America the Beautiful, Where Have You Gone?

As an adolescent I loved everything American. I listened to American Rock and Roll; Elvis, Dion, Buddy Holly, Neil Sedaka and Leslie Gore. I loved the Motown music by the Four Tops, The Temptations, The Supremes and Mary Wells. The best movies came from the U.S.A. Think of “Casablanca”, “Rebel Without a Cause”, “Twelve Angry Men”, “The Ten Commandments”, or “Blackboard Jungle”. I grew up watching American TV. Ed Sullivan, Bonanza, Bugs Bunny, The Dick Van Dyke Show and I love Lucy were some of my favourite programs.  I was fascinated with American automobiles from the 1950’s and 60’s with their two-tone paint, large chrome grills and wide white wall tires.

My parents often took me to Plattsburgh, New York, a lazy little U.S. border town on the shore of Lake Champlain, and about an hour’s drive from my home in Montréal. We would go to Grand Union for groceries. Well just the cereal aisle alone was enough to make a young boy cry with joy. There were so many different brands and boxes that I had only seen on Saturday morning cartoon shows, Trix, Kix, Coco Puffs and so many more. My mother always bought a jar of U-Bet chocolate syrup with a soda fountain pump, a product called Twist that was a mixture of peanut butter and jelly in a single container, those little sandwiched Nabisco crackers made with “cheese” and peanut butter, and these crazy drinking straws that had some kind of powder in them that would magically turn regular milk to chocolate milk.

When I was twelve years old, my dad took me to New York City. We stayed at the Statler Hilton in Manhattan. We went to the Carnegie Deli where I had my first Pastrami sandwich, the size of a compact car. We went to the Empire State building, Macy’s department store, and the Central Park Zoo. We had lunch at the Automat and dinner at the once famous Lindy’s. Between the sites, the sounds and the food, I was overwhelmed with awe from this remarkable city.

My love of all things American extended into my adult life. I often thought of moving to Florida or Vermont and opening a small business there. Many of my friends moved to New York, California, Texas or Florida and they all seemed to be successful and content with their new lives.

I viewed the United States with rose-tinted glasses. I understood that people of color were often victims of prejudice and hate. I didn’t really understand the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War, especially having met several “draft-dodgers” who escaped to Canada. As I grew up, I started to notice differences between our two countries that weighed in favour of my own nation.

Let us all work together, Americans and Canadians, to find the right balance between unbridled personal freedom and the safety, protection and the right to a peaceful existence for all our citizens.

Why does the “richest country on earth” not have universal medicine? Why is gun ownership such an important right? Why are there so many mass shootings at schools, universities and shopping malls? Why are American colleges so expensive? How do injured individuals end up suing and winning enormous sums of money, when it is their own negligence that caused them to be hurt in the first place? Why are public schools so terrible, downtowns so run down and drug overdoses so common? And lastly, who made the President of the United States the “leader of the free world”?

I am not sure when it happened, probably a gradual degradation of society brought to fruition by a combination of events, tragedies and scandals. The British music invasion, the Vietnam War, the gradual take-over of the American car market by Japanese imports, the Watergate scandal, “reality” television, the Columbine shootings, police brutality aimed at African Americans, and finally, the election of a president whose actions and speeches served to divide, rather than unite this great country.

Today’s America is more hype than content. The rich get richer, while the homeless population continues to grow. A plan by a former president to introduce universal health care was rejected by many Americans and the final outcome was just a small slice of the original proposal. American values, especially for many of those who lean to the right, encompasses unlimited individual freedom with little regard for the effects on their fellow citizens. On the other side, left-leaning individuals tend to support a “woke” movement that scrutinizes every action and speech to ensure that no identifiable group is even slightly criticized regardless of the context.  The current “leader of the free world” appears to be asleep at the wheel.

I don’t want to be labelled as an individual who hates America. In fact I love to travel in the U.S. I have many close friends and family who live in America and who represent all sides of the political spectrum. It has saddened me to see the anger and hate that has been generated by both sides and propagated through biased news reporting and unverified social media platforms.

But most of all, I don’t want Americans messing with my own country. Recent protests in Canadian cities by citizens who were fed up with Canada’s harsher COVID-19 health restrictions were rumoured to be financed and supported by American right-wing groups. If this is in fact true, I urge Americans to please mind their own business.

No politician is perfect, neither are the policies and laws of most nations. Canada too, has its share of homelessness, random shootings, poverty and racism. While there is less flag waving and we tend to win fewer Olympic medals, we are still proud of our country. Canadian freedom to me balances individual liberties with communal limits. This means when the free actions of one group or individual are injurious to another, that activity cannot be boundless. No one really knew what COVID-19 could do. Canadian politicians decided to be more cautious, preventing citizens from taking part in group activities, shutting down some venues and invoking plans and incentives for getting most people vaccinated. It may take several years to evaluate whether or not these policies truly benefitted the population at large.

To see our beautiful capital of Ottawa taken over by a group of rebellious truck drivers and their supporters last winter made me both sad and angry. To a much smaller degree, it reminded me of the brazen attempt of some American citizens to invade their own seat of government on January 6, 2021. That’s an image I hope I never see in my country.

Both Canadians and Americans have a choice, the choice to elect a democratic government, to expect that their elected officials will make policies and laws that benefit society, to freely criticize these individuals when they disagree with these policies, and to vote them out or impeach them if they violate the public trust.

Let us all work together, Americans and Canadians, to find the right balance between unbridled personal freedom and the safety, protection and the right to a peaceful existence for all our citizens.

Paul J. Starr is a recently retired systems analyst who has lived his entire life in Montréal, Canada. On Sunday mornings he is “living the dream,” hosting a two-hour Internet radio show featuring music from the 50s and 60s called “Judy’s Diner.”