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Dear Canada [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-07-09

Dear Canada;

You don’t know me but I’ve known some of the beauty and friendliness that epitomizes my memory of you. The nights I spent in Vancouver, the scenic beauty of Cold Lake, the sprawling metropolis of Toronto and its surrounding farmlands and forests…. I’ve served shoulder to shoulder with members of your armed forces when we would have joint training exercises when I was in the Navy way back in the eighties. This native Texan has even picked up some of your vernacular while serving, visiting and watching Canadian television productions. Red Green, Trailer Park Boys, Letterkenny and Shoresy just to name a few have given me so many hours of entertainment. The last two in that list are the only reason I pay for Hulu, in fact. I’ve fished for salmon in your streams, I’ve had funny and awkward conversations with French speakers in Quebec and I’ve flown in and out of the base/airport on Resolute, far to the north. I love and respect Canada and its people and I always will.

I had been eagerly watching the new Gordie Howe bridge go up, spanning the Detroit River, I was online live when the two sides officially joined and my heart swelled with pride when I saw two steelworkers cross, shake hands and pose for photographs. I was in Vancouver when Canadian Actor Tyler Johnson was born, though of course I was unaware at the time. Now that I’m mostly retired, my plan had been to join my sister in Alaska and to get there by way of driving up through British Columbia, something I’ve wanted to do for these past 38 years, since I saw it’s stunning and majestic mountains from off shore. In fact, to that end about a year and a half ago, I bought a large Honda Pilot, specifically for the road trip.

But then Trump happened…..

Although I didn’t vote for the orange shitgibbon, although I worked as hard as I could to prevent his political re-emergence, and although I’ve made it clear that none of my friends, family and acquaintances who voted for that monster can remain in my life in even the smallest and most tangential way, it’s still partly my responsibility for the current state. The entirely understandable antipathy toward Yanks as you like to call us and our burnt umber despot wanna be is so sad and depressing for me. While I can’t be personally held responsible, I participate in this society that has become so xenophobic and depraved as to elect such a....man. So it’s not my doing but it is my responsibility to clean up the mess.

I’m sorry, Canada. Know that the majority of us have more respect for you than does Trump or his MAGA cult. The idea of you guys becoming the 51st state is revolting to me. Not because we wouldn’t privileged for you to wish to join us or to have you do so, but because the very idea is so blatantly disrespectful and asinine to you and your justifiable pride and national sovereignty. I would sooner you blow up the Gordie Howe bridge than be in any way part of the country that tries to strongarm you into a shotgun wedding between our peoples. I apologize for the rhetoric and the unabashed greed of the Republicans salivating at the idea of turning you into the same kind of dystopian shithole we have become.

I’m also sorry for the more benign yet still deeply disrespectful way some others of us treat you condescendingly, like a small child trying to do big person things. You don’t deserve that kind of crap and those of us who have spent any time at all with Canadians know full well that you are a proud and accomplished nation and a people as diverse as we are and far more civilized about said diversity. I know that racism and xenophobia exist in Canada and that there are politicians who would love nothing more than to follow Trump down the MAGA hole but so far you’ve managed to keep your darker selves under their rocks.

I see Canadians in the comments sections of blogs, news sites and YouTube videos absolutely and justifiably excoriating Yanks due to the words and deeds of some of our ruling cadre but please understand that there are so many more of us who want nothing to do with this regime or the implementation of its wholly diabolical agenda. I don’t know what the near future holds but please remember that while you must distance yourself from your southern neighbors for now, many of us have always appreciated our special relationship and will long for the time when we shared one of the longest and least fortified borders in the world with our good neighbors to the north and won’t rest until we can once again be brothers and sisters of North America. It’s my sincere hope that you will feel the same when it is once again safe for our good relations to resume. I hope that I can take my road trip eventually but even if I can’t, I will always love and miss Canada.

But you can seriously have Ted Cruz back….

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