Love letters and nasty notes from people we didn't even think knew we existed
By ROY MacGREGOR
UPDATED AT 12:59 PM EST Monday, Nov 8, 2004
It's no picnic, let me tell you, living in this open-concept high school called Canada.
You're up; you're down.
You're covered in zits; you're the hottest thing in the halls.
They laugh at you; they admire you.
They ignore you; they want you.
You just never know, as you lie there at night alternately hugging and chewing on your pillow, what the morning will bring.
This weekend alone brought love notes and nasty notes from people you didn't even think knew you existed.
Howard Gensler of The Philadelphia Daily News pleads, "Adopt us, O Canada," calling for a Second American Revolution in which Canada gets all the blue states that went to Democratic Senator John Kerry, the presidential choice by a wide margin for Canadians, and the United States keeps all the red states that decided to keep Republican President George W. Bush in office.
(Any student with a home computer surely received that redrawn map of North America that shows Canada sitting like some magisterial eagle, wings hanging down both coasts, over a compressed block called "Jesusland," a rather obvious knock at the religious, moral right that is being blamed for the Bush re-election.)
The Philadelphia columnist's idea is to create the world's sole superpower out of empty Canada and those adjoining states that wanted a Democrat in the White House.
Canada would offer open arms and, presumably, open minds, in exchange for such things as working submarines and helicopters.
The Daily News offers better schools -- "all eight Ivy League universities" -- and even suggests the Green Bay Packers set their eye on the Grey Cup. In exchange for flu shots, which are already free in many parts of the country, Canada would get Broadway, the auto industry and Arnold Schwarzenegger as "a swell Canadian premier."
(And, we presume, Hillary Clinton to replace Paul Martin once his incomprehensible-to-the-newcomers minority government falls.)
We haven't been wooed in such a manner since The Economist declared us "cool," which came hard on the heels of being called names you wouldn't even use in a schoolyard for not joining the U.S. war effort, which reminded us all of when South Park was singing "Blame Canada" for just about everything.
See what I mean about it being like high school? Up? Down? You're hot; you're not. Proof that we are hot, at least over this weekend, was said to lie in those 115,016 disenchanted Americans who visited the Canadian immigration website the day of Bush's acceptance speech.
There were even pulse-racing accounts of another website (http://www.marryanamerican.ca) that purports to connect Americans who simply can't take any more of this right-wing crap to unhitched Canadians who can, automatically, offer citizenship in that once "cool" country that is suddenly the hottest thing in North America. "You can help," the site pleads. "Open your heart, and your home. Marry an American."
Sexy American liberals, we are told, are so desperate to escape that "no good American will be left behind." The site even offers up profiles -- spoofs, surely -- of Canadians eager to mate with the righteous Left, including one single Canadian woman who says she doesn't shave her legs but does "a wicked Joni Mitchell impersonation." Even the Toronto Star joined in, suggesting "there might be a way for Canada to take advantage and attract America's brightest and reverse the brain drain it has suffered for decades."
All this party talk, of course, brought out the spoilers.
"You don't want to go there," advises Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam. "It sounds so alluring. Good beer. Cheap Viagra. Hardly any crime.
"Friendly, if somewhat ineffectual, people. . . . Secure borders, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense."
But, Beam cautions his fellow Americans, don't forget that "Canada is full of losers like you." Health care might be free, he says, but "you get what you pay for." If you want to work in government you have to speak French. There's no hockey and, "You think you're living in a high-tax state right now? Hahahahahaha." In the efforts of harmony, therefore, this high-school graduate (okay, so it took an extra year) has a new suggestion.
First, all those disenchanted liberals should take Alex Beam's advice and stay put right where they are in all those sad blue states.
Instead, what is needed is not the Second American Revolution the Daily News is calling for, but a new and full "North American Revolution" in which immigrants from the red states, Bush Country, head for Canada.
And not just to Canada but specifically to Ottawa, where they might ultimately convince the ruling class that real people live west of the Mississippi and Red Rivers and that, contrary to Carolyn Parrish's belief, one need not necessarily have suffered "profound psychological damage" to have a different world view.
The beauty of this is simple.
If enough conservatives can be drained from the red states, then 2008 should belong to John Kerry, which would supposedly please most Canadians.
And as for Ottawa, who would even notice a little more political confusion?
rmacgregor@globeandmail.ca |
