Contrary to Trumpelstiltskin’s assertion that many Canadians wish that Canada would become the 51st state of the U.S., there may actually be one or two who are stupid enough or ignorant enough to wish for Canada to be absorbed into a country with endemic violence, racism, the pathological misogyny of the anti-abortion movement, a health care “system” which is of benefit only to the insurance companies which control it, etc. The list of U.S. deficiencies and malignities could go on and on. On the other hand there are many citizens of the U.S. who wish that they could become Canadian and live under Canadian conditions. Rather than Canada becoming the 51st state, perhaps Canada could acquire new provinces by annexing the former states of New York and those grouped under the name of New England, of Washington and Oregon and California and a few other geographically scattered states. What is left then of the U.S. would quickly devolve into Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead, or even into something worse than that.
Finally, perhaps the best response to Trumpelstiltskin’s ravings is to quote from “America”, a poem in Allen Ginsberg’s book “Howl and other poems”: “Go fuck yourself with your atomic bomb.”
Harvey Abramson
