What's Next USA?

I was flabbergasted to see many of my USian female friends post the above as their profile picture on Facebook today.

The comments were chilling. Many considering sterilizing procedures, their husbands considering vasectomies. Others stockpiling birth control methods. Others putting out words for friends who need abortions. Canada is taking in droves of them at the moment and offering services free of charge.

And then I thought, of course. The Handmaid's Tale, long predicted by Margaret Atwood (a Canadian) has arrived and this is how it arrives.

It's 2022, I keep reminding myself and rights are being removed in the country to the south of us by a positively evil misogynistic Supreme Court who are planning to take away the rights of gays next and have gleefully announced it.

All this trailing back to the rapist and racist they put in power in 2016. One who promised he would take his revenge on every woman who rejected him. A psychopath, fraud, grifter and grafter - who will never be charged for all the criminal acts he performed before, during and after his election. His (paid?) fall guys will take it all on the chin for him. Because that's how a mafia works.

Meanwhile, this is all a great distraction for a country burning  up or flooding catastrophically while racist cops stop and sometimes kill  those who drive or walk while black, and AK47 wielding 18 year olds kill random children in schools as the cops cower outside, afraid. And enshrined by the NRA is the right to bear such weapons, concealed or not. And Monkey Pox declared a national health emergency.  And in the midst of this, the speaker of their house marches off and pokes the beast that is China.

All this while climate change is the only item that should be on the agenda of the USA - the worst polluters on the planet.

/end rant 

Quality of Life

 Living in Canada, as one wag put it, is like living with a meth head as a tenant in your basement. A tenant who is so out of touch with reality that he keeps screaming in your face at every opportunity that he is the best tenant ever and he has all these friends who will tell you the same thing.

Well let's start with quality of life.

Canada is, guess? 1.

Followed by Denmark, Sweden, Norway. and way down the list at #20, is the USA.

And then you get healthcare. The U.S. healthcare system only extends to those with money. Lots of it. If you are barely surviving economically, serious health issues can result in bankruptcy.

"Medical bills are reported to be the number-one cause of U.S. bankruptcies. One study has claimed that 62.1% of bankruptcies were Caused by medical issues.  Another claims that over two million people are adversely affected by their medical expenses."

The U.S. ranks last overall on the health care outcomes domain (Exhibit 1). On nine of the 10 component measures, U.S. performance is lowest among the countries (Appendix 8), including having the highest infant mortality rate (5.7 deaths per 1,000 live births) and lowest life expectancy at age 60 (23.1 years).

Best healthcare systems in the world are:

1. South Korea
2. Taiwan
3. Denmark
4. Austria
5. Japan
6. Australia
7. France
8. Spain
9. Belgium
10. United Kingdom

And gun deaths, so far  in the US in 2022. Those red dots? Use your imagination.

And then we have this travel advisory/warning from the Canadian government on going to the USA, as if one is entering a "third world" country:

"Gun violence

The rate of firearm possession in the US is high. It’s legal in many states for US citizens to openly carry firearms in public.

Incidences of mass shootings occur, resulting most often in casualties. Although tourists are rarely involved, there is a risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Familiarize yourself on how to respond to an active shooter situation."

No other country in the world shoots its children in schools as they hide under desks. And the solution? Arm teachers, reduce number of doors to schools.

The louder one screams about being the very best, the greater the lie.

Cruelty, Savagery, Bullying, Delusion and Newspeak.

I have many USian friends. Gentle, kind, thoughtful and, well, sad and scared. I care about them. But I also see that protective bubble they wear: a nostalgic longing for the Kennedy or Lincoln or Obama USA. Without really parsing what those past USAs were. (Slavery? Slaughter of the Aboriginals?)

I, at this distance off at the edge of Canada, see 100 years of non-stop invasions of other countries, on some pretext or other. So many military installations in every corner of the universe as to be considered a form of ownership of the countries they inhabit. I, myself, live on a former US fortress which was abandoned some time in the fifties but was home to thousands of US military during WW2. All the battlements and armed gateways and arms manufacturing are long gone but the history remains. A reminder of the presence that transformed the landscape overlooking St. John's.

Now, it has all come down to this unstable moronic buffoon controlling the nuclear button to global annihilation. A man who is the butt of endless jokes. Endless jokes which gives everyone a quick mocking laugh but this does not alleviate the underlying fear which is ever present in all of us. That in a moment of rage, this bully can blow us all to smithereens. Who can incite hatred and othering for blacks and Muslims and people of colour in his own country.

He is the symbol of all that is corrupt in the country to the south of us today.

I'm grateful I still have the capacity to be appalled at each fresh murderous assault on schoolchildren by schoolchildren, at the massacres at concerts, at bombs, at the homegrown terrorism that seems to abide in every town, at toddlers shooting at mothers or siblings, men slaughtering their women partners.

But the fact that it is allowed to continue, day after day, year after year, chills my heart. So now we have the schoolchildren marching following the women marching, all marching like I remember Martin Luther King marching but the slaughter of the innocents continues, blacks, kids, gays, women in their homes.

It is a savage and cruel country indeed that can look into the eyes of these traumatized children and tell them nothing will change. And remind them that assault weapons are the right of every man, women and child to do with what they will.

It is a savage and cruel country that can look at millions and millions of their poorest and deny them life saving health care. Or plunge them into bankruptcy if they are middle-class and uninsured.

It is a savage and cruel country that can see seniors and elders eking out an existence in their cars with no home or health care, lucky to work part-time in a Walmart for sustenance.

It is a savage and cruel country that can drive by so many homeless who live in tents on the sides of the roads and under bridges.

It is mass delusion to call where they live the land of the free and the home of the brave.

It is newspeak to call invasions of sovereign countries "bringing democracy" or. sadly, "freedom".

For how can any country bring democracy anywhere when they don't have it themselves?

I leave on a note of hope from our cherished Leonard Cohen, RIP, written over 20 years ago.

One Question

Everybody's throwing their two cents around on the Aurora, Co. killing. Have you noticed?

Here's a partial causation list:

NRA
Violent games (like the Christians and the lions never were at it not to mention WW 1 & 2 ?)
No more funding for care and feeding of the dyed red-haired lunatic fringe element of society.
Our compromised agri-businesses loaded with toxicity.
Big Pharma (have you noticed nearly everyone is medicated these days, h'm?)
Parental lack of discipline
Too much parental discipline
A.D.D.
Lack of porn.
Too much porn.
Liberalism
Conservatism.

And the winner is: blame the victims. Seriously. As in what were the audience doing sitting in a theatre watching a violent film. Can you believe the sick thinking process behind that? Something along the lines of: what was that girl doing walking down the street at midnight - she deserved to be raped.

That audience in Aurora, Colorado, deserved the violence for watching a violent film. Classic and appalling victim-blaming.

My one question is this:

Apart from killing people, what other uses does a powerful assault rifle like an AR-15 have and why would any run of the mill lunatic gain access to it?