Please make sure you leave your pleated, khaki Dockers™ at home:
(Courtesy Slate)
And this week’s winner of the “You Talk Like a Fag and Your Shit’s All Retarded” Idiocracy Award:
Joe the Douchebag
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Clever/UncleverNovember 2nd, 2008 | Categories: Bad Behaviour, Canada v. USA, Celebrities, Sarcasm, Stupidity |
 6 comments6 comments to Clever/Unclever |
June 2010 |
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Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 B Stewart. All rights reserved. |
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When I move north, do I get to keep the Mountie with the gift basket? (Bad pun intended)
What do think of the “move to Canada” response? It infuriates me when presented as a “I’ll show the U.S. how angry I am!” thing, because: Like the U.S. cares? It does not. But it would be disingenuous to pretend like SOME of the reason I live in a country where I can’t vote is that it offers me greater benefits than the country where I do vote. I mean, it’s not ONLY the crumbling beauty of the architecture that keeps me here. Czechs don’t seem to mind me here, but I wonder what you as a Canadian think when you hear the “move to Canada” idea presented.
That’s a very good question, Anne, and I can really answer only “as a Canadian” who happens to be me. Given the apparent liberal bias of those who threaten to (peacefully) invade our borders, I don’t have much of a problem — except for the pleated, khaki DockersTM thing — if they were actually emboldened enough to do what they threaten. Perhaps it would change Canadians’ peculiar tendency to consider mediocrity a high-water mark for performance.
On the other hand, while I wholeheartedly prefer living in Canada to living in the U.S. — and I’ve done the latter, for a few months at a time — it’s more than Canada’s harsher climate which might prove vexing to the emigrant American. Our overwhelmingly egalitarian attitude would frustrate the entrepreneur, I’m sure, as would our inability to support anything new and exciting as more than a passing fad.
I get your point, though, that Canada is seen by many Americans as a last-resort response to hard-right, christianist Republicanism, that even Canada would be barely better than such a regime. I take mild offense — and only mild, because I’m Canadian, after all — at that notion.
Like Czechoslovakia, Canada has more — much more — going for it than its not-America-ness. And knowing I can see my doctor and have the best health care on the planet without going bankrupt, knowing I can get medical marijuana should I need or want it (and the government allows it because it’s the right thing to do), and knowing I can get married to Champ if we decided we wanted to and we’d be protected by the government and not prohibited by it… well, I know where I’d rather live.
Instead of moving to Canada, I kind of dig the plan proposed by Scott Jacobson of Vanity Fair. In short, rather than move to Canada, liberals should move to Red States in enough numbers to colonize and shift the voting demographics.
Given the looser gun laws in those states, defending oneself from Good Ol’ Boys trying to shoot your windows out while you listen to Terry Gross shouldn’t be a problem.
Actually, Brett, what appeals to me about Canada is all the good things you have listed and more. I really don’t consider Canada second runner up and actually I think as far as a country with a conscience and a sense of doing what is right, Canadians have it all over the U.S.
Honestly, the only thing holding me back is finding a job so that I would not be a drag on society. If I find something it’s time to cash in on Dad’s citizenship and leave this sorry country behind me.
Joe the Log Cabin Republican is more like it…