Alaska Trip, Day 1: Toronto
Canada: socialist outpost on the proud shores of Mother Capitalism.
We only spent two hours in Toronto, all of it in the airport, most of it in line at customs — but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from our president, it’s that all you need to do to understand something is look into its soul and listen to your gut. Well, I looked into Canada’s soul, and I’m afraid it’s everything that our wise leaders said it was. Except worse.
The terrible things we saw. I shudder to think of them now. Effeminate men in berets roaming the airport, pushing outrageous communist tracts into the hands of visiting children. Mimes struggling to escape their invisible glass boxes of infinite lameness. Victims of socialized healthcare sprawled under benches, begging passersby for medical treatment. Giant collective farms squatting just outside the airport, filled with humpbacked proletarians, bent under the burden of their leaders’ bankrupt ideology — and, of course, the crushing weight of God’s absence.
We were late for our plane, but I stopped to talk to a frightened-looking young man scribbling Maoist slogans on a slate, under the watchful eye of a large Mountie. Without saying a word, I handed him a stick of gum. And then I stood back, and waited.
He stopped scribbling, and looked at the gum, and then he looked at me.
“That’s yours,” I said. “It’s called property. Do you know what property is?”
His eyes got wide, but he didn’t answer.
“It’s something that belongs to you,’ I said. “Not the hive mind, ok? Not the commune. You.”
He didn’t answer. I gave him a Bible.
“This is the word of God,” I said. “I know that your atheist teachers told you that there’s no such thing as a God, but there is, and He is kind and gentle and loving, and He will damn your teachers to the pits of hell where they will suffer unimaginable torment for all of eternity. As will you, if you don’t shape up.” I smiled.
He looked at the approaching Mountie, and then back at me.
I pointed at the stick of gum. “Prop-er-ty,” I said, emphasizing each syllable. I pointed at the Bible. “God. Ok?”
The Mountie arrived, and fixed me with a stern glance. “Eh?” he said. “Tour Eiffel fromage bonjour j’aime Stalin, eh?“
I winked at the young man, and patted him on the back, and left him there, with the seeds of freedom sprouting in his poor desiccated soul.
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