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There was a time when we Canadians experienced U.S. election campaigns in the same way that a grandmother experienced bingo: The only reason we watched was to hear our numbers called out. Free trade, acid rain, softwood lumber, NORAD, border security. These were the entries on our game sheet -- the only ones we cared about.
All that has changed over the last decade: Thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other free trade mechanisms, most of the bilateral issues between Canada and the United States have been resolved. Fear of the American colossus, once the great neurosis of Canadian public life, is now very much in decline.
In fact, the sense of intimidation that we once felt has been turned on its head: Many Canadians now observe America's political spectacle with a sense of smugness. The unhinged rhetorical fusillades and open conspiracism of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, in particular, have become a form of ironic reality show entertainment. "I would build a great wall" and all the rest are laugh lines in the Canadian media.
But it is nervous laughter they elicit. We wonder: How could this great nation to our south -- a beacon of liberty, and the West's great protector -- have become a place where popular presidential candidates jabber about banning Muslims, or casually propose "carpet bombing" Middle Eastern population centers?
Dig beneath the spasms of insecurity, fear and smugness that Canada's intellectual class has exhibited toward the United States, and you find an underlying attitude of warmth among ordinary people. Most of us travel to America, at least occasionally, for vacations and work. We talk to Americans every day on Facebook and Twitter, watch the same TV shows, follow the same sports.
America is a friend, in other words. Even left-leaning Canadians politicians such as Justin Trudeau will tell you as much.
But the face that this friend has shown us during the current presidential campaign -- of naked religious bigotry, of race paranoia, of curdled nostalgia for mythologized "greatness" -- is not a face we recognize or appreciate. And once the voting is done on November 8, we hope it is a face that Americans never show to the world again.
How the World Sees U.S. Vote
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/28/opinions/presidential-election-international-views-roundup/index.html
The whole world is watching our 2016 election, and paying attention more than we might think. It does not appreciate all of the fearmongering and flaming rhetoric coming from those aligned with the hard-right.
The British contributor to this article said this on how Britons view Donald Trump: "...He reminds us of Gordon Gekko, but without the sex appeal...."
