America, But Better Read online

  We wish to dedicate this book to the American citizen, whose forebears ushered the world into an age of democracy and enlightenment, whose grandparents risked everything to preserve these ideals through the most brutal wars the world has ever known, who today march, protest, occupy, and sacrifice to leave a better world for their children. We are behind you. Don’t fuck it up.

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Really Important Maps

  The Canada Party Manifesto

  1. America and Canada: Continental BFFs

  1.1 Timeline of U.S.-Canadian History

  1.2 Grok the Vote: Campaign Reform for Idiots

  1.3 Making English the Official Language for Native English Speakers

  1.4 Combining Our Cities: Welcome to Van Francisco, Dirty Hippie Capital of the World!

  1.5 Understanding Hockey, from the Country That Gave You Football and Basketball

  1.6 The Cameron Plan: America in 3D

  1.7 How to Say You’re Sorry without Looking like a Total Pussy

  2. It’s a Small World (Unless You’re Liechtenstein)

  2.1 American Exceptionalism, or How to Make Other Countries Feel Bad about Their Bodies

  2.2 Killing with Kindness, Torturing with Tenderness

  2.3 Weaponizing Politeness: Fight like a Canadian!

  2.4 Showing Nature Who’s Boss

  2.5 Un-American Idol: How Reality Shows Can Stop Illegal Immigration

  2.6 A Simple Solution for Integrating Our Indigenous Peoples

  2.7 The Metric System: Exactly Ten Times More Awesome Than Imperial Units

  3. The Irony of Being Ironic in a Post-Ironic Age

  3.1 The Elitist Scourge: How to Hate People Who Are Better Than You

  3.2 Citizens Divided: People Are Now Corporations

  3.3 Thoughts on Relieving America’s Sexual Tension

  3.4 The Question of: a) Education

  3.5 Health Care: More Than Just a Dental Plan for Hockey Players

  3.6 Helping Children Determine Their Value as Future Americans

  3.7 Obesity: Big Thoughts on Big People

  3.8 All We Are Saying Is Give Guns a Chance

  3.9 Crime and Punishment, and then Crime Again

  4. Treating Experts like Mammals

  4.1 Grandpa Lost His Shins in the Big One: Our Statute of Limitations on Living Off Other People’s Sacrifices

  4.2 What to Do with “the Gays”

  4.3 You Are NOT the Father! Abstinence-Only: Education and the Rise of Immaculate Conceptions

  4.4 Media Libs

  4.5 Weed. Sweet, Sweet Weed.

  4.6 The Constitution, Annotated

  4.7 Science vs. Religion (Spoiler: Science Wins in Overtime!)

  4.8 Living in Fear: The War of the Words

  Appendix A: Some Handy Tear-Out Application Forms

  Appendix B: Canadian Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  Foreword

  by Abraham Lincoln

  Four-score and sixty-seven years ago, I was watching a dreadful performance of Our American Cousin, wishing I were dead. I hate the theater.

  And then a funny thing happened.

  I can’t help but wonder if I might have survived that night if my government had free health care, a more reasonable policy of gun control, a mastery of the apology, or even a national hockey program to help the North and South settle their differences on the ice.

  It has been two centuries and some change since our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men—and eventually women—are created equal. But now we are engaged in a great uncivil war that threatens to test whether that nation, so far removed from the founding principles upon which it was conceived and dedicated, can long endure.

  I believed in my lifetime that the cure to a divided America rested in the hands of the North. Today our solution lies just a bit farther, in the hands of the good people who occupy the true North, strong and free. Within these pages lies the blueprint for our future, a nation returned to the principles of liberty and equality, plus some stuff about hockey. Perhaps if we had this book in my lifetime, I should not have perished from this earth.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Penny Aficionado, Sixteenth President of the United States

  Introduction

  Hello, America. It’s us, Canada. You might remember us from the documentary Strange Brew. Or that flag you sewed onto your backpack the summer you bummed around Europe. Or that time in the sixties when your hippies slid into us like second base, waiting until it was safe to return home.

  But we’re more than the country you kick in your sleep as you slumber through the American Dream. We’re your next-door neighbor, and the paper-thin border has done little to muffle the sound of your political anguish. We tried turning up the stereo, but every other song is Bryan Adams, which just makes the headaches worse.

  So we’re pursuing the only option left: We want you to elect us the next President of the United States. We had a chat with the rest of the world, and everyone agrees your addiction to dangerous, divisive politics has gotten out of hand, and you’re headed for an overdose. We’re offering you the chance to kick back for a while and let a trusted friend cook your meals and fluff your pillows, giving you time to do some healing and generally reevaluate your place in the universe. So this is not an invasion; it’s an intervention.

  Why are we qualified to lead America? Because we are America Jr., the little brother who has idolized you since we were baby colonies spitting up in Britain’s lap. We’ve grown up together, tamed a frontier together, laughed, cried, bled, overeaten at Thanksgiving, and conquered outer space together. We share the same spacious skies and amber waves of grain, the same purple mountain majesties, the same sea to the same shining sea.

  Sure, we’ve had a few rough patches. The War of 1812. Vietnam. Celine Dion. [Again, we are really, really sorry about that.] But we’ve weathered these storms to develop the largest trading partnership, most integrated militaries, and weakest beers in the known universe. Both of our Constitutions are based on the personal liberties outlined in Mom’s Magna Carta, and it is this—our mutual status as beacons of freedom to the rest of the world—that unites us in cause and makes us continental BFFs.

  Which is why it has been with great sadness, and more than a little nausea, that we’ve witnessed our American brothers and sisters betrayed over the past decade by privately owned politicians who have created franchises out of persecuting the disenfranchised, fetishized ignorance at the expense of reason, deprived citizens of their civil liberties in the name of a very profitable notion of security, and driven up taxpayer debt to finance solid gold pockets to carry their other gold.

  We have watched from a distance with the same horrified stare one might impart on a busload of kittens being carried away by a tornado. We have watched class warfare committed by classless bourgeoisie. We have watched as huddled masses yearning to breathe free were told that it is un-American to huddle, mass, yearn, or breathe. We have watched, and for years have asked ourselves, “Isn’t somebody going to help those poor folks!?”

  And then we realized: We are a somebody. And we’re not just an “outside the beltway” candidate, we’re outside the border. So we’ve written this book—translated from Canadian to American English—to explain our platform a
nd convince you that you’re better off getting an overhaul from an honest mechanic than being scrapped by China and sold for parts.

  America used to be the world’s quarterback—popular, hardworking, and ruggedly handsome, the country everyone aspired to be. But then there was that White House party the new administration kicked off in 2000. Remember that? Pissed-off neighbors? Carpets stained with motor oil? All the rent money spent on beer and airport groping? America stopped playing with the team, got fat and lazy, started beating up gays and hassling women, becoming the bully that other countries fear but don’t respect. And Canada, a few years your junior, got dragged down with you, our self-esteem—although many of us will deny it—intimately tied to that of our older brother. We told you not to drink and drill. But you didn’t listen. And now we are all paying the price.

  It’s not like we don’t have our own faults. Our prime minister makes Dick Cheney look like a human-rights crusader. Our oil program is so apocalyptic it was given a “Special Thanks” credit in the book of Revelations. And we have recently earned permanent-member status in the election-fraud club coveted by up-and-coming superpowers the world over. Which is why, once we become your president, we will turn around and invade ourselves, as we could use a good regime change of our own.

  But since it’s colder in Canada, the concepts of freedom and neighborliness have been kept fresher. Liberty is still crisp. And although our own leadership has left the refrigerator door open and begun rotting the ideals that sustain us, a daunting opportunity has surfaced with the rise of the oil sands and the melting of the Northwest Passage, and we now face the terrifying prospect of becoming a superpower in our own right.

  But we don’t want to do it alone. We still love you, America. You are family. We want to remain brothers, side by side down the longest border in the world, a border marked by a monument inscribed with the words “May These Gates Never Be Closed.” We would like the same to be true of our minds, which is why we’re asking you to elect us your leader.

  We are aware that your laws say presidential candidates have to be U.S.-born, but since Canada recognizes the rights of same-continent partners, we are legally obligated to declare ourselves a U.S. citizen by proxy. So instead of marking the box for “Most Charming Hypocrite,” why not vote for the country you deserve? We are the Canada Party, and we want to help you rebuild the great nation this world sorely needs: America, but better.

  Really Important Maps

  America and Canada

  Continental BFFs

  1.1 Timeline of U.S.-Canadian History

  1775: “Awkward Autumn” becomes the theme at the annual British Empire family portrait when America and Canada show up wearing the same flag.

  1776: America signs the Declaration of Independence, kicking their war with Britain into high gear. Canada, not wanting to offend anybody, fights for both sides.

  1776–80: Thousands of British Loyalists in the U.S. move north to Canada, still largely a British colony. A fur trapper is trampled to death at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s first ever Boxing Day sale. Bryan Adams begins his music career.

  1789: Pennsylvania ends its prohibition of theatrical performances, allowing the signing of the Constitution and the centuries of drama it would incur. [Although drafted while medicine was theoretical and man-tights all the rage, it is still referenced literally in modern American law.]

  1812: A young America acts out its own colonial fantasy and invades future-Canada, then retreats, realizing a new driveway is not worth the roaming charges. [Exactly two hundred years later we get around to writing this book.]

  1814: British forces capture Washington, D.C., and burn it to the ground, although the pubs and bordellos remain curiously untouched.

  1815: Britain finalizes the Treaty of Ghent after losing a round of Beer Pong. Well played, America. Well played.

  1830–60: Tens of thousands of American slaves “emigrate” to Canada via the Underground Railroad, which is sort of like a Disney ride with less racism.

  1861–65: American Civil War. Canada invents popcorn and takes to the sidelines.

  1867: Three British colonies unite to form an independent Canada. American newspaper headlines exclaim: “Whatever.”

  1901: A government census shows 3.5 percent of Canadians were born in America and 1.6 percent of Americans were born in Canada. When asked why they emigrated, the majority of respondents on both sides checked the box marked “Looking for hotter women.”

  1907: The USS Nashville sails into the Great Lakes without asking. Canada apologizes for getting in the way, pays for dinner.

  1921: Canada develops a defensive strategy to repel a U.S. invasion. Canadians are instructed to “act normal” to avoid detection.

  1939: Canada calls King George VI, politely asking permission to declare war on Germany. The king replies, “Who is this?”

  1941: America and Canada cooperate to send 133,000 of their citizens to internment camps as part of a Japanese Community Outreach Program.

  1945: At the end of World War II, Canada possesses the fourth-largest air force and third-largest naval surface fleet in the world. America giggles, calls it “cute.”

  1958: America and Canada finally agree on the curtain color for the NORAD underground bunker.

  1960s: Canadians, having already experienced a Toronto garbage strike during a heat wave, avoid entering the Vietnam War. Fifty thousand Americans move to Canada, giving rise to bong-craft’s “Glazed Age.”

  1972: Canada realizes Richard Nixon is a Dick.

  1974: America realizes Richard Nixon is a dick, pretend they noticed first.

  1988: Canadian hockey great Wayne Gretzky is traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings. Canada mourns, and learns that California has a hockey team.

  1994: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) encourages trade between America, Canada, and Mexico. Canada and Mexico discover neither of them has anything the other wants.

  2008: Canadian Justin Bieber is discovered on YouTube, instantly becoming an international celebrity—a far cry from his high-school nickname of “Singing-and-Dancing Pussy Boy.”

  2010: Canada defeats the U.S. in Olympic men’s hockey, winning the gold medal in overtime. Awesome.

  2012: Canada is elected President of the United States. Global warming abruptly ends as the atmosphere’s greenhouse gases are blown into space when the entire planet exhales a collective sigh of relief.

  Follow this link to a video message from Canada

  1.2 Grok the Vote: Campaign Reform for Idiots

  There is perhaps no reform Americans would appreciate more than a Canadian approach to the election process. Like a summer-camp love affair, a Canadian election is passionate, awkward, a legal maximum of three months, and regularly punctuated by rainy afternoons doing arts-n-crafts. The longest election cycle in Canadian history was 74 days, when Libe4al candidate William Lyon Mackenzie King defeated the Conservative Party’s Arthur Meighen in 1926. (The Progressive Party came in third, and was awarded a yellow ribbon and a Tim Hortons gift certificate.)

  Watching American elections through the CNN peephole, Canada sees something that resembles a room of diarrhetic chimps holding a year-long shit-tossing-themed house party that makes one forget the original wall color. For the 2012 presidential contest, Newt “Moon Tang Clan” Gingrich declared his candidacy nineteen months before the election. One-third of Canada’s prime ministers have spent less time than that actually holding the office.

  If the U.S. federal election process was not already a national exercise in waste and bad haircuts, the 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court—declaring that unrestricted political spending is protected by the First Amendment—has turned it into a full-on Trump family reunion. Estimates for 2012 election expenditures top $10 billion, more than twenty times the annual budget of the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, which is the favorite example of waste and bad haircuts held up by many of the politicians benefiting from this money.

  The longer and more costly the election process, the more polarized and polarizing the voters become. The level of unity-inducing paranoia in federal elections may soon lead to four-year cycles of real-estate markets catering exclusively to political demographics.

  To prevent U.S. elections from becoming a self-sustaining industry financed by fear and nonrecyclable yard signs, while simultaneously addressing the growing disconnect between citizen and candidate, we propose bringing voters and votees together for a little one-on-one through our new, streamlined election process, Speed Voting.

  Based on the practice of speed dating, Speed Voting will give every interested citizen a fifteen-second face-to-face with each candidate, during which they can ask whatever they want. The rounds will be televised and made available, unedited, on an elections website, searchable by categories such as geography, platform, hilarity, and stutter duration. Replacing the role of independent investigator once entrusted to—and recently abandoned by—the mainstream media, Speed Voting will match the fifteen-second span of the typical sound bite, which is also the average time a voter spends researching any particular topic. For many, Speed Voting will present an exciting chance to smell a millionaire. For others, an opportunity to photobomb a soon-to-be-jailed United States senator.

  There will, of course, still be debates to confuse and entertain the masses. To reengage young voters in the political process, we have designed this handy drinking game so they can play along. [We recommend playing with Canadian beer to provide actual intoxication.]

  * * *

  It’s a Promise!

  Pay rates for Congress and the Senate will be directly tied to their productivity. Bonuses will be awarded for responsible governance. Penalties will carry the same interest as student loans.