I was thinking Superman.
But I always was a sucker for that John Wayne-like, "Truth, Justice, and the American way"!
My Polish side of the family actually was just like that. Decent, hardworking, in love with America, and honest as the day is long. Everyday in America was a privilege to be part of the greatest experiment ever! All Catholics, who everyday preached, demanded, and tried to show examples of honesty, morality, and ethics. And they were pretty good at it. My father even considered it his moral obligation to pay his fair share of taxes. No different than his enlisting in the service. Hell, he'd throw in a coupla' extra bucks to the IRS if he thought it would help! I'm serious, here.
Those guys, and those generations are gone. We are at a great loss for it.
My grandparents on both sides were both that way. My Polish grandmother could not understand how I could demonstrate against the Great America, her sister who came after the war, who had been a teen slave for the Nazi's, thought I was next to God.
A story as example, my grandmother feuded endlessly with "the Jew" a woman, like her and just as stubborn. Every winter, often more than once a season she would give us buckets and tell us to walk along the railroad collecting coal spilled from steam trains. Then we were told to take it to "the Jew" and "don't let her see you or you will make her feel ashamed."
But I disagree about those "generations"being gone. They are just a different color now. Some years ago I was in a very bad accident and had to be kept in hospital ER for ten hours, and needed a late night cab to take me across Burrard Inlet and had a driver wearing a turban. We talked after I asked him "why Canada?" He did not have to think, and ran off a fairly healthy list of positive reasons about similar government systems, same language and ended with "and in Canada I know someone cares, about me and my family, my children will not ever suffer here."
He went on. "India is where I was born, my roots remain. Canada is now my home. I love her. I would die for her!" I had never, in nearly 70 years EVER hear anyone speak so of my country. Since then I have been studying Canada as it is defined by my neighborhood, here in Vancouver. We imported 60,000 some Syrians mostly sponsored by people already hear, so I spoke to some people who sponsored and a family of four who had come in the airlift.
In ever case, every meeting, every encounter I see that "Everyday in America was a privilege to be part of the greatest experiment ever!" in their eyes, along with a gratitude for this strange arrangement of a country of many nations. In closing, about those Syrians, they had lived in a single tent with another family of three for four and a half years
The only real difference I can see between Canada and the US is the US is divided in two, by design of politicians, new Americans are a political issue, not a basic aspect of its make up. The new are resented now as rumor has become reason and the new are seen as a drain on the system; competition for jobs, hand outs. They don't pause to really inform themselves. I doubt, if all Americans knew that in that wave of Syrians we brought in 100's of engineers, nurses, much needed doctors along with children and families.
IMHO, America somewhere along the line stopped being an experiment. We can't, we need new Canadians to survive.
