A contrast between Canadian and American attitudes
Released in 1985, “My American Cousin” is a Canadian period piece about the restlessness of youth set in 1955 British Columbia. It “playfully contrasts Canadian and American attitudes,” as one reviewer describes it, a difference in worldview that has manifested itself a thousand different ways over the past 250 years.
That difference continues to manifest itself unabated.
We Canadians are often smug when it comes to how Americans see the world and their role in it. We often like to think that we have some sort of moral high ground because of positive Canadian differences we see in areas such as the cost of health care and the relative frequency of mass shootings, for example.
However, we tend to judge on the basis of what we think we know about Americans because of what we see on TV or read about online rather than through the eyes of the people who actually live there. This leads us to some misguided conclusions, in my opinion.
My own American cousin
My wife and I recently had opportunity to visit my own American cousin and her family. They live in Northwest Indiana, which essentially serves as a suburb of Chicago, in neighbouring Illinois. Needless to say, we sat and talked about a lot of things, including differences between our two countries and the current state of US politics.
My cousin is probably the best type of person with whom to discuss these things. She is fiercely protective of her immediate family and has strong views about who she is as an American and how the rest of the world sees the US. She is the product of an immigrant success story of hard work and perseverance via her Ukrainian grandparents and understandably sees her world through those eyes.
However, she also has an open mind and considers different opinions. She is by no means a rabid partisan of any sort, which made for some insightful and mutually respectful dialogue during our visit, despite our differing views on some subjects.
In both our conversations with each other and my own observations about life in NW Indiana, I was able to learn perspectives that I wouldn’t be able to glean from a typical Canadian news site or magazine article. Unsurprisingly, if we want to understand Americans and why they act and vote the way they do, we have to walk a mile (not a kilometre) in their shoes.
We all vote a certain way for our own reasons
Everyone in any country votes for a particular candidate for his or her own reasons, even if those reasons don’t make sense to anyone else. For instance, I can’t for the life of me imagine ever voting for someone as unhinged and morally (and now legally) decrepit as Donald Trump because, to my mind, a candidate’s character matters.
There’s also no doubt for me (and for the vast majority of European leaders) that his superficial, juvenile understanding of the situation in Ukraine, as well as his choice of running mate and known deference to Putin, will ultimately undermine Ukraine’s interests. This would also be critical to me if I were an American voter.
However, for many people who actually live in the US, voting for Trump makes complete sense. They are willing to place less emphasis on his personal shortcomings (does this win the 2024 award for understatement?) because they are more concerned about, for example, what they see as an open southern border (some argue it’s not that, but perception is everything in politics) or Trump’s supposed strength on economic issues, which Americans consistently place at or near the top of their political concerns.
There is also the idea that Trump represents the quintessential bulwark against a “woke” movement that many Americans see as deeply problematic – too much change too quickly, in the view of many. For these reasons and others, Trump’s candidacy resonates for many people, as the political signage throughout rural Indiana would indicate.
A rural-urban divide
If you look at a county-by-county map of the 2020 US Presidential election results, it shows something that state-by-state maps do not, namely that the Democrats won the big cities, while Republicans won much of everything else.
Even in Indiana, which voted heavily Republican as a state, the Democrats solidly won Indianapolis and Bloomington (where Indiana University is located). They also handily won Lake County, which is the county closest to Chicago. However, even there, only the very NE part of the County, which is really part of metro Chicago and tends to be poorer and more disadvantaged, voted for the Dems while much of the rest of Lake County – rural and more affluent, including where my cousin happens to live – voted Republican.
Not bloody likely that the Dems would find much purchase in those more rural areas these days, regardless of candidate. The default vote there is unquestionably Republican.
This is not unlike Canada, where Conservative strength is often deeply entrenched in rural areas, while Liberals tend to win in the cities (polls indicate that this pattern will likely go by the wayside for the Liberals in the next federal election, slated for 2025), so we shouldn’t be surprised that this happens in the US as well.
Dems have not helped themselves
Of course, the Dems have not helped themselves in gaining the trust of Republicans over the years with, for example, candidates like Hillary Clinton calling half of Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables” during the 2016 Presidential campaign. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t going to entice Republican voters to switch sides too quickly, whether in Indiana or anywhere else. This was almost as dumb as former President Barrack Obama’s comments in the 2008 Presidential election that working-class voters “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion.” Almost.
There have also been the Dems’ own moral failings in the person of former President Bill Clinton, of which my cousin deftly reminded me, although I would argue that he got taken to task on that politically more than Donald Trump ever has, notwithstanding a time-wasting Trump impeachment or two. Neither party is squeaky clean here.
Then, of course, Joe Biden’s age was a major factor preventing those Republican voters who may have considered not voting for Donald Trump this time, while still voting Republican in the down-ballot races. As my cousin suggested, 81-year-old Biden vs. 78-year-old Trump was perhaps not the most appealing of Presidential contests in US history, at least for those not firmly on one side or the other. It’ll be interesting to see what the polls have to say now that 59-year-old Kamala Harris (who went to high school in Montréal, by the way) is the Democratic standard-bearer.
Socialists?
The Dems are also seen as too “socialist” by many Americans, which would be a surprise to actual socialists, including the 92,000-member Democratic Socialists of America (who are a movement rather than a party). At the risk of oversimplification, the Democrats tend to focus more on equality of opportunity and attention to the poor and disadvantaged than the Republicans do. This is definitely true.
However, they still cater to corporate interests and do not advocate for the overthrow of the capitalist system or for state ownership of all the means of production. On this basis, no political scientist would ever characterize the Dems as socialist or communist – this is simply nonsense.
But this doesn’t stop the Republicans from labelling all Democrats that way because they know that those labels, whether accurate or not, will scare many voters away from the Dems. Once again, perception is everything in politics, with the more radical and highly visible Democrats in Congress and elsewhere often making this easy for the Republicans to do.
All in all, there are reasons why many people identify with the Republicans in the US, regardless of who is running. This loyalty to a particular party is not unique to Americans, by any stretch.
Where Canadians have a right to comment
As Canadians, we have a right to some opinions about what is happening in the US. After all, we are each other’s largest trading partner (with nearly $3.6 billion worth of goods and services crossing the border each day in 2023) and the US is still the world’s strongest economy, as well as its foremost military. After all, its decisions in those spheres have a very direct influence on life in Canada and the world.
I personally also believe that I have a right to pass judgement about how the US conducts itself relative to Ukraine, both because it is my ancestral home and because I still have family there who will be affected very directly by decisions the Americans make in that regard.
I will not hesitate to call out Joe Biden’s timidity in the face of supposed Russian “escalation” or Donald Trump’s mindless boast that he could end the war there “in 24 hours.” These things are in my wheelhouse and I’ll continue to comment on what I see as poor American decisions there (while remaining grateful for all the Americans have done for Ukraine). Commenting on how the US conducts its foreign affairs is not solely an American prerogative by any means.
American internal issues are internal to Americans
However, when it comes to issues within the US itself, including how Americans see the world why Americans vote the way they do, we Canadians have to tread more carefully. After all, we don’t live there. We don’t know what it’s like to live within a superpower and we don’t know what it’s like to live in a country that’s despised by many around the world (often with good reason, historically speaking).
Within that context, we also don’t know what it’s like to live in a country in which the prospect of another September 11 attack, somewhere, somehow, is very real. Except that the next time, it will probably be much, much worse.
Is it any surprise that my cousin and millions of other Americans think about such things and are preparing for the worst on a number of different levels?
The limits of my cross-border perspective
From my cross-border perspective, I’ll never understand the appeal of a Donald Trump, especially his cult-like following among many or the extent of the free pass he gets for all that we know him to be, including a convicted criminal. I wouldn’t even think of voting for this type of person if he were in Canada (although more than a handful of Canadians might), never mind worshipping at his feet the way so many Americans seem to do.
And I’ll never understand the appeal of policies such as “open carry” (i.e., being able to carry a firearm in public in plain view), as is the case in Indiana and the vast majority of other US states. Most Canadians, me included, would be loathe to see this in Canada, just like we’d be loathe to see the same amount of gun violence in this country that happens in the US.
But, once again, the US is not my country, it’s not my culture, and it’s certainly not my call to make. When it comes to issues internal to the US, Americans are the only people entitled to pass judgement because they are the ones who will have to live with the consequences of their choices.
Walking in the shoes of another
In the course of my cousin’s and my wonderful conversations about many things during our recent visit to Indiana, I made the point that it’s always a good idea to walk in the shoes of another as we try to make sense of the world and our place in it. But she and her family helped remind me that I, too, had to walk in the shoes of the other and I’m glad they did.
I was fortunate to be able to do that for a few days in that beautiful part of the world, with the opportunity to see some things differently. And I did reconsider how I saw some things – not everything, but definitely some things, and I’m the richer and wiser for it.
Never hurts to try on a different pair of shoes once in a while.