America Is an Occupied Country

The sense of living in an occupied country has been growing on me for several decades now. I live in Canada, and am thus “a voice from America’s crazy attic” (Robertson Davies’ phrase, somewhat extended). I was born into a different kind of country. Yet all my life I have been watching the transformation, watching the politicians at work, watching the incremental social fallout, without fully grasping the extent. The oddest little event brings it home.

Take this one. Riding a crowded trolley through rush hour in Toronto, the thing is unexpectedly short-turned, spilling all passengers onto the street to wait for the next crowded trolley. About a dozen of them have no transfers, not having expected to need one. The driver, in a mood, will not issue them, saying the riders had to get them when they entered the transit system. This is nonsense, and he knows it. But no one complains. They file out onto the street, incidentally into a cold drizzle, and wait glumly.

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