Sunday, March 19, 2006

The Transparency of Glass Houses

Oops, yet another cross-border disagreement. Another little tempest caused by an American family going to all the trouble of writing each of the members of the Canadian Chamber of Sober Second Thought. That's what they get, for taking such a sobriquet at face value. In their personal protest at their disgust with Canada's annual seal hunt the McLellans have warned that if Canada does not cease and desist they will take their estimated eight-grand travel holiday elsewhere. Do so, do so.

I know we've often thought of doing the very same thing. Oh, not the seal hunt, we can live with that, and we do. Uneasily, but who are we to cast stones at the Inuit Tapirisat who tell us loud and clear that the seal hunt is an integral part of their ancient way of life, still proudly practised. Nor the Newfoundland sealers who depend upon the funds generated by the seal pelts to help their families struggle through another year's living expenses. No, what I meant was our own personal disgust at many of the initiatives that the United States takes upon itself as the undeniably-only existing world power, and our yearly decisions, half-reluctantly, to clamber about in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Thing is, we admire Americans, we just deplore the current (and sometimes-previous) administration. Let's face it, much of the world does. Unjustly, often enough, but that's life. The United States has always been a force to be reckoned with, one capable of delivering to the world great good particularly during troubled and critically fractionalized times. It has also been guilty of devious meddling in the affairs of other countries when its interference has been directly against the best interests of those countries.

The thing of it is, countries are like people, they have complex personalities and sometimes the better halves of their psyches shine through, and sometimes the darkly egotistically selfish personas gain the upper hand. Hell, even the American people themselves deplore, loudly and with gusto, their disapproval of the direction their government has taken them. Say, for example, for their much-celebrated traits of making nice with foreign tyrants and dictators when the fallout for so doing has been favourable for the U.S. Or the CIA's not-so-secret involvement in the affairs of other countries' destinies when they run counter to the self-perceived interest of the U.S. government.

There is a strong national conscience but it has been known to be suborned, and a pity that is, to be sure. Because, in the end, there are likely more conscience-stricken and decent individuals in that country, doing their utmost to guide it toward the light of reason and model diplomacy than exists on average in just about any other country in the world.

But back to that little protest which engendered a rather intemperate response (hear! hear!) from one of Canada's Senators. Senator Hervieux-Payette deplored this hapless (who, after all, do they think they are?) family's attempt at emotional blackmail by comparing the plight of baby harp seals being harvested to thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq having lost their lives over the past three years of U.S. intervention (war, invasion, oversight, take your pick) in that miserable country.

Do I chide thee? Let me enumerate the many reasons...
  • The passion of American hunters to track down and shoot (sometimes mutilate) game in that country and in ours; (even unto tiny wee passels of birds who seek their revenge by staging shoot-outs between highly-placed administration types and their shooting buds)
  • Antsy religios in State governments making a go at challenging Abortion Rights for wimmin;
  • The squirrely worship of unbridled Capitalism and the inevitable fall-out;
  • Consumerism beyond conscience;
  • The ubiquity of exhortations to do one better than the neighbours;
  • The ongoing inability of observing and honouring commitments between neighbouring, friendly countries, then grousing when the neighbours throw the garbage back at them;
  • Human rights condemnations abroad, while practising same abroad in U.S. interests;
  • Targeting for censure international graft and corruption within foreign governments, neatly overlooking U.S. domestic same;
  • The lack of zeal in attending to the plight of the poor, the underprivileged within the Country That Has It All.
Hey, in other words, just like us and all the other neighbours, neither as honourable, as decent or as caringly compassionate as we would like to believe of ourselves.

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 19, 2006

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