ArcaMax

OK, so I'm a small-timer.

This column runs in some papers around the country, but I'm not the most popular columnist this syndicate employs. I've written a few books, but none of them have been bestsellers. I've been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize twice, but I didn't win.

So, I figure if things get worse in what was once the greatest country in the world, I'll probably be all right.

Oh, sure, I've written bad things about America's drift toward fascism, and about gun fetishists, and racists and homophobes, but who could possibly mistake me for a voice that needs to be smashed into silence? They go after the big people, not little people like me. I'm no Steven Colbert.

But these days, when I write, I can smell barbed wire.

And Canada.

Quebec, to be exact, the part of Canada where the French people live.

I had two French-Canadian immigrant grandparents, and one of them, my grandmother, never became an American citizen. Four of her boys fought in World War II.

And Canada, where I have never lived, tells me I can get Canadian citizenship.

"I'll help you pack your bags," some voices howl. "Liberals like you should get out of America if you hate it so much!"

Because I live in an immigrant-heavy part of Massachusetts, I've always had friends who had dual citizenship.

"Pick a side," I used to growl at them 25 years ago.

I always thought most of my dual citizenship friends did it to be different, to seem a little more exotic than us regular, KFC-raised Americans. Most of them had been born in America, and a lot of them had never been to the country their parents left.

I've been to Canada. My father had family in Quebec, and we went when I was a kid. My wife Deborah and I honeymooned in Montreal, and I can still speak the Canadian version of French I spoke when I was a child. I speak it more slowly than I did then, and I have to think hard to remember some words, but, as I found out on my honeymoon, I'm fluent again after about three days.

So, I look out the window at my American lawn, and I look at my phone and check my Canadian citizenship eligibility, and I think maybe the Canadian passport would be a good thing to have in my pocket. When I was younger, before debit cards, I never went out at night without a $100 bill. Oh, I wouldn't spend the hundred because a night of beer or dating probably wasn't going to cost more than the three 20s I had folded in with the hundred, but I liked knowing I had the big bill in my pocket.

We don't live very far from Canada. If refugees weren't clogging the roads, we could be over the border in a little more than eight hours.

And I'm a small-timer. I'm not going to have to run. You probably won't have to, either, not unless it's six years from now, and they've started jailing people for stuff they posted on Facebook in 2026.

And at least you can tell them you didn't mean what you posted. Me, I write this column for money, and my name is on it, and my picture is on it, and I can't claim I didn't mean it, or I didn't know what I was saying. Knowing what I'm saying has been my job for 40 years.

I'm not in any kind of panic, and I haven't done a thing about Canadian citizenship, but I hate that I even think about that Canadian passport. I hate it like poison.

I've never had to think about my American identity. I was born here, and that's been enough. I was not required to love the flag, or support the military, or believe in God, or think there were only two genders. I was not required to be grateful for America because America was mine, and no one gave it to me, and no one could take it away. I didn't need a backup plan, or an escape route, or a bug-out bag.

And as you say of new neighbors, the Canadians "seem nice," or at least they seem too nice to kill me or put me in a "camp" for something I wrote.

I'm not that worried, though. I'm a small-timer, right?

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com . Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.