U.S. DELUSIONS OF SUPERIORITY

 MORE NIGHTMARE THAN AMERICAN DREAM

It's either chutzpah or sad. The Americans, a warm and generous people despite their ignorance of the real world, seek relief from their hordes of incompetent and crooked politicians by picking on Rob Ford.
He's a safe target, you see. He's fat, foreign and white, and from some place on the Great Lakes. And even most Americans know where the Great Lakes are, because Chicago and Illinois are on one of them, you know,  the city and state that has more of its politicians in jail than all of Canada.
 Joe McHale, a comic from a TV show that hasn't been renewed - and a cable channel that most have never heard of - takes a shot at Mayor Ford at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Applause from the "incestuous"  mob in front of him (just one of the insults from U.S. critics.) Some should have police file numbers across their chests. Others tell more lies than truth.  The curdled cream of a Congress that doesn't work even by their low standards is in the room.
Surely even politicians used to believing their own press releases realize that the American dream is more the American nightmare when it comes to their leaders and their establishments screwing up. United States is a country that preens it's the best in the world when, as most surveys show, it's only tops in debt. It is a country that invented mayors being on crack cocaine, when they aren't stealing that is, whose floundering attempt at medicare is a costly imitation of what Canadians have enjoyed for decades, and whose military was late to two world wars and so suspect that Canadians preferred not to fight beside them.
They have a superiority complex wrapped in the stars and stripes, which is rather strange when the giant of supposed granite has feet of clay and is bound by a corrupt financial system.
I told you not to vote for the performing bear when Ford ran. He's awful and getting worse. But please, there are so many dreadful governors and mayors in the U.S. that you wonder how Americans would even dare criticize any foreigner. Are they really under the illusion that makes them superior?
Some recent samples from an apology of mayors.  Linda Thompson wanted to crackdown on "scumbags"  who dumped illegally in her Harrisburg. Thomas Menino wanted his Red Sox to win something that doesn't exist called World Series Cup. Bob Filner of San Diego finally pleaded guilty to three of the sexual harassment charges by more than 17 women and is banned from politics. Barry Layne Moore of Hampton, Florida, was charged with possessing and selling oxycodone.
Do I really have to mention the convicted black mayor of Washington where the banquet was held, or the black mayor of Detroit, and all the corrupt family and party machines that run all their city halls?
Mayor Ford has become a symbolic punching bag for late night hosts. He's a safe target because he hasn't helped bosses and business get licences and sweetheart grants. He's safe because he's not a crony of the billionaires who infest politics with their selfish agendas. Attacking Ford is a no-brainer for comic writers because by comparison to the dreary clutch-and-grab of losers who run their cities, he actually is more interesting.
The correspondents dinner features journalists who make a living doing what is done routinely inside the House of Commons and Legislatures of Canada. We have many question periods where prime ministers, premiers and ministers can be grilled by each other  They have occasional staged press conference which might as well have a script.
The Americans are so busy thumping themselves in the chest when it comes to sport,  their supposed experts ignore the fact that when it comes to games against Canadian teams, officials are so biased, they shouldn't officiate at tiddlywinks tournaments.
The Raptors lost their seventh playoff game by one point. The officials delivered for the NBA establishment by such atrocious calls, they would be banned from working future games if there is anyone at NBA headquarters actually watching games rather than just trying to survive the latest mess caused by an bigoted owner.
Canadians invented basketball. The first NBA league game was played in Toronto in 1946. Yet we are treated by star players like rubes to be plucked in the barnyard mud, which is where their agents live. Officials are so used to Americans dominating the sport, they give them the edge in most calls.
The Toronto media are so used to the awful officiating against the Raptors that with the exception of broadcasters, there was little or no mention in the post-mortems.
The miracle in baseball is that the Blue Jays were allowed to win everything in 1992 and 1993. When it looked like they were going to be in the World Series again in 1994, and horrors, the opponents may well have been the Montreal Expos, it seemed wiser to let a baseball strike happen.
Goodness, we can't have the two Canadians teams play against each other in "our" World Series, can we? Actually it's called the World Series because it was sponsored originally by the World newspaper. If you really want to have a World Series, say the Americans playing the game that was developed largely 150 years ago in Canada, have the other team from the rest of the world and watch who wins the American pastime.
We have a free trade deal with the Americans, sort of. It's certainly not a fair trade deal, not when  it only works when the U.S. wants it. Most of the House of Representatives and Senate want a new pipeline from Alberta. Yet Barack Obama blocks it because of business interests goading rich environmentalists who want Americans to forget that Canada is the largest supplier of energy to the U.S., just as we are their largest trading partner.
What the business and Republican establishments really want is to drive up the price of everything from Canada, to so handicap imports, they can have more of the home markets to themselves and then bully their way on exports.
Unfortunately, none of this is known to most Americans who are notorious for their ignorance of the world. For that matter, most Americans can't name a majority of their own 50 states and their capitals, so finding countries like Afghanistan and Iraq where their soldiers were being blow up was beyond their capability.
To them Canada is some mass to the north where the cold weather comes from and where some of the better NFL quarterbacks really learned how to play. We criticize our CBC but they have the most boring radio in the world and the worst TV giant in the history of the world, the rabid Fox.
We might make a dent on Americans if we turned off all the water and  gas and electricity and oil that we send them for just one day, but with their crumbling infrastructure, they probably would think  it's just the usual local problem.
As it is, we're screwed. For them, a little learning wouldn't be a dangerous thing, it would be an improvement.