O (You Aren’t Fleeing to) Canada

Every day that Americans agonize over abortion, decry the war in Ukraine or rake their fingers bloody over the brick wall of guns is another 24 hours closer to the day Republicans try to steal the 2024 presidential election, with better odds this time. More pliant secretaries of state. More true believers waiting in state legislatures. A hyper-partisan Supreme Court.

And as much as I’m concerned about women’s rights, Eastern European atrocities, school massacres, etc., those issues pale compared to the prospect of the United States no longer being a functioning democracy. Where a candidate like Donald Trump can lose, as he did in 2020, by 7 million votes — quite a lot, really — yet insist he won and, far worse, be supported by an enthusiastic mob of leering lackeys and blind bootlickers.

With that in mind, I posted on Facebook a chilling column by the Washington Post’s Max Boot. “We’re in danger of losing our democracy. Most Americans are in denial.”

The very first comment ended: “The outlook is bleak. I’m going to study a move to Canada.”

Again with the Canada.

The “Ho for Canada!” crowd has to realize they represent a vein of weak, selfish, cowardice that is among the worst qualities of the Left, almost as bad as the subservient, anti-democracy terror that causes supposedly free Americans to sprawl before seditionists like medieval peasants groveling at the passing of a nobleman on horseback.

First, have you been to Canada? It isn’t free; it’s empty. A nation a little larger, in area, than the United States with 1/9th the population. California has more people.

Second, if the point is we are trying to avoid letting the United States devolve into the white fantasyland of Republican dreams, well, some 80 percent of Canada is white. I’m surprised Republicans aren’t mooning about escaping there. The national health care system must put them off.

Yes, I understand there’s a “Why-didn’t-they-get-out-when-they-could?” dynamic. All those good German Jews who stuck around as the nation went insane in the 1930s, hoping for the best when they should have been on the next boat out of Bremen.

But we aren’t anywhere near that, and if Democrats can find a spine, maybe we never will be. Pre-emptive surrender is not a success strategy. The United States isn’t 1938 Germany. It’s 1931. There is still time to avoid the catastrophe. But that takes work. And people.

The lesson of Hitler is that tyrants don’t stop until you stop them. And frankly, I’d rather give 100% to saving democracy here than have one eye on the door, hoping to fall back to Canada. Where fascism will also come knocking, since it’s popping up everywhere.

When Marine Le Pen, who pockets bundles of blood soaked currency from Vladimir Putin, can snag 41% in the recent French presidential election, you know fascism is on the march. There’s nowhere to run; it will find you.

Don’t let those who would burn down America to enjoy the pretty glow be the only ones fully committed to their cause. Anyone who says they’re going to Canada, especially now, deserves Canada. Fine, go. Be a Canadian.

For the rest of us Americans, blessed with still being here, the plan is to stay and make sure this country remains a place worth living in. Now is not the time to abandon ship. Now is the time to chain yourself to an oar.

When Alexander the Great sailed his army across the Dardanelles Strait in 334 B.C. and landed in Persia to battle Darius II, he ordered his men to burn their ships.

“We will either return home in Persian ships, or we will die here.”

Win or die. That’s a plan. And we have an advantage. We are home and not going anywhere, and refuse to cede our country to a bunch of whining chronic liars and anti-factual losers who know they’ll keep losing unless they corrupt the mechanism of voting.

Anybody who has no stomach, sure, run to Canada, get out while you can. We will prevail without you. But remember another big problem with running to Canada is that is you end up in Canada, and trust me, as a person whose been there, that gets old fast.