Genesis Of A People

Appendix 4: An Apt Analogy

On his TV program, Real Time, Bill Maher once made an interesting point: If people from Quebec started bombing New England, surely the U.S. government wouldn’t stand for it; and would undoubtedly respond by bombing the shit out of Quebec.

Regarding this hypothetical, Mr. Maher may very well have been correct.

Presumably, he was insinuating that—due to the crude rockets sporadically lobbed into Israel from Palestine, and the occasional suicide bomber deployed—the Israeli government is justified in relentlessly attacking Palestinian civilians with an on-going military incursion; including the routine destruction of public infrastructure, relentless oppression, and the systematic demolition of residences.  However, Maher’s analogy is flawed—or at least very incomplete.  A more accurate analogy would be as follows:

In a brazen effort to expand the territory of New Hampshire and Vermont, Messianic New England WASPs have gone over the Canadian boarder and started forcefully evicting Canadians from their homes.  Quebec, the New England expansionists insist, was their Promised Land; so they’re merely taking what was theirs by divine right.  To support this contention, they point to a piece of ancient scripture that they treat as a title-deed to the designated land.  In it, their godhead is portrayed as a cosmic real estate broker; and it is stipulated that—thousands of years ago—THEY were the appointed beneficiaries of that particular territory in North America.  (For a discussion of this contention as it pertains to “Zionism” vis a vis Palestine, see my essay: “The Land Of Purple”.)

The New Englanders promptly established a brutal military occupation of Quebec, replete with the relentless oppression of all Québécois—who’s ancestors, being FRENCH, do not qualify for the divine charter that has been invoked.  (It also doesn’t help that they are Roman Catholic instead of Protestant.)  This includes regularly bull-dozing countless houses in Quebec in order to make way for New England settlers who are coming up from New Hampshire and Vermont (in a Yankee “Aliyah”).

For the past two generations, this hegemonic process (call it “Yankee lebensraum”) has involved restricting the freedom of movement of all Québécois; while cutting off the primary means by which Canadian civilians were able to provide themselves with food, potable water, medicine, and other crucial supplies.  Moreover, it has included the routine bombing of Canadian schools, hospitals, and vital infrastructure…not to mention the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians (often women and children) in order to assert the (divinely ordained) Yankee presence on this particular part of Canadian soil.  Such drastic measures were, of course, all carried out in the name of “New England security”.

(Stay with me.  Here’s where it gets interesting.)

In a move of desperation, some of the more incensed Québécois lob crude rockets into Vermont and New Hampshire: a meager retaliatory effort pursued for lack of better options.  For them, there was no other recourse; as nobody else in the world was doing anything to remedy their dire situation.  From time to time, one of their crude rockets kills a small handful of New England residents who were living close to the boarder.  Each time THAT happens, in response, the U.S. government “bombs the shit out of” Quebec, massacring dozens—if not hundreds—of (innocent) Canadian civilians; along with some of the culprits.  The rationalization for such a colossally disproportionate response: protecting Yankees (while punishing the Québécois terrorists).

Of course, this retaliatory response only serves to exacerbate the hostility, sewing yet more resentment.  In a continued act of desperation (and in reprisal for their slaughtered brethren), some Québécois lob a few MORE rockets into New Hampshire and Vermont—again: the only means at their disposal to retaliate, short of throwing rocks at the New England tanks making incursions onto their farmland; and sometimes as the fleet of Caterpillar bull-dozers demolishing their orchards and houses.  (Any other resistance, they have found, has proven utterly futile.)

The vicious cycle continues—orders of magnitude more Canucks are killed for each New Englander killed.  The media expresses outrage at any Yankee casualty…while ignoring the order of magnitude more Québécois fatalities that regularly occur. And there is nary a peep about the on-going suffering of all French Canadians in the region.

The plight of the Québécois is dismissed as a necessary means to a Providential end: Making the entirety of Quebec province part of New England, which the Creator Of The Universe had promised to the American WASPs long, long ago (according to sacred Yankee lore).

To reiterate: The Québécois endure daily oppression, persecution, and eviction—even as the Messianic New Englanders complain about the occasional, isolated deaths of Yankees (Vermont and New Hampshire residents) from the crude Canuck rockets.  This all persists, even as more New England expansionists continue to bull-doze orchards and homes, stealing yet more land in Quebec…and, in doing so, essentially rendering Quebec a massive militarily-occupied, open-air prison for the destitute Québécois.

How does Maher’s analogy look now?

Another hypothetical to mull over: Imagine how the U.S. citizenry would react if a (hypothetically) superior Canadian military force did all the above to everyone in New England.  One wonders if people in the Northeast Kingdom and Coos county would limit their reprisals to throwing stones at the Canadian invaders…after their families had just been slaughtered by missiles reigning down from the sky.

Suddenly, it seems to matter exactly WHO’S homes are getting bull-dozed. Who is oppressing whom?

We Americans should be especially aware of the atrocities associated with the slaughter and forced expulsion of indigenous populations for the glory of a favored tribe…in the name of Providence (a.k.a. “Manifest Destiney”). This realization should be stark, be the victims Seminoles in Florida, Arabs on the West Bank of the Jordan River, or Viet-minh peasants in the rainforests of Indo-China.  Shame on those of us who would be so perfidious as to endorse such behavior anywhere in the world, by anyone, at any time, for any reason.