by informing me that in the Winter Olympics, Canadian athletes had been shamefully subsidized by their government, being, I guess, some form of hired guns.  American athletes, on the other hand, performed out of  "love for their country", without government assistance.

She informed me that the U. S. was a republic, where people voted for individuals to represent them.  Canada, on the other hand, had a parliamentary system, which was sinisterly "European" and foreign, and you had to vote for the "party", not the individual.

She knew that Canada was "socialist" and that the NDP was very dangerous and "Marxist".  I said I thought she was probably referring to Canada's single payer health care system, but she said there were many other things besides health care, although she didn't identify any.  I tried to help her by pointing out that Canada was so far "left", that it had run surplus budgets twelve years in a row (1997-2008).  She countered with the observation that the United States was "broke", and that's where Canadian policies like government-paid  health care had gotten them.

To sum up, she was happy to see that Stephen Harper had won the election, and she knew that many little "tea parties" were sprouting up in Canada to help save it.  That certainly made my day.