Of all the possible outcomes of the halftime kerfluffle, I admit that expressions of “Canadian Exceptionalism” did not appear on my list. We live in a truly odd timeline.
You find the take bananas because you have not understood it. It’s not about “which country has it worse than other nations”. It’s that Canada is having its sovereignty explicitly denied by the US. This is not by far the worst thing that’s happened to any country in the Western Hemisphere, and nobody suggested that. But it is bad, and specific to Canada.
Nobody is “complaining” about this. I specifically said it’s a good thing for all countries in the Western Hemisphere to be seen as equals in sovereignty and legitimacy to America, and it’s good for Bunny to remind Americans of this, but folding Canada into a generalized “the Americas” is wrong, for the specific reason that this is something Canada is actively fighting against right now.
Anyone who thinks this is the point of the posts they were responding to, has clearly not studied those posts. It’s a mischaracterization and misunderstanding.
However, if you do have a Spanish interpretation that puts things in a different light, I do read Spanish, as do many people on this board, and I’m sure we’d all be glad to hear your take on it. Please feel free to elaborate.
There’s a distinction between threatening and disrespecting a country’s sovereignty, specifically the recognition of a country’s right to exist, vs. treating them badly or violating their borders or coercing them in other ways.
What the Trump admin did to (for example) Venezuela is pretty awful. That’s a distinct and different thing from saying that Venezuela isn’t a real country and that it should be made the 51st state, which is a different bad thing that’s only happening to Canada and Greenland, about which those countries are extremely angry and sensitive (and justifiably so).
It’s possible for 2 bad things to be bad in different ways, and to talk about them differently. It doesn’t all have to be collapsed into a contest of who has it worst, or who doesn’t deserve to be mentioned at all.
But again maybe we’re laboring under some misunderstandings that could be cleared up by your explanation in Spanish, so please feel free to share that.
Then you wrote this bit extremely poorly, because that’s exactly how it comes across.
If you didn’t mean to express that Canada has it worse that Latin America, you failed miserably in your messaging. Not to mention that claiming that the US is running a country (as he said about Venezuela), after kidnapping their leader, is absolutely denying their sovereignty. Your argument is awful here.
Let’s not kid ourselves. When we ask permission to be here and steal their land and resources and they object to it but we stay and take it all anyway, we are NOT “guests”.
You are well aware that there’s been no discussion of making Venezuela the 51st state, and I presume you’re aware that Maduro, the person you described as “their leader”, is part of a military junta that wasn’t democratically elected. If you understand these points then you understand the distinction, but it seems like everyone really would rather collapse it all into the statement that Canada’s overall mistreatment by the US is nowhere near that of the rest of Latin America.
And the latter is a point I don’t dispute at all. It’s an obvious point that doesn’t really need to be belabored, which is why I’m talking about the less-obvious point.
Colour this Canadian extremely confused about this entire chain of discussion. Señor Bunny was simply saying, “God bless America. All of it.” Canada is part of the Americas. Nothing more complicated.