My wife and I have just moved to the lovely island of Kauai in the Hawaiian archipelago, where we intend to spend several months a year recovering from the Canadian winter and its accompanying Kelvin-scale politics. We are gradually getting to know the island and its people, a mixed population of natives, expatriates, Filipinos, Japanese, and assorted others.
The “vibe,” as we say, is upbeat, the landscape striking in its beauty, and the people, for the most part, are laid back, hospitable, and not particularly political. In the florid rhetoric of a travel book I’d been reading, Kauai is blessed with “lush landscapes, cascading waterfalls, pristine beaches, and [a] vibrant cultural tapestry…where serenity and adventure harmonize,” which is true if somewhat ornately rendered.
I’ve also come to appreciate the music scene, which is quite lively, too. The bass player for The Eagles visited the shop where I just bought two Taylor guitars plus a keyboard for Janice. And I met the well-known Texas guitarist Mike McLean there and picked up a few finger-and-chord tricks from him.
If we had residency status, we'd sell our suite and buy a house on Hoona Road just south of the Poipu roundabout near Spouting Horn — assuming we could afford it. The Feng Shui is amazing. Regrettably, not being border-storming illegals, we are bound by American law to a maximum stay of 181 days per year. Green cards are not in the offing, and the citizenship route, as we have been apprised, would be difficult, lengthy, and not guaranteed.
It should be obvious to any reasonable person that the U.S. under a Trump administration is the place to be and a conceivable harbinger, as one columnist believes, of an “incredible future,” certainly in non-sanctuary states. But not all would agree.
Recently, we ran into a rather gregarious woman who informed us she was a retiree from the mainland pursuing a free and leisurely life in Hawaii, as electorally blue a state as one could hope to find in the U.S. However, in the wake of Donald Trump’s resounding victory, she was now rethinking her decision and, like so many febrile and sanctimonious American feminists, considering moving to Canada. From her perspective, America was clearly throwing itself into the arms of Orange Man Bad, as cruel and barbaric a dictator as one could imagine, Hitler redivus, maybe worse. Even Hawaii was no longer safe. After all, Tulsi Gabbard had now converted to the Trumpian faith, a MAGAtrocity praised by no less an authority than Hawaii’s daily Star-Advertiser. The blue wall is showing chinks even in Obama’s home state.
I held my tongue but knew how I wanted to respond, which would not have been in caveated language. Why anyone would want to leave the Garden Isle for terra incognita, especially on so flimsy a pretext as untutored resentment and political ingenuousness, struck me as the height of folly. There is no dealing with people who insist on remaining illiterate when parsing the real world.
This poor lagomorph might have felt differently had she been aware that moving to Canada meant paying $8 for a gallon of gasoline, close to 50% higher food prices across the board, a capital gains tax docking her investments at 67% past a certain relatively moderate limit, an utterly useless carbon tax devastating Canadian households, hamstringing industry and bankrupting farmers, runaway inflation dwarfing that of other G-20 nations, and legislative abominations snaking their way through parliament like Bill C-63 levying fines of up to $70,000 and possible life imprisonment for anonymously reported “hate speech” offenses — that is, for things said or written years ago, said or written today, or that might be said or written in the future. Shades of "Minority Report." One would only have to look to North Korea or Keir Starmer’s terminal U.K. sliding into a socialist nightmare to see the political vector on which Canada has embarked.
One thinks of the nonsense spewed by a dim-witted Eva Longoria, who believes the fubar canard that “a convicted criminal who spews so much hate could hold the highest office” — the typical sub-cortical response to Trump common to celebrity culture, to members of an incestuous political cult, and to deluded ordinary folk as well. Unlike the vast majority of her hysterical colleagues, Longoria will, apparently, at least make good on her promise to turn her back on America, for which we would be grateful. Would that all such TDS loonies and unhinged progressives follow her example, though almost none will keep their word, alas.
Of course, our new acquaintance wasn’t about to leave her island sinecure. America was a country you could safely detest while continuing to enjoy all its manifold advantages. Others like her have adopted another tactic to express their displeasure. Having declared their intention to leave the country choking in their righteous dust, but nonetheless remaining firmly cemented to the spot like parking lot bollards, they have decided to pull a Lysistrata stunt and withhold their sexual favors from the male offal who voted for Trump.
We learn, for instance, that Whoopi Goldberg — she, in Nigel Hannaford’s phrase, of “impregnable, unresearched ignorance” — along with many of her fellow feminist Democrats, threatens to go on a sex strike to protest the election of Donald Trump, which is like threatening to no longer mix bird poop into the porridge. As the excellent C.A. Skeet puts it, “This is partly due to some sort of ‘punishment’ they're doling out on us (as if, had they stayed in our lives, these psychopaths would be doing us a favor).” FrontPage Magazine observes, “men across America are trembling in terror.”
Like any country, America has its share of silly people and off-the-wall imbeciles, but unlike many countries, it also has a core of strong, sane, and resilient individuals who are able to course-correct when they see their country streaking for the precipice. Few nations can say the same. Those who wish to abandon the U.S. would profit from an extended sojourn in Canada, where they would quickly discover that the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence and, indeed, that there isn’t much grass there to begin with. Now that Trump is in power and the pestilence of wokeism appears to be receding, the proper direction where possible is the other way round. Were it feasible, Janice and I would happily settle on Hoona Road.
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