Well, I'm off to America

My fellow Canadians,

I like you guys, but lately you've been driving me nuts.

Everything's been far too Canadian recently and I need a break.

Our country loses a bid to join a group of U.N. hall monitors futily screaming at our peers to stop running and we react by retreating to our rooms to write emo poetry and cry about how the other kids don't like us.

Our government was so distraught it actually tried to claim some offhand negative nellying by opposition leader Michael Ignatieff caused literally dozens of countries to snub us.

Quick, how many opposition leaders of foreign nations can you name off the top of your head?

Yeah.

Meanwhile, though our Prime Minister still won't speak to reporters and access to information laws are being systematically underminded, people decide to freak out because MacLean's Magazine was mean to Quebec. A sensational MacLeans front page? This is not news.

Not content with being content about being kept in the dark, it seems we're now getting openly hostile with people who would inform us.

Some Canadians - even people in the media I respected such as MacLean's Scott Feschuk - freaked out at journalists reporting edited-but-still-disturbing details from the Colonol Russell Williams trial.

"It's never pretty when the media gets to cloak their lurid instincts in the guise of doing a duty," Feschuk wrote on Twitter, presumably after lecturing a hobo on getting a job.

Only in Canada - well, maybe Belarus too - would people argue the public shouldn't have the right to know what's going on in a public courtroom because it's gross.

Come on, Canada, grow some balls. In a land where twitter accounts are assigned at birth and hardwired into our skulls, mabe we could whine about this stuff. But in our world, where buttons like 'unsubscribe,' 'unfollow,' and 'unfriend' exist, we've been given the freedom of choice.

I guess you could argue choosing to fight for not having a choice could be seen as a valid choice... ah, but there I go being all Canadian again.

Closer to home sweet home in Halifax, the debate about whether to put oodles of public money towards a new convention centre was shrouded by secrecy for a long time as government declined to say how much it would cost.

To give government some credit - Christ, there I go again - they did finally unveil the cost of the centre about a week before announcing they would support it. Rather than encourage this openness, Marilla Stephenson, the premier columnist at the province's paper of record, lambasted our elected officials for bothering to level with us.

Rather than analyze the information, Stephenson was exhasperated that the government was still doing their wishy-washy thinking thing instead of taking action. "Why on earth did they undertake the briefing, then?" she chirped.

To amplify this... Marilla Stephenson has scolded the government for not rushing to throw money at a hugely controversial project and only telling the public the cost afterwards.

I've reached my breaking point. I need to be around some assholes. I need to look at someone and think ' I wonder if that guy is carrying a gun.' I need to hate something with as much passion as the synopses in my brain can muster, and not even know or care why.

So I'm off to America, where centrists are fictional, liberals are conservatives, and conservatives are closeted homosexuals.

Where beer is cheap, football has four downs and a man's moral compass is pointed right at the heart of his enemies and instead of a compass it's a handgun.

I need to feel that strange sensation that comes over me whenever I visit the U.S. where anyone who tries to stop me from doing whatever I want is committing a grave affront; where absolute freedom is paramount and I end up screaming "But this is America!" at some 7-eleven clerk in Boston who won't sell me booze at midnight.

So I'm going for a taste. I leave tomorrow but, like a deep-sea diver, I'll first acclimatize myself with a couple days in America Lite - Toronto, with it's new Americany mayor - then I drive down to Washington for the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert-sponsored Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on October 30. One can only hope I'll witness a big brawl between tea partiers and Huffington Post bloggers.

I expect one of two things to happen.

1) Immersed in liberty and cheap beer I will emerge like a Chilean miner into a state of enlightenment. I will then return to Canada, start up a grass-roots libertarian party and lead the charge against our nation's paternalistic system.

2) It will become painfully obvious that the US is a crazed, bipolar country veering towards the edge of a cultural and financial cliff that will make the collapse of the Roman empire look like a lesser episode of Seinfeld.

After viewing our country through the other side of this tragic mirror I'll rush back to embrace all that is Canadian and forgive our occassionally infuraiting complacency.

Seeing as Lady Gaga has become America's voice of reason, my money's on the latter.

Either way I figure I come out on top. So I'll see you all in a week. Come on America, don't let me down now when I need you the most.