Push the usual Elbows Up craziness my way if it makes you happy.

Call me a traitor. Tell me I’m not a real Canadian. Demand the authorities seize my passport. Accuse me of being a Trump bootlicker.

Such ravings are what they are. They are ravings.

I’m going to the U.S. I even mentioned the trip on national TV. Some people didn’t like my plans.

I am going to the great city of Chicago. I am a Chicago Cubs fan. I want to sit in the stands and watch a ball game at Wrigley Field.

I want to go and listen to great music, go to great bars, see great architecture and art, eat great food and enjoy a hot dog without ketchup. Chicagoans know what I mean.

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Where other Canadians head to the U.S. but fly under the radar and talk about their trip to only a few and then only quietly because they don’t want any grief from the Elbows Up crowd I make no apologies.

I like the U.S. You got a problem with that?

The Americans I have met have been good to me. They have been friendly. They have been welcoming. They are our neighbours.

They are not afraid to tell you what they think. I like that.

Many of the best stories I tell from my career in newspapers came from the times I covered events in America.

The good, the bad and the ugly from championship fights in Las Vegas and home run hitters in St. Louis to the biggest mass suicide on U.S. soil, the tragedy of the Heaven’s Gate cult in southern California.

I do not understand Canadians boycotting the U.S. and then going on about how the travel decisions people make somehow define who is and who is not a true Canadian.

Quite frankly, I couldn’t care less where folks go on vacation. Fill your boots but don’t tell me the choices Canadians make are a test of patriotism.

I just don’t get the reasoning of the Elbows Up crowd.

I understand many Canadians hate the American president. I get how there are many who feel disgust at the mere mention of his name. I get how many souls rage any time the president mentions Canada as the 51st state.

What I do not understand, what I do not get, is how someone’s anger towards President Donald Trump leads to the idea true Canadians should not be visiting America, how one Canadian not going to a Chicago Cubs game achieves some goal beyond some bogus feeling of being morally superior.

You know, bragging to those you know about how your elbows are up even higher than the next guy because you refuse to step on American soil until Trump is gone.

These folks are cut from the same cloth as those nitwits in Toronto who booed hockey star Auston Matthews when he was announced as an Olympic gold medallist for Team USA.

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And, as the head scratching continues, how are individual Americans responsible for what gripes Canadians may have with the U.S.?

Take Chicago. Not that it should matter but in the last presidential election they voted 70 per cent for Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump.

So boycott the U.S. if it floats your boat but don’t push your politics my way.

While we are on the subject of people not visiting places where they consider the leaders to be harmful to the country, they should ask themselves one question.

What leader stands in the way of Canada realizing its full potential as an energy superpower?

It’s not an American leader. Americans are buying Canadian oil and want more.

No, it is David Eby, the premier of British Columbia, with his pain-in-the-butt opposition to a new pipeline destined for the north B.C. coast.

Should we now boycott travel to B.C. because of Eby? Should we skip Kelowna, not go to Victoria?

So I will go to Chicago.

And I just scored a news release from three downtown Las Vegas casinos who have seen more than 15,000 Canadians in one month since accepting Canadian dollars at par with the much stronger U.S. dollar.

They’ll even accept the weaker Canadian dollars as if they were American greenbacks at the BarCanada watering hole, advertised as “an ode to Canadian sports and culture” where you can watch hockey and drink Molson Canadian, Labatt Blue, Moosehead and Kokanee.

And these people deserve our wrath? Put your elbows down and give your head a shake.

© Calgary Herald