Saturday Morning Confusion about fear in our lives!

Dear Friends:

I saw this 'thought' posted on the web...... and some replies to it:

"Canadians have more faith in government to handle coronavirus than Americans and Brits—and less fear for their lives"

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I think as a country we have significantly less mistrust of each other at a core level. Add to that a desire to not be socially ostracized, and to try and “do the right thing”, I think Canada’s guiding principles of goodness will enable us to confront this better than many other more fractured countries. I realize that there is a division in our country in regular times, but in times of trouble we are just Canadians and genuinely want best for our fellow citizens.

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I was thinking about that right after I posted my comment, and honestly, I don’t really have an answer. I’m pretty much holding the states up as the benchmark for vitriol and hyper-partisanship. More or less I think cooperation is the only thing that’s going to get us through this nightmare, and I’d like to think ( possibly wishfully) that Canadian’s have each other’s backs. Ra Ra Ra!

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Having lived in both the UK and Canada, and not being from either of those two countries (so no home-country bias), I can comfortably say Canada is a more unified society, with greater trust in government to do the right thing. I’d rank it probably second highest out of the five major English speaking democracies in this regard (I’ve lived in all five for multi-year periods).

1. NZ
2. Canada
3. Australia
4. UK
5. USA

There’s not much to separate the top three but there’s a significant gap between 3-4 and an even larger gap 4-5. All in my personal opinion that is.

Edit: I might swap Canada and Australia on this list if you include the Quebec situation, actually. But if you take that out of the picture I think Canada beats them. I think what really separates the UK from the top three is the more entrenched class system. There simply isn’t that yawning gap between segments of society in CA/AU/NZ that there is in the UK and US.

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UCP has something close to a monopoly over Albertan politics. I kind of understand why I work there sometimes and have friends there but that is a problem. Even in a democracy people in power generally only fear 1 thing, votes against, because justice is tiered otherwise. So without consequence abuse is pretty much guaranteed.

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When I lived in Ontario I had the same mistrust of the Liberals, the corruption and mismanagement at times made you want to hurl. The one advantage Ontarians do have is that the province is capable of voting for any party, even the NDP had a run at it in the past lol. The consequence of that is that there are boundaries and there are limits that politicians have to recognize or they will lose their jobs. Corruption and incompetence still exist of course, but they definitely have to try harder and limit themselves somewhat. Even mini Trump, Ford, is getting praise in here, he knows he has to do certain things to have a chance next election, that is the power of consequence.

Moral of the story, partisanship is god awful for democracy, be Canadian first, whatever your province second, the political party last.

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Don't forget that we also don't have nearly the same level of pure propaganda being spouted 24/7. I like to think that Sun Media failed here because the vast majority of Canadians recognized that they were just spouting vitriol and had nothing to do with actual news. The US abandoned the "don't lie on national TV" rules decades ago, and Murdoch's empire is inciting hatred and division in the UK, and especially in the US and Australia. I'd wager that a lot of distrust and conflict comes from constantly being lied to by the media people are exposed to and being unable or unwilling to critically think about new information.

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I agree with you. The CBC may have the occasional incident, but overall, they do generally keep it reasonably neutral (bearing in mind, perfect neutrality isn't actually possible). American news, on the other hand, is quite shocking in how biased it is and how much false information is included. I feel like I get stupider every time I'm exposed to it. And I'm including all major American networks in that, it's a race to the bottom, though Fox is admittedly FIRST.

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I feel like there are some unwritten rules for Canadians that we all kind of know about but were never really taught. If someone needs to help you help them when your in another country your an unofficial ambassador so treat the people with respect and at least try to learn some of the languages. If the country falls apart we all put it back together, if the country gets invaded we protect it together. I honestly feel that despite the fact that we may not agree with our politicians all the time we love our country and feel a silent pride that swells in the chest. At the end of the day, we all know what it means to be Canadian and that when push comes to shove that means more than words can describe. The true north strong and free does come close though.