Soapbox - VERY long winded

We all start our blogs with our intentions of rantings, ravings, an outlet, a place to bare our insanities and life's ironies and allowing others to view us from the anonymity of behind our schwanky flatscreens. Sometimes weeks/days/months/several hundred posts go by before we realize someone else may read what we've written and possibly are offended by it, take some of it and apply it to their own lives or that even someone finds it amusing/entertaining/offensive enough to comment on.... so with that in mind, I will apologise in advance if I do offend anyone and please feel free to comment both positive and negative.

My soapbox is creamsicle orange and I proudly wave my Canadian flag eh?

I have linked previously to the Disc where I have racked up nearly 2 yrs of real time (since 1996) of my life in a place that I enjoy and have been a player, a coder, an administrator and general dogsbody. I have met people there from many many countries and have made friendships that will last a lifetime. There have been significant events in history that I can recall hearing about for the first time and discussing for ages, all whilst logged into the Disc. Diana's death... Sept 11th...
Bearing in mind the significant diversity of the internet and that every type of community, be it a blog community, the Disc, a game website, anything where there is interaction ... will bring out the worst in people when confronted with situation.. just as real life. The stats of the Disc ... UK, Aus and US make up nearly 80% of the countries represented there... the US a quite significant portion even though the theme is created by an English author.. anyways, I digress (again..)
Sept 11th was significant for the world. The Disc is my second home and having sent my daughter to school with huge concerns based on the location of the airport, her school and our house... but none the less, I went "home" to make sure those that were part of our family and living in NY were safe.
The first comments I see are from Americans. Uneducated comments. I bite my tongue and listen. (yes yes odd for me, but I did it!) Various comments fly by, the tv on in the background of my monitor listening to various reports... and after yet another American makes a snide comment about carpet bombing, I decide it is time to speak up.
"This is a declaration of war, and don't be surprised if by this time tomorrow, GW will be preparing deployment" I say.
"How can you say that?"
"Because GW is an eye for an eye man." I reply
"No he isn't!" the arguments fly.
"Of course he is, he believes in the death penalty, you can't get much more eye for an eye than that."
So the arguments fly further and I watch as adults... yes adults turn themselves inside out with prophecies, predictions, and various other carryings on.
And then comes the "Oh poor pity us, it happened on US soil, we have suffered the most" debate. And yet again, my big mouth opens...
"This is an INTERNATIONAL tragedy. Yes, it happened in the United States, and yes there are many people affected in the United States. Please realize that I am sitting less than 3 hours from your border and I too am in a position of fear, however, my fear is from North Korea not from the Taliban or whomever they are accusing of this heinous act. We are ALL affected"
Then I promptly logged off before I lost my temper...
A few days later, GW graced us with his presence and presented the State of The Nation address. I was horrified.. terrified. I am more afraid of him than I am of Saddam... than of Osama.. With or without the backing of the UN he is going to do what he wants to do regardless of the outcome. After watching this televised address, I sit stunned in front of my computer and I write a letter to my local newspaper.
My letter ..in brief..
The only reason that GW wants Iraq so bad is because of the oil and the oil fields north of Iraq that Dick Cheney has interests in. He is the CEO of an oil company that cannot get its oil out because Iraq won't let him build a pipeline and Afghanistan says sure, but we want a cut. And at the end of our mess in Iraq, we've hired Hudson General to come in after and clean it up and while they're at it, they'll continue to do what they do best... build pipelines. And they'll do that while they fix up Iraq for us.
Did GW not learn anything from his predecessors? The real threat is from North Korea. They make weapons grade plutonium which the US paid several billion dollars in aid along with South Korea for NK to close this plant and build a new one that would not make weapons grade. There are bunkers full of plutonium. Have we bothered to check to see if they have followed through with their promise and that THEY don't have weapons of mass destruction?

I wrote this letter and sent it to various people. I then sat back and watched my letter become Michael Moore's movie. I then just saw a couple of weeks ago that the American people voted Farenheit 9/11 as the best movie. These are the same people that voted Bush in for a second term. Say What?!
There are websites (which I can't find the links for at the moment) where thousands and thousands of American's apologise to the rest of the world for GW. A few days before the election, I happened to catch a George Carlin special on the Comedy Network and he said a couple of things that really make a lot of sense to me, as a non-American...
"The Americans elected an American.. when you have a gene pool as small as this, you don't have much choice."
and
"Choose the evil you know"
So to every Canadian that bitched at me the days following the last US election... they didn't have a choice... it was him, or Bob* from the last trailer on the left in the second largest trailer park in Louisiana who is married to his brother's sister and drives around in a 76 Chev half-ton with a Confederate flag in the back window and a gunrack with 2 sawed off shotguns fully loaded and a pair of horns on the hood.

The American economy needed a war. Canada needed the American economy boost. We all benefited. Just remember that the US is a war mongering country. Every war since WWII that has happened anywhere in the world has either been started or kept going by the US, save East Timor, which kudos to Australia for telling them to get the fuck out. :-)

And lastly... to every American that gets their back up because Canada didn't participate in the Coalition of the Willing:
We are a peacekeeping country. We go around after you have been into a country and attempt to fix the chaos you have created. We do not have an army. We have used British subs that leak and sink, we had 2 Chinooks, but we crashed one into the deck of one of our three ships just days after you asked for our help, we have every possible deployable soldier doing peacekeeping duties already. Remember, we have been flat open spaces (Saskatchewan!) and if they were hit by a missile, it would just change the scenery slightly and make road trips a little more interesting.

We are not governed by the church, we make decisions and laws that reflect the majority, not the morals of the church. Same-sex marriage, legalized pot for medicinal purposes (you can even grow it!), we say please and thanks and gosh and by golly, we play damn good hockey.

After all of that ranting, I will say there is one thing that perhaps we as Canadians could learn from Americans... we are not on a whole an overtly patriotical country. We are proud, don't get me wrong... but the patriotism that drew Americans together after Sept 11th is something we as Canadians could learn a lesson or two about...

I again apologise if I have offended my loyal readers *laugh* But this is my soapbox..

*All in all, Bob sounds pretty damn sexy and since I ain't getting any, he may just have to do ;-)