A Canadian who is earning an American law degree, but spending a term at home, writes:
"I'm studying law at the University of Toronto for a semester, and have been discussing the election with professors and other students. Not surprisingly, the Torontonians I've spoken to (and indeed a sizeable majority of all Canadians) are resolutely anti-Bush, but they don't share your optimism about the outcome. Most have adopted a fatalistic attitude about the whole thing.
"Bush's international misadventures have gravely damaged a cross-border relationship that was strained to begin with. Canadians have always been vaguely resentful of the United States as a country, as much for its heavyhanded trade policy as for its cultural dominance.
"They have long harbored a morbid fascination of a country that is like them, but not like them; indeed, the Canadian identity has more to do with NOT being American as anything else. In the past, this attitude toward the United States has manifested itself in cultural protectionism, and a smug attitude of moral superiority.
"But all of that has festered into something nastier during Bush's regime. Canadians now distrust not only the American government, but also, to a troubling extent, the American people themselves. They sense something deeply corrupt about a people that would even entertain the thought of returning Bush to office. They have begun to ask themselves seriously whether Americans are really much like them at all. Canadians are used to labeling Americans as ignorant, arrogant and chauvinistic, but these epithets aren't softened by chuckles and eye-rolling like they used to be.
"I've been telling people here that the election isn't a foregone conclusion, and that Bush may well spend the next four years as Brush-Clearer-In-Chief. But I don't think that anything short of a Kerry win will convince them. Canadians simply don't trust Americans' capacity to make the right choice. That being said, if voters do repudiate this grubby criminal gang on November 2, I intend to show staid Toronto what to do. If you see TV footage of Canadians dancing in the streets, well, that was my idea."
UPDATE: Michael Otsuka (Philosophy, University College London) writes:
"It's alarming that so many Americans support Bush. That must point to something deeply corrupt about a national culture which even Bush-hating Americans share to some extent. But, without denying that it's possible for a people to entertain a thought, there isn't a people entertaining the thought of returning Bush to office in this case. Rather, you've got a large number of Americans who have known for some time that they will vote for Bush come what may (never mind the facts), a roughly equally large number who have concluded some time ago that they hate Bush and everything he stands for, and a small number who for some reason can't make up their minds. When I venture into bits of Red State America which lie beyond the borders of its college towns, I feel much more of a foreigner than I've ever felt as an American living in London -- or as a visitor to Quebec, for that matter."
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