Update include, of something I missed yesterday. Sorry.
A liberal friend thought she might like moving to Canada. I had already hit her with the unwelcome* news about the racial breakdown of violent crime** - and thus gun ownership and gun laws and gun culture are not the drivers of American violence vis-a-vis Europe and Canada - so I didn't want to close by overloading her. But when I hear that people want to move to Canada, or Western Europe, I immediately think so you want to move to whiter places. Why? That's not how they have framed this in their own minds, and they would deny that race has anything to do with. Directly, and consciously, this is likely true. Nonetheless, the places they choose are always very white.
If conservatives were as racist as is claimed, it is they who would be ignoring minor differences and lining up to go to Denmark and Austria.
Canada has an increasing Asian population - you know, the ones that are criticised on American college campuses as being too white-aligned - and since reforming immigration laws in the mid 60s has started allowing black immigrants from the Caribbean, especially Commonwealth countries, those numbers have increased as well, though they are still small at about 3%. (Only that recently? Yes, quite recent.) No Hispanics, really, and First Nations peoples are about the same percentage as in America. Yet somehow rednecks don't want to go there.
Canada also has a nice semi-European feel with a big chunk of people speaking French and closer ties to the UK, so that's a draw for liberals as well. And Canadians are defensive about not being Americans, so that's also fun. I like the place myself, and the UK as well. I can see moving to Canada - my grandfather was from Nova Scotia - or some places in Europe, but knowing what I do now about the demographics I would feel a bit guilty about it, wondering if I had some (previously unconscious) racist motives for it.
*She was shocked, stating that she had never heard this before. I could not tell if she meant "This must not be quite true, because I have followed such things moderately closely for decades," (Yes, but on NPR and in elite media) or "Why has no one told me this before?" This is of course a main problem of discussing things with liberals, because they believe an array of intertwined untrue things, and you no sooner start to give the evidence, often quite obvious, for one point when it bashes up against another false belief that will also need to be undone before they will consider your claims about the first one. Hence red-pill, blue-pill metaphors. Hence my statement from years ago that the journey out of liberalism is not so much an intellectual one - that part is easy and straightforward - but a personal journey of uncomfortable self-discovery. Which is why it often becomes deeply related to religious questions as well.
**I don't like bringing it up at all, but it becomes necessary when gun regulation folks start making claims about restricting firearms being the solution.
My wife, being from Maine and having some French Canuck in her background, can claim Canadian citizenship.
ReplyDeleteI've heard some parts of Canada are nice and possible I might want to visit, but wouldn't want to live there.
I've lived in Europe, albeit on a military base. Nice place to visit, but wouldn't want to live there.
As far as those libs who always say they're gonna move to Canada when politics don't go their way...let me buy you a ticket and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
I think you are brave to tough it out in vibrant New Hampshire, which is very close to Canada in more ways than one. But your point is well taken. Liberals say they want to get away from rednecks with guns, but they really want to get away from the diversity of which rednecks with guns are one part. Their idea of heaven is a farmers' market in Rutland, Vermont, or perhaps a poetry workshop at some private college on the coast of Maine.
ReplyDeleteI first heard the "move to Canada" threat (promise) when Reagan was was elected, although I suppose the idea began with draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. Since my wife is Austrian, we have more than once had anxious liberals ask if we had considered moving there to escape American barbarism. Little do they know that America is too left-wing for my taste, but there really is not country to which I can run, or even threaten to run.
I have heard claims that there are countries where one can at least disappear to somewhat, subject to nodding to their governments and cultures which are more tyrannical, but less effective and thus safer for the time being. I dunno myself.
ReplyDeleteYou're right that the "facts" are interconnected, and learning one contradictory fact won't change much of anything--the network of other "facts" will return attitudes to their original state.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it seems as though challenging someone's favorite news source is like telling a Muslim the Koran is nonsense.
All of the above. However, I find that the epistemological conflict is not so much between liberals and conservatives as it is between men and women, between people who trust the media and those who don't, between people who run businesses and those who don't, between people who trust institutions and those who don't, and between people who sense that they are targets of the mob and those who are vigilant for class enemies.
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