A fresh picture taken this morning in Grand Centre, Colorado. The small print tells us it was paid for by a small business-owner. No doubt there are more around.
Real Americans?
I’ve met dozens recently. Time and again through February and March, straight-ahead men and women I’m happy and honoured to have as neighbours. Gracious, witty and not at all easily defined.
More than ever I recognise the Canadian (even more so, the British) canard of lumping all Americans together. To me the exquisite differences between Texans, Minnesotans and southern Californians are far more enjoyable than those of Ontarians and British Columbians.
From Corpus Christi through Arizona and New Mexico to Arnold-land I’ve been talking to them in and around their own territories although that doesn’t mean it’s where they started out, in a lifetime a Buckeye-stater may move from Ohio to Louisiana or Montana, Floridians re-starting in Utah or the Coastal Bend of Texas, much the same as Canadians hop from province to province for a better life, love or maybe just a change of scenery.
But something became apparent last month in the long and polarising run-up to Obama’s healthcare legislation, which I followed because it was the hot topic, every day. I spoke to many old geezers at breakfast along the way who were bitterly opposed to having healthcare for the poor “shoved down their throats…”
These suntanned victims-in-waiting of Obama’s socialist nightmare had giant motor-homes towing late-model Jeeps will full gas-tanks awaiting them in the parking-lot. They were people feeling no pain.
They were people who by all accounts who should look in the mirror each morning and say sweet, I lucked out in this life.
But they don’t. They are mightily pissed-off with their country and the intentions of its leadership, entirely borne out by the frighteningly partisan divide when it came time to vote.
These Americans behave as if it was their own ox being gored, made even more bizarre by the upward ticking of Wall Street stock in so-called healthcare-providers, aka the insurance industry, a cautious welcome being given to the prospect of public-private partnerships outlined in the Obama bill.
This brings a monster into the spotlight. Is USA not the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Or one where the haves despise the have-nots, the healthy despise the sick, and the wealthy despise the poor?
What we saw last month was a stark declaration of division:
“Cut the rope, I’m up”.
