More irritants have been piling up of late. Recently Canada's Foreign Affairs Office took the previously unthinkable step of issuing a travel advisory after the Americans threatened to single out Canadian citizens of Middle Eastern descent.

Lately, Canadian newspapers have been full of the tale of Michel Jalbert, a Quebec duck hunter who recently spent a month in a Maine jail. His crime: filling up at an American gas station in his hometown of Pohenegamook, which sits on the Canada/U.S. border. It's a daily routine the villagers have engaged in for years (the gas station's driveway is in Canada, but its pumps are in the United States). American authorities imprisoned him for crossing the border with a gun, not allowing him to contact his family for over a week.

The Jalbert story has been huge in Canada, ignored in the States. Which only adds to Canadian irritation -- such affronts sting all the more since the Americans are no more aware of our outrage than a baboon who walks through a spider web. (Pat Buchanan recently caused a top-of-the-newscast Canadian furor when he referred to us as "Soviet Canuckistan." Buchanan really ought to consider moving to Canada -- up here, people pay attention to him.)

Recently, PBS ran a two-part biography of the great Benjamin Franklin. It detailed his subtle and brilliant diplomatic work in Paris during the American Revolutionary War, tirelessly ingratiating himself with the French to gain their support against Britain.

Not many Ben Franklins around these days. Then again, there is virtually no one in the Bush administration who feels the lack. Apparently, the new America does not need friends.

This American attitude was detailed with sobering clarity last September when the administration released its "National Security Strategy." In it, the U.S. frankly proclaimed its intention to dominate the globe and, as the world's only superpower, to play by its own rules. All justifiable, the manifesto claimed, because unlike the imperialist titans of the past, America always acts for the common good.

The honesty was almost refreshing. And the reality of the global situation is undeniable. What's annoying is that America is not content to be the world's über-bully. It also wants to be loved. It's like Bogart and Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon. "When you're slapped," the U.S. sneers, "you'll take it and like it."

Few outside the U.S. accept the country's automatic claim to the high moral ground. On the contrary, postwar history suggests that the U.S. tearily celebrates its own democracy while coldbloodedly subverting any other governments -- including democratic governments -- deemed to be hostile. Bush's "You're either with us or against us" rhetoric might have been all right when the villain was bin Laden. But now that this noble battle has been replaced by what is widely considered an irrelevant vendetta against Iraq, the attitude doesn't wash internationally.

President Bush appears to have the instincts of a congressman. Congressional representatives do not generally care about foreign policy (unless it leads to local defense contracts). If some trade issue gives a congressman the opportunity to bash foreigners while championing local voters, he'll snap it up like a whorehouse gift certificate. Likewise, the Bush administration often seems unconcerned with how American actions are perceived abroad.

Most of the media attention accorded Bush's National Strategy focused on military matters. But grass-roots anti-Americanism often centers on an issue that American commentators rarely deign to notice -- trade. The National Strategy revealed an interesting attitude toward free trade, a policy usually considered intrinsically American. Free trade, it announced, would be pursued as a sacred good. With one caveat: American workers must never suffer.

Hello? America will sign free trade agreements with you but if they ever start working in your favor, it's tariff time? What sane nation would sign a deal like that?

A nation with no other choice. A nation like Canada.

The favorite Canadian quote on cross-border relations came from the late Pierre Trudeau. Living next door to the U.S., the former prime minister said, is like sleeping with an elephant; you feel every twitch and grunt.

He was perhaps too diplomatic to point out that Canada is actually more like a flea on an elephant's ass -- invisible unless we prove too annoying, and then easily crushed. That's a fact Canadians are forced to accept. But it doesn't lead to fond feelings.

Recently I was talking to some friends about that Ben Franklin documentary and happened to mention the inspiration French revolutionaries took from the Americans. My friends were skeptical -- surely, they insisted, the American Revolution must have followed the French. The idea that those heroic peasants from "Les Misérables" lit their torches from an American flame seemed impossible to my Canadian peers. Today's America is viewed as Republican -- not bravely-manning-the-barricades republican, not teaching-the-world-the-ways-of-liberty republican. George W. Bush Republican.

And we know what Canadians call him.

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