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The 1999 film “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” contains a rousing musical number called “Blame Canada,” in which parents of unruly children resolve to blame Canada for all their child-rearing problems.
The humor in the song derived from the fact that blaming Canada for anything seemed so absurd. They’re our kindly northern neighbor, a more polite version of ourselves! They gave us Michael J. Fox, and the Ryans Gosling and Reynolds, Bret “Hitman” Hart, and Shania Twain and Celine Dion! How could we ever be mad at them?
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Today, our president is blaming Canada, in an escalating conflict driven by his most petty and vindictive impulses, doing nothing but harm to the citizenry of both countries. It’s not a complete breakup with our closest ally, but it’s drawing awfully close. And it isn’t hard to imagine it getting progressively worse as we slog through the next three years.
Last week in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a remarkable speech in which he all but declared the end of the post-war order that the United States and its allies created.
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he said. “Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security, that assumption is no longer valid.”
The “middle powers,” he went on, have no choice but to band together for their mutual interest, free of the delusion that they can rely on the great powers — or, more specifically, one great power. And rather than just lamenting what Donald Trump is destroying, he argued that it was always something of a lie.
“Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised,” he said. “Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.”
Not surprisingly, Trump didn’t take it well. The day after Carney’s speech, he said, “I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful — they should be grateful to the US, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
