"For Canada day, all I have to say is that I'm sorry," Canada said through the video. America was on his phone watching his newest post on YouTube titled 'apologies from Canada'. "I am genuinely sorry for how I've acted in the past. Black face is not okay." The screen showed an old photo of Canada in some stereotypically dark makeup. "I take responsibility for my decision, and I shouldn't have done it. I should have known better. I recognize it is something racist to do and I am deeply sorry. This is not what Canada is aboot, eh. I have talked to many countries and have educated myself on the issue. It will never happen again." His voice was becoming shaky. He took a second and whipped away the beginnings of tears. "I-I hope you can forgive me, but I understand if you can't. Thank you for listening. I'll be happy to have a conversation with anybody in the comments over this issue."
America rolled his eyes and scrolled down to leave a dislike, but then he noticed the like ratio. "Fake news. This is way too high. He's using Russian bots to get those likes," he said to himself. He scrolled down, then scrolled back up because the comment section moved for some reason. To his surprise, the comments were mostly super supportive and forgiving. Even African countries. "F***... I've gotta do this! If I apologize, then everybody will all be my best buds and buy me the most awesomest birthday presents ever!" He started putting together his camera. "They'll see how great of a country I am!"
America was watching his video back. "Hey there dudes and dudettes!" His digital self said. "Quarantine has ended, kind of - it's complicated - but I'm still making some great content for you all. I have something important to say, but first, a word from my sponsor, dollar shave club! And no, this doesn't mean I'm shaving the beard." He continues on about dollar shave club for two minutes straight. It finished with "remember, promo code "july4merica" and get .1% off of your least expensive purchase. Now, I wanted to say I'm sorry." Fake tears started flowing out of his eyes. "I'm sorry that you guys get offended by blackface. Everybody else was doing it at the time, I swear. It was supposed to be funny. I'm sorry you guys don't have the same sense of humor as me." He blew his nose and whipped away the fake tears, but more came back. "My actions have hurt me more than they hurt you, trust me. And I could have done it a lot more too, but I didn't. Because it's wrong. I'm sorry if anybody's black face offended you. Especially you Egypt, and," America squinted at the camera, obviously trying to read something, "Eth-o-pie-a, and all you other African countries. #allcountriesmatter. Please accept my apology." He used his jacket to clean the tears off of his face, then immediately smiled. "Wow, how sad. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, and share it with everybody. And check out my merch! I'm rolling out new 'I'm sorry' pop sockets, t-shirts, and makeup kits. Don't worry, my face is on all of them." He continued talking about his merch and showed credits until the ten-minute mark. America clicked to add as many ads as humanly possible.
He laughed to himself. "Not only will I get everybody to love me, I'll get enough money to illegally buy fireworks! Win-win!" Publish was pressed and the video went live.
He sat back, waiting for the likes and praise to come rolling in. The opposite came instead. "What the **** is this?" America asked himself, looking at the hate. He whipped out the phone and started dialing.
Not too long later, he had himself a small gathering of countries somewhere outside. Canada, Mexico, Japan, Britain, and Lithuania were all there, wearing masks. America had a mask on the table, but wasn't wearing it. Instead, he was looking, more of glaring, across the table and slurping up some beans. Beans are a political statement.
"What's the emergency? You're not going to build another barricade, are you?" Britain asked.
America finished scarfing his beans and scoffed. "No. I'm not France, one revolution a year is good enough. I want to know what's going on here. Are there any secret treaties? Insider trading? You know, you're on my land now and that's a felony, you illegals. Speaking of which, why is Mexico here. I never invited him."
"Sorry, he came with me," Canada said
"Russia would like you to know that you couldn't put him in jail if you tried," Lithuania said.
America stared at Lithuania. "Who the hell are you? Where's Russia? Is he still throwing up blood or something?"
"I'm Lithuania, Russia's representative. Yes, the oil spill is still a problem, and will be for decades, but he's not worrying about that anymore. I was sent instead because he's making a YouTube video right now."
America slammed his hands on the table. "I knew it! It's all a- wait a second…" America took his phone out and started filming himself. "It's all a scheme! Sabotage!"
"What are you even talking about?" Britain asked.
"My youtube video! It got so much hate! After I apologized and everything!"
Britain hung his head and sighed. "Why do I even ask?"
Mexico started laughing. "Amigo, that apology was mierda. You've done so much worse than blackface."
"Like what?"
"You ripped California and Texas out of me, you're trying to build a wall, and the alamo. I'll never forget the alamo," Mexico said.
"I fail to see the problem," America said.
"You also murdered your natives," Britain added. "I have pictures." He showed an old twitter thread of America's where there was a picture of little boy him murdering some native Americans with an ax. It said 'manifesting my destiny' under it. Britain scrolled to show an older America happily burning down a Vietnamese village. He then scrolled past one of his own, kinda transphobic, tweets to show America droning the middle east. "This last one is from a week ago! And these are only the ones you take pictures of. I don't even know what happened to Chaz!"
"Well, Seattle started calling himself Chop so I chopped his anarchist ass into pieces, and, long story short, now he goes by Seattle again. I think he was a bad influence though. Portland is starting to act up, but it's probably nothing," America said. "And, also, I'm changing the Washington redskins' name, so that makes up for the rest of it."
"No it doesn't!"
Lithuania raised a hesitant finger. "I think I should mention that Russia hates you and says you ruined his achievement of the first person in space, amongst other things."
"That commie bastard doesn't deserve recognition," America defended
"Um, well," Canada started, "on the topic of your not-so-nice actions, you also did do some horrible things to Japan and the Japanese. You had camps. Only two nuclear weapons have ever been used in history and, well, there was a pattern."
"Japan had it coming," America said. " He should have opened his eyes before walking into my camp. Honestly, he should be thankful now that I only know him for Anime now. Besides, he forgave me, right Japan?"
Japan, who has been here the whole time, nodded. "Hai. But, I must admit, you have done some less than favorable actions in the past, even excluding all that has been said so far."
"Is this about slavery?" America asked. "I made it illegal a long time ago, Mississippi is finally changing its flag, and I'm working on getting rid of Mount Rushmore. Nothing says 'I'm sorry about slavery' better than bulldozing Abraham Lincoln's face."
Raising a skeptical eyebrow, Mexico asked. "How about actually saying 'I'm sorry' and then doing something to help those affected by it?"
"But why though?"
"If I may say something," Japan said, "America isn't all wrong here. We have all done some horrible things in the past, me included. Holding it over each other's heads is what leads to things like WWII. We should instead learn our histories so we don't repeat them, not to feel sorry for doing them. Our leaders that ordered the horrible things are long gone, after all.
America nodded, then looked off to the distance. "Hey all you watching this steam live, Japan's the best right? Well, second best." He pointed to himself. "Stiff competition."
"You're filming this?" Mexico asked.
"I'm always filming."
"But what are you looking at? Aren't you filming on your phone?" Britain asked.
America laughed. "You think I don't have cameras everywhere?"
Lithuania's phone chimed. "Aha, Russia just finished!" He sent the video to everyone at the table. They all watched.
Russia's video started off as all of his videos do, with blasting music and a yellow 3-D sign saying 'подчиниться' over a red background. It then cuts to a video of him sitting in his gamer chair, staring intensely at the camera. "Privyet. Now, a lot of people in the comments have been asking me to make an apology video. For what, you may be asking. Well, they talk about me purposely starving my sister Ukraine, gulag, splitting many countries in half, having a road of bones, sewing live dogs together, giving Pepsi the sixth largest military in the world, killing over a hundred million of my own Russians, and more. Even recently Britain, America, and cyka America are complaining about me hacking their COVID cure trials. Did I do all of these things? Of course I did. Do I regret any of this? Nyet. If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would. The thing I'd do differently is sell more vodka. Oh, and America, I know how much you like twitter. I should warn you, it is quite hackable. Proshchay, comrades, and buy more vodka or I will kill you."
The countries all stared in silence. "Goddamnit!" America said. He threw his phone down and started storming off.
"Where are you going?" Britain asked
"To buy vodka! He was really convincing!"
To be continued...
