Canada

Escaping Gilead – My experience crossing the border

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

May 21, 2025

Ever since January 20th, when Trump pretended to take the oath of office, things in America have felt really dark. From people being grabbed off the street by ICE and disappearing from public view without due process to the rise and fake fall of Trump’s top campaign donor, Elon Musk, it’s felt very end of a nation-ish. This includes rumors about changes at the border.

Here in Portland, it’s about a four-and-a-half our drive to the Canadian border. I’ve made the crossing many times. Last time was in December when Cozy and I drove up to Vancouver for the Taylor Swift concert. The crossing was a blast with carloads of Swifties shouting to each other and Canadian border guards the recipients of countless friendship bracelets. It’s so nice having another country just up the road a piece.

So I decided to make a run for the border.

After Andi picked up Cozy yesterday, I hopped on I-5 to make that long journey north; Olympia, Seattle, Bellingham, to the Peace Arch crossing about 10 pm last night. Late on a Tuesday, the usual border traffic jam was gone, but there was something new this time.

On the American side of the Peace Arch, there was a red traffic light and a barricade pushing cars into one lane. Up ahead I saw two armed men talking to a driver. When they finished, I was waved me forward. Two men in black military gear and long rifles stopped me. I searched for any identifying organization; border patrol, ICE, HSI, FBI. Nothing. I could have asked. I could have said, “Hey fellas, I’m on a DHS CP3 project. Who are you with?” But the rifles just shut me up.

It was a brief interaction. One of the men asked me to role down all my windows so he could look in the car. It was clear they were looking for people, not contraband. I have no idea who they were. To tall white guys straight out of central casting. I assumed that if I wasn’t a white male, the stop would have been longer, but they sent me forward where I showed my passport to the border guard and headed into our great neighbor to the north.

I didn’t go all the way to Vancouver. I booked a “pod” just south of the city in Richmond because I saw a program about Japanese pod hotels and it seemed like a fun way to crash for the night before turning around and heading back the U.S.A. in the morning. If you ever wondered what sleeping in a coffin would be like, this was it. But the coffin had wifi, so I got an Instagram post up about the experience. Actually, it reminded me of sleeping on the tour bus back in my road manager days, so I slept well.

This morning, after breakfast at IHOP (it truly IS international!), I headed south. There had been a lot of talk that entering the US would be the real problem. That I would be made to swear loyalty to the Mango Mussolini or would they search my phone and look at my social media footprint where I daily proclaim the emperor has no clothes. One wrong thoughtcrime and I would go from Canada to El Salvador.

There were only two lanes open at Peace Arch so I had time to watch and get nervous. It was obvious that the guards were taking their time, especially with Canadian cars. When is was my turn, I got the 20 questions, about what I did in Canada, who I met in Canada, what I bought in Canada. I know that most of these questions are meaningless and just meant to give the guard a chance to evaluate your demeanor. He took my keys and opened up the back of my car. He said, “Where are all your clothes? Your backpack’s empty.” I wanted to say, “That’s my brother’s backpack. He’s dead.” But, for some reason, I said, “I left them in Seattle.” Again, my white maleness played a role, I’m sure. I was allowed to enter my country and head home to pick up my kid.

The whole thing was weird. Why are there armed guards before you get to the Canadian border guards? What are they asking Canadians coming into the U.S.? Last night, it felt like they are trying to stop people from escaping  the United States, not escape into it, like a scene from The Handmaid’s Tale. I can’t change my skin tone to repeat the experiment, but the joy of international travel by car is now tense and scary. Part of me wonders if I should have just stayed in my pod.

Watching the Death of Nation in Real Time

~ Randy Blazak ~ 5 Comments

April 1, 2025

A hundred bucks says Donald Trump has never read the U.S. Constitution. Or The Bible. Or a book. His latest blather about running for a third term is either an overt telegraphing that he’s going to pull a Putin and declare himself “President for Life” or it’s another distraction from that fact that he and Musk are crashing the system so they can scoop up the pieces.

Either way, America is screwed.

I’ve written ad nauseam about the elements of the Trump movement that map directly on to the rise of fascism, starting back in 2015. The parallels this time around are even more stark, including hollowing out America’s system of checks and balances (starting with firing inspector generals), alienating our long term allies (Blame Canada?), flaunting the rule of law, especially due process, and the vision of expanding empire. Leave Greenland alone.

In 70 insane days, Trump has transformed the United States from a democracy to an anocracy. Anocracies are hybrids of democracy and authoritarianism. Russia has elections, but they are Putin-controlled cosplay. Trump is playing by Putin’s playbook, step by step, where a democracy is transformed into a dictatorship, with the support of the loyal oligarchs. And when your favorite oligarch is the richest man on the planet it’s that much easier.

The damage Elon Musk is doing to America may be irreparable. The 2400 Americans that Musk fired from the CDC today will have ripple effects across the world, but especially in communities that voted for Trump who require federal support in disease prevention. But, hey, MAGA got to own those liberal scientists! America is unravelling. Our safety net is being shredded. Social security is next. Our national security is already splayed open on the Signal app. The nation collapsing. And it’s not in slow motion.

Trump, his drunk frat boy sycophants, and the crafty billionaires that cleverly steer the President of the United States have a plan, to remake America into Russia, a feudal state where the landed gentry collect the wealth and the rest of us pay the interest on our debt to them. Trump going after DEI, civil rights protections, and vote by mail is all part of the race to autocracy. All that was great about 20th Century America is being erased before our eyes.

But in a moment straight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we’re not dead yet. We still have time to jump off the corpse wagon.

The natives are restless. Protests are growing all over the country, including in red states. Americans are waking up to the threat. Sociologist C. Wright Mills called it the sociological imagination. When you are aware of your values and those values are under threat, the crisis moves you to develop a wider analysis. If you value American democracy, this is a fucking crisis. And the irony is that it will be disaffected Republicans who tip this thing into a national surge against Trumpism. Yeah, Idiocracy requires idiots and there will always be MAGA cultists who will follow their orange god off a cliff, but we can do this without them. We need Reagan Republicans and the ghost of John McCain. (Eighties Me can’t believed I just typed that, but this is an emergency!)

This is go time, America. It’s time for old baby boomers and young Gen Alphas to make noise, monkey wrench, flood the courts, take to the streets, sit in, stand up, and stop this madness. Or there will be a point when we can no longer claim to be free.

The end of the Eras Tour and how Taylor Swift stopped time for my daughter

~ Randy Blazak ~ 6 Comments

December 8, 2024

There are a lot of responsibilities of a parent. We need to keep our kids safe and provide the skills so they’ll be successful as adults. We need to wrap them in love and make sure they have three meals a day. But sometimes, we gotta make a dream or two come true to show there is still magic in the world.

At some point in the last year, Cozy’s obsession switched from the Animal Crossing video game to Taylor Swift. It corresponded with me also becoming a fan as I started talking about her music on my YouTube channel. We got to develop this thing together. When the concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, came out October of 2023, neither of us were that interested in seeing it. Then, seeing the actual Eras Tour became the mandate. Swiftmania had come to our home.

For me, as a music fan, it was coming to appreciate the incredible talent of her songwriting and the unique production of each album. For Cozy, it’s also about her connection to her friends, the fifth grade Swiftie crew. The old teeny-bopper culture of the bedroom has gone from the days of dreams of male stars, and the dream to marry them, to a 21st century connection to a female artist who empowers girls and women with empathy and strength. No wonder fragile men hate Taylor Swift.

So the hunt for tickets was on. We had a place to stay if I could score some tickets to one of the London shows. The tickets for the Warsaw show were the cheapest. I entered every contest I could, including buying lots of raffle tickets. I’m from the days of $12.00 concert tickets so the thought of paying more than a hundred times that for a show was beyond me, but the kid wanted to go. And so did I. We renewed Cozy’s passport just in case we got tickets to one of the more affordable shows in Europe. We didn’t.

The tour, that began in Glendale, Arizona, on March 17, 2023, was set to end not too far up the road from us in Vancouver, BC. A few weeks ago, Cozy was in tears realizing her dream to see Taylor was winding down. Then she woke up one day and said, “Can we try a fundraiser?” So we recorded a video and sent it in to Kickstarter right before Thanksgiving but it never got approved to launch. So, in a last minute appeal, I asked fans of Cozy to Venmo support for this mission to get the kid to the Eras tour. We scored a couple of semi-obstructed view tickets on StubHub for the Friday show for only $999 each with a $700 service charge. (I hope the CEO of StubHub is laying low.)

With the tickets on my phone (and some sustaining donations from Cozy’s mom and some great friends), we headed north to Canada. The highway was jammed up with Swifties. At one point, north of Seattle, Cozy and a car full of girls tossed friendship bracelets to each other as we headed for the border. I’m guessing there are a ton of the famous bracelets on I-5 that didn’t make their target. The Canadian customs guy laughed when he saw our car, covered in graffiti, including writing on the driver’s side that said, “Broke Swiftie Dad” with my Venmo handle.

Once inside the BC Place Arena in Vancouver, the excitement was leaping off the walls. I was a year younger than Cozy when my parents took me to see Elvis Presley, so I wanted her to remember every second and just breathe the whole thing in. She was busy trading bracelets while I checked out all the subcultural fashion. (My favorite was a T-shirt with a picture of Jake Gyllenhaal’s face, the inspiration for the epic “All Too Well” song, with a red cross over it.). Cozy was in her “22” outfit, hoping she would be selected out of the 60,000 in attendance to receive the coveted “22 hat” from Taylor herself. But there we no mistaking that we were in the middle of a cultural phenomenon, about to be in the room with the biggest pop star on the planet.

After a pleasant set from Taylor’s buddy Gracie Abrams (daughter of JJ Abrams), the countdown clock struck zero, the lights dropped and our special concert wristbands started flashing. Happy Eras! It was wonderfully deafening. Like the Beatles times a thousand (dollars). I recorded Cozy as Taylor appeared mid-stage to launch into the Lover Era portion of the show. She screamed and didn’t stop screaming for three hours. It was blissful. Dad mission accomplished.

The show itself was incredible. I got to hear all my favorite songs, including “Cardigan” and “Midnight Rain.” Her acoustic set, different each night, included “Never Grow Up,” which always reminds me of Cozy. But the zeitgeist of the night was the first bridge to “Cruel Summer,” where we all sang at the top of lungs with the women herself. “I’m drunk in the back of the car…” They were filming the concert so if there’s an Eras Tour 2 movie coming out, you may see Cozy and I singing our hearts out.

Cozy didn’t get the 22 hat but during that song she’s convinced that Taylor waved at her up on row XX in the upper level of the arena. I’m sure she did. Every moment of the concert was brilliant, from “Miss Americana” to “Karma.” After three and half hours, I didn’t want it to end. Swift put on a brilliant show, singing a thousand songs, dancing her ass off, and making everyone of the 60,000 in attendance feel like they were sharing a personal moment with her. I’ve got a pretty good resume of concerts over the years (I was at Live Aid, for godssake), and this was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced, both musically and culturally.

We made are way back across the border after the show and got a hotel in Bellingham, Washington, and drove home yesterday in the pouring rain. We made it back to Portland in time for Cozy to get to the birthday party of her Swiftie bestie who had a house full of girls waiting to hear from a friend who had actually been to the Eras Tour. When Cozy knocked on the door, you could hear the screaming down the block. She came bearing friendship bracelets for everyone.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour ends tonight in Vancouver, after 149 shows on five continents. It is the largest grossing tour of all time and has shaped culture and economies around the globe. Astronauts have reported being able to see the concerts from space and geologists have claimed the crowds have caused the earth to vibrate. All that is true but I know for one 10-year-old girl it was simply about the moment Taylor Swift waved at her that caused time itself to stop. And (with a little help from my friends) I got to be the one who made that moment happen.

To you, everything’s funny

You got nothing to regret

I’d give all I have honey

If you could stay like that

– Taylor Swift, “Never Grow Up”