Polite appear­ances to the con­trary, Canada’s rela­tion­ship with the U.S. has always had an ele­ment that can be summed up in a para­phrase of the open­ing line of a son­net by the Eng­lish poet Eliz­a­beth Bar­rett Brown­ing:  “How do you p*** us off. Let us count the ways..” 

Tar­iffs and annex­a­tion bom­bast mere­ly head the list of irri­tants. They’ll hurt Amer­i­ca as much as they do the rest of us, and at worst, will be struck off when, and hope­ful­ly long before, the Trump-MAGA-Musk fias­co comes to a statu­to­ry end.
Occa­sion­al polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic igno­rance can be endured in the same way we do the annu­al black­fly and mos­qui­to seasons.
Stu­pid­i­ty at bubon­ic plague lev­el is anoth­er matter.
The head of the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency crow­ing “… We are dri­ving a dag­ger through the heart of cli­mate-change reli­gion and ush­er­ing in America’s Gold­en Age” shows total dis­re­gard not only for what his agency is sup­posed to do.
If you want to turn your coun­try into a garbage dump by  pro­claim­ing “today the green new scam ends, as the E.P.A. does its part to ush­er in a gold­en age of Amer­i­can suc­cesss”, you might have the decen­cy to con­sid­er your neighbour.
Oops, the “good neigh­bour” rule about not affect­ing oth­er states with air­borne pol­lu­tion is gone too.
Aban­don­ing cut­ting green­house gas emis­sion mea­sures for the sake of more prof­it for your main pol­luters is espe­cial­ly galling for Cana­di­ans. In spite of being a lot low­er on the offend­er scale than you, we’ve been pay­ing a much-hat­ed and hurt­ful car­bon tax.
The new non-rules will also open the spig­ot for pol­luters to use water­ways as tox­ic dump­ing grounds. Did I miss the bit about you build­ing one of Pres­i­dent Trump’s beloved walls along the bor­der that runs though the mid­dle of the four Great Lakes we share ?
Or does the fact that Cana­da holds 20 per­cent of the world’s fresh water make you think it’s okay to turn yours into tox­ic sludge, because we’ll be hap­py to “bail in”?
Just to be clear, the inane fan­ta­sy that Cana­da will become the 51^st state is a threat to our nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and secu­ri­ty in the way that an obnox­ious neigh­bour who plays inces­sant loud music is to one’s sanity.
                 IGNORANCE ISN’T BLISS     
Per­haps because until now they’ve been tol­er­at­ed, Amer­i­cans seem bliss­ful­ly unaware how many and var­ied oth­er items are on the p****d off list.
Under the head­line “Cana­da and Amer­i­ca must go back to get­ting along”, an opin­ion piece by the Wash­ing­ton Post edi­to­r­i­al board blithe­ly stat­ed that: “Trump’s broad­sides against Cana­da, espe­cial­ly his sug­ges­tion that the coun­try become the 51st state, have unleashed a wave of nation­al­ism north of the border.”
They might have cho­sen a bet­ter adjec­tive. Waves dis­si­pate over time and dis­tance, break when they hit a reef or the shore.
Cana­di­ans have always been and always will be nation­al­is­tic. We just don’t flaunt it by turn­ing our country’s name into a fist-pump­ing chant at every opportunity.
The boast that the U.S. won two world wars falls in that category.
As your allies nev­er tire of point­ing out, Amer­i­can troops showed up almost three years late in both, and  most cer­tain­ly made huge and cost­ly con­tri­bu­tions, for which, we’d like Vice-Pres­i­dent J.D. Vance to know,  your com­rades-in-arms were then, are now and ever­more shall be so, deeply grate­ful. Thank you,
But you didn’t “win” the wars, you “helped win” them. From our point of view, there’s a big difference.
It’s one rea­son why your allies today may be for­giv­en if they are non-plussed as to why tak­ing over oth­er coun­try’s min­er­als and sov­er­eign­ty, is, as Pres­i­dent Trump repeats ad nau­se­um, essen­tial for your nation­al security.
If you’re so inse­cure that the only way you can feel safe is by in effect colonis­ing friend­ly coun­tries, it’s past time for we,whom you cov­et, to look else­where for friends and trad­ing partners.
How­ev­er, and impor­tant­ly, let me make it clear that none of the fore­go­ing is intend­ed as,dis­par­age­ment of Amer­i­cans as individuals.
Over the course of near­ly three decades with CBS News, I shared adven­tures, dan­gers and laugh­ter with Amer­i­can col­leagues with whom I hope I remain friends, in spite of the cur­rent nonsense.
I also find it sad that my Amer­i­cans neigh­bours on the Ontario lake where I spend the sum­mer will now prob­a­bly, and under­stand­ably, feel they must for­sake their cus­tom of fly­ing the Stars and Stripes (respect­ful­ly below the Cana­di­an Maple Leaf) on poles out­side their cottages.
Browning’s orig­i­nal open­ing line will nev­er apply to U.S.-Canada rela­tions as it was writ­ten, but hope­ful­ly the cur­rent ani­mos­i­ty will even­tu­al­ly ebb to the point where it can at least read: “How do I like thee…” 

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