Back from Vancouver

Without being unpatriotic, you understand, what I detest about America is the sheer loudness of the brand, the insistence that no other brand counts, that we are the only way to go. This has only got worse since the fall of communism. Americans are offended that anyone else has a national anthem praising the beauties or splendors or achievements of their native land - that they admire their own movies, music, food, mode of living more than they admire ours. They are offended when any other nation wins an Olympic gold medal, because that means some other country's anthem will be played. They want the whole world turned into Disneyland with only one brand of coffee and one sort of hamburger and one sort of cola. One temperature. One weather. They want the whole world to be Chevrolets which, gas-guzzling aside, offends me because I think it's boring. I think a world with Packards and Studebakers and Rolls-Royces and Volkswagens is more interesting. And if it were Fords, they could be any color as long as it was red, white and blue. And fast food is terrible and the nine-to-five work day is inhuman; it is not nap-friendly; it is corporate in the worst sense.

And we're terribly offended that the whole world does not wish to be American any more, indeed that much of it never did. The world would rather be Canadian. We are all poised to kick out the immigrants, and they'd rather go to Canada. Old Croatian proverb: Give a man a fish and he will eat for one day; teach a man a fish and he will move to Nova Scotia. There is nothing like being all dolled up to reject an importunate suitor only to find out he's really come to ask your "dull" sister to the dance. And she's accepted him, so he may be next door the rest of your life - how do you like that?

If McCain wins the election, I think we'll all have to move to Canada. I don't see what other choice we'll have. Not that it will save us from global disaster, but at this point nothing will.