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It’s never exactly gracious to reflect upon one’s good fortune by noticing the calamitous ill luck endured by just about everybody else. Even so, Canadians should be forgiven for indulging in that vice on Canada Day for perhaps just a moment, considering the state of liberal-democratic contentment around the world in 2016, and how Canada stacks up. Not to get too “In All of Us Command” about it, but seriously. It really doesn’t get much better than we’ve got it, right now.

With that stereotypically apologetic Canadian outburst of passive-aggressive patriotism out of the way, I ask you: Is there really a single damn we should give about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau allowing his likeness to appear, in the guise of a boxer wearing a Maple Leaf T-shirt, on the cover of Number 5 in the Marvel Comics series, Civil War II: Choosing Sides?

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Almost everywhere else, democratic progress is tanking. By the impeccably tabulated reckoning of the Freedom House organization, the steady advance of democracy following the Soviet implosions of the late 1980s shifted into reverse gear a decade ago and it’s been all systems backwards ever since – or put another way, ever since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.