Sorry state of the U.S. feeds our denial

This year, I propose we leave our “America Problem” behind us.

The problem is a collective complex, and a telling point of our national mythology: Canadians feel we are morally and ethically superior to Americans.

It’s easy to see why progressive Americans look north with envy. We have universal health care, gun control, a far more welcoming refugee policy and no death penalty. We stayed out of two of the most misguided American military interventions of the past 60 years, namely the Vietnam and Iraq wars. American politics is a strange cesspit of TMZ, The National Enquirer and The Onion.

This has elevated us to heroic status among many Americans. We frequently feature in Bernie Sanders’ speeches and Michael Moore movies. A few years ago, late-night talk show host Seth Meyers chimed in on Donald Trump’s snarling at Canada. Meyers quipped it was like “holding a grudge against a golden retriever puppy.” This amounts to Canada being utopianized.

It may seem flattering, but this perception isn’t benign and has complex ramifications for Canada as a whole. Canadians are inundated with American news media; by contrast, Americans remain ignorant of much of what goes on in Canada. The late prime minister Pierre Trudeau once likened existing next to America as “sleeping with an elephant.” That metaphor stuck. That one-way relationship, combined with America’s rose-tinted view of Canada, has led us to a kind of paralysis. When faced with our own problems, we often mentally turn to a simple, comforting thought: at least we’re not Americans. It simply leads to denial and deflection, and places us in an arrested stage of development.

The reality is, Canada is not a golden retriever puppy. We have a litany of our own problems: arms sales to Saudi Arabia; government-sponsored pipelines; dire, ongoing poverty in Indigenous communities; and racism is every bit as alive and ugly in Canada as it is in America. (Canadian authors Desmond Cole and Afua Cooper, among others, have detailed this reality exhaustively.)

It seemed a reckoning might have arrived with the discovery of graves of Indigenous children over the past year. There was shock and deep sorrow across the political spectrum. But the issue wasn’t a major part of the discussion around last year’s federal election, and ultimately, Canadians voted for safety in the status quo.

This is an especially difficult time to evolve past our America Problem. After all, American politicians and journalists are now sounding alarm bells at the very real possibility that their status as a democracy could soon be over. As terrifying as that is, it’s equally important that we not sit so hypnotized by the train wreck that is America that we are complacent about our own flaws.

The Trump presidency, the “Big Lie” that he somehow won an election he so clearly lost, and the Jan. 6 insurrection that punctuated his term have accelerated our America Problem into a surreal overdrive.

But consider how low this sets our bar. It’s a bit like remarking that your husband isn’t as bad as Norman Mailer, your teacher isn’t as nasty as John Wayne Gacy or your accountant isn’t as corrupt as Bernie Madoff. We’re incapable of self-reflection; we can’t actually see our own problems because what’s happening across the border looks so much worse.

I have high hopes America’s Fox News-fuel led, conspiracy theorist-Trump-cult fever will break. But we can’t rely on that to happen. It’s time to end this cycle: we can’t get our act together until we tune out the disaster movie that is the United States of America.