You know that scene in Children of Men where Clive Owen is riding the bus while a propaganda video is listing the names of world capitals over apocalyptic newsreel footage before declaring "THE WORLD HAS COLLAPSED; ONLY BRITAIN SOLDIERS ON"?That's probably how most Canadians are feeling this week now that Donald Trump's inauguration has finally arrived.This is it, folks. Zero hour of a brave new world where America may or may not have a functioning executive branch as of 12:15 PM on January 20. Fasten your safety belts and please keep your limbs inside the vehicle at all times.
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Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau is now the Dudley Do-Right of international liberalism, riding ass-backwards into a confrontation with an unpredictable US president bent on overturning the North American order. It's a tall order for anybody, but especially for a prime minister whose political ideas and personal style are so wildly different from The Donald's.How will this actually play out in US-Canada relations? Here are a couple of the major issues where we're likely to see some real tension.Even if the formal machinery of international North American politics hold more-or-less together, the biggest shift in Canada/US relations once Trump is inaugurated will likely be at the symbolic level. Not only can we probably expect an awkward personal relationship between Trump and Trudeau, but both countries have staked out pretty different turf for their national identities.It will be fun to see Trudeau's Canada facing off against Trump's America. The Liberals are in charge of the Canada 150 celebrations this year, and their branding of this country is famously tied to the Great White North being a magical multicultural land where immigrants with advanced degrees can thrive as menial labourers while Laurentian whites nod sagely to one another during Vinyl Café listening parties. Canadian smarm will probably go into overdrive sometime around late June.On the flipside, it's been barely two months since the US election and it's already having a profound impact on our political discourse (hello, Kellie Leitch!). It'll be interesting to see what happens as the Conservative leadership race wraps up and sets the tone for the next two years of federal politics, in much the same way that tracking the progress of Ebola was interesting for people working at the Centre for Disease Control.
THE BRAND
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At a more elemental level, there is the basic clash of personalities. It's tailor-made for a low-budget TV comedy. Trudeau is the soft-spoken, metrosexual male feminist who cares about your feelings and will do the dishes for you and possibly also give you a foot bath if you indulge that weird sexual thing he's into that you find vaguely uncomfortable in its strangeness but not particularly threatening in any way, it's just not your thing but he's really into it so it's a bit of a give and take situation and otherwise honestly he's a pretty good catch all things considered. This is a metaphor for ethics scandals, I guess.Donald Trump is a big loud oaf who only cares about making deals and bragging about sex crimes and tweeting rude reviews of the burrito stand across the street. What will these two wacky roommates get up to next?!Despite their totally opposite personas, the great irony in all this is how similar they are. They're both glorified salespeople for nationalist ideas that extend beyond themselves. Trudeau is technocratic neoliberalism with a human face and Trump is chauvinism in a gaudy suit. Trudeau is the spokesman for the Ottawa mandarin class and Trump is the spokesman for the impotent American id.They are the two-faced god of late capitalism in North America. One face sweetly whispers empowering slogans and the other hisses your most erotically violent revenge fantasies. They are the apotheosis of the politics of branding, and the worst conflicts always stem from the narcissism of small differences. Expect Canada to be thoughtlessly lionized in the liberal press on both sides of the 49th parallel and for cuckoldry to go mainstream as a Canadian conservative epithet.
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