Sometimes it takes a pandemic to show what a people is really made of.

It's tempting to always compare Canada to the US, it really is. But, can you blame me/us? They're so big, they're right there, and on a clear day if I'm down by the lake, I can see it. Everybody and their dog in the Himalayan foothills and the jungles of Africa has heard of them, but the vast majority of non-Americans will never see the place. I can, and I have, and I've spent a lot of time there. So there.

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Our two countries have official mottoes.

• Canada: A Mari Usque Ad Mare (or, "From Sea to Sea")
• The USA: In God We Trust

Isn't it strange how, in the place of official church-and-state separation, the divine -- and, specifically, one in particular -- has found its way into so many things? (Then again, we have "God" in our anthem, or at least one version of it.) Anyway, I digress.

We also have many unofficial mottoes, but there's a pair that are fairly comparable.

• The USA: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
• Canada: Peace, Order and Good Government

This US motto was probably inspired by philosopher John Locke who, in the late 1600s, wrote about "life, liberty and estate." Just before the US declared independence, Virginia was drafting its state Declaration of Rights and expressed that people should have "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

I think those two are pretty obviouly connected, but it's telling that Virginia really expanded the bit on property: as Howard Zinn has noted, the people who led the early USA were almost entirely rich land- and slave-owners, and it could be interpreted that independence from the UK was merely the best way for them to get richer. So, much like Snoop Dogg, their minds were on their money, and their money was on their minds.

As the story goes, when the actual Declaration of Independence was being written, both Ben Franklin and Tom Jefferson wanted to downplay the whole "property" thing. Perhaps they thought that Virginia could be a nice beta-version of the Declaration for the new union of pretty-independent states.

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 And now, the religious bit.

I really don't think the notion of the "Protestant work ethic" can be overstated in the whole ethos of the US, both in the past and the present. Since the Puritans were a kind of 17th Century "extreme Protestantism" sect, and they set up a good deal of the US in the first place, it's natural that their values would infuse the young country-in-the-making.

Roman Catholocism had talked about doing good deeds, of course; not just tithing to help support the Church, but loving thy neighbour and all that jazz as a sure ticket into Heaven. Since you have the ability to do good things in your time here on Earth, it's up to you to actually do them -- or not -- and if you want a sweet-ass afterlife,* you really should get your act together.

* Okay, afterlife real-talk here. Let's say I get into Heaven; it's a longshot, but anything's possible. Now, let's say there are all sorts of "sinful" things I've secretly wanted to do here on Earth, but I was restrained from doing so because of a fear of a lousy eternity. Would I be able to do them in Heaven? Could I see someone I didn't like back on Earth, blink three times and have a gun appear in my hand, and put hot lead between their angelic eyes? If Heaven truly is a wonderful place, I should be able to pull this off despite a Commandment ruling this out, right?

Calvinism, on the other hand, is really a bummer. Turns out that, the moment you're born, it's already determined whether or not you're making it to Heaven, and you've gotta spend your life figuring out whether or not you were chosen. Since being frugal and working hard were thought to be features of those who were going to make it, you'd better do those things during your life just to make sure you really were one of the select group.

So, in a quaint 18th Century kind of way, working hard means you're upping your chances of salvation.

Simmer that in a pot for a couple hundred years, and you get the late-20th/early-21st Century perversion known as "prosperity Gospel." Slick-talking evangelists like Joel Osteen use this as their bread and butter, and it has some weird conclusions:

1. If you work hard, you'll make it to Heaven.
2. Working hard in a capitalist society means you're going to get a lot of money and possessions.
3. If you have a lot of money and possessions, that means God has chosen you to be a success.

This, of course, misses a huge point: western society is not a meritocracy. Working hard and playing by the rules (both God's and Caesar's) doesn't guarantee anything. In the US, you can be working sixty hours a week at the only job you can find, and if you get sick, you're toast because you don't have health insurance through said lousy job. You've worked hard and played by the rules, and don't look now, but you're screwed. It's a little less drastic in Canada, but it's shades of the same thing, for sure.

Osteen is the kind of preacher who'll fill an arena -- namely, the one the Houston Rockets played in for decades -- and get millions more viewers on TV. At the outset he has a soothing voice, upbeat personality and a perma-smile. Not bad, right? Pretty charismatic.

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Prosperity Theology is a lot more popular in the US than it is in Canada -- but, don't fool yourself, he still gets on major TV networks here on Sunday mornings. It really seems to nail all three parts of the States' unofficial motto, not unlike another trinity that comes to mind presently.

1. Life: everlasting, baby!
2. Liberty: God's on your side, you're free to do whatever you want.
3. Pursuit of happiness: Osteen's a happy guy, maybe I can be happy too?

There is a flipside to both the Protestant work ethic and its mangled, weirdly-evolved offspring of Prosperity Theology, and while it's never explicitly stated (both in common parlance and in Scripture), it's infused into American society without question. The logic goes like this:

• If you work hard, good things will happen to you.
• But... that must mean that, if bad things happen to you, you didn't work hard enough. 
• If you didn't work hard, that means you're destined for Hell, and you were destined all along, weren't you?

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I see two conclusions coming out of this for American society.

The first deals with health care. The US is (in)famous for having private health insurance for most people, as it has let the free market do its thing. By nearly any international measure it's a catastrophic failure: it costs twice what any other developed country's system does, and its citizens live shorter lives, on average. Plus, Americans complain about their health insurance companies incessantly. You'd think they'd put two and two together and nationalize the thing, wouldn't you?

The second part is a certain resignation among some Americans about the novel coronavirus and the illness that it could bring. Lately there are people who are tired of restrictions and regulations -- not the people that stormed the Michigan state capitol back in April, mind you; I'm talking about people that have been doing their duty over the past few months and are just tired of it all -- and are of the mindset of, "Well, if you're gonna get sick, you're gonna get sick, there's nothing you can do about it, so screw these masks."

So, put these two things together: a tenuous health care system for most people, plus some people have just given up entirely. Enter the pro-business, anti-regulation lobbies who are more than happy to jump on this, and now you've opened the door to jam all sorts of terrible things into the US system which might take decades to undo.

If you haven't given up, this must be an incredibly frustrating thing to see among your friends and neighbours. "Hey, at least I'm trying over here! Quit screwing this up for the rest of us!" I have American friends who are definitely in this group.

In conclusion: keep the border closed.