Some of my best friends are Yankees, but you’ve got to admit: Yanks can describe something, with a perfectly straight face, as “…being downright unAmerican.”
Nobody up here can say, “UnCanadian”—not without sounding sheepish.
A confident man in Santa Fe once said, “No self respecting New Mexican wants to be caught sounding like a Texan.” Ya, well, try living north of 50 states—OK, 48—full of loud Yankees.
I can remember when folks in Camelot were reading the best seller The Ugly American—and responded by creating the Peace Corps. And now, in their great but partly-demolished White House, they have cut USAID. —I imagine phantom loaves of bread being thrown back in our faces as heavy artillery shells— Back then, worldwide, folks regarded American tourists as eager to be popular, backslapping, and loud.
Ugly from the very microsecond they cross a border—yet to see Americans at their best all you have to do is see them before they cross, in their homes in Yankee-land. Good people.
Good, but not curious. I admire Canadian syndicated writer Gwynne Dyer. Alone among North American journalists, he tried to understand how he and his peers had believed the scenario of “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, we must invade, RIGHT NOW!” None of the other journalists, with egg on their face, were curious enough to look at themselves.
Once again, Dyer’s alone: In his latest little book he noticed how the span of forty prosperous years, from the end of WWII to the start of Reagonomics, has now been matched by (forty freeking years!) an equal number under President Reagan’s not-so-new model, years not-so-prosperous. Dyer lists the promises of Reagonomics, including “the money will trickle down” and then Dyer lists which of the promises came true. I ask, “If the money ain’t trickling, where’s it going?” Maybe, as Bill Gates noted, we should be taxing the factory robots. And maybe a Universal Basic Income would effectively circulate the trickle.
If their current economic model, producing their current economy, is important enough to impel their majority to vote for a “populist” president, then why isn’t it important enough for their “best and brightest,” the university students, to understand? Why aren’t students doing a local Peace Corps equivalent—as when they went into local communities in the 1960’s—to explain to blue collar people why Reagonomics is considered a net good they “should be grateful for”? Students, explain that net good.
Maybe, if the students are “U.S. citizens,” then by definition they “just aren’t smart enough.” Maybe they come home at Christmas to preach to their parents about Ukraine but never tell Dad why his standard of living is frozen forever. Maybe even physics majors “don’t get it.” If so, then prepare for more populists entering congress, not fewer.
Meanwhile there is a controversial question about Donald Trump: Is he a king? Republican Party members all say, “No.” My school didn’t teach US civics, where supposedly the sober congresspeople would “check out,” then “sanely balance,” the opinions of an individual. But we did learn European history.
We know a king by his courtiers all copying his fashions in clothing and thought. I don’t mean the day the House Speaker and other Republicans wore red neck ties, I mean all the president’s ministers copying his all beliefs in utilizing lies and personal attacks, in quick succession, like a string of scary firecrackers. Then again, I never followed US Youtube news until January 20, 2025, so maybe they’re normal and I’m wrong. You think? (November court case https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu6A_gvxe5A )
History? I lived through it. I was a boy among long haired youth when President Nixon talked about people who didn’t go in for protests and extreme pacifism. He call them “the silent majority.”
I like students; if I was a college professor down in the US, I would teach them about the necks of some giraffes “…being downright unAfrican.” A few have necks longer, a few have necks shorter, while most are perfectly normal. The necks, in toto, can be size-charted, bar-graphed, as looking like a dromedary camel’s big hump. Call it “the hump curve.”
But today Yankees view their country, of republicans and democrats, as a two humped camel. Clowns to the left, jokers to the right …then who’s in the middle with you?
Pity the poor Americans: they’re not stupid, just “science challenged”— I mean, who hasn’t heard of the hump curve?
Maybe—I don’t know—I should encourage good Americans to vote with their feet: To all my cousins in the 50 states: If you’re doctor, if your attention isn’t hypno-glued to the pitcher of Kool-aide called Fox Editorial, if you’re a nurse… then come to Canada. You’ll find some of your sane, silent majority already here.
Without those one-eyed loud people ignoring any media that’s not Fox.
Without the folks believing in kings and camels.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
In the Great White North
October
2025
Afterwords:
Dyer’s web site, link The book I referred to is Growing Pains
An (October 28) excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson, This Week in Politics Explained
“…trying to understand how the government works, and I think it’s been key to waking people up; so I would say we’re going on a good track here for helping people understand, not just that Trump is whackadoodle but that the system has not worked for forty freeking years because the very wealthy took it over and took it out of the hands of the rest of us…” link:
The confident man in Santa Fe, code named “Eric,” with his homely old pickup truck and red plaid shirt, refusing-to-be-glamorous, is the international assassin in the Matt Helm series by Donald Hamilton.
(President Reagan, in a humble red plaid shirt, spoke in favour of free trade… For those with an attention span, who don’t mind a presidential talking head, willing to have the full context, here is his speech, not like a TV commercial, but a full five minutes link)
His Court copies the king: Trump is known, to put it politely, to be unpresidential in public. I mean he has “no filter.” I mean he swears.
In Canada, for any big official, from any country, to be swearing in public is front page news, as in today’s Globe and Mail for October 29, 2025.
It was Trump’s ambassador to Canada, “in front of more that 200 invited participants, many of whom were prominent U.S. and Canadian business executives” who “delivered an expletive-filled dressing-down to Ontario’s representative” regarding the clip of Ronald Reagans’ speech on tariffs
I guess the people of King Trump’s court are Ugly Americans before they even cross the border.
