Western countries, mind your business

By VINCENT CORTES

EDITORIAL EDITOR

  Does anyone else find it ironic when Canada or European countries mock the social woes ongoing in America?

  I sure do…This mentality is especially endemic on social sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Reddit as seen through one particularly toxic tweet reading: 

 “Our healthcare is free. We don’t have $50,000 student loans at age 18. Medicine is free for youth under 25. Marijuana is legal. Abortions are free. Our drinking age is 19. Your president is a racist orange cheeto and your police kill black people for sport.” 

  Racking 849k likes and 190k retweets, this tweet is the pinnacle of tired abhorred talking points. It is time we ask ourselves: when are we going to stop pretending that these countries are utopias?

  Imagine proudly flaunting the greatness of your country when in fact your country also has roots in colonialism and slavery? While these countries are portrayed so positively in a social light, they are marred with the same social inequities of the U.S. 

  Like all countries in the western world, the main beneficiaries are straight cis white men. Why is Canada flashing their socialized healthcare when it more often than not alienates LGBTQ+ members or those living with HIV? What about the hundreds of indigenous people missing—where inaction from Canada’s government has left the peoples’ communities the only ones searching.  

  And these countries so shamelessly point out the brutalities in the U.S. as if we as a people aren’t fighting desperately for resolve. Pointing out a country’s flaws is one thing, but to demean one to prop up your own is nothing short of hypocrisy.