I’ve been visiting in the United States for the last ten days.

It’s interesting to note the differences between our two countries. Canadians love to boast about their friendship with the Americans. In the United Sates, one would be hard pressed to know there is a Canada.

I read the newspapers in that country and watch the news on television. The only mentions of Canada or things Canadian are related to the National Hockey League playoffs or the odd baseball score reporting a Toronto win in baseball. I watch Steve Nash in the NBA playoffs but nobody identifies him as a Canadian.

The only Canadian news I saw in the last few weeks was a buried item in the Charlotte News, reporting that the Softwood Lumber issue had been resolved and the United States will refund some $4 billion in punitive duties.

There was also something in last Wednesday’s New York Times about the Harper budget (buried on page 10) that informed us that his budget would generate a $20 billion tax cut for Canadians and a $1 billion reduction in government program spending. The only other Canadiana was cast by Fox News and their castigation of Neil Young for not being an American.

Life is interesting in the United States.

The disparity between the well to do and the poor is stark. Part of the community drives $50,000 SUVs, plays golf and lives in houses or condos worth $200,000 or more. The other part of the community cuts their grass, live in slums, work for minimum wage and wonder what the future holds for them.

I was talking with one fellow who had just returned from a volunteer mission to Louisiana, post-Katrina. He talked about the homeless and/or displaced New Orleans residents and their conditions.

He talked about their living environments flooded with alligators and poisonous snakes. He talked about people living in tent cities with nothing but the clothing on their backs, people who had never been outside the city limits of New Orleans before the hurricane, people traumatized by their refugee camp circumstance.

Americans are concerned that Medicare (publicly funded healthcare for seniors) and social security programs could be bankrupt in the next ten years.

They’re concerned about “illegal aliens” otherwise know as immigrants from Mexico and Central America. It’s estimated that some twelve to twenty million illegal immigrants live and work in the United States. Some Americans want to send them home, a hypocritical situation given the fact these immigrants are gainfully employed as construction workers, agriculturalists, domestics and others and two thirds of them pay taxes. The dichotomy is found in America’s preoccupation with border security.

As one gentlemen said to me “there are a lot of people in the world who want to kill us. We have to stop them from getting into the United States”.

Back dropping these concerns is an undercurrent of anger and rage that so far has only found serious expression in non-traditional media, a few anti-war demonstrations and late night comedic pokes at George W. Bush.

People are incensed about their loss of a city (New Orleans), the presidential lies about Iraq, the torturing of prisoners, the loss of tens of thousands of soldiers to death and serious injury, their economic solvency, loss of their global reputation and the rampant corruption and political scandal in Washington as witnessed by the Abramoffs, the Libbys, the Delaneys and Dick Chaney’s former employer, the Haliburton Company. The mid-term elections could help vent some of this anger.

Resting on this stage is a growing discomfort with gasoline prices that have topped $3.00 a gallon over the past month. There was public derision over the Republican’s promise of a $100 gasoline rebate (since dropped).

There is an underlying fear of China as a major holder of American debt and repository for “American jobs”. There is concern that China’s growing demand for oil and gas is putting pressure on gasoline prices in America.

There is also embarrassment in the hypocrisy of Dick Chaney’s claim that Russia is rolling back democratic reforms while he seeks oil and gas from former Soviet territory and neighbor Kazakhstan.

There is worry about healthcare. A lack of heath care insurance is driving Americans to financial ruin and even death. Some 46 million of them have no healthcare insurance whatsoever.

A survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a non-partisan organization in the United States that studies health care found that 41 percent of non-elderly American adults with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 a year were without health insurance or healthcare for all or part of 2005. In Canada, we worry about waiting times.

I’m struck by the fact that ordinary Americans in one-on-one conversation seem pretty close to Canadians in terms of the daily needs and interests of life. On the other hand, I get the impression they are imprisoned by their patriotism and their fear of terrorism. They are greatly conflicted by their need to support U.S. troops in Iraq, even as they know their President took them to war under false pretenses.

America is a country of 300 million people. Canada is a tenth of the size. The people of the United States barely know we exist. When we identify ourselves to them, they are polite but patronizing as one would patronize a tourist in a hospitality environment.

They equate Canada to cold weather, natural resources and barren territories. They live in an isolated world where much of their media serves as a filter for what’s happening around the globe and fails to inform in terms of the reality of events in the world.

They’re great people but they come from a much different place.

Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and business owner operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic.