When I was young and travelling around the world I’d tell people I was from Alaska and they’d occasionally tell me that we should become part of Canada because America was such a terrible place. I’d feel a little uncomfortable about that, being an American and having some affection for my own country. But now I don’t know that I’d react the same way. Trump and his cult are making it very easy to look to Canada.
Robert Reich discusses Trump’s new obsession with territorial expansion and has a modest proposal:
But as long as we’re considering changing national borders, why not do it in a more sensible way?
How about the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California becoming the 11th province of Canada? After all, the politics of these blue states would fit much better with Canada’s than with Trump’s America.
Meanwhile, the New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) and New York could become the 12th Canadian province, for much the same reason.
While Trump is toying with the idea of annexing Canada, these blue American states should bid him goodbye and be annexed by Canada.
Hell, Trump might just go along. He doesn’t like these blue states anyway. They all voted against him in 2016, 2020, and again in 2024. He’s been looking for ways of getting even. Why not simply disown them?
Letting Canada annex these blue states would also simplify Trump’s war on undocumented immigrants, since many of them reside in these states.
America First Legal, a nonprofit run by Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, has already written to local elected officials in California and New York warning them not to try to become sanctuaries — threatening that the officials could be personally “criminally liable” if they refuse to support federal government efforts to detain and deport illegal immigrants.
But if California, New York, and other blue states were annexed by Canada, the problem disappears.
Of course, this leaves the pesky question of whether Canada would accept America’s West Coast as its 11th province and New York and New England as its 12th? I’ll leave that question to Canadians.
I can’t say I’d blame them if they said fuggedaboudit. We may be blue states but we have plenty of MAGA weirdos too. On the other hand, it would be an economic powerhouse so …
Obviously, this is just a joke. But with Trump shooting off his mouth about annexing Canada and Greenland it makes you wonder if some of the things we believe are unthinkable are as unthinkable as we think they are.