Answers:
What has the US done to me? Called me baby killer. Discriminated against me for jobs among both the public and private employers. Allowed the theft of a family trust by legal means. I was a native born volunteer for active military service 1962-1966. You don’t want to know the details. I’m not alone in any of this. Many had similar experiences.
What did I do? Went back to school where I became aware of what my former country did in Vietnam and generally. What my former country did was unacceptable to me and continues to be unacceptable. I found a place that attracted me far more than my former country and came here. I became a Canadian citizen as soon as possible and renounced my US citizenship at that time, and since I wasn’t believed, I again renounced it more than 20 years later. Without knowing it I only came back to where art of my family came from.
How have I contributed to my community since then? Presently, I volunteer to serve on my local library board and my local volunteer firefighters. In the past I put most of my savings into a sound and lighting company and staged quality events for community groups. At many of these events people from other countries stood before me and told of atrocities they experienced and how conditions of life became impossible. You don’t want to know the details, but I heard the words and seen the truths written on their faces. Nobody is told of these things unless they are able to listen and understand. I listen. Truth is found in the details and the truth takes work. But you don’t want to know the details.
People who have experienced atrocities have the truth. They are the details. I only have second-hand truth. But people have stood before me. I can tell you about countries where nobody in the country-side eats pork--because pigs eat the corpses. I can tell of countries where children aren’t named until they are five--so death won’t hear of them. I can tell of mothers who toured the world with their list of 10,000 disappeared (their children), and they ask only ‘where are they.’ Of course everybody knew where they were and also why. I also could tell of people I’ve known who carryout the dark business of nation that is tritely called wet-work. They are the details too and they pay a price for their calling. I worked at a large US Army rehab hospital one summer. All the patients were missing one of more limbs. I imagine they eventually experienced job discrimination as did I.
The truth is in the details, and people with truth say very little about it. I only carry their stories, and it’s a burden I’d rather be without. None of us say much. There is no use to baying at the moon—much as has been done in most of this thread. Truth isn’t to be found in words. It’s in the details.
Question: Does anti-American mean the people or government? Nation states are not biological entities that have friends and enemies or experience love, hate or fear. Nation states do not live by moral or ethical codes or have any humanity what so ever. They are organizations. America is a construct of the American people. There is little use in laying blame certainly not on an organization. I cannot however exonerate the American people. It is their government and they bear responsibility for what it does. I cannot exonerate the people because they don’t want to know the details. Few Americans question how the power and prosperity that is so cherished was earned and is now maintained. Few Americans would be told if they actually asked. To be told, you must change you lives, and to do that you must atone before you can know of the details.
I met an American last summer who had broken down on the highway that runs through the middle of nowhere at our camp near where we live. I took him to where he could telephone for assistance. I offered him hospitality. He helped me work on a shed while we waited. It was pleasant. God it was hard. Another truth is that there is no reliable moral guidance for things that haven’t been experienced. In my experience, I could not condemn him as I may have wanted to. I do not bay at the moon nor do I pass judgment on what I have not experienced.
Americans should recognize that the baying at the moon we’ve heard here is a baying where friendship remains possible. People who have the truth don’t talk about it. There is a price to be paid before the truth can be heard and the price gets higher the longer it’s delayed. Anti-Americanism in Canada mostly is the baying at the moon among estranged friends Canada too must atone and pay a price.
The price must be paid, because eventually truth becomes unaffordable--and then there’s only the wait. The wait is perhaps what I could tell you a close up of a woman’s head looks like when the top of it was blown off by a charge set by a special squad. A detail is that special squads are funded by the US. Learn how to pay the price and pay it now. I do not care for a world where such truths prevail and I do not wish to carry the burden of such details. I do wish such burden even though my truths are all too easy second-hand ones. I paid a price but not a high enough one, and I have yet to have persons from the American gulags stand before me. Americans must assume responsibility for their government because it is them. Americans cannot assume that responsibility from within gated communities or gated nations. Nobody will talk to you. I barely am able to do so.
