Let me start this by saying, I love America. I am actually a bit of a history buff, and, minus all the colonialism, expansion, and war, I think America’s a pretty great place. I haven’t seen all of it, of course, but I think that for the most part Americans are good people and this is a land of great beauty and opportunity.

We could do better, in my opinion. We’ve gotten close in the past, in fact. If not for a few years of opposition that took the form of Republicans even voting no on their own bills just to prevent a Democratic majority or presidency from getting a win, there are quite a few things that other industrialized nations have that we could have by now as well.

Like Canada.

Since his election, Donald Trump has had an ongoing “joke” about making Canada “the 51st state” in America, promising them all the glory of, um… Well, I’m not sure what he’s promising them. I think he mostly just wants to have their natural resources. Maybe he’s saying we’ll protect them with our military?

Nobody’s attacking Canada, though. With the minor exception of apologizing too much, Canadians are pretty much known as the nicest people on earth. That’s a reputation well-earned, too. They provide a lot of services for their taxpayer dollars, without wasting a bunch on unnecessary things, like lining the pockets of defense contractors and reserving tax breaks and incentives for the wealthiest 1% of their population.

In fact, if you add up literally all of the billionaires in Canada, they have a collective net worth of more than $100 billion less than just Elon Musk. There is no meritocracy or oligarchy. You don’t know a single one of their names, like you know Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison and…

Enter Elizabeth May, the leader of Canada’s Green Party. In Canada, the Green Party isn’t a bunch of also-rans as they are in the United States. Although they are few, they do hold seats in Canada’s parliament and actually get things done.

May had a “joke” of her own for Trump last week at a press conference in Ottawa:

Hey, Donald, have we got a deal for you: You think we want to be the 51st state huh? But maybe California would like to be the 11th province. How about it? California? Oregon? Washington?

This is what you get: free health care. Universal free health care. No more 1-year-olds who suddenly fall off the Medicaid list and their parents are in the news because they’re trying to do a GoFundMe so they can get their daughter to a doctor. Universal Free health care. Guess what? Those gun laws that your Congress is too afraid to pass because of the national gun lobby. We already got our strict gun laws.

Now that sounds like an enticing offer. The universal health care that American progressives have been trying to pass for years? The common sense gun laws that the vast majority of Americans agree on?

It turns out other Canadian lawmakers are finally getting irritated with Trump’s constant drumbeat of a “joke” and are hitting back. On Tuesday, a social media post from Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, said “President-elect Trump’s comments show a complete lack of understanding of what makes Canada a strong country. Our economy is strong. Our people are strong. We will never back down in the face of threats.”

On Monday, Ottawa’s Premier Doug Ford told reporters, “You know something, to the president I’ll make him a counteroffer. How about if we buy Alaska and throw in Minnesota and Minneapolis at the same time? He may be joking, but under my watch, that will never ever happen.”

Trump literally continues to say this every day, to the point that it sounds like he thinks people should take the idea seriously.

And honestly, it’s hard NOT to take it seriously, at least a little, since he’s been such a nutjob on other, similar issues. We thought he was “joking” at first about buying Greenland, but then he started saying “nobody really knows” if Denmark controls Greenland (they do) and yesterday, at his off-the-rails press conference, he actually refused to rule out military intervention to take the island by force.

He’s literally talking about sending the US military to invade a NATO country and take it over in the name of expansionism. That sounds familiar if you say it with a German accent.

That’s no joke. Couple that with his intense rhetoric about immigrants, his plan to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and his plan to reclaim the Panama Canal “in the interests of America,” and you’ve got a guy who thinks he rules the world.

Thankfully, we can count on Canada to at least tell him to shut the hell up. God knows none of his underlings here will do it.