When someone has hit rock bottom, is engaged in self-destructive behavior, is a danger to themselves and others, it’s time to hold an intervention. Family and friends can come together, sit them down and talk to them about what their behavior is doing and why they should start turning their life around. For a person, this can happen in a living room, the comforting and familiar surroundings. How, exactly, does one hold an intervention for an entire country?
In Canada, we’re close friends with our neighbours to the south. Sure, they’re often difficult to deal with, frequently a bit obnoxious and have an inflated sense of their own importance, but we deal with them and generally like them. But, as primary season is kicking off south of the border, they’re hitting rock bottom. They are not addicted to drugs, but have become hooked on loud, obnoxious politicians. It’s a dangerous addiction, one that could have negative consequences for all of its friends and neighbours. Really, we need to sit them down and talk to them about who on earth they’re trying to elect into office.
It’s just a rebellious phase, some might argue. The Donald Trumps and Ted Cruzes of the world are there, shouting about how they’re not the establishment, and that might seem appealing to a young country rebelling against their parents or the concept of reasonable discourse. But they’re dangerous things to be messing with. You dabble in a bit of loudmouth television personality, thinking it can’t possibly do much harm, that it’ll just be a bit of a laugh, and the next thing you know you’re building a wall on a border.
It’s sad to watch a country trying to destroy themselves, but really it was our own fault for not seeing the signs. I mean, in hindsight we can see that someone like Sarah Palin was just a gateway terrible politician, but at the time we just treated it as a phase, and possibly a way to keep Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live, so we, as an international community, didn’t take it as seriously as we needed to. Besides, we had not before witnessed a creature that communicated entirely in wacky soundbites, it was like discovering an entire new language.
Ignoring the problem was not the solution though, and we can see that now. Sure, people can cling to the hope that it’s not so bad, that they’ll come to their senses. The Republican party might calm down, reject the crazy crowd and settle down with (relatively) nice, boring Marco Rubio. The country as a whole might go with whoever wins the Democratic party nomination, whether they put Hillary Clinton in the White House in a fit of ‘90s nostalgia or go with the option all the kids are talking about, 74 year old Bernie Sanders. Maybe all the crazy people will go away and we’ll get a country that is ready to settle down with a president who didn’t claim an entire country was made up of criminals.
But what’s going to happen in four years time? They might just relapse yet again, and given how the addiction to lunatics has progressed in the past several years we’re going to find ourselves with a country we care about, considering a vote for someone even further off the deep end than Donald Trump. It’s sad to watch them struggle with their addiction to crazy, dangerous people who are just going to abuse them. Plus, it’s partially our fault, since Cruz was born here under the full benefit of the Canadian healthcare system he hates so much, but in our defense he was a baby at the time.
It’s difficult to know how we can hold an intervention. After all, America does have a pretty high opinion of itself, the rest of the countries have to approach this carefully. They will likely shout that you can’t tell them what to do, they’re the most powerful nation in the world. They’ll probably go on about how they can quit paying attention to dangerous, obnoxious idiots any time they want, they just don’t want to just yet. And then the next time an obnoxious blowhard with hair that can’t be explained by nature walks into the room, they’ll be swept off their feet again, and we won’t be able to do anything to stop them. At least they’ll erect a much larger fence so it’s slightly more difficult to see them hurting themselves.
If any Americans are reading, take this message. We, in Canada, care about you. You’re our closest neighbour, after all, apart from that tiny bit of France tucked in the middle of the Maritimes, and we want you to be happy, healthy and not consumed by completely insane people. We don’t want to see you hurting yourself anymore. So please, put down Ted Cruz, shake your addiction to Trump, stop giving time to these dangerous men who really don’t care about you. We will give you our love and support as you try to put your life, and political system, back together again.
