Snapshot: "Oh, Canada"

On unelected Elon, spending rejected, worsening inequality and happy dreams about our neighbor to the north

Hello to a Canadian mountie. (Photo by Ascent/PKS Media Inc. via Getty Images)

At first I was struck by the sheer arrogance and stupidity of Donald Trump posting this week about turning Canada into the 51st state—“Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st state,” he lied—never mind that MAGA enablers were later claiming that their humorless leader was just joking. Then Wednesday happened, when unelected President Elon Musk blew up the pre-Christmas spending bill that would have kept the government open and functioning and likely would have passed with bipartisan participation.

Insisting that the proposed bill was “criminal” and spreading lies about its actual contents, the world’s richest man threatened to primary any member of Congress who went along with the legislation. “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk posted. This was just one of over 100 posts by America’s leading oligarch, intended to bully Republicans into submission.

It worked. He tanked the bill that would have extended government funding through next March and included funding for child cancer research, disaster relief and economic aid for farmers. This mess is of course deeply worrying, given the damage that Musk’s destruction would cause millions of government employees, military members, farmers, senior citizens and other at-risk Americans who count on government services and payments for their survival.

But, amid MAGA Republicans kowtowing to their new overlord—who, by the way, will surely be all-in on fresh tax cuts that help billionaires like him, never mind rising national debt, or massive defense contract increases—I began to think more about Canada. Oh, Canada.

In these turbulent times, I often hear people pondering what it would mean if America split up into blue states and red states. Well, how about a different scenario? What if Musk-Trump and their nasty band of marauders succeed in turning our beloved country into a collection of scraps so cheap that our friends from the north could consider acquiring and turning the U.S. into its 11th province?

Yes, I’m kidding. But, to my surprise, when I posted this thought on Bluesky, my joke was warmly applauded as a welcome notion. Here was a chance for people south of the Canadian border to join a system of universal healthcare. Here was a chance for, as one person put it, “benevolent rulers.” Here was a chance to dwell on the delights of maple syrup, the need not to flee the country and all those very nice Canadians. “I would be OK being a Canadian,” said one poster. “We should be so lucky,” said another. “At this point, that sounds fabulous, eh?” said a third.

Of course, it’s not like this proposal would be warmly received in points north. “With all that debt, nah,” said one Canadian. Ending this warm reflection, there was this sober slap of reality: “I speak for all Canadians here on this topic. We won't buy, even if you pay us.”

OK, so it looks like we’ll have to dig our own way out of our mess. As of last night, a stripped-down alternate proposal was dismissed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries with these simple declarative sentences: "The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious. It's laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown." A subsequent vote confirmed nearly every Democrat and 38 Republicans agreed the new bill was not serious. Final defeat for the spending bill Trump endorsed: 235-174.

I don’t know what the coming days and weeks will yield, except more chaos, conflict and madness from co-presidents Musk and Trump. And as much as I dread the consequences for everyday Americans who neither voted for this nor imagined how cruel oligarchic rule could be, it’s worth noting that this fiasco a month before they officially take power will meaningfully decrease their political capital.

Even among spineless House Republicans, Musk’s Grinch-like theft of Christmas relief is a bad sign of things to come. While I’m not one to revel in others’ misfortune, we can only hope that the Trump-Musk “let’s destroy America and buy up the broken remnants on the cheap” project eventually earns these awful men the enmity they deserve. It might finally convince a solid majority of Americans why they should be mad as hell and why they shouldn’t take it any more from corrupt, self-serving billionaires. That could eventually yield system change that a grossly unequal and unjust America sorely needs.

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