Of all the numskull, hammer-headed, misguided, ham-handed, tin-eared ideas floated by our current president (and there have been many, by my count), the one about annexing Canada as a 51st state has got to rank in the top 10 world-wide. His supporters claim he was just joking. If that’s so, it’s the first joke I’ve ever heard him crack. Plus, the Canadians ain’t laughing. Pretty much in response and against heavy odds, they elected another Liberal, a former banker whose response to Trump’s casual condescension has been the classic gesture often seen in heavy traffic.

The two million Gazans whom the president has dismissively claimed would be transported somewhere to make way for glittering resorts on the Mediterranean; the 57,000 Greenlanders who have echoed Prime Minister Carney’s response; and the four and a half million Panamanians whose sovereignty has been so carelessly weighed against Trump’s megalomania, all beg to differ with his ambitions for them. But the Canadians aren’t begging. Their response reminds me of a billboard I saw once facing the sea on the north shore of Cuba. A man in overalls, armed with a pitchfork, shakes his fist and shouts in Spanish, “Come and get it, Yanqui!”

Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, now 91, but ever ready for a verbal scrap, posted online a lengthy response to our president, which began in part, “To Donald Trump, from one old guy to another, give your head a shake! ... What could make you think that Canadians would ever give up the best country in the world — and make no mistake that is what we are — to join the United States?”

Personal slurs flow easily from our president, making fun of people who oppose him. There’s Sleepy Joe (who managed to stay awake through the Pope’s long funeral, which the president did not). And Little Marco. The list is long. But, while claiming that the Canadians, with whom we have had a long and productive trade relationship, “have been ripping us off for years,” we appear to have (the rules change so unpredictably, it’s difficult to be sure) started a tariff war with our closest ally. Closest in every way.

It’s likely that very few, if any, of the geniuses advising the president have any appreciation of the true size of Canada. It’s the second-largest country on the planet; only Russia is larger. To them, it may be the big cities along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, with maybe the oil fields of Alberta and the Athabaska tar sands added on. Their vision is urban and financial, and given the entirety of the country, sadly myopic.

Canada’s boreal forest is vast and, as my friends and I have found over the years, all but impenetrable to anyone on foot in the summertime. Any New Englander bedeviled by mosquitoes and black flies in season discovers, when they venture into the Canadian bush an entirely new dimension. For a typical Canadian take on the subject, google Wade Hemsworth’s “Black Fly Song.” That humorous approach to a reality so maddening helps a lot in understanding one main reason Canada will never entertain the president’s fantasy.

I’ve had the privilege over the years of flying from Trudeau airport in Montreal, across the vast stretches of prairie from Manitoba to Alberta, and then out over dark green taiga to almost-treeless tundra and the pristine north-flowing rivers of Nunavut. I’ve enjoyed the warm hospitality of friends in Kugluktuk, beside the ocean on the north shore of Canada, where Washington, DC, and even Ottawa seem otherworldly. The notion that these folks would give up the curse of universal health care for the benefits of profit-driven insurance and the privilege of wrangling in Mike Johnson’s House of Representatives is laughable. Imagine what the addition of the State of Canada’s at least dozens of representatives to the United States House (including the fractious Parti Québécois!) would do to the balance of political power in the Lower Forty-Eight. The whole idea is less a grand scheme than a fever dream gestated in a clearly addled mind.

In case there’s any doubt on our parts, the Canadian national anthem should give us some clues about our neighbors’ reaction to the notion of subsuming the nation as a state: O Canada! Our home and native land….With glowing hearts we see thee rise, the True North strong and free!...God keep our land glorious and free! O Canada, we stand on guard for thee! There’s, naturally, a French version, in case you’re so inclined. But the message is clear: If you’re anything but friendly, butt out.

If we need any further evidence of friendship, the Canadians have noted the Trump Administration’s defunding of our suicide hotline and are offering a toll-free number connecting to the Canadian version. Hell, I’d call just to hear the accent, eh?