Dear America, Canada Is Watching Your 2016 Election And We’re F*cking Worried About You (And Us)

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Dear America,

I’ve spent my life less than a hundred miles to the north of you, and grew up watching your movies, listening to your music, and Wolfing your Blitzers. And as your close neighbor, and maybe even your friend in a sort of Cameron Frye/Ferris Bueller sense, I’m worried about you. Specifically, about your upcoming election and how it affects me. So yeah, to be honest I’m mostly worried about me.

First, let me be clear that you shouldn’t take any self-righteous crap from Canadians. We were, and are, generally horrible to Indigenous people, immigrants scare many of us, and we make billions arms dealing and taking a blowtorch to the climate. Our head of state is the Queen of England (and most of us aren’t embarrassed by that), we elected a crack-smoking goon as mayor of our largest city, and now that our Prime Minister looks like a walking saxophone solo, our collective boner has drained all the blood from our collective brain and we’re letting him get away with some grim business we wouldn’t have let slide under his shark-eyed predecessor.

But on a global scale, we’re just a barnacle on your Carnival cruise ship, along for the ride while you sail around the world devouring the all-you-can-eat seafood, leaving Walmart supply chains and Friends reruns in your wake. You are the most powerful nation on earth and you’re about to elect its most powerful person. A person who will control the largest military in human history, have the ability to nuke us all into the past tense many times over, command a global apparatus of mass surveillance which can target and assassinate at will. And someone who can deputize Jimmy Fallon into humanizing them with a game of chubby bunny no matter how much of a blood-gargling ghoul they are in reality.

And then there’s climate change, that laser sight resting on humanity’s forehead.

So while you should absolutely feel free to vote for whoever you want, please remember that, like a parent deciding whether to give their child a pellet gun for Christmas, your decision affects a lot of other people, and squirrels. And as much as Canadians like to joke that WE should build the wall to keep YOU out hahahahaweresofunnydidyouknowjimcarreyiscanadiansssssssmokin, the fact is the American empire is always calling from inside the house.

America’s founders revolted against a dominant foreign power. Canadians revolted a bit against that same foreign power, and then decided to just wait it out until they got bored and mostly left. But now, you’re our most dominant foreign power, and while we can’t overthrow you (YET! I’m kidding please don’t drone my wedding), I will politely ask you to consider our feelings.

So America, please, please, for the sake of your country, for my country, for the love of all that is not the worst, don’t vote for Donald Trump.

To be honest I don’t expect that plea to sway a single vote away from Trump. But like I said, this is mostly about me. I need to feel like I did my small part, that I said my piece, so that one day when my children and I are huddled inside our fallout shelter, eating our last can of Trump-brand Tremendously Corned Beef underneath the charred remnants of civilization, I can tell them I tried. I did the best I could. I wrote a letter on the internet.