Taking on the “menace of the north”

At last, says Dana Milbank, a US president “with the guts to stand up to Canada”. For too long,
we Americans have tolerated abuse from the “menace of the north”. Our neighbours have inflicted
one “abomination after the other” on us over the years. They gave us diphthong vowels and weird
culinary innovations like poutine, Hawaiian pizza and instant mashed potato. “We turned the other
cheek.” They sent us the teenybopper Justin Bieber. Still, we didn’t retaliate. Yet at the recent G7
summit in Quebec, Canada finally went too far. First, it corralled President Trump into signing a
communique loaded with such objectionable provisions as a commitment to work towards “a clean
environment” and “ending violence against girls and women”. Then, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
had the nerve to protest against the recently imposed US tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium.
“We’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around,” he said, adding that he
found it “kind of insulting” that the US had cited national security reasons for the tariffs. It’s obvious
from this crazed rhetoric that Canada presents “a clear and present danger” to the US. There’s only
one solution: “We are going to build a wall from Maine to Alaska – and Ottawa is going to pay.”