To Serve Canadians

Twilight Zone Trump welcomes Canadian's aboard his spaceship to Hell

By Jude Klassen

In 1959, the brilliant, dedicated Rod Serling kept his artistic-activist vision funded by pitching his series, The Twilight Zone, as pure entertainment. He re-envisioned his hard-hitting anthology drama series, Playhouse 90, as science fiction allowing him to continue to tackle social issues without the broadcaster or sponsors feeling threatened.

One of the most famous episodes (there’s even a Simpson’s parody) is To Serve Man, where US citizens are conned into trusting aliens called the Kanamits. These towering, white-robed aliens have allegedly come in peace to help Americans end famine and war. They’ve even written a book in their complex language about how they will serve the American people. US linguistic experts are hard at work deciphering the weighty tome and are only able to translate the title, To Serve Man, before there is an excited rush of gullible Americans lining up to board the spaceship.

Tragically, as Canadians, we know we have a dangerous handful of brainwashed citizens clamouring to “board the spaceship.” People who think that being swallowed by Russia’s Useful Idiot would be a good thing. Or, not so bad. Look at the way Trump describes “the 51st State.” He incoherently muses that Canada would be “a cherished state, a beautiful state!” Hell, he’d even let us keep our national anthem. He might boo it, though… or send in the Jan 6th squad to round up misbehaving comrades for reprogramming camp. Hell, nothing a face-cage of rats couldn’t fix.

The good news is, we will NEVER be the 51st state—even if every citizen has a lobotomy and decides it’s a swell idea. The bad news is, if we are served up by PP and his gang of mouth-breathers it will be much, much worse.

I grew up in the hard heart of hoser country, Chilliwack BC, and remember the first fetid whiff of the White Christian Nationalist movement out of Alberta: The Reform Party that became The Alliance Party. They wore matching white shoes and belts (subtle) and sold themselves as the self-made man party that would make short work of the “welfare state.”

Despite their Bible-thumping origins, the right-wing reformers appealed to people like my dad, an ex-Mennonite Alberta farm boy who starved his way through medical school, his shoes held together with plastic bands. My dad believed in socialized medicine, he saw firsthand what it was like in the US where he earned his specialty in ENT, but the idea of anyone being “shiftless” and living off his tax dollars could really ramp him up.

Dr. Dave approved of the resourcefulness of the First Nations people who secretly supplied him with blackberries and “River Chickens,” and he often flew to Bella Bella to look after everyone’s hearing in exchange for a week of fishing. He loathed braggarts and pretentious people, and to my lovely mom’s horror, he always played the redneck in any elegant setting. He loved BC, especially the great growing weather, and he basically farmed our backyard. Once, when I was admiring his overflowing basket of squash and beefsteak tomatoes, he nodded and made a classic Dave statement, “Yep, you have to be a real asshole to starve in this province.”

In the pre-internet days of rage farming, the Alliance Party used divisive tactics to whip up the self-made Daves, weakening the Progressive Conservative Party and forcing them to unite the centre-right with the far-right. When Harper was elected, he quickly dropped the Progressive and began the assault on our scientists, our lakes, our retirement age, our healthcare, our way of life.

Harper’s government, as damaging as it was, seems relatively tame in retrospect. Much like the first term of the Trump administration, there were still some checks and balances in place.

Harper now heads the cynically titled International Democracy Union (IDU): a global network of hard-right parties set on dismantling democracy. But hey, MAGAs, keep ignoring IDU and vilifying the World Economic Forum (WEF): a global forum that aims to improve the state of the world and focuses on economic growth, climate change, technology and social progress. WEF has been tossed into the Vitamix with 10 scoops of bullshit, pulverized, and spoon-fed to the anger-stoked bros & Danielles who are vomiting it up all over Canada. Having nothing on PM Carney other than he’s wealthy (bitch, please!), the trolls are chanting, “He’s a WEF puppet!”

Speaking of puppets…

Poilievre is Harper’s protege, a weak and spineless 45 year-old infant. His voting record shows he’s against healthcare, dentalcare, public education—basically, all progressive policies. In 2022, Global News verified that PP’s YouTube videos included a tag, hidden from viewers, but not from the video’s publisher, that were a dog whistle to online hate groups like MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) a male supremacy group whose aim is to completely cut women out of their lives.

If elected, this far right Conservative government could finish the destruction of Canada that Harper began. We’d be boarding that spaceship ASAP.

These are NOT your parents Conservatives.

If my Conservative-voting, self-made father was still around, he’d be swinging a shovel at Trump and forcibly vaccinating any arseholes praising cod liver oil and ivermectin. He’d consider the USA-funded MapleMAGA, who held Ottawa hostage and fucked with our economy to be terrorists who should be fired from the country in a shit cannon, and PP, that greasy little career politician, should get a goddamned job.

While I spent most family dinners arguing about global warming, misogyny, gay rights, and the separation of church and state, I did understand where my dad was coming from. He was raised in poverty, his kids were raised with plenty, and I quote, “Look at you goddamned spoiled brats, waterskiing, having a good time.”

If the shit hit the fan, he was sure we’d be as useless as caged hamsters at defending ourselves. I guess we’re finally going to find out.

He knew how to shoot up some food. We just knew how to pluck it.

So, yes, I am fluent in hoser, but these “Drop the Hoods” Conservatives, with their Russian bot-fueled rage are a horrible puzzle. I assume that the MAGA men have some fantasy of tradwives and getting ALL the cream, and all the respect, but I still don’t get the 51st Staters—what are they thinking?

Lower taxes? Stronger dollar? We know that the US having lower taxes on the working/middle class is a myth and for your taxes you get Sweet Fuck All (as Dad used to say). Stronger dollar? I’m guessing here, but it seems likely that our Canadian dollars would be converted to US and with the exchange rate anyone with any savings or a mortgage would be financially wiped out. And unlike the US Federal Reserve, Canadians own the Bank of Canada. And, it bears repeating, our PM, Mark Carney, then the governor of the Bank of Canada, is the guy who made sure we didn’t have to bail out our banks in the 2008 financial crisis.

For convoy bros and their rabid Danielles, its appeal is also in the end of vaccines. The freedom to have polio parties and die like medieval peasants. The younger Canadians voting for the Cons are likely disillusioned by the impossible housing market and lack of job security. They might be thinking that they could move to California and make bank. Many of them are subsisting on minimum wage, which would drop to $7.25 an hour. And good luck getting health benefits. Want to have a baby? It’ll cost you around $26,000 just to birth it (as opposed to free in Canada) and you’ll get a couple of weeks to recover. In your shack. By the river.

I repeat, we will never be the 51st state. Do you honestly think we’d be given voting rights that would potentially wipe out the Republicans?

Best case scenario, Puerto Rico North. More likely scenario—they seize our property and send us to internment camps as enemies of the regime. They’ll use our young people as cannon fodder for their wars—by then most of theirs will be wiped out by deregulation of food safety, lack of vaccines, a total lack of communication and full-on denial as diseases spread.

In the twist ending of the Twilight Zone episode a reporter rushes up to the launchpad to warn her friend who is about to board, “To Serve Man is a recipe book!”

Fuck eggs, them Canadians is good eatin’.

Canadians have ONE chance to hang onto our beautifully imperfect country. PM Mark Carney is the person for this moment. Will it be intensely difficult? Absolutely. Will we be fighting the Trump/Russian regime, as well as our domestic terrorists: Danielle Traitor Smith, Kevin O’Leary, and the MAGAMaple 10%? Damn straight! But we are elbows up, gloves off and over the boards. We have agency, we have power, we are MAD AS HELL and we aren’t going to take it anymore. We are Canada Strong!

Yes, the Trump regime has the weapons, but we have the brains. And the good news is they’ll accidentally text CBC before they do an air strike.

Jude Klassen is a Toronto author and filmmaker who covered film and TV for Movie Entertainment Magazine for over a decade.

judeklassenfilmmaker.com

Originally posted: https://substack.com/home/post/p-160082902