I'm sitting here being a Canadian. I do that most days. Some days I choose to be an American.
Some years ago I was in Texas. At a rest stop a couple of Texans spotted my prairie diphthong, my absolute lack of accent, and asked me where I was from. Minnesota? Wisconsin? Iowa. I finally admitted I was from Canada. Where abouts? They asked. I told them Edmonton. They'd heard of the West Edmonton Mall, wanted to know if the stories they'd been told about the world's largest shopping mall were true.
Now as it happens I was well prepared to answer their questions since I'd paid my way through graduate school by, in part, working as a tour guide at the mall. They just couldn't wrap their brain around the concept. Oh they understood the idea of a big shopping mall, filled with wild excesses, like full-size pirate ships, submarines, and a hotel with rooms where the bed is in the back of a pick-up truck. They just couldn't understand why it wasn't in Texas. My two new friends explained to me, rather as if I were retarded, that Canadians just don't have the cojones to do a project like that. I didn't have the heart to tell them that Canada is slowly taking over the US.
Canada keeps exporting it's best and brightest to the US. We use double speak and call it a brain drain. But every Canadian is in on the joke. The truth is they are there to Canuckize unwitting Americans. Meanwhile the US keeps sending some of it's best and brightest to Canada where they get turned into Canadians.
Think we aren't engaged in a war? Consider Vancouver almost stole the film industry from Hollywood before someone woke up. But we Canadians are very tricky. While Hollywood is defending itself from our frontal attack we are busy infiltrating. Every year more Canadians work in the film industry, in all of America's cultural industries. We are taking over, one talent at a time.
It's a classic confrontation between a mighty Goliath and an incredibly meek David. I can't quite figure out who I'm rooting for. That's because I have a foot in both camps.
My duality is an accident of birth, but runs very deep. Part of my family came to the United States on our own ships and settled up and down the east coast in the sixteen hundreds. Another branch were brought to the US as slaves to work the plantations. But my Canadian roots also run back eight generations. I find myself conflicted on many key issues because in reality Canadians and Americans agree on very little.
Take the war on terrorism. Canadians, in our typical fashion, have reservations about responding to violence with violence. We like to negotiate our enemies into submission. Canadians will analyze any situation endlessly, we are a nation of policy wonks. Our analysis of the terrorist threat leads us to believe--we like collective thought--that ultimately no country can be safe unless issues of poverty and social injustice are confronted and resolved.
We Americans on the other hand believe that safety lies in the rule of law. In this time of stress we want strong and certain leadership. It seems to us the best way to deal with the terrorist threat is to cut off the beast's head. If terrorists are relentlessly hunted down, the states that support them punished in every way imaginable, then they can't ever again threaten our shores. Policy debate at this time is unpatriotic and counter-productive.
Though I should point out in passing that Canadians also have a much firmer grasp on the nature of war than Americans do. We have no problem with the concept of causalities. We have no doubts that war is about killing people and risking being killed. In fact, we don't get why Americans make such a big deal out of trying to fight a clean, casualty free war. There ain't no such thing. If you are going to do something, it's best to do it with your whole heart and soul, that's the Canadian way.
We Americans seem determined to play both good cop and bad cop. And to do both at the same time. Drop bombs and food. It seems to us that we have a responsibility for ensuring the safety of the entire world. A solo superpower version of noblesse oblige. So we can spank the bad guys but not too hard.
Canadians tend to think that Americans are wonderful but that America is horribly passive-aggressive. Most Americans, to the extent they think about those odd people who live between them and Alaska, them and Russia, them and the North Pole, think Canadians are very polite and Canada is weak. And so it goes, and I'm caught in the middle.
Where will it all end? Ultimately Canada and the US will merge into one seamless whole. And because Canada has been preparing for that day for over a hundred years it will dominate the union. The result will be a country that thinks first and reacts later, that negotiates endlessly, but if you just won't get with the program we will nuke you.
Wait, didn't Teddy Roosevelt call that "speak softly and carry a big stick?"
