bladeracer wrote:I do wonder if much of today's violence doesn't stem indirectly from the constant ingress of authorities into controlling every single thing we do, or even think nowadays. One thing that has changed in the past century is regulation of every possible thing - maybe there's a link.
Where is this? Americans living on one side of the street under US law and Canadians on the other? I didn't realise there were towns straddling the border up there. Must be a nightmare for law enforcement? I've heard stories about Albury-Wodonga having NSW laws on one side of the river and Victorian on the other. There was even a homicide across the river.
I think it would be indirect, but certainly today we have this hyper focus on rules and regs and laws yet we've minimized people taking personal consequences for their actions and it's chalked up as a person "depressed", "oppressed", "has a syndrome/illness/disability". We've also turned the abnormal into normal and the normal into abnormal. Compared to 30 years ago it seems we have a very stressed society as a result.
Yep up in Vermont once you get close to the border(within 20 miles or so), a lot of the names you see are French and you might hear French spoken as well. At one point several of the towns were essentially one town, people came and went, went back and forth across the border every day for business, people intermarried, etc. Now with the security state after 9/11, more rules were imposed and then when Covid came and Canada turned into an authoritarian police state, the border has been shut for two years and it's kinda killed these towns. Also at one time many back roads ran across the border with no border crossings at these places. Back in the 1990s I used to get into Canada with a drivers license, no passport.
I was in Derby Line, Vermont on Caswell Ave. There is the famous library there that part of the building is in Canada, half in the USA. The houses on the north side of the street, either the house is part in Canada or part of the yard is resulting in homeowners paying property taxes in both countries. If not dual citizens it has resulted in some citizens unable to go in their back yard or have to wall off part of their house. When you drive down this street you are watched by the US Border Patrol and the Canada Border Service. The border crossing at Stanstead Quebec here at Derby Line is closed on the Canadian side and has been for two years.
Another famous street is Canusa Ave. where the road is on the Canadian border, houses on the south side of the street are in the USA.
It's an extremely bizarre situation as it was probably easier for a westerner to get into East Germany to visit back in the day compared to a US citizen getting into Canada these days, legally that is. You can walk right across the border illegally both ways because there is no physical barrier, however if you get caught on the Canadian side you might be looking at fines up to $50k and prison.