Mike Myers Is Right To Question America's 'Madness'

I haven’t traveled outside of the U.S. since 2019. I was venturing into the Canadian wilderness to search for Bigfoot as a Cryptozoologist for a TV show called Mysteries Decoded. Bigfoot is not real, nor was I a cryptozoologist, but I don’t think the people running the show cared. And, to be fair, I was being as truthful as the guy we were venturing out to meet for “proof.” Being on that show sucked, but being in Canada was as fantastic as you would assume.

It wasn’t my first time up North. I had worked at a Comic Convention in Toronto a few years earlier. It was, however, my first time in British Columbia. The water was insanely blue. The woods were tranquil and calm. Everyone I interacted with was kind and pleasant. It was one of the most pleasant traveling experiences I’ve had (aside from spending a night in a s***ty RV waiting for a fraud to make Bigfoot noises). I loved it, but I’m a normal person, so the thought “this should be the 51st state” never popped into my head.

That’s a real thing that the current presidential administration is angling for. Every time someone tries to pretend it isn’t true or will blow over, Donald Trump reiterates his intentions to make the significantly better-off country a part of ours. It’s absolute lunacy, and incredibly disrespectful. Canada is doing just fine. We are not. And every time the leader of this country yells about forcing them to join us, we look worse. There are people out there not shy about saying as much either.

Mike Myers returned to SNL this year to skewer Elon Musk in an impression that made the tech billionaire mad enough that he tweeted about it. It’s been fun to see Myers return to the studio that made him a star, but the best parts came during one episode’s closing moments when Myers appeared wearing a shirt that read ‘Canada is not for sale.’ The message was loud and clear. Myers hadn’t planned to do any sort of protest, but he kept thinking about how Musk said Canada wasn’t a real country, and he “got angrier and angrier.”

The Wayne’s World star recently opened up about the moment to the New York Times. “What happened came from my ankles and from my brain and from my heart, and it was not about me — it was about my country,” he explained. “I wanted to send a message home to say that I’m with you, you know.” Myers has duel citizenship in the U.S. and Canada, and noted how this whole ordeal sucks, saying, “What’s happened has really hurt our feelings. We love America. We love you guys. We don’t understand what this madness is.”

His words are simple and to the point. We have soiled cherished relationships with other countries thanks to one man’s terrible whims. So, Myers explains that ridiculing people like Trump and Musk is important because it takes away their power. “Fascism doesn’t like to be ridiculed; it likes to be feared,” he explained. “Satire is an important tool in the toolbox to say that this is not normal — that the cuts he’s making are not normal.”

He’s right. Facism won’t be stopped if we don’t call out its awfulness and clown on the chodes who want it. America will have a lot of work to do to repair these damaged relationships. And, just as importantly, Canada is not for f***ing sale.