Dear Canada

Dear World,

I would like to bring to your attention the plight of my country in hopes that you might find it in your hearts and budgets to come to our assistance.

For over seven years we have suffered under the despotic rule of a government that hijacked our normally fair and free elections process. Since that date our liberties have been drastically eroded and our Constitution has been grossly disfigured. Our private information is subject to search by the government at any time so that we may be accused of “terrorist activities” and jailed indefinitely without access to lawyers or fair trial. Our poor and middle class are being taxed to extinction so that the few, wealthy, friends of government may live an even easier life. We are increasingly forced to “uphold family values”. This means the erosion of women’s rights and the imposition nineteenth century values as we are given no support to raise this family that we are supposed to value. Our old people are left with very little to live off from the system they paid into throughout their lives. We are routinely denied health care by a greedy system that punishes us for being honest about our aches and pains and denies coverage to those who most need it. Far too many of our people go without health care at all because doctor visits are too damned expensive.

We are a country that was founded on freedoms – freedom of speech, press, and religion. But increasingly these power centers in our country are controlled by a select few. An active debate in the public sphere has is increasingly over-run with insipid media content. We may speak but our public voice is drowned out by the cliché messages decided upon by a chosen coterie of propagandists. Our politics suffer the influence of religious groups determined that every one should live according to their values. Indeed, in the name of fighting terrorism, certain religions are even vilified. It seems that the only real freedom we have left is the right to choose what we would like to buy in the many big box stores and shopping malls that have over run our communities.

We have become a shameful laughing stock in the world community, associated with ignorant leadership and extremely poor environmental stewardship. We are known for favoring big business and big box retail rather than valuing our land and the welfare of communities. This is simply not true. Many of us cringe and worry at what is becoming of that fragile fabric of our social and ecological networks. We would like to do better by the environment. We would like to support each other. But at every turn we are rebuffed. We are told “not to hurt business” or “not to impede material progress” or simply “shut up, it’s an election year”.

Our president is despotically dishonest, using lies, manipulation and fear mongering to start wars all over the globe. Thousands of our young people have died (either physically or emotionally) in the name of wars with no justification and no honest provocation.

But we feel the American government has shown that it is viable for one nation to invade another and overthrow a legitimate government entirely without justification or provocation. We believe our government deserves to meet the same fate to save her citizens from inept and selfish rule. Please do not let our young people’s sacrifice in Iraq be in vain. Show that unprovoked war can, indeed, install true democracy.

For all of the above reasons and many more too numerable to outline here, we the citizens of the United States respectfully ask to be invaded by Canada. Please impose your democracy, health care and common sense upon us. Before it’s too late and our sick ones die for lack of health care or our old ones go hungry for lack of social security; before our environment collapses under the weight of ‘progress’ or we, as a nation, perish from our own brainless palaver, please invade us and topple our government.

If you see no value in undertaking this operation let me assure you that, if nothing else, we Americans will make great pets.