Resistance is futile.

We have been assimilated.

The Borg Collective known more officially as the U S of A is only a hop, skip and a jump away from acquiring its 51st state. It's Manifest Destiny whether they know it or not.

It's Super Tuesday in the United States, and that's what is all over the tube tonight. I was expecting this, so I plugged myself into iTunes for most of the evening, with the idea of watching The National newscast on CBC (that's the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for those not "in the know") when it came time to turn off the lights and let Hubby sleep. The CBC is, after all, the heart and soul of all that is Canadian, and its main raison d'être is to celebrate and preserve the culture of this great country of ours.

Peter Mansbridge, our newsanchor, was live from Los Angeles. At the bottom of the screen were little tickers of who was winning what state, and for the first ten minutes, with correspondents scattered throughout the States, it was all about Super Tuesday. Then we had about four minutes about our disgraced former prime minister (the one I'm still surprised didn't become our first assassination, so beloved was he by the time he stepped down), and then less than a minute about the Canadian soldiers who were wounded in Afghanistan. Then it was to commercial, and when they came back, it was all big splashy graphics of elephants and donkeys and even the freaking seal of the President of the United States.

All of this for an election that is nine months away and in a different country! I was nauseated, and that only got worse as I remembered the CBC is a crown corporation and this was my tax dollars at work. Why don't we just install a 24-hour Britney-Surveillance-Cam while we're at it?

Personally, I prefer the Canadian method of elections to the eighteen-month saga the Americans endure.

Governor-General: Would you like some tea? And what brings you by Rideau Hall today?

Prime Minister: Yes, please. And, since we're doing well in the polls, I'd like to call an election for five weeks from Monday. May I have permission?

Governor-General: As the Queen's Representative in Canada, that sounds good to me. One lump or two?

Neither the Canadian nor the American system is perfect, but at least ours makes for better TV. And, in case you're wondering, I tried switching from CBC to CTVNewsNet, our other national news network. It was almost exactly the same, but with duller graphics.

I'm not an idiot -- I know that because of our close proximity and ties to the US that whoever replaces George Dubya will ultimately have an effect up here. But this is ridiculous. Is it any wonder that when I asked a class of grade nines last week how we were different from Americans, it took them a minute or two to come up with answers beyond "We're smarter than they are?"

So, how did I get away from the passive Americanization of my soul last night?

I did what any self-respecting Canadian would do.

I turned on the hockey game.