I think I need a lawyer. I haven’t done anything illegal... yet… but I’m thinking pretty hard about doing something that may run afoul of the law.
In my defence, nothing I have in mind would in any way harm anyone. There would be no monetary gain behind what I want to do, just a feeling of satisfaction and maybe the ability to hold my head a bit higher.
But I might have trouble next time I try to cross a border.
It is a criminal offence to forge a passport. The maximum penalty is 14 years in the slammer. I can’t imagine any court would sentence someone to that, given they sentence most people who kill someone to less time.
It’s against the law to make a material, false statement to procure a passport. Ditto for procuring any “material” alteration to a passport. You can only get two years for that.
Which raises the question for which I might need a lawyer: Is it a material alteration to Wite-Out my place of birth on my passport?
For several years now, I’ve been questioning why my passport needs to include my place of birth. What for? Who cares where I was born? I’m a Canadian citizen. Shouldn’t that be enough?
I’ve thought of just leaving that box blank the next time I have to renew my passport. But I’m not sure they’d let me do that. And it might be even worse. Would a border agent be suspicious if that was blank? Could I claim ignorance? “Don’t rightly know where I was born. I was just a baby when it happened.”
I used to worry about terrorists herding me and fellow travellers over somewhere, checking our passports and pumping a round into anyone who was a citizen of what they considered the Evil Empire—the U.S.A. Would they understand it wasn’t my fault I was born there? Shouldn’t I get extra points for having moved to Canada and become Canadian? I mean, doesn’t that show a commitment far beyond the coincidence of those who were simply born here?
I don’t worry about that anymore. It doesn’t seem to be the same issue it used to be. But now, this week, there’s a bigger issue. You see, my passport—the only one I have for the only country of which I am a citizen—lists my place of birth as not only USA, but Des Moines, U.S.A. As in Iowa. As in the location of the dictator-in-waiting, the Orange Monster, Donald Trump’s first primary victory earlier this week. That Des Moines. That Iowa.
Oh, the shame.
Given my status as a Canadian citizen, given the fact Canada can’t legally strip me of that citizenship, since to do so would render me as a person without a country—something they’re not allowed to do—what would it hurt if they let me choose a Canadian place as my place of birth? On the continuum of lies, that would be beyond white, it would be luminescent, a blinding white you couldn’t look at without welder’s goggles.
In a very real sense, moving to Canada was kind of like being reborn. When I landed—limped, actually, in a 1968 Volkswagen with a nearly blown engine—in Montreal in January, 1979, it certainly felt like I’d awakened in a different life and country. For starters it was -40, the point on a thermometer where it doesn’t matter whether I follow that with a C or an F. Montreal, on the cusp of the first sovereignty referendum, definitely seemed like a different country. Had I moved to Calgary I’m sure it would have just seemed like a trip to a colder, less-well-armed Texas.
So I’d be happy with Montreal as my place of birth on my passport. Heck, as opposed to Des Moines, I’d be happy with Come By Chance, Flin Flon, Moose Jaw, Dildo, Asbestos, or Stoner. Maybe especially Stoner. Or certainly Whistler.
I have no fond memories of Iowa. Although I didn’t live there long, it was long enough. Bitterly cold in winter, oppressively humid in summer, hogs and corn are the only thing Iowa had going for it as far as I could tell. While it may sound callous, I’m grateful my younger brother was born with life-threatening asthma that led my parents to move to Arizona and then New Mexico.
In many ways, living in the southwest was like living in a different country. All the American history taught in school mostly happened in the East. The settlement of the West, the land grab from what was part of Spain and Mexico, the California gold rush, none of that was taught.
And now, the U.S. is a foreign country. Fractured, violent, torn along party lines and hijacked by a past president—frighteningly possibly next president—who has no love nor time for the freedoms and rights enshrined in the Constitution except when they
support or can be perverted to serve his own, twisted ends.
And the people of Iowa, at least the Republican people, people who would always refer to themselves as the “good” people of Iowa, have handed him a resounding win in the first primary, relegating the other hopefuls—also known as the lesser, though not by much, evils—to footnotes of the 2024 general election.
So morally and ethically bankrupt is the current Republican Party that moderate Republicans—mythical beasts bearing a cultural kinship to unicorns—and Democrats actually believe Nikki Haley and
Ron DeSantis are acceptable alternatives. Well, something horrible is better than something apocalyptic.
There is no solace—okay, maybe a wee, little bit of solace—in the fact the Orange Monster only polled 51 per cent of the caucus votes. DeSantis at 21 per cent and Haley at 19 per cent weren’t even in the same decade, and are just as likely to split the non-Trump vote next week in New Hampshire.
That a Trump candidacy and second term would be disastrous for the world is evident in, well, virtually everything the lying scoundrel says. Leave NATO, let Ukraine dangle in the breeze, cosy up to the other dictators around the world, stuff the Justice Department with sycophants and toadies,
use his power to punish the long list of Enemies of Trump, burn up the planet and find ways to line his own pockets and those of his cronies.
I don’t know what’s happened to half the population in my former home and native land. I don’t care, except for the fact they may unleash this lunatic on the world and then be surprised at what he destroys in the next four years.
Like winning the lottery, I only hold out faint hope Trump will lose or disappear. And I’m not even sure I can still buy Wite-Out.
