Statistical probabilities aside, one has no reason to suspect that intelligent life exists anywhere in the universe besides on Earth.
Imagine, however, that intelligent extraterrestrial beings did exist, and imagine that they somehow stumbled across the latest example of blathering inanity from former MSNBC host Joy Reid. What might those beings assume about the kind of civilization we humans have built?
Thursday on former CNN host Don Lemon’s “Lemon Live at 5” podcast, Reid sank to hitherto unexplored depths of galactic absurdity when she suggested — apparently in all seriousness — that President Donald Trump’s half-jocular quest to make Canada the 51st state would require a war, and that the United States would lose that conflict because of what happened during the War of 1812.
To paraphrase longtime conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, “It’s too much. It’s too much.”
Indeed, how does one take a person like Reid seriously enough to even begin writing about her in jest? Heaven knows how sensible readers would manage to get through a story that took her seriously throughout.
Furthermore, while I always owe far more gratitude to readers than they owe to me, in this one instance I will reverse that order. After all, I listened to Reid speak so that you may be spared the experience, if you so choose.
The fatuous spectacle on Lemon’s podcast began the same way most liberal media commentaries begin: with undisguised condescension toward Trump.
“Grampy Trump, let’s talk. Let’s talk,” Reid said in a clip posted to the social media platform X.
Lemon, of course, laughed. In fact, the clip’s only genuine virtue is that he never spoke.
Should Reid join the Canadian Armed Forces?
“First of all,” Reid continued, “you can’t make Canada the 51st state without going to war with them.”
Spoiler alert: Everything that came out of Reid’s mouth during this clip was utterly false and misleading, especially this claim. The U.S. has absolutely no intention of going to war with Canada.
No one has ever suggested such a thing — least of all Trump. That, however, did not stop the flippant-sounding Reid from educatin’ the folks.
“And let me explain how that happened — how that worked out — the last time we tried to go to war with Canada,” she continued, assuming the posture of history’s dumbest and least self-aware teacher. “They burned the White House to the ground in 1814 and won the war!” she yelled.
Her eyes, which barely concealed the festering hatred beneath her vacuous exterior, suggested that she might have revealed a fantasy. Does she, like pop music icon Madonna, dream of destroying the White House?
The nonsense continued for nearly a minute more, well beyond the point of endurance.
“Canada beat us in the War of 1812!” Reid yelled, again with more volume than insight. “They probably like their chances against us.”
Then, though the volume diminished slightly, the flippancy and inanity continued.
“We’re not gonna beat them in a war, because we have never been able to do that,” she said. “You’d have to occupy a country that is equivalent of the size of the United States, in which the top two-thirds of it is uninhabited frozen forest land that touches the Arctic.”
For the budding military tactician Reid, that geographic analysis inspired another pointless historical analogy.
“You know how that worked out when the Nazis tried that with Russia?” she asked. On the word “Russia,” her voice dipped into something for which the English language has no precise term. I can only describe it as a flamboyant “Oh snap, girl” tone — the sort of thing you know when you hear.
In any event, I digress, for the tone of her voice merits far more serious analysis than her argument. What was she saying again?
“Which is the equivalent of Canada on that part of the world,” she continued.
Oh, right. She was talking about Russia and the Nazis.
“We gonna lose,” she said, bringing back the “Oh snap, girl” tone. “We don’t have enough troops to occupy. They are a country of 39 million people who have about as many guns per capita as we do.”
Joy Reid predicts that America will go to war with Canada and lose pic.twitter.com/ACyHoW8mh1
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 21, 2025
Before addressing Reid’s outlandishly false assertions, one must pay some notice to Lemon, a walking caricature in his own right.
Early in the clip, Lemon did respond with laughter, no doubt because he shared Reid’s condescending attitude toward Trump and everyone in the president’s orbit.
At several points along the way, however, the look on Lemon’s face suggested that even he recognized Reid’s absurdity.
As for what Reid actually said, in 1812 the United States went to war not against Canada, but against the British Empire, which at that time included Canada. The British Army — not some autonomous Canadian force — burned the White House and other government buildings in August 1814.
Moreover, a “Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America” ended the war. That occurred at Ghent, Belgium, in 1814. British Canadians got nothing they wanted from the treaty (an Indian buffer state, for what it’s worth). Americans, on the other hand, celebrated the war as a victory.
Meanwhile, Reid’s comparison between Russia and Canada also boggled the mind. It had no relevance, apart from what it revealed about Trump-haters’ ubiquitous use of “Nazi” analogies.
As for the question of not having enough troops, it might be beneath the reader’s dignity to point out that yes, in fact, the modern United States has a military quite capable of contending with Canada’s.
According to the Department of Defense, active-duty U.S. armed forces numbered more than 1.3 million in 2024.
Meanwhile, earlier this decade, the Canadian Armed Forces numbered 68,000 strong — no doubt brave souls all.
Her claim that Canadians have as many guns as Americans do is also completely false. World Population Review says the U.S. has about 121 guns per 100 people; Canada has about 35 per 100.
As silly as this entire exercise seems, Reid did unintentionally raise one interesting point.
In short, how might Canadian gun owners greet an invading U.S. Army? One suspects that most of them — certainly those truckers who protested their government’s COVID-era authoritarianism — would welcome Americans as liberators from a despotic regime.
As tempting as that sounds, however, it will not happen. Nor does it render Reid’s rant any less ludicrous to an intelligent listener, earthly or otherwise.
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