Reading of yet another rant by Nugent at a political rally (and an NRA gathering is a political rally) gave me a quick return to a recent trip. I spent my honeymoon in Quebec City early in January 2011. (Note: if you ever get the chance this is a great city to visit and is somewhat Duluthian in history and character.) But for a day trip my wife and I did a day long dogsled outing. We got to ride and have a driver slide us over the meadows and through the woods. It was quiet enough to carry on a conversation with the driver.
My driver was a recent college grad who had taken a political science class in his last semester where they were able to use the 2010 U.S. elections as real-time case studies. I will never forget being deep in the woods in the Quebec woods with snow sifting through the trees and having this young man exclaim “we could not believe that you (Americans) would have a political candidate pose with a gun to promote his campaign.”
When we got back to our hotel we saw the news that Gabby Giffords had been shot in Arizona.
From gun control to climate change there is a huge percentage of Americans who are motivated by fear of losing guns, rights, money, freedoms.
Maybe the more we can educate our neighbors about how this country is viewed by the outside world, like a sled-dog driver in Quebec, the sooner we can put fear behind us.
