Anger at Trump, Anger at Americans

On CBC radio on Canada Day, the co-host of the “Canada Day in the Capital” special from Ottawa interviewed Adrienne Clarkson, Canada’s Governor-General from 2000 to 2005, introducing her as someone who embodied the essence of Canada perhaps better than any other individual. Most of what Clarkson said was the sort of bland platitude one expects on such occasions. There was one notable exception—when Clarkson was asked to comment on America, and Americans. You could hear an edge come into her voice as she asserted that Americans are “too dumb” to even try to understand Canada.

She didn’t say that Trump is “too dumb….,” or even that “Trump voters are too dumb….” She said “Americans.”

The interviewer seemed to take that comment as unexceptionable—all in the spirit of Canada being “elbows up” against Donald Trump’s tariff and annexation threats.

Imagine the reaction if Clarkson had said that Chinese people are too dumb to even try to understand Canada. Or if she’d said that Nigerians are too dumb to even try to understand Canada. She would have been met with appropriate outrage.

At the moment in Canada, it seems that almost any level of anti-Americanism is given a pass.

A new Pew survey reports that 34% of Canadians have “a favorable opinion of” China, while exactly the same percentage have “a favorable opinion of” the US. When Canadians were asked the same question in 2024, only 21% had a favorable opinion of China, while 54% had a favorable opinion of the US.

Does the US deserve to be regarded so unfavorably? Even those who are staunch opponents of the Trump regime and all it stands for—as I certainly am*—should surely recognize that the United States remains a democracy. It’s a democracy under very serious threat, to be sure, but a democracy it remains.

Compare it with China, which has never had free and fair elections, which tightly controls almost all aspects of its citizens’ lives, which flouts international law with impunity, and which has confined over one million of its people in internment camps. Or compare it to Russia under Putin.

A just-released Nanos Research poll reports that, when asked “Which of the following feelings best describes your views towards Americans?”, 24% of Canadians chose “anger.” Again, this is not Canadians' feelings towards Donald Trump or towards the Trump administration; it’s Canadians’ feelings towards Americans.

It’s worth doing the math here. In the 2024 American election, 65.3% of the voting-age population actually voted. Of these, 49.81% voted for Trump. That means that 67.5% of voting-age Americans did not vote for Trump in the 2024 election.

A very great many of those 67.5% feel as much anger towards the Trump administration as do Canadians.

I would argue that, much as anger towards Trump and his administration is appropriate, we should do everything we can to rein in feelings of anger towards those who voted for him; in the long run, I think we’re well advised to try to keep open the lines of communication with the United States—and with Americans of all stripes—even when the American administration is as antagonistic as is that of Donald Trump. (I’m buying far less that’s “made in America” these days, but I haven’t given up travelling to the US and talking to Americans.) But even those Canadians who don’t want any contact with anyone who voted for Trump and/or who have decided to protest what the Trump administration is doing by renouncing travel to the US should surely recognize that all Americans do not deserve our condemnation.

*I realize as I write this that I've in fact written very little on this blog about Trump--the exception being posts about his draconian dutbacks in foreign aid. But the fact I haven't written much about him is not because I'm inclined to go light in comdemning all the horrific things he's done; it's rather an implicit acknowledgement of so many others having written so well in condemnation of him. If I can think of anything to add that hasn't been written a thousand times before, I will certainly do so.