There’s an adage out there that says you can’t pick your neighbours but that you can sure as hell pick your friends.
It’s an adage that can now be applied to the relationship that currently exists between Canada and the United States.
Geography and history gave us the United States. The Americans and their bizarre choice of a deranged president have given us Europe.
Big Mouth and his Acolytes, duly elected by our friends and family south of the border, have decided to undo maybe 145 years of collaborative history by singling us out for economic punishment and the threat of economic annexation as America’s so-called 51st state.
Good for them. Whatever makes you feel relevant, if for some reason relevance has been something eluding you. Maybe push around Greenland, Mexico, and Panama as well. Completely estrange yourself from Europe and pull the rug out from under Ukraine while you’re at it. Kiss Vladimir’s Russian ass and try not to ruin your makeup before having to do the same to China’s Xi. Makes me wonder if you simply forgot about Japan and South Korea or if you just haven’t gotten around to pissing on them yet as well.
In less than a single month, the Americans have managed to do what I thought might be impossible for even them to do. That is to be universally hated by every other nation on the planet. Except for maybe Russia.
I didn’t show up here to offer rational or logical arguments surrounding the regime of Donald Trump or how there’s even a regime led by Donald Trump. There are no rational or logical arguments to explain a phenomena such as this, such as him, without indicting an entire nation, without blaming an entire people.
It’s too easy to invite comparisons with 1930’s Germany, but the fact remains there was no Nazi Party without the Germans. By extension, there can be no MAGA without Americans and their stupid little red hats.
Our brothers and sisters to the south have lost their collective minds, their collective conscience, and their collective good sense. The world once relied on them to maintain the balance of these things, but now they’ve lost their compass, something(s) knocked them off their track, and they are now running the bulls through the china shop.
A nation borne of violence, developed and grown through violence, and often sustained through violence, has decided that they now have to show their true colours, and threaten others with violence if they don’t get their way. Welcome back to the American Wild West, this time led by a caricature of a cartoon character, an apt reflection on a people who have lost their pride and decency in a world that once needed them to respect those things, even defend those things.
But we can’t count on them anymore.
If Canadian fans boo the U.S. team at the Four Nations Cup, I say go to it. If Matthew Tkachuk doesn’t like that, well, I don’t like Matthew Tkachuk, so who cares about what he likes and doesn’t like? Same goes for brother Brady, and I really don’t need to see dad Keith on my hockey telecasts anymore due to over-saturation. Plus he’s a giant blow-hard, sort of the poster boy for the entirety of America.
The United States has taken actions against Canada that amount to a legitimate declaration of war. They have purposely and with intent targeted us for economic pain, significant economic pain, all without any provocation. They have threatened our territorial integrity, again. Not since the U.S. Civil War (their second civil war for anyone counting — Americans like to shoot things, especially each other –) have we had to deal with threats like this. In fact, it was the freaking Americans and their threats in the 1860’s who are most responsible for Canada expanding to the Pacific Ocean in the first place.
In the 1980’s, it was the Americans who touted the concept of economic globalism as part of their rule-based order. As the dominant nation, they whip-sawed everyone else, including us, into shape, and that led to the initial Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. It was the way the Americans decided they were going to economically rule the world, and they forced everyone else into the plan.
Then, suddenly, they didn’t like it anymore and ripped up the parts of the FTA — Free Trade Agreement — they didn’t like when Trump first came along. Now, forty years after insisting on globalism, they’ve turned to isolationism and decided that the way to Make America Great Again is by putting up trade walls and throwing their weight around. In effect, they pulled the rug out from underneath the very system they demanded everyone else be a part of.
What a bunch of assholes. Like, seriously.
So you know what?
Build that wall. Build those walls. Not to keep us out, but rather to keep them in.
Europe is a market of over 350 million people who apparently share our values more than the people living on the other side of the fence. We’ll just keep the blinds on that side of the house closed so we don’t have to look at the losers next door, and turn our attention to our real friends, our democratic and economic partners, the nations and democracies of Europe.
I’ll be fine if I don’t buy another thing from that side of the fence ever again. Rip up the contract for the F-35’s and purchase the Saab Gripen instead. If not one Tesla gets sold in this country from this point forward, I’ll buy the noise-makers and balloons. Forget the Hawks. I’m going to be a Sens fan now, Brady Tkachuk notwithstanding.
I don’t even think we should let Trump into the country for the G-7 summit being held this year in Alberta. Who invites and welcomes somebody who is threatening to roll over you? As if.
Well, maybe Alberta would. I forgot, they’re not Canadian, more like wannabe Americans living out their probation terms before being granted full Yellowstone status. Lost my head there for a second.
From the time I was a young boy, I’ve been an apologist for the Americans and the United States. But always in the back of my mind I knew the the greatest threat to my country was the country right next door. They’ve attacked us twice already, and threatened to do it a third time. One should never take them for granted because they’ve always had a certain, almost dangerous volatility.
Do you ever remember the school-yard bully who pulled a punch to another kid’s face just to get the poor kid to flinch? Then laughed at the kid? As if making somebody afraid is part of having a good time. Well, my thinking is that a pulled punch is a punch nevertheless, and there’s absolutely nothing funny about it. Somebody pulls a punch on me and it’s on.
This guy and his tariff threats is pulling punches right and left. And if this is his opening gambit to get other concessions, then we should view it precisely the way it ought to be viewed, as a naked act of aggression.
I think it was Pierre Trudeau who said living next to the Americans was like living next door to an elephant. That every time the elephant rolled over, you stood a really good chance of getting crushed. I don’t like that analogy, because I like elephants and don’t want to lump them in with Americans.
Because elephants make sense. And they’re smart. And they don’t run around shitting on all the other animals. Not a good comparison at all.
Back to the opening adage.
No, clearly you don’t get to choose your neighbours. But you do get some influence over who you hang out with. The Americans have gone out of their way to demonstrate that they’re no friends of ours, if judging by their words and actions is a legitimate manner of judging.
As to differentiating between the nation and its citizens, maybe there was a time when a mature approach such as that might have been the way I chose to go about it.
But no longer.
They elected this man, and it wasn’t even close. So they can take their lumps.
God, guns, and hatred. They pay lip-service to the first, worship the second, and live the third as part of their emerging national consciousness.
They’ve built their corrupt little empire, and now as far as I’m concerned, they can choke on it.
Or maybe, just maybe, they can find themselves again, grow up and do the world a favour, and clean up the mess they foisted upon us.
MARA.
Make America Right Again.
And you can keep your stupid little hat.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 