How pleasant it is to be in Canada, land of restitution, brief umbrage, total apologies, minor differences, peace, order, a government trying very hard to be good, and free speech as long as it isn’t rude.

I’m not saying Canada doesn’t have huge problems — the suffering of Indigenous people, a changing climate, and inadequate health care being three — but compared to the bedlam south of the border where, as James Baldwin said of race, “to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time,” we’re a haven of petty disagreements.

Canadians quarrel, or are egged on to quarrel by plodding Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer whose slogan seems to be “I am not Mister Fancy.” Well, no one said you were.

It seems unreal that anyone would care about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s socks, or deplore young people for asking him for selfies, or complain that tax dollars cannot be spent on anti-abortion campaigning by religionists, or that government forms say Parents 1 and 2 instead of mother and father.

As Luke Gordon Field, editor-in-chief of the Beaverton, says, “This is the kind of s--t you get upset about when Donald Trump isn’t your president.” They are Boring Ottawa Pundit Quarrels, the type of thing that sails past the average Canadian coping with jobs, mortgages and current crushing child care costs (thanks, Premier Wynne). Most people are too busy praying they never leave their child in a hot car.

What the PM wore on a visit to India doesn’t really register either, although it matters to CBC commenters, who think all Indian clothing is funny-looking.

It is a negligible thing, the kind of squabble you’d have with your next-door neighbour who planted a hedge out of spite, which results in you muttering snidely when you shovel your driveway but you know, it’s a nice hedge and yes, I clip it for them because why not.

I see I test your patience. Back to my point, which is that in Canada small issues fill the room while huge issues wait outside. All politics is local, which means important matters like pipelines don’t have much traction outside B.C. and Alberta. Yet the Conservatives are still harping on what presents the Trudeau family and the Aga Khan exchanged at Christmas; a sweater and an overnight bag.

I blame social media oligarchs who made local problems domestic, then personal, then internal, until we became part of what I call the Hinge Community. I learned this from a clever @acarboni tweet:

“Me: *watches a single YouTube tutorial so I can fix my door hinge* YouTube: WHAT’S UP, HINGE-LOVER? HERE ARE THE TOP 1000 VIDEOS FROM THE HINGER COMMUNITY THIS WEEK. CHECK OUT THIS TRENDING HINGE CONTENT FROM ENGAGING HINGEFLUENCERS”

This happens. I tried to cover my brass fireplace doors with black metal barbecue paint because I am my own woman/too stingy to buy new doors. It didn’t go well of course and I spent $1,500 on new black ones. Anyway, I am now an involuntary member of the Rustoleum Community.

Could any community be tinier? Yes, the emerging Topsheet Community, which posits that you don’t need one under the duvet vs. clean decent people who wash both sheets once a week. Millions of such communities are at each other’s throats online.

In the meantime, climate changes brings drought and flood, John Bolton wants a war, possibly a nuclear one with North Korea, or Iran, or both, and huge revolting carpets of stinkbugs are invading Toronto homes, brought to North America on a Chinese pallet.

Canada needs a smart, calm, globally acute and internationally minded prime minister to face all this. But absurd unreliable polls seized on by the Ottawa Quarrellers suggest his popularity is falling, though they’re not sure why. What tiny interest has he offended?

Is it a surge of angry men? Who wear only black socks because that way you never have to match them? Does the Androgynous Community in its Zuckerberg-grey T-shirts object to the shalwar kameez?

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We may have sliced our attention so finely that we can no longer encompass global or national issues at all. We may be entertaining ourselves to the point of extinction.

hmallick@thestar.ca

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