Rewatching Canadian Bacon now is striking because its satire feels less exaggerated and more descriptive.

The film presents a society facing internal frustration and a loss of cohesion, responding by manufacturing an external enemy to restore a sense of unity. Canada’s role, intentionally harmless, underscores how the choice of enemy is secondary to the psychological function it serves.
What makes the comparison to the current U.S. climate compelling is the similarity in tone rather than specifics: heightened outrage, simplified villains, and discourse driven more by performance than resolution. The unsettling shift is that what once operated as absurdist comedy now registers as plausible social behavior, suggesting the film’s satire has not aged into irrelevance but into recognition.