Kootenay Crust by Ian Cobb

Op-Ed Commentary

Long ago when the Earth was still green and I was seven-years old, I met an American peer in the shallow end of a California motel pool who ignited what has become a lifetime tracking exercise.

Happy to make a friend after suffering the indignities of a family road trip from Winnipeg to Disney Land in Anaheim, with a brother and sister nine and five years older than I, it was a relief to hang with a kid my age.

In our introductions we stated where we were from. After learning he was from Minnesota, I proudly proclaimed my Winnipegness and the kid stared at me unimpressed. “Where’s that?”

“In Manitoba,” I happily declared, convinced the kid would cotton to the fact his state bordered it. “Where’s that?”

“In Canada,” I blurted.

“Where’s that?” the kid asked snidely.

My puny young brain could not comprehend this kid’s arrogant ignorance. I wanted to punch him on the shoulder but I left the pool and wandered back to our motel room to get a snuggy from my brother and snarly indifference from my sister.

That encounter launched me down the road of life with a view of our southern cousins being arrogantly ignorant and that view was magnified mightily from travels abroad.

There was the time in the British War Museum with my cousin John when we were strolling through a gallery of paintings from the Second World War. One was of a factory making large bombs to be dropped from planes. Near us two 18(ish) year-old Americans, possibly from Texas, looked at the painting and one said, “Looky thar at them bullets.”

My much-older cousin turned to me and said, “Bloody Americans always have to have everything bigger than everyone else!”

I was 15 at the time and already severely jaded toward Americans, thanks to three trips to Britain by that point. There is something about Britain and Americans. For many, it brings out the loud-mouthed buffoon in them. The braggart and bully.

Now, not all Americans are like that; far, far from it. It’s just the ones who are like that are so insufferably annoying and loud, they capture everyone’s attention around them as they suck the air from rooms. They are known in the club-of-the-rest-of-the-world as “Ugly Americans.” It’s been a thing stretching back to the Cold War but Americans are only just this past decade starting to really figure it out thanks to its decayed political discourse and the in-your-face ugliness of it all.

Don’t just take it from me; according to Britannica the term ‘ugly American’ “has since passed into the language as an expression of the boorishness and insensitive parochialism of Americans abroad.”

Loud-mouthed buffoons are as common in American politics nowadays as they are in touristy London pubs.

Sadly, it’s not just Americans. More and more Canadians are tilting their windmills toward bluster and bullshit over substance, with the aim of improving themselves and not society or their communities. This is a classic example of the massive impact the USA has on Canada. It is life imitating art (in this case propaganda disguised as news).

While BS has been the hallmark beating heart of politics since Ugg the Smelly became the first mayor of the cave 40,000 odd years ago, it’s so much more insulting now because politicians, inspired by Donald Trump, entering his second term as American President this day, spin endless blithering nonsense. And sadly, the pinhead media circus, operating on algorithms from feedback provided by mewling dunderheads, propagates the hate and division.

In the rotten winds of Facebook’s recent slaying of fact-checking on its platform waft chuckleheadedly factless babble artists and cheese muffins – unfettered by the tethering of truth or second-thoughts of integrity. It’s all about ‘look at me’ and ‘listen to me so I can get paid and screw the truth and facts because that’s like boring n shit and no one pays attention to me.’

What could go wrong? Oh yeah. That.

If you think things are bad today as Trump slithers into the Whitehouse with his entourage of billionaire Bond movie villains, Youtube ‘stars’ and wannabe Igor ass-kissers, just wait a year or two.

We enter the Age of the Ugly American. It might last four years if we’re lucky. It all tracks.

Brace yourselves fellow Canadians. A heaping helping of bellicosity worthy of jerseys being pulled over heads and uppercuts being fed is coming.

I say let’s be hockey in a time of professional wrestling; Canadian hearts and guts over glossy shouting nonsense.

– Ian Cobb is e-KNOW owner and editor

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