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Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's avatar

From a reader named Robin - Not a hockey fan, but I agree. It's not the players or the fans that're the problem here. We're not only being divided as Americans. They're trying to divide us from our friends to the North. We're friends with Canada 🇨🇦. Friends with Mexico, Denmark, Panama, and most all of the countries around the world. They're trying to, not only normalize hatred in the US, but around the world. You see, it makes it easier for them to invade the countries of our friends. DO NOT BE BRAINWASHED TO HATE! Unless you hate what people like tRump and Elon and the dark, quiet entities are trying to do to ALL of us.

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A Rob's avatar

💯 Canada is our friend and ally just as is Europe and Australia. The common denominator always seems to be divide and weaken by Trump and his colluders. Remember Autocrats and dictators are not our friends and only want to see our Country dismantled and destroyed.

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Wendy Arnold's avatar

very true. I agree 100%

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Jonathan Gellman's avatar

I read your thoughts and the replies with one faint hope: that the booing is just an escape valve for frustration and is is limited to national anthems.Indeed if music lovers at hockey games boo national anthems they’re probably exercising a form of critical judgment as those anthems rarely reflect the best music to come from their countries of origin.

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Wendy Arnold's avatar

it is a protest against Trump's comments

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Wendy Arnold's avatar

Trump divides to conquer to control the narrative. Canada is great. Canada must defend itself from Trump's actions to take their country. American citizens themselves, need to protect themselves from poverty, illhealth, and homelessness. We are all stronger together.

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Anna Oba's avatar

This Canadian thanks you so much for your words of kindness. Hate is so destructive and can take hold at alarming speed. I know so, so many Americans do not take Canadian booing personally but instead, are as alarmed as we are that the leader, in arguably the most powerful position in the world, is spouting such dangerous rhetoric. Having said all that, Go Canada! 😏🏒

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Kathleen Litterer's avatar

I think Trump’s slamming almost everything and his lies have opened the floodgates to being civil. When our President calls people names and says whatever he wants , it’s hard to teach especially children to be respectful.

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Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's avatar

Children will listen. And adults do too. They feel they have license to say whatever they want whenever they want. We need to stand up to it.

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Kathleen Litterer's avatar

Do we stand up to it? I don’t see media calling Trump out!!

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Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's avatar

Not nearly enough. After learning the hard way last time, they seem to have once again developed an aversion to the term “liar.” too many euphemisms and niceties.

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Kathleen Litterer's avatar

But they are allowing him to continue to cow everyone. Someone needs to open up about all the lies and lots of what he says is just made up.

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Mark Statman's avatar

Rabbi—love the stranger is the most poignant and, for me, one of the teachings most at the heart of how I hope to live my life (it goes along with my goals of combining love, social justice, and, because I’m a poet, beauty). It is easy to love my family, my friends, my community. But the ones I don’t know? The other? Haven’t I (we) so often been the other?

I officially became a Mexican citizen last March (so a dual national of the US and Mexico). I view my northern country with a sense of despair, my country of residence with hope. My president here is a Jewish woman climate scientist who was part of a group that won the Nobel Peace Prize. My president there?

Tonight I’ll watch my Knicks host the Bulls.

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Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's avatar

Congratulations on your dual citizenship. You're in a good position to give some needed perspective to those of us up here. Don't be a stranger, as they say. Keep us posted

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Mark Statman's avatar

Ah—but I do, Rabbi! See my A Poet in Mexico substack! It appears every Tuesday and Friday at 8 am Oaxaca time! My schwarze bupkes post in January might make you laugh.

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Barbara Guariglio's avatar

What would you have to boo about? Our neighbor and ally who had always stood by us? Because “they started it”? How very childish. Ask yourself, what do they have to boo about? EVERYTHING!!

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Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's avatar

Pure tit-for-tat. No reason for Americans to boo other than revenge. PM Trudeau was at the game and Fox and I the N.Y. Post of course want to connect him to the booing. The only quote I’ve found from him was this - “We have been given a perfectly legitimate reason to shout out loud that we are Canadian, that we are proud to be so, and that we will remain so for a long time.”

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Barbara Guariglio's avatar

👏💙🇱🇷

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Cheryl Andrews's avatar

Rabbi, Canadians don’t care. We have nothing to be ashamed of

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Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's avatar

But all decent people need to care when standards of decency are degraded.

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Cheryl Andrews's avatar

Can’t argue with that but it is a form of peaceful protest

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Jenny's avatar

Canadian here. I agree with you - and also wish that Canadian fans had not booed at the hockey game recently during the American anthem. There are other ways to express what we are actually feeling. We are not angry at all Americans, only the ones who are leading the insanity and take part in it.

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