Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute commentator Jack Granatstein, normally quick to dismiss any Canadian who criticises the United States or its foreign policy as a knee-jerk “anti-American”, appears to have finally succumbed to that great Canadian reflex himself (J.L. Granatstein, “Our American friends are trouble,” Ottawa Citizen, 9 October 2011):

The American people are in one of their periodic fits of national madness, their psyche unravelling before our gaze…. A one-term Obama presidency, almost unthinkable 24 months ago, now seems possible, even likely.

But the Democrats’ one saving grace is that their political opposition, the Republicans, are completely obdurate and utterly oblivious to reality, the Tea Party faction controlling their every move as they spout Bible Belt economic and religious nostrums. Congress is paralyzed, and the jostling among presidential wannabes grows ever fiercer. But what a list of potential candidates: Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney. That roster is so terrifying, so packed with utter nonentities, that Romney actually seems the best of the lot, even if he is damned in the eyes of many in his party because, as governor of Massachusetts, he passed a medicare bill not all that dissimilar to Obama’s. Shame, sir, shame! What a cadre of nobodies, a list to make the world tremble at the prospect of one of them directing the Shrunken States of America….

If the world’s fiscal situation weren’t so serious, we could all laugh at the Americans and their blustering incompetence and political games. But their ossified Congress means there can be no serious or sustained action to tackle the U.S.’s economic problems, even while the Secretary of the Treasury admonishes the European Union and the Euro-bankers to get their act together to find a solution to the Greek debt woes (and those of Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc., etc.). The global economy and world stock markets go down the tubes while the Tea Party in Washington and Podunk sets the pace on the road to ruination. What a farce.

Maybe the idea of an American-built wall along the Canada-U.S. border is not such a bad idea after all. Not to keep our “terrorists” out of the Republic, but instead to keep the Americans and their dysfunctional governmental ideas, their wild-eyed politicians, their preachers, and their rabid Fox commentators out of Canada. Canadians have become used to the idea of believing that we are dull and boring and that everything exciting happens south of the 49th Parallel. It is certainly true that there is some excitement in watching a great nation flush its substance away, but I’ll take dull and boring any day, thank you very much. Build that wall high, not that it will protect us from the worst of the folly down south. And by the way, best friends, whether we like you or not, you can pay for it yourselves. If you can afford it.
(Emphasis added.)

Love to see the Wikileaks analysis of that little diatribe.