I sit in front of my screen, having, within the hour, taken medication for which I paid not a penny, by a physician whose fees are covered by the government.

Yep: You guessed it. I’m Canadian.

Our health care system is better thans yours, hands down. That being said, it is not the panacea that people such as Michael Moore believe it to be. I, myself, suffer from OCD, a case severe enough to prevent me from holding a job. Thus, social assistance pays my rent and also provides me with a drug card, allowing me to obtain my Zoloft, Ativan, and any other medications I might require, at no cost to me.

On the flipside, most Canadians do not have a drug card: They either pay for their prescriptions out of pocket or sign up to Blue Cross for coverage of their pharmaceutical expenses. But visits to the doctor are free for ALL Canadians.

Now, one thing that you’ve heard is true: Wait-times can be, and often are, a major pain in the butt, BUT: The idea that people up here are dropping like flies while waiting to see a specialist is utter nonsense. Does it never happen? It does. ON VERY RARE OCCASIONS. Any system of any type will have exceptions to the rule, but, bottom line, if you’re in a life-threatening situation, you shall be triaged to the front of the line.

The system isn’t perfect, but, death panels? Euthanasia? Government beaurucrats getting between doctors and patients??? WHO WRITES THIS SHIT?????

And, more importantly, why do so many of you believe it?

I watch FOX. And CNN. (For some reason, MSNBC is not a part of any cable package available in my province.) I’ve seen the “town hells,” with the astroturfers, brought in from out of district, barking there manufactured outrage. (Funny: I thought that right-wingers were against busing!) But I’ve no doubt that some of these people are regular, decent citizens.

Which brings me back to wondering: Why are they buying the BS? Are Americans so easily propagandized?

Rhetorical question: Having observed the run-up to your folly in Iraq, I know that the answer is “yes.”

As a lily-white Irish-Canadian, I cannot help but think that, were the current occupant of the Oval Office a lily-white Irish-American named, say, Barry O’Brien, there would not be anywhere near the level of histrionics that I’m seeing on my television.

Liberty. Tyranny. Fine antonyms, those. So fine, in fact, that more and more Republicans are using them like newly-discovered “Words for Today,” embracing them with a surfeit of passion, so as to constitute what I can only describe as a series of linguistic threeways.

Who would have thought that Michele Bachmann could be the Linda Lovelace of lexicological politics???

But, of course, those words, like so many employed by the right, are code.

Whenever I watch Americans screaming “liberty” and/or “tyranny,” the translation to my mind is, “Hi, I’m a gun-toting, red meat-eating, The-Bible-is-literally-true-even-the-self-contradictory-parts ‘Christian’ who simply can’t handle the fact that a BLACK MAN IS PRESIDENT!”

I mean, seriously, where were these people?

When George W. Bush was spending like there was no tonight, let alone tomorrow, where were they?

When Dick Cheney was taking 200+ years of legal precedent and waterboarding it, where were they?

When John Ashcroft was putting your Constitution into the shredder, where were they?

When Scooter Libby was committing treason, where were they?

When your country was being led down the garden path to an entirely unnecessary war in Iraq, where were they?

When, for eight years, on every aspect of foreign, military, domestic, fiscal, cultural, legal, and ethical matters these suddenly “outraged” people were being lied to by their own government, where were they?

And where…do they get…the unmitigated…gall…to show their racist, xenophopic, incurious, willingly disinformed, anti-democracy, anti-American, and yes, anti-LIBERTY faces in public today???