Canada is Great—and Trump Has Nothing to Do With it

I owe Canada an apology.Like millions of other Americans, over the past few hours, I’ve been guilty of sarcastically giving Donald Trump credit for “keeping Canada great,” in the wake of Mark Carney and the Liberal Party’s unthinkable comeback, after being down by double digits just a couple of months ago.And yes, it is true that Trump’s completely asinine and unnecessary trade wars, his nonsensical talks of annexing Canada, and his never-ending s**t stirring with our upstairs neighbors, have certainly partially fueled the election results—it would be a gross mistake to ascribe to him any true impact on what has transpired there.The truth is, Canadian voters are just smarter than American voters. They are more informed, more mature, and wiser in wielding their collective power than we are, and that’s the story today.They took a sober, objective look at the 100-day horror show this mentally-addled, incompetent, sociopathic dollar store dictator has curated and said, “To hell with that.”And while decent people here in America are finding some secondhand joy in watching Trump being exposed and rejected, and while we’re all reveling in making Canada a proxy middle finger to him and his Administration, we’re also once again reminded of just how ignorant our electorate is, how polluted our system has become, and how unlikely it is that we’re going to be able to course correct the greatest collective mistake in our history.We could have done this at any point over the last decade. This nation, that has had more to lose than any, that has seen firsthand just how unrepentantly vile he and his surrogates are, that has had every MAGA red flag fully in front of us failed again to protect ourselves, our neighbors, and the planet we’re sitting on. Instead of creating a strategic voting bloc formed of our commonalities, we allowed purity politics, unrealistic candidate expectations, and plain old laziness to allow a 34-count felon to ascend a second time. Canada’s election results, while surely allowing our nation to have a shared exhale, also should shame us all.Yes, our electoral process is different, yes, our systems are not comparable, and yes, in some ways we are more vulnerable to a fractured coalition of opposition to Conservatives than our friends to the north may be. But ultimately, none of that matters, because we should have unequivocally sent Donald Trump and his cadre of criminals, hucksters, and racists packing at the polls a few months ago, and right now they would be facing legal accountability and we would be celebrating having had the collective decency to tell fascists to shove it.But instead, we’re here vicariously reveling in another nation rejecting inhumanity and embracing empathy, knowing that we neglected to do so, despite the consequences to ourselves and to the world. And while I, like so many Americans, am waking to what feels like a repudiation of our Sociopath-in-Chief and am cheering along with them, I also know that this is another moment when America needs to look in the mirror and once again ask itself just how we managed to f**k this up so gloriously, and wonder if we’ll again know the joy of defeating hatred.As much as today is a declaration of who Canadians are, it is a sobering reminder of who we are not.Congratulations, Canada, for keeping yourselves great by declaring your goodness. I wish we had done that here.The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe