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For all the Kerry supporters that threatened to “leave the country if Bush gets reelected,” it is sadly time to pack your bags and pick a destination. There is, however, a silver lining: in a warm show of bipartisanship, several of my Republican friends are offering to drive Democrats to the nearest international airport. Their goodwill is certainly the result of their post-victory elation so you should take advantage of it before it dissipates. (Just for the record, to show my appreciation, I offered to put all of them on a bus to rural Indiana, but they didn’t accept.)
I, for one, never said I would leave the country. Here are six reasons why:
1. I’m used to living here now.
2. I don’t like soccer. And I don’t want to be confused when someone says that they’re going to the football game.
3. I don’t want to contract AIDS.
4. In Europe, for example, the refrigerators are very small and it’s inexplicably hard to find peanut butter.
5. If I leave the country, I will no longer be in America, which means there’s a very good chance that whichever country I’m in will be bombed by America.
6. “Seeing the world” isn’t a motivating factor because there’s a high probablility that by staying here I’ll get drafted into the Army and shipped off to some semi-developed nation that I wouldn’t otherwise have encountered. And it will be “most expenses paid”!!!
So there are obviously a lot of good reasons to remain on American soil.
But
(Quick! Look around and make sure nobody’s looking. We cool? Good.)
Maybe we could secede.
I got this idea while looking at one of those maps that has been separated into red and blue states. Here’s a fun experiment for those of you at home:
Get out a blue marker. Color in the piece of Canada between Michigan and New York. Then fill in a little bit of North Dakota and Wyomontana (I can never remember which state, Wyoming or Montana, is on top) and Northern Idaho so that all the blue is connected.
It looks like the Continental 48 is wearing a bad toupee with uneven sideburns, doesn’t it? Well, guess what. That’s the new Democratic States of America. All the red states can become the Republican States of America.
Question: That’s never going to happen.
Answer: Why not?
Question: Because neither the United States of America nor Canada will go for it.
Answer: You’re wrong.
Listen. Canada will gladly give up a sliver of Ontario to be one country farther away from George W. Bush. In fact, we could probably just take it without asking and I’m pretty sure nobody in the rest of Canada would notice or care. I’ve been to this section of the North. I slept in a Howard Johnson’s in London, Ont. when my Jetta broke down on the way home from Michigan. This was not a place I would ever want to go back to. But it’s very important that we connect all the corners of our new country and since this section of Canada sucks, they’re not going to mind if we take it.
So then the question is: why would the Republican States of America agree to go along with this?
Well, first of all, raise your hand if you care about North Dakidahowyomontana. I just said this out loud in my room and nobody raised their hand, which means that zero percent of the people I polled care about North Dakidahowyomontana. Or they didn’t understand the question. Nevertheless, if I plug this figure (zero) into a complex mathematical formula that was developed specifically for this thought experiment, one finds that approximately 42.7 people in America care about North Dakidahowyomontana and they all live in that very state. But the poll also says that those people will be placated if we just offer to build an Indian casino somewhere between Minnesota and Washington so we shouldn’t have a problem there.
Second of all, the Republican States of America have made it quite clear that they want nothing to do with the Democratic States of America. The D.S.A. is home to people like John Kerry, Hilary Clinton, and free blacks. The D.S.A. hosts fewer NASCAR events. Plus, U.N. Headquarters are in New York, which is within D.S.A. borders. Let me make this clear: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON FOR THE R.S.A. TO WANT TO REMAIN IN THE SAME COUNTRY AS THE D.S.A.
Because this breakup would be mutually beneficial, I don’t see any reason for it to get messy. It will be like an amicable divorce. We’ll keep the dairy cows; you guys keep the corn. We’ll keep the winters; you keep the Crawford, Texas summers. We can share the border control problem because we’ll still have Southern California. We can also share custody over the kids (the kids, in this case, being major professional sports and Wal-Mart). And each country gets its own Disney resort.
There is no reason to have a civil war. As I’ve already stated, the R.S.A. is probably going to be happy to see us go. Also, WE don’t own guns, YOU do. Also, fighting scares us.
It is, however, understandable to be a little wary of the R.S.A. Many Northerners will probably be worried that the R.S.A. will try to bully us like a big fifth-grader pushing around a spectacled nerd. The bully wants the nerd’s lunch money. The nerd will try diplomacy. The bully will pretend to understand what diplomacy means. They’ll shake hands. Then the nerd will turn away, satisfied, and the bully will smack him on the back of the head. The nerd’s glasses will fall off and the bully will steal his lunch money.
Question: Was that a metaphor?
Answer: Yes.
Question: For what?
Answer: For Bush dropping a nuclear weapon on Philadelphia.
Question: Oh.
But we must have faith that the secession will go smoothly. Picture the utopia that could be formed. Our government would be like the U.S. model but we would have health care for everyone. Maybe we’d even have more than two political parties. Plus, there’d be lots of free stuff for first-time citizens. And we would have Hawaii, which is supposed to be a very nice place to visit. Sure, we would miss out on some natural resources like oil and offensive linemen, but it shouldn’t be too hard to import these products.
You can think of my idea as radical, but look at the options:
1. Stay in America and be embarrassed anytime one of your friends, like Australia or Sweden, comes over for dinner.
2. Move to some other country like you said you would. Let’s face it, other countries aren’t that cool. But on the bright side, you have more options now. Afghanistan and Iraq are now officially open for business and I’ve heard you can get a great deal on a cave.
3. Secede.
Think it over and get back to me.
I think we can make a great nation.
(I call first president!)
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adam@theadamwhite.com |
