Why did you ever think that you were not powerless. Actually you are not powerless but you are powerless in the way that you seem to wish for.

Short of Massive wealth and/or highly priviliged birth, you are powerless here or anywhere you choose to go. Historically there are a few exceptions to that rule but they usually aren't late bloomers.

Do you really think that you would have any input in Canada or even that you will be truely happy with the way things are done up there? I imagine you do not but see it as an expression of protest. A protest like that is about as effective as a vote for Kerry in Wyoming. I recommend that you don't do it and just say you did.

As an educator you may not have macro power but do you have the power to shape minds, in your family and in the one of ten or one of a thousand kids you interact with.

As the head of an extended family, (as I suspect you also are) I guess my need for power is satisfied by my influence over the few. Politically, I am no more influential than Bush over the 49% that didn't vote for him but there is more to life than that.

Whether you believe that the USA is negatively affecting the world or as I do that the world is affecting us, little is as we would want it to be. I would gladly volunteer me and mine to be colonists to collective life in Antartica or Mars or anywhere I could truely be isolated from the problems of this world but the fact is, there is nowhere to escape the mess that is the world or the influence of this country.