You know, I'm a pretty positive person in general. I tend to be willing to stick things out, try to make things work. For the last few years I've been watching the rightward drift of the USA with considerable alarm, but I have clung to the idea that surely people will come to their senses eventually.
That idea is becoming harder to hold on to every day. The retirement of Sandra Day O'Conner may just be the final straw for me. Between my friends on the left falling over each other in their rush to concede defeat and argue that we'll just have to accept that Roe is going to be overturned, and my enemies on the right threatening that Bush better not nominate Alberto Gonzales because he's just not conservative enough, I'm about ready to pack up and leave. This is why I held on to my British passport and didn't become an American citizen, folks - I had a queasy feeling that something like this might happen.
I keep telling myself that the wingnuts are in the minority (there are about 25 million of them according to some estimates), but the fact is, minority or not they're running the show. These are not people who see politics as a civilized conversation between reasonable adults, these are people who see politics as the WWF with nuclear weapons, complete with bizarrely exaggerated machismo and a level of staging and fakery that a reasonably intelligent five year old could see through. Not only that, but they seem to have read A Handmaiden's Tale and interpreted it as a how-to book (now retitled Sexism for Dummies). And boy do they love their guns. And hate gay people. And anyone else who's not a married middle-class white man.
I just don't get it. The country is going to hell in a handbasket and hardly anyone seems to notice. The British papers put it well on the day after Bush was "re-elected" (I'm still not convinced that he really won Ohio) - how can 250 million people be so dumb?
Given that Tony Blair seems determined to make London, my old home town, into a prime target for Al Quaeda (Scotland Yard has already foiled 12 cases of attempted terrorism since 2001, and it's only a matter of time before one of them succeeds), I'm not sure that going home is such a great option right now either.
Canada's not really all that cold, right? I can buy some thermals, maybe invest in a good pair of snow boots. I already love hockey. I'm smart and well educated, shouldn't be too hard to find a job. I know some of the words to Oh Canada, or at least enough of them to sing in a drunken haze at sporting events. I look really cute in my winter coat with the furry hood. Think they'll let me in?