Sorry, Donald: Canada Has No Interest in Becoming Your Latest Foreign-Born Trophy Wife
The Donald Trump administration is currently engaged in what Steve Bannon calls Flooding the Zone with shit. The idea is to overwhelm your opponents by doing so many egregious things at once that it’s hard to even keep track of all the ugliness, let alone fight it effectively.
It’s a deliberately overwhelming strategy designed to break the spirit of everyone fighting Elon Musk’s hostile takeover of our country and its institutions.
It’s hard to know where to begin. Yesterday, for example, Donald Trump, in his official capacity as a fake Christian and anti-semite, determined that Chuck Schumer was not Jewish because he wasn’t aggressive enough in promoting Israel’s genocidal policies toward Palestinians. Trump probably thinks that he can’t be anti-Semitic because he loves money and is sexually attracted to his Jewish daughter.
Alternatively, I could write about Trump’s belief that boycotting Tesla in protest is illegal. Oh, and there was that whole bit where they attempted to deport a Palestinian protestor for exercising his right to free speech.
That’s the thing about Donald Trump. He’s the second most powerful man in the world, and most of what he says can be reflexively dismissed as bullshit, bluster, and lies. He is an unserious man who demands to be taken seriously, if not literally.
But I am instead going to focus on one of the several million things bugging me about Trump’s second term: Canada.
Canada is our closest neighbor and one of our most important, loyal, dependable allies. Canada was our friend. Why wouldn’t they be? Up until fairly recently, we were both democracies, although the United States has become more fascist by the day.
The histories of Canada and the United States are inextricably intertwined. Antagonizing a famously polite country made no goddamn sense. Why start shit for no reason?
Because I am not a sociopath, I’ve always seen Canada as our friend and neighbor. Donald Trump, unfortunately, sees them much differently.
As part of Trump’s soul-deep conviction that everybody in the entire world is fucking us over in the most deliberate, vicious manner imaginable, except for our pals Israel and Russia, Trump portrayed Canada as funny-talking parasites who take and take and take from the United States without giving anything in return.
The idea of doing things for humanitarian reasons is unfathomable to Trump. For him, every relationship is transactional. You don’t do things because they’re moral and right and Christian: you do them for money, power, and privileges. It’s quid pro quo: you do something for me, and I might do something in exchange for you.
In his first term, Trump was mainly just an asshole to Canada and its leader Justin Trudeau. That may or may not have something to do with how Melania looked at Trudeau with barely concealed lust.
He stepped up his belligerence in his second term. Our foreign policy could once be boiled down to “containing Communism” and “promoting Democracy.” Trump doesn’t care about promoting democracy. If he did, he wouldn’t be buddying up to Putin and bullying Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Then came the threatening tariffs for no goddamn reason stage of our once cozy and untroubled relationship with our neighbors to the north. This was followed by imposing tariffs despite everyone telling Trump it was a horrible idea that would hurt American businesses and consumers and not be a magical money machine.
Trump started talking about Canada becoming our fifty-first state.
At first, that seemed like a bad joke rooted in the power imbalance between the countries. If it was a joke, nobody seemed to be laughing.
As is often the case with Trump, he’ll say something outrageous and wrong to see what kind of reaction it gets. If people are horrified and disgusted, he’ll claim he was engaging in his trademark humor. If he gets a good response, he’ll insist that he wasn’t joking.
Trump was doing to Canada what in pick-up artist circles is called “negging.” The idea is to throw a desirable woman off balance by playfully insulting her, to make the target of seduction so insecure and desperate to prove her attractiveness and desirability that she’ll end up having sex with the creep treating her like shit.
The twice-impeached thirty-four-time felon is used to getting what he wants financially, professionally, and sexually. He’s under the delusion that he won by an unprecedented landslide that gave him blanket permission to do whatever he wanted, whether legal or not. He thinks we appointed him God-Emperor, and he can consequently take over countries like Greenland and Canada like they were cards in a Monopoly game.
This is a still from a fictional movie, not a real chart, President Trump
Trump’s pitch to Canada is essentially the same as his pitch to Melania. He boasted that he could use his God-like power and unlimited wealth to make Canada rich and powerful. That’s not all! Trump is also offering Canada the opportunity to experience the enormous prestige that comes with being not just associated with Trump’s America but part of it as well.
It reminds me of the moment in Deadpool & Wolverine where Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool tells Wolverine that he’s entering the MCU at a particularly dire time. The same is true of our country. I can’t imagine the Canadian people loving the idea of becoming part of the United States under any circumstances. I imagine that they are particularly repulsed by the prospect of getting swallowed by a superpower controlled by a senile man-child who communicates at the level of a perpetually apoplectic toddler.
Trump’s overtures to Canada, both in press conferences and on social media, involve an incoherent, contradictory combination of insults and flattery and insults poorly disguised as compliments and compliments that are actually insults.
The reality show bozo will graciously allow “Oh Canada” to be played at hockey games as a state song rather than a national anthem. Why should they have a national anthem? They’re not good, strong, smart, or Trump enough to be a country, but the 34-time felon in the White House thinks they’d make for a swell state. A beautiful one. With so many resources to exploit!
It will take a long time to repair the tremendous damage Trump has done to our relationship with Canada through hubris, narcissism, and an innate desire to bully people he perceives as less powerful.
Trump’s appeal has always been nationalism. By nationalism, I, of course, mean white nationalism.
There are Trump cultists north of the border who share his nationalist convictions. Trump’s right-wing fans are consequently much more likely to pursue a Canada First agenda instead of wanting to be our country’s fifty-first state.
Trump thinks that if he only insults Canada enough, and really drives home the idea that they’re nothing without the United States, and utterly dependent upon us and our incredible military and economy, then the Canadian people will rise up and angrily demand that their country give up their autonomy, independence and identity and become part of a country that devolves further and further into Fascism by the day.
That 51st state shtick was never funny. It’s just mean and gross. It’s sad that there’s not a single actual grown-up in Trump’s administration willing to risk losing their job by telling him that what he’s doing is pathetic and insane and reflects terribly on him and the country as a whole. Marco Rubio should do that, but he’s scared shitless of Trump and Musk’s wrath.
Sorry, Trump. Canada has no interest in becoming your latest foreign-born trophy wife. They’re finding it incredibly easy to resist your seduction attempt.
I am, however, intrigued by the notion of the United States becoming a province of Canada. They’re doing a whole lot better than us right now. I would rather be led by Justin Trudeau than Donald Trump.
Maybe after we become part of Canada, Trudeau will throw Trump a bone and name him King of America. He can sit on a tacky gold throne and order people around to his heart’s content as long as he realizes he has no power in this situation and is a leader in name only.
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his non-existent dental plan didn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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