Now where did I put my Canadian passport? « The Edge of the American West

September 28, 2008 at 6:48 am

I disagree: it sets up McCain’s victory as the “default unless” which is not the approach you need to take. Panicking people works for the base, sure, but the “undecideds” are more likely to be pushed the other way by the desparation of the ad.

As social psychologists have noted, there’s a very powerful effect from “what everyone else is doing” — it’s become part of the anti-binge drinking movement on colllege campuses, for example. This moves in the other direction, and is based on the assumption of a visceral reaction which undecideds clearly aren’t going to have.

September 28, 2008 at 8:37 am

John Emerson

That’s brutally negative campaigning.

September 28, 2008 at 9:08 am

Jason B

It seems to me this ad is only going to be effective on people for whom the mere idea of a McCain presidency is unthinkable, and it also seems to me that all of those people were a) decided already and b) motivated enough to vote against McCain.

I’m not sure who this would affect in the intended way.

September 28, 2008 at 9:15 am

m. leblanc

Guys, y’all are missing the point. The ad is directed at supporters, and designed to scare the living shit out of them. For a supporter like me, it gives me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

And makes me want to get out and volunteer more, donate more, and harass more people to register to vote.

Which is exactly what you need media directed at supporters to do–like you said, the supporters are already going to vote.

September 28, 2008 at 9:17 am

m. leblanc

Oh, and if you look at the linked post and comments (which I didn’t look at before I wrote my previous comment) you’ll see what I am talking about.

September 28, 2008 at 9:39 am

dana

I agree with m. leblanc, partially. It’s definitely meant to get supporters fired up. But there’s also a lot of people, I suspect, who support Obama, but have no idea when the deadlines for registration are, or don’t know how it works, etc. This describes a lot of college students, in other words.

It gets the supporters fired up to think about get out the vote operations; it gets the supporters-but-forgot-to-register demographic, a reason to check their registration now.

September 28, 2008 at 10:23 am

Stephen

Why do so many people I know have passports from other countries? I want a Canadian passport. Or British.

Switzerland should have some sort of quasi-citizenship thing where people can use that status to have a Swiss passport. I’d do that for my family in a heartbeat.

September 28, 2008 at 10:42 am

dana

Why do so many people I know have passports from other countries?

I’m going to guess that you know a lot of foreigners? [ducks]

September 28, 2008 at 11:17 am

Jason B

I think the last eight years have rendered me dead inside, because I had no emotional reaction to that video at all. Just an intellectual “Yep, that’d suck” sort of thing. And “suck” doesn’t even begin to cover how bad that would be. It would be a catastrophe, but I think I’m broken.

September 28, 2008 at 11:37 am

Rich Puchalsky

Just laugh, if it happens, Jason B. Laugh at all of the stupid people who are going to have their lives wrecked because they voted for McCain. Because of course it’s going to disproportionately affect them. Their job are going to go, their social security payments are going to get defunded, their kids are going to die in foreign wars, and yeah that will affect innocent people too, but not as many of them. And it’s going to completely trash what’s left of their precious American exceptionalism.

September 28, 2008 at 11:44 am

urbino

And then they’ll re-elect him.

September 28, 2008 at 11:51 am

Rich Puchalsky

Yeah, that too. Otherwise it all would have been a waste!

September 28, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Dr J

“Canadian passport” is my favorite synonym for “mullet.”
Others receiving votes: “Pennsylvania mudflap,” “Kentucky coonskin,” and “Missouri compromise.”

September 28, 2008 at 1:58 pm

marianne

You know that Canada is poised to re-elect a right-wing leader, this time with a majority, right? Just saying.

(Dr. J – genius).

September 28, 2008 at 2:49 pm

Stephen

I’m going to guess that you know a lot of foreigners?

Well, I walked into that one. No, I mean dual citizens. Drives me nuts.

September 28, 2008 at 2:55 pm

Wrongshore

I assume they’re not showing that on television. As long as it’s something for all us sky-is-falling fear-driven volunteers to put on Facebook, I think it’s good.

September 28, 2008 at 5:43 pm

bitchphd

makes me want to get out and volunteer more, donate more, and harass more people to register to vote

Yep. I’ve donated money I can’t afford this week. I’ve signed up to phone bank, which I fucking hate doing. I’m thinking about going to Nevada to canvass for a weekend, even though I know it’ll wear my shit out, and considering foregoing visiting the bf in order to do so.

September 28, 2008 at 5:45 pm

bitchphd

Just laugh, if it happens, Jason B. Laugh at all of the stupid people who are going to have their lives wrecked because they voted for McCain. Because of course it’s going to disproportionately affect them.

I have to admit that I hate this attitude.

September 29, 2008 at 2:35 am

Emma

Hey, Ari, I thought you were coming to Australia. I’ve been planning menus and everything.

September 29, 2008 at 4:53 am

Rich Puchalsky

I have to admit that I generally dislike yours, B.

September 29, 2008 at 7:02 am

asl

Meh. I’m voting for Obama, but the ad doesn’t excite me. It just makes me wonder how he and McCain differ on the biggest economic policy decision of my time and I don’t know the answer. I’d like to see that ad.

September 29, 2008 at 7:07 am

dana

I have been meaning to post why I don’t like the ‘move to Canada’ rhetoric*, and it involves pirates and pirate ships, but I haven’t had time.

*except in the case of actual Canadians, where it’s a reasonable proposal.

September 29, 2008 at 8:25 am

Vance

I think my problem with the joke/threat about moving to Canada is that it seems to reduce the meaning of the election (and of government, policy, society, etc.) to a question of one’s immediate personal comfort. I lived abroad during 2002-2005, and I didn’t find that the better quality of espresso available in Bologna made it easier to look at the photos from Abu Ghraib.

September 29, 2008 at 8:28 am

bitchphd

Exactly.

And it’s probably just my stubborn streak, but leaving when you could stay and actually campaign against/work to mitigate the damage seems really self-indulgent. Especially since, generally, people who have the option of emigrating are not likely to be as personally affected as those who don’t.

September 29, 2008 at 8:58 am

Rich Puchalsky

The reason that I’m in America in the first place was because my family were refugees. In fact, I come from generation after generation of refugees; the people who didn’t move often didn’t live to have descendants. We came here; we were productive; we more than repaid what we owe to this society. I owe nothing more to the American empire then my forebears did to the German Empire, the Russian Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Roman Empire, or the Babylonian Empire.

Now, are things actually that bad in America? No. But waiting until they get that bad means that you risk being unable to leave. There’s a substantial lead time for legal immigration to Canada; it’s not like you can just airily move your family abroad once a large number of people to want to do the same thing.

“Immediate personal comfort” is actually what has kept me here against my better judgement — my kids and their grandparents like to see each other. But the people who think that uprooting your family is self-indulgent can go try it a few times.

September 29, 2008 at 9:12 am

Vance

No, threatening to uproot your family if the Republicans win is self-indulgent. And another reason for that is that it implicitly compares a Republican victory to the kinds of real oppression your family fled.

September 29, 2008 at 9:21 am

Vance

Also, there’s a difference between what one may owe to one’s government (”the American empire”) and what one may owe to one’s society.

September 29, 2008 at 9:33 am

Rich Puchalsky

A Republican victory by itself isn’t much — we’ve had plenty. But the particular kinds of victories they’ve been winning indicate to me that collapse and real oppression is a distinct probability. And this “stay and work against the damage” bit is just one of those indicators. Somehow there can be damage severe enough so that you should work against, yet it’s not sufficiently bad to make it worth while to remove your family from it. It’s the kind of thing that people write when they can’t really believe that anything bad could happen to them — and any residual nervousness can be hidden under a good round of blame for those self-indulgent people who say that America is making some amazingly bad choices that they don’t want to be part of.

September 29, 2008 at 9:35 am

bitchphd

It’s the kind of thing that people write when they can’t really believe that anything bad could happen to them

I’m currently believing that my pending mortgage loan just exploded, actually.

September 29, 2008 at 9:37 am

Vance

Somehow there can be damage severe enough so that you should work against, yet it’s not sufficiently bad to make it worth while to remove your family from it.

Are you seriously saying this is unreasonable?

September 29, 2008 at 9:45 am

dana

It’s the kind of thing that people write when they can’t really believe that anything bad could happen to them

Not in my case. That’s what makes the ’screw you, you deserve it’ line so frustrating. I stand a much better chance of ending up unemployed and moving in with my parents than most of the people I see saying “so, like, canada has health care, right? I’m so outta here.” I’m going to have my life wrecked even if I voted for Obama.

The other point is that if our economy collapses, we’re likely taking Canada with it. If what you’re fearing is economic collapse, it’s not going to be all that much better up North; we’re their biggest trading partner. (There’s something quintessentially American about the assumption that if I want to leave, that country will surely accept me which also amuses me to no end. )

September 29, 2008 at 9:50 am

bitchphd

To me, what makes the “screw you, you deserve it” thing frustrating is that it seems really classist. The folks to blame are the politicians and their wealthy supporters who knew exactly what they were doing, or should have. The poor dumbasses who voted R because of stupid shit like abortion or God or knee-jerk patriotism are objectionable, maybe, because of their beliefs, but it’s a bit much to say that people who are ignorant deserve to be made miserable over it. It sounds too much like the “hey, if you were so stupid as to take a subprime loan and are now losing your house, it serves you right” line. The fact is that a lot of this stuff is *complicated*, and most people are too busy worrying about shit in their day-to-day lives to spend a lot of time boning up on economics or politics.

The responsible parties are the assholes who take advantage of that fact, not the people who get taken advantage of.

September 29, 2008 at 9:56 am

Rich Puchalsky

It’s a very narrow range, Vance. Your judgement of how much damage there is depends on who you are and what you think is going to happen.

Already this isn’t really a good place for my kids to grow up. What if one of them, in a fit of adolescent rebellion, decides to join the army? Then I couldn’t even think that they were risking themselves in a good cause. What if one gets locked up — innocent or guilty? Our prison system is the worst of any industrialized country — torture and rape don’t just happen at Abu Ghraib, they happen here too. Our inability to provide universal health care is already costing me about a sixth of my income, meaning that I don’t get to save for their college. And our political system is controlled by lunatics who are systematically bungling every long-term problem our society faces. That’s not even counting what might happen if the economy goes belly-up and the Christianists take real power.

So yeah, I’m here for now. I am politically active; I’m doing everything I can. But don’t call people self-indulgent who muse about getting out.

September 29, 2008 at 9:57 am

Rich Puchalsky

Or, rather than being “classist”, you could be really condescending and assume that all of those people who voted for Bush were helpless dupes who didn’t know what they wanted.

September 29, 2008 at 10:00 am

bitchphd

I’m not assuming that “all” Bush voters don’t know what they want; I’m assuming that a lot of the people who, as you yourself said, are “stupid” and will be “disproportionately affected” are fairly ignorant of the complexities of politics and economics. Which, in fact, is a fair assumption, given the relationship between voting patterns and education.

September 29, 2008 at 10:14 am

Stephen

I’m in a weird position in this type of discussion, because my family is going to leave the USA, probably in about 3-4 years. But that’s because my wife hasn’t been able to get over how much she misses Korea, and I’ve lived there long enough to know that I utterly love that country as well. If we really wanted to leave because of the GOP or whatever, we could go now. And if the US completely falls apart, maybe we will, though I don’t think that’s really going to happen even if McCain wins.

At least not right away.

My main beef with others having non-US passports is that there isn’t a nation on earth I don’t want to visit, and many of them are more welcoming to non-US citizens than they are to Americans. I’d love to be able to travel on a US passport when it’s beneficial, and that of some other nation when it isn’t.

September 29, 2008 at 10:16 am

Rich Puchalsky

They’re willfully stupid. You can’t protect people from their own willful stupidity. And yeah, assuming that poor and un-educated people can’t figure out their own interests is condescending. They thought that other things were more important than the things that you think they should have thought. It’s certainly tragic that they’re going to take a lot of innocent people with them, yes.

September 29, 2008 at 10:26 am

bitchphd

Like I said, “willfully stupid” is much the same kind of thing people like to say about folks who got screwed over by their subprime mortgages. It’s nice to be able to look down on people and feel like they deserve to be looked down on because of their choices, but it is kind of jerky.

September 29, 2008 at 10:27 am

bitchphd

They thought that other things were more important than the things that you think they should have thought.

No; they think things other than what *you* think they should have thought. My point is that the things people think are important–their day-to-day lives, how to get the kids to school, whether or not to take that job, etc. etc.–are, in fact, pretty important to them, and there are good reasons why a lot of people focus on that stuff rather than on politics.

September 29, 2008 at 10:44 am

Rich Puchalsky

There’s a big difference between a private choice for yourself and a public choice of what kind of society we’re going to have. If I can’t look down on people for public affirmations of religious bigotry, racism, jingoism, free market cultism, warmongering, and approval of torture, then really what you’re saying is that you should never look down on people.

But you’re doing it, with your “self-indulgent” bit, so hey.

Now we could go back and forth all day about who is thinking for whom, but come on. I’m not the one propounding the rescue fantasy.

September 29, 2008 at 10:52 am

ben wolfson

If you can’t look down on someone for his or her choices, what else is left?

September 29, 2008 at 11:18 am

Michael Bérubé

Oh, all right. You all have convinced me to start my blog up again.

September 29, 2008 at 11:24 am

Ahistoricality

Already this isn’t really a good place for my kids to grow up.

It doesn’t happen often, so it’s worth saying: I’m agreeing entirely with Rich in this discussion.

if our economy collapses, we’re likely taking Canada with it. If what you’re fearing is economic collapse, it’s not going to be all that much better up North

It’s not the economy: it’s the Bill of Rights. I’d actually be willing to bet on the Canadian economy adapting better to the changing economic situation than we do, too; We’re their largest trading partner, sure, but they’ve got the educational and infrastructure foundation necessary to shift gears, and a smaller economy to shift.

September 29, 2008 at 11:30 am

Rich Puchalsky

We have convinced you to start your blog again? Ha! My Internet ranting is proved to be beneficial under any kind of utiliitarian-consequentialist scheme.

September 29, 2008 at 12:03 pm

dana

It’s not the economy: it’s the Bill of Rights.

Snarkily, Canada doesn’t have our Bill of Rights; less snarkily, while only crazy people would say that Canada isn’t a free nation, they’re not just an idealized version of the U.S.

September 29, 2008 at 12:05 pm

Rich Puchalsky

Thanks, Ahistoricality.

If the U.S. economy really does go down the tubes, everywhere on Earth is going to have a crash. What happens then depends on the degree of social solidarity in the society. It’s not like I’d think that Canada would be magically insulated from all harm, but I think they’d recover without as deep a descent.

September 29, 2008 at 12:50 pm

Walt

Canadians have rights?

September 29, 2008 at 2:19 pm

ari

Canadians have rights?

In Canada, we do.

September 29, 2008 at 3:13 pm

quietCanuck

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.”
K. Vonnegut, Slaughter House Five

Replace ‘poor’ with ‘poor and thus uneducated and ill-informed’? Hating on the disadvantaged is a cheap shot.

And, I’m quite fond of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Do we need to throw in the right to bear arms before our southern neighbours would be comfy acknowledging it as a bill of rights?

September 29, 2008 at 3:21 pm

Rich Puchalsky

Hating on the disadvantaged? More poor and / or un-educated people vote Democratic than Republican. The same logic that would say that those poor people who vote GOP are dupes would say that those voting Democratic are — what? After all, they also are busy people who don’t have time to think about politics etc. etc.

Most of the poor people who vote GOP are racists. And no, they don’t get a pass from me just because they are supposedly helpless naifs who never heard that racism was wrong.

September 29, 2008 at 3:30 pm

quietCanuck

Then why is it that electing McCain would “disproportionately affect them”?

September 29, 2008 at 3:36 pm

bitchphd

See, Rich, I learned about this empathy for the poor–even the icky ones–while I was living in Canada. It’s not something Americans are good at, but if you move up north, you’ll have to learn it too.

September 29, 2008 at 4:53 pm

Rich Puchalsky

Our going to war would disproportionately affect them because they’re militaristic. (People don’t just join the army because of economics. Despite the “economic draft”, black enlistment has dropped precipitously since the beginning of the Bush era.) Economic crashes would disproportionately affect them because the rural areas of the country depend on government handouts to a far greater degree than urban areas. Social security payments, if privatized “voluntarily” as McCain plans, would be first signed up for by seniors who believe in market worship. All of the stupid things that they believe in make them more vulnerable, not less.

And really, give people the dignity of their evil choices rather than maternalizing them into “the poor”, would you?

September 29, 2008 at 5:52 pm

Rich Puchalsky

By the way, I became curious about what the percentages really are. A quick Google turned up this. According to the chart at the bottom, in 2004 20% of non-high-school-grads were party-identified Republicans, while 41% were Democrats. 18% of those making less than $20K/year were Republicans; 43% were Democrats.

They aren’t being fooled, and they aren’t “the poor”.

September 29, 2008 at 6:14 pm

dana

Everyone simmer down the damned rhetoric because while ari is nice and conciliatory, I am not, and I enjoy knocking heads. Be nice. Be Canadian. Or the remaining polar bears will migrate south and eat you.

September 29, 2008 at 6:55 pm

quietCanuck

Whoops. Sorry. Current events have me going crazy but consider me simmered down.

And thanks for the stats, Rich.

September 29, 2008 at 7:02 pm

dana

The “be Canadian” was directed at everyone, of course.

Current events make me want to form a pirate gang and go around shaking down bankers for their booty.

September 29, 2008 at 7:29 pm

foeb

If you can’t look down on someone for his or her choices, what else is left?

His or her desire to look down on people, clearly.