About Rhetoric Part Deux

With the Americans going on about "uncivil rhetoric," Canada and Quebec has its share.

No dogs or Anglophones does a nice job culling together hostile commentaries towards ethnics in Quebec.

"Les Americains sont des hombristes." Americans are insular. So went a news report years ago about a museum opening - of all things. Always struck me a little like "pot calling the kettle black."

About the link, I tend to regard them as "fringe" opinions.

***

Of course, the one that will remain imprinted in my mind forever and ever is Jacques Parizeau's infamous and classless "we lost because of the money and ethnic votes" during the 1995 referendum in which the Federal forces won by the slimmest of margins. People forget how close Canada came to being dissolved that night. Tension filled the air.

My friend and I were changing a head light on his car. Hardly a political type, he placed a cigarette in his mouth and said, "I can't believe how sad this is. Of all countries..." And said nothing else.

Indeed. Pure laine (pure stock) separatists act as if they're Palestinians. They're not. They're far, far, far from that scenario. Quite frankly, I find it horribly misguided for them to even remotely compare themselves to them. You ain't gonna get a better existence than in Canada. I admit that much. For all our mediocre and immature disposition at times, one thing we have is peace. Peace of mind. It's the one thing millions of immigrants yearned for when they came here. Over the years I've met and spoken to an endless amount of immigrants from Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Belgium, Armenia, Cuba, Turkey, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Haiti, Portugal, Sri Lanka, India, China, Somalia, Kenya, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador and countless others and they all had one thing in common in their opinions: Quebec has no idea what true oppression and violence is. They mock those who died in their homelands at the hands of their own government and various sectorial wars.

That night in 1995, we shamed democracy. Later, we discovered illegal spoil ballots and a deceitful question only caused more problems. The Feds, led by the Liberals, went into the election with a tad too much cockiness.

The sad thing about Parizeau's malicious nonsense was how a friend on my street rationalized it at the time: "It's true but you don't say those things in public."

Think about that. It does reveal a certain mindset.

I'd rather be an "ethnic with money" with class than a myopic separatist with none of either.