Frying their Canadian bacon
WE NEED to start a new Cold War. The first candidate who promises one will have my vote.
Remember Cold War I? President Kennedy said we were going to put a man on the moon in a decade. We all knew why: we had to beat the Russians there. We spent $7.1 gazillion yet taxes were a whole lot lower, and we got a new generation of technology out of it. Oh, and we got to the moon.
See? The perfect war: We never actually fight the enemy. We just decide that we want to beat them at something. Let's say our president said, "We're going to get rid of oil in 10 years." Totally nutty. But then we would all get behind it. The government would fund all kinds of new ideas, because we don't want anybody else to beat us to it. Seriously.
Just imagine the government contracts for alternative sources of fuel if we were trying to best our enemy. If it hadn't been for the first Cold War, after all, we would still be testing rockets in the backyard. With the oil race going, we'll be riding in spit-powered cars by 2018.
Of course, whenever you talk about getting us off of oil, somebody will bring up China and India. "They will have an advantage over us. They will be polluting, using oil, and making every thing really cheaply - unlike today, when they have to rely on children to do that."
But this is the real genius of my Cold War plan. China and India will think they've got all the world's oil to themselves. They will be gloating over us, I bet, maybe even working on their first wave of obesity. And then in 10 years, we'll just hand them the keys to Iraq and Iran. "Ha! It's all yours now, buddy," that's what we'll say. "Dear Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Algeria, Libya, Venezuela, Angola, please stop calling us. We don't work here anymore. Here's the number of your new customer service representative in New Delhi."
Of course, the big problem with Cold War I was the proxy wars in places like Korea and Vietnam. The best candidate for our Cold War II enemy is Canada. Instead of ruining somebody else's country, we could just have a few skirmishes over border states, like say New York. Nobody would get hurt because the war would be conducted by civilian militias - actual New Yorkers, who are too busy for the job, and actual Canadians, who are too nice. So the governments can rattle the saber and send in the militias, who will just trade places for a couple of months and will stay in motels at Niagara Falls for convenience.
Plus, let's face it, James Bond movies have gotten a bit thin without a Cold War. It's hard to buy the whole secret espionage thing when enemies make videos of themselves for YouTubazeera. But in Cold War II, we'll have real spies trying to steal real technology secrets from Canada and the Canadians will be trying to steal from us. Canada will kidnap scientists from MIT, but the scientists will just pretend to be Canadian. This is way easier than pretending to be Russian. The scientists can escape by walking calmly past the security guards and can come home in a rental car, stopping to buy fireworks.
Best of all, Cold War II will give us something to do together. You know we need that, because the candidates keep saying so, that we have to "work together," "build bridges to each other," "unite as a people." We used to be united by watching the same three TV shows. But are we going to ask ourselves to give up cable? Vote no!
Oil is easier. Plus, the motels at Niagara Falls have free HBO.
Monique Doyle Spencer is author of "The Courage Muscle: A Chicken's Guide to Living With Breast Cancer." 