If there was ever a moment, summing up our country today, it was the prime minister swanning around in some far-off African land, trying to woo the United Nations, while Canada erupted in nationwide protests.

The damage he has done; the confusion he’s sown; the hopes raised then immediately dashed, are now evident from sea to sea to sea.

But Justin Trudeau’s own eyes didn’t witness it. Of course not: he was giving another performance on yet another stage: like a poor man’s Laurence Olivier, leaving the burning theatre behind for some far-off pantomime gig.

You cannot govern a huge landmass, with such a diverse range of people and interests as ours, by playing to the global gallery at every opportunity, yet it’s something this fellow can’t help but do. Because some folk might actually believe you mean to follow through on this endless puffery.

And when you don’t, they get a little peeved, until that string is played out and the whole darn country picks sides, as it is doing over the outlandishly ludicrous issue of digging shallow holes and laying pipe into them.

It should never have come to this but, after the Harper decade, folk wanted razzle-dazzle from the PM’s chair. Well, they got it. And they’re going to get a good deal more in the months ahead, as more barricades are erected and the merry militants come out to play, knowing the fellow at the top is a sycophant and an apologist: as steadfast in a crisis as that proverbial chocolate fireguard.

Once, Canadians had this image of ourselves as different from the rest: kindlier, more co-operative, less easily riled than, for example, our southern neighbours. It was a delusion.

We’re the same, emotional humans as populate every country. Heck, almost half the inhabitants of this land are first- or second-generation Canadians. They didn’t simply evolve into some superior form of mankind when disembarking at Pearson Airport.

Prime ministers, through the generations, understood this and made quiet bargains with one area of the country after another. In doing so, they created a loose, federalist system, allowing citizens to take pride in the wonderful Maple Leaf.

That was too boring for Trudeau. He would make Canada the cherry on the top of a monstrous cake, baked somewhere in the bowels of the United Nations, where everyone enjoys extra rights and endless privileges with no one ever footing any bill.

There’d be apologies all around, promises of so much equality we’d be scared to shout at the neighbour’s cat, pledges to be the green poster child for the planet — despite the distances we must travel and the vicious cold we endure — and, most damaging of all, a declaration we’re guilty of genocide in dealings with the Indigenous population.

When such dangerous rhetoric increased expectations and subsequent demands to sky-high levels, Trudeau simply grew a beard and skipped off to start the same, sad routine in foreign lands, hoping to grab a Security Council spot for Canada: something that would simply make our country even more dependent on the favour of foreign zealots, busybodies and tyrants.

So we’re getting the wake-up call: rail lines blocked, factories shuttered, farmers frustrated and legislatures surrounded by a bunch of people — not even Indigenous folk in many cases — that seem to think a hard day’s work is carrying some misspelled sign. They break the law and our prime minister talks about dialoguing, as though giving drama lessons to wide-eyed students back at college.

But once this dust eventually settles, there’ll be a backlash, as the pendulum swings far back the other way.

Often it’s said Canada is just like the U.S., only 10 years back down the road. Well, remember when Barack Obama rallied those citizens in 2008 by calling out “Yes, we can”? But, after eight years of dashed hopes and dreams, they actually found that, in the end, yes, indeed, they could elect someone called Donald Trump.

Something similar this way comes.

Chris Nelson is a regular columnist for the Calgary Herald.