Tag: canada

Vancouver I Hardly Knew Ye

Posted on by Deanna Kreisel

by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog)

A couple of years ago I briefly became famous for hating Vancouver. By “famous” I mean that a hundred thousand people or so read an essay I posted on Medium, and for a few weeks it became a part-time job to answer emails from well-wishers, cranks, and haters.[1] (Now, thank God, I am blissfully obscure again and all my emails are from manufacturers of undereye creams and students asking questions that are answered on the syllabus.) By “hating Vancouver” I mean that in the essay I wrote, which was in response to a truly nutso anti-American screed by Wade Davis published in Rolling Stone, I used Vancouver as a test case to refute Davis’s claims of Canadian superiority. It was too easy, in a way: Davis held up my former hometown as an example of income equality and social justice, which is sort of like using the Marquis de Sade’s château as an example of Buddhist lovingkindness. In my response, poor Vancouver—which has many other excellent qualities—was the innocent victim of an essayistic drive-by shooting; my aim was elsewhere, but she got caught in the crossfire.

But lambasting real estate greed and excoriating the hypocrisy of the municipal government are not all I have to say about Vancouver. I would also like to complain about the weather. Just kidding! Well, not kidding: I really do like to complain about the weather, but that is not what this essay is about. This is a love letter to a place I left, a place that I wanted to leave and do not regret leaving and yet miss, deeply and tenderly, every single day. It is also an essay, I suppose, about why my spouse and I decided to leave Canada and relocate to Mississippi, a move that never ceases to amaze anyone who hears about it. I mean, fair enough—without more information, I suppose such a move seems akin to relocating from a Buddhist monastery to the Marquis de Sade’s château. Read more »

Move to Canada If Donald Trump Wins? How About Break Up the United States Instead

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

by Akim Reinhardt

KEEP CALM AND MOVE TO CANADA | Moving to canada, Keep calm, Canada quotesIs there anything more clichéd than some spoiled, petulant celebrity publicly threatening to move to Canada if the candidate they most despise wins an election? These tantrums have at least four problems:

1. As if Canada wants you. Please.
2. Mexico has way better weather and food than Canada. Why didn’t you threaten to move there? Is it because of all the brown people? No, you insist. Is it the language? Well then if you do make it to Canada, here’s hoping they stick you in Quebec.
3. New Zealand seems to be the hip new Canada. I’ve recently heard several people threaten to move there. News flash, Americans: New Zealand wants you even less than Canada does.
4. Fuck right off then if you don’t want to be here.

As we stare down the possible re-election of Donald Trump, I’ve got a much better alternative: Stay put and begin a serious, adult conversation about disuniting the states.

If, through the vagaries of the Electoral College, 45% of U.S. voters really do run this nation into an authoritarian kleptocratic, dystopian ditch, then instead of fleeing with your gilded tail between your legs, stay and help us reconfigure the nation. It might be the sanest alternative to living in Trump’s tyranny of the minority, in which racism and sexism are overtly embraced, the economy is in shambles, the pandemic rages unabated, and abortion may soon be illegal in most states as an ever more conservative Supreme Court genuflects to corporate interests and religious extremists.

And of course it cuts both ways. Should current polls hold and Joe Biden manage to win the election with just over half the popular vote, those on the losing side will be every bit as upset. So upset that they too would likely open to a conversation about remaking an America. Read more »

Why You’re Going to Vote for Trump and How You Can Win a Free Ticket to Mexico

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

by Akim Reinhardt
2+2=5
Hello. My name is Akim Reinhardt, I was very, very wrong, and now it's time for me to pay for my mistakes.

The good news is, when I pay, you just might be the one to collect. My loss can be your windfall.

The catch? You'll have to publicly debase yourself almost as much I am about to do right now.

Sigh.

How did it come to this? You and I publicly shaming ourselves on the internet, each of us desperately hoping to salvage a little bit of joy as the world burns around us?

It's all because of that goddamned Donald Trump.

Trump is about to claim the Republican presidential nomination, and a whole lotta pundits got that one wrong. Legions of professional gabbers, from every corner of the political spectrum, badly missed the mark, assuring you that he'd never be the GOP candidate.

Despite their wishful thinking dressed up in high falutin' gibberish, it's happening anyway; Trump is poised to become leader of the pachyderm pack. And so a lot of the yakkers had to make amends.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post literally ate his words. Pass the salt and pepper.

Nate Cohn of the New York Times and David Byler of Real Clear Politics each created a laundry list of everything they got wrong, which like most analysts, was quite a lot.

Perhaps the oddest mea culpa came from polling wunderkind Nate Silver, who explained away his spectacular failure by saying that he had acted like a barbaric “pundit” instead of staying true to the “scientific method.” Rather than relying on statistical modeling to figure out if Trump would win, Silver says he just made “educated guesses.”

Since Silver never really explains why he traded in true reason for such wild tomfoolery, I'm just gonna assume he went on a months-long bender.

Normally, it would be very easy for me to look down my nose at these losers. After all, I'm not a statistician or a professional talking head. I'm a historian. And if there's one thing studying history has taught me, it's that trying to predict the future is pure folly.

What were these dullards thinking? Guess the future? Good luck with those crystal ball shennanigans. Studying history has shown me, time and time again, that the future is unknowable. The past is a mystery and the future is an illusion. So allow me to haughtily point a sanctimonious finger at these morons.

Except for one thing. It turns out that I'm one of those morons. I, too, am a loser.

I spouted off like all the others, publicly assuring people that Trump would not win the nomination, offering up historically informed ramblings as evidence. And just like the rest of them, I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

It was a fool's errand, of course. So why did I do it?

Read more »