I say this as a once-proud Canadian: fuck you, Canada. Stephen Harper and his brigade of destroyers, again? A fucking majority? What could you possibly have been thinking, Canada? What the hell is wrong with you?
I know you’re not completely stupid, Canada. In the half of my 45 years that I lived there, I met lots of people who weren’t stupid. My mom, who’s mayor of my hometown: she’s one smart lady. But I’m not going to ask her if she voted Conservative. I fear her response would break my heart.
I don’t want you to apologize to me, Canada. That would be silly. But it will be heartbreaking when you come to me weeping, with fresh bruises across your face, because you believed him when he said he wouldn’t hit you any more, and you went back. Again. For the sake of the kids.
I don’t want to feel a tingle of schadenfreude when I see the smoking, cratered economic wasteland after the Great Real Estate Disaster that is coming, Canada, your people shambling and blistered, draped in scorched rags, clutching the tattered paperwork for your 40 year mortgages, or for you to learn a lesson about greed from that.
I don’t want you to be the nation I so loved when I was a boy, the country I was so proud of.
I don’t want you to wake up and realize that by emulating the worst, you become the worst. America’s so exciting, so vibrant, they have the best drugs and the shapeliest fake tits, the shiniest teeth and the porn, have you seen some of that crazy porn they make down there? And the great big servings of curly fries? Holy shit! Everybody loves America, except that Bin Laden creep, and hell, they finally took him down Rambostyle, right? So all aboard the USA train!
Those boring frigid Scandinavian countries, where they have the highest standard of living, the best education and health care, the lowest infant mortality rate, even — who needs all that? Who wants to be like them, all dour and shivering and strong and secure and beloved, when America! is just next door and has that flashy car and gold tooth?
I don’t want you to look in the mirror and realize you’ve become a disappointment, an also-ran, a minor-key sidekick to a lumbering misguided giant, a mockery of the great men and women who built you. I don’t need you to understand that the toxic Network News American Political Buzzword Culture that has colonized your media and infected your discourse has distracted your people and corrupted your leaders and is destroying you. I don’t want you to embrace the principles that made you great. I don’t want you to take a step back and think about what kind of nation you want to be, and then live up to those principles.
No, wait, what the hell am I saying?
I want all of those things.
But it looks less likely with every turn of the screw that I’ll ever be seeing them.
Well, I expected that the election was enough to jar you out of your quiet place and produce a good rant. I’m still sputtering incoherently with indignation and disbelief, so thanks for saving me some time by publishing this lovely, concise diatribe.
Consider yourself lucky you don’t live here. I have to keep resisting the urge to grab my fellow Richmond residents by the throat and shouting “are you fucking stupid?” in their faces.
It almost mollifies my righteous fury that you two smart and noble ladies are the first folks to leave a comment on this one.
Almost.
You know, I feel bad for you guys, but I’m getting tire of seeing America blamed for your election results, as if we control your thoughts. Harper is Canadian, and comes out of a Canadian conservative tradition and you guys just elected him for a third time. Ironically, Ignatieff got destroyed in large part due to being seen as too “American”, so which is it? Is the US the heart of Conservative darkness or engaged in a secret plot to control the Liberal party?
Hey, if Canada does go to shit, you could always come to Vermont – all the curly fries you could want, plus gay marriage and (soon) single-payer health care.
Oh, I totally get that, Sapph. It’s not so much blaming America per se (although that’s certainly part of it, and it’s nice and easy to get ranty about, so I lean that way readily), it’s blaming Canadians and Canadian politicians in particular who think Canada should be more like America.
Despite the prevailing winds of opinion, which hold that Canadians are Americans who add occasional diphthongs where they shouldn’t be, Canada and America, deep in their secret hearts, could not be more different.
A book I always recommend for those who are interested in what that really means, and what being Canadian really means (at least for many of us), is John Ralston Saul’s Reflections Of A Siamese Twin. I recommend Saul’s non-fiction work to pretty much everyone, always, but this one deals specifically with the knotty heart of Canadianness, and is a work of great insight.
I reckon.
Now look what you made me do — I had a nice ranty head of steam built up, and you made me get all cool and reasonable. 😉
Well, I just ordered a copy of that book, as I’ve always been a bit interested in Canadian identity, and it looks like a good place to start. I guess I’ve always thought Canadians were more like Americans than they want to believe, so it will be interesting to see how this book challenges that.
I will watch with interest what new laws Harper puts into place with his new majority. I’ve heard about a new crime bill that imposes a wide range of mandatory minimums, especially for drug crimes? If true, that is unfortunate – even the US is moving away from such a hard line on drug crime, and the US Supreme Court has, over the last few years, repeatedly ruled against sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums.
/facepalm
That is all I could do after the Canada signed its oppression warrant. Harper as his con-zombies will destroy everything Canada worked so hard for so long to achieve.
I have started looking for what country I would like to be a part of, because apparently the one I love just gave itself a massive head wound. It sounds rather excessive, but I was doing this weeks before the election results fearing the impending assholery the electorate would exude. They all voted with their fear and greed… money, money, money, it’s pathetic.
So you know what? I will take my extensive education and expertise to another more deserving country that has more respect for itself. I’m sorry, but I’m choosing to end my relationship with that abusive, lying spouse. Congratulations Canada, I’ve been born and raised to hate you.
Here we are a month later Stavros and I’m still seething. I know exactly how you feel about this. Our home and native land is truly fucked for good this time.
I hate obama for pretending to be liberal. I hate the US for what they are. I’m stuck here, I hate that too.
How heartening! Someone else feels as rotten about their country going to the dogs. Gone.
p.s. I still remember those wonderful “steenking badges.”
True story: I was just reading (yet another article) about another Stephen Harper science cut, and my temper flared, and I had one of those fuck-everything moments. In a pathetic venting attempt, I typed “fuck you” into Google. This page was the tenth(ish) result. The pathetic venting attempt was a lucky shot. Nice one. Good rant, too.
Canada is a free country. We want nothing but peace in this world. We want to be able to do what we want to do, according to the laws put infront of us. We aren’t stubborn, cocky, and arrogant like the US. They feel so strongly like theyre the best, so we let them. Why do all the hard work when doing it on ur own means the US will not only steal our ideas, but use them against us. So we let them create businesses, we let them come into canada, yet they still feel like we dont deserve more money even when revenue is going above the US stores. The americans want to run the entire world and we as Canadians know that. We dont have the money or the population to say anything about that. So what do you want us to do? We as Canadians want a perfect world, where theres peace, happiness, friendship, family bonding and of course freedom. But, american companies as well as other world wide countries, use us like a rag doll and DONT GIVE A FUCK about us.
Born in Canada has made me into the best person i can be personality wise. I can go to any country and get along with snybody i meet. I have strong beliefs that the majority of countries out there dont give a FUCK about anyone but themselves.
So in the end, the rest of you should look at urselves as dissapointments, we never wanted your help, uou invaded and told us what to do. Cudos to you, you must be SO much cooler and better than us. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, we don’t need no criticism, we dont need any advice. The guy who wrote this must be a true hick straight from texas, cuz if you really lived in Canada you would be patriotic to us, cuz there is NO BETTER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD and every single person in the world knows it deep down inside whether or not they want to admit it.
If my spelling bad, its cuz i wrote it in 5 minutes cuz i was pissed off when i read it.