Paul
Si. Pierre
es "

PAUL.ITICS & PERSPECTIVES

Colonel Lowery, the briliiant
Kootenay editor, used to refer to vis-
its by English journatists to western
Canada as being like an icicle going
down the back of your neck. They
came, spent a week or two and went
back knowing everything there was
to know about British Columbia, all
of it unfavorable.

Like most newspapermen, the
colonel knew how easy it is to
become an instant expert. You act as
if you don't plan to go back to that
restaurant. Yet you can't spend even
@ short time in another country with-
out a few strong impressions crowa-
ing inon you.

Here are a few from a pleasant,
short, generally aimless holiday trip
across the United States from Pacific
to Atlantic:

ROADS AND CARS

WHY CAN Canadians never
catch up to Americans in car

travel? Why can't we cross
the continent in three days on
Canadian roads?

This whole trip was on four lane
highway (No, 90 Interstite) and a
good third ef that went through lands
even more sparsely setded than
southern Canada, How do the Yanks
afford to have us ride on velvet all
the way?

For one, they have better traffic
law. Perhaps because of their historic
devotion to individual freedom, their
highway system assumes that drivers
have common sense. We don’t.

In the ULS., when two lines
squeeze down to one, there is usually
just a sign asking for 45 miles an
hour. No women with flags, No 15-
mile-an-hour zones,

Toll booth slow downs? In the
crowded East, beginning near
Chicago, toll gates are thicker than
cranberries in the bog. The signs just
say “Slow.” It's assumed you'd
rather drive slowly than get a faceful
of conerete. Compare this with B.C.
where we establish a 15-mile-an-
hour zone a quarter mile from the
booths which everybody, of course,
ignores.

GRACE AND CHARM

Few nationalities are more friend-
ly than your average American. New
York is an exception, but there are
no average Americans there. The
ordinary citizen of the great republic
is gracious and helpful. He bolsters
your faith in the common people.

Then why do such decent people
get such indecent governments? Few
are as ruthless and conscienceless as
American governments. Even the
most popular of presidents do unfor-
givable things. The Kennedy plot to
murder Fidel Castro is only one
example. Jimmy Carter was the only

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president to comment publicly on
this split in the American personality.
He didn’t last long.

Despite what their newspapers
pretend, Americans are estranged
froma democracy and half of them
have quit voting.

HEART OF DARKNESS

The heartland of indusirial
America is now called the Rust Belt.
Millions of manufacturing jobs have
been lost.

Car companies are now proclaim-
ing prosperity but by prosperity they
mean higher dividends and higher
pay for the obscenely overpaid auto
industry executives. For the workers,
it's poverty and despair. Detroit isn’t
that much different from London
after the blite.

Mazda of Japan is the only com-
pany to open a new manufacturing
plant in the Detroit area, For 3,500

jobs, it had 100,000 applicants.

WHICH AMERICA?

The American melting pot theory
remains mostly that, just theory.
Many countries make up the U.S. By
temperament, New Englanders are
farther removed from the California
Crazies than from Eastern Canadians
or the Englishmen whose tea they
dumped.

The shopping mail has yet to con-
quer New England. Srnall towns still
have main streets with tiny shops run
by people who’ ve been in the same
business for gerierations, serving the
same families.

MYTHS

American political lobbies are

Friday, August 19, 1994 - North Shore News - 9

Decent people, rotten governments

nore powerlul than ours. Few are
inighter than the American Medical
Association,

Among New Englanders, who
live only two hoots and a holler from
Canada, is an article of fain that
every Canadian wakes each moming
weeping salt tears that his country
wus SO perverse as to establish
Medicare and praying that private
care make him healthy again soon.

ICs useless to suggest that it’s
pure AMA fantasy, No facts can
withstand a cannonade by a high

price American tobby, Also mem-
bers of the U.S. Congress have fong
been nutoriously buyable.

MEMORABLE

‘Tuis time, it was the Wall Drugs
success story in the South Dakota
hadlands, # muld-million dollar busi-
ness begun in the worst of places at
the worst of times by a poor man
who had nothing going for aim
except a dream. Never underestimate
these people,

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