An interesting part of the fallout from the Wikileaks release of US diplomatic cables is the degree to which diplomats are concerned with the petty insecurities of nations. Canadians, for example, “'always carry a chip on their shoulder' in part because of a feeling that their country 'is condemned to always play ‘Robin’ to the U.S. ‘Batman.’" This strikes me as true enough, though Tony Blair might have disputed who the real Robin is.
Deriving a sense of personal prestige from a sense of national prestige, though irrational, is real and not unique to any nation. People outside of the U.S. think 'American exceptionalism' is ludicrous: We would never fall for such a stupid idea here...we're just exceptional like that.
The fact is that a country as underpopulated as Canada will always have a hard time playing Batman. It reminds me of how rural Canadians resent Toronto for being so dominant. Toronto is dominant because it's where all the people live. Don't live where bears outnumber people if you want to feel a part of a powerful society.
Luckily there is a policy that will solve Canada's national inferiority complex once and for all: open the borders. Canada is vastly underpopulated. There are a lot of people in the world that would jump at the opportunity to move here. Double the population, triple it, quadruple, and suddenly the importance of the country on the international stage will zoom to supersize. Batman? I'm talking the Silver Surfer.
