Oh, Canada. I'm Sorry
You deserve better, my friends.
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DETROIT — I grew up and now live just 15 miles from the Canadian border. I have a lifetime of friends and memories in Canada, mostly in southern Ontario where my parents bought a family cottage in the late 1960s — a gray-shingled farmhouse on Lake Erie, 30 miles south (yes, south) of Detroit, where we spent our entire summers and every weekend year-round.
I love Canada and Canadians. Which is why President Trump’s bully-brinkmanship on tariffs is so painful to watch.
It hurts to hear Canadians boo the U.S. national anthem at hockey games, though I can't blame them. Our president has openly called for a takeover of their country.
It hurts to see the mayor of our sister city, Windsor, Ontario, announce cuts to funding for the annual Detroit Grand Prix in our downtown streets. But I can't blame Mayor Drew Dilkens; he's got a wolf at his door.
It even hurt to watch Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau humiliate himself by traveling to Mar-a-Lago in December for an official state (butt-kissing) visit. But he’s not the first political leader to look foolish talking sense to Trump.
Most of all, it hurts to see Trump tarnish America’s image in the eyes of our allies — not for a policy he has studied or truly believes in, but for the attention he gets by loudly talking tough and quietly capitulating. Which is his game here, a loser’s play.
One of my favorite Substack authors,
, writes about how history can inform the future — and he and happens to be Canadian. As demonstrated by his Notes and newsletters, Gardner gets Trump in a way most Americans do not.In a column titled, “The Ugly American,” Gardner suggests that Trump personifies the worst stereotype of an American abroad.
Loud, abrasive, arrogant. Incurious about local culture and politics because Americans have nothing to learn from foreigners. Incapable of delivering even a few words in another language and certain they can always make themselves understood by speaking English at a higher volume. Smugly confident that the United States is the most advanced of civilizations, in every way that matters, and all the rest of the world silently dreams of being American, or least meeting one of God’s chosen.
That’s an “ugly American.”
Gardner explains the oft-misunderstood history behind the phrase, including how the 1958 novel “The Ugly American” argued for a more humble, gracious and good-works approach to U.S. foreign policy. Authors Eugene Burdick and William Lederer inspired U.S. leaders to take action that Trump now seeks to undo.
A young senator by the name of John F. Kennedy was particularly taken with the novel. He bought copies to give to every one of his colleagues in the Senate.
When Kennedy became president in 1961, he created the Peace Corps to advance the vision of Lederer and Burdick. He also collected the various foreign aid programs developed under Dwight Eisenhower and consolidated them into a new agency called the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID.
That’s right. The same USAID Trump, (Elon) Musk, and Musk’s minions are carving up without so much as a cursory policy review.
Burdick died in 1965. Lederer died in 2009. It’s probably just as well, Gardner writes. “Witnessing the return of American foreign policy to the 19th century would surely have killed them.”
From my home just north (yes, north) of Windsor, Ontario, I’d like to tell my friends in Canada, I’m sorry. You deserve better.
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Yes, it's heartbreaking
I read The Ugly American in the early 70s (thankful for libraries). Since the early 00s, I've thought about this book, but once we hit 2016, and saw Trump interact with world leaders with utter disdain (except for gal pals Putin and little rocket man), I've thought about it frequently. Those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it. My heart aches for all.