The 2018 US War With Canada: A Comedy For The Ages

My amusement with Donald Trump (I will never call him president) rose to new heights this past weekend when he launched a Twitter attack on Canadian Prime Minister, or as most Americans say, president, Justin Trudeau.

This attack, like most of Trump’s attacks, was wildly unfocused, filled with lies and alternative facts and of course, all the vitriol that he could muster after having the one idea he brought to the G-7 Conference (re-admitting Russia) soundly trounced. And the entire group questioning the necessity for his draconian tariffs on steel and aluminum.

After Trump left in a huff for an important real estate development meeting with North Korean monarch Kim Jong Un in Singapore, Trudeau, explained, in the civilized tone that most high school teachers have, that these tariffs would be met with retaliatory tariffs and that though we are a nice polite country, we would not allow ourselves to be pushed around by America, or anyone else for that matter.

Well, of course, this set the Commander of Cheese (a title given to him by KellyAnne Conway) off on a tirade, accusing Trudeau of all kinds of disloyalty related stuff. His minions in Washington got so excited they even started slamming Trudeau, pointing out that there was ‘a special place in hell’ for people like him.

At this point, I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to bust a gut. The people who run America these days are all way beyond insane. They have no idea how funny they sound to anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together.

Thinking of the mild-mannered, aristocratic Montreal bred Justin Trudeau as some sort of evil menace to the United States is beyond laughable. But every time I think about it, I still laugh.

What This Is Really All About

By now many of us have figured out that Trump is about as deep as a small sidewalk puddle, so you have to really focus your analysis on the shallow stuff. Like Trudeau is a good looking guy who carries himself well, has lots of charisma, a beautiful wife who loves him, is a true Liberal and is liked by almost every leader in the world because he behaves like a human being.

Trump, on the other hand, is, well, none of the above. And is pretty much hated by any world leader who is not a fascist dictator. So I’m thinking that maybe there’s a little bit of envy going on here.

The school bully being jealous of the captain of the football team sort of drama.

Only it’s not a drama. It’s a comedy and Trump is so egocentric and narcissistic that he actually believes that he is the star of this comedy and it’s getting great ratings.

The fact that most of what he is doing is just plain stupid from an economic perspective, will cost America tens of thousands of jobs, will ruin one of the best, formerly most stable and largest trading relationships in the world doesn’t appear to bother Trump at all.

The irony is that the working class people who make up the majority of his base are the ones that will be the most seriously affected, along with all the growers and farmers who will suffer as a result of the inevitable retaliatory tariffs that will hit the US from just about everywhere that matters to the US economy.

But, on the bright side, these people, if they can still afford their cable, will have a lot of time to watch the comedy show that the Trump presidency has become.

There’s always a bright side to everything, isn’t there?

What Will The New Episodes Look Like?

There are two ways that the showrunners for this comedy can go.

They can wait to create new episodes in November when, hopefully, the Congress and maybe the Senate flip, adding more Democratic members to the cast and they can start undoing all this nonsense.

Or if that doesn’t happen, the world’s economy is trade-warred into a massive recession, perhaps even a depression. In these episodes, America becomes even more isolated than it already is, and a new world order rises up out of the ashes and America is no factor in any of this, because, by this time a lot of the engine that powers their economy will have fled.

If you don’t think this can happen, then I would point out to you, that the fragile nature of the world economy makes anything, no matter how far-fetched a high concept you are pitching, something that will be seriously considered.

And where will Trump be?

Well in the first scenario, he will either be impeached or imprisoned or just put out to pasture with all the other old farts who aren’t all there.

In the second scenario, he will have appointed himself king, will have purchased, at government expense, the Game of Thrones throne. He will then sit on that throne all day and send Tweets to all his other dictator friends, providing there are any telecom companies left in America to allow him Internet access.

And just to think, we can argue and quite emphatically, that it all started just for the ratings boost that declaring war on Canada would give him. And of course the fiasco of the past year and a half.

There’s no business like show business.

Jim Murray is an experienced advertising and marketing professional. He has run his own business (Onwords & Upwords), since 1989 after a 20 year career as a senior creative person in major Canadian & international advertising agencies. He is a communication strategist, writer, art director, broadcast producer, mildly opinionated op/ed blogger & beBee Brand Ambassador.

Jim lives in St Catharines Ontario and is a partner at Bullet Proof Consulting. www.bulletproofconsulting.ca

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