Dear Canada: I’m Sorry.
Canada deserves an apology. It won’t get one from Donald Trump, so I’ll do it myself.
When I was ten years old, Canada briefly became home. I moved in with a family friend outside of Toronto, where for two months I attended school and sang the Canadian national anthem in English and French. I discovered hockey trading cards, which could be flicked by using the thumb and forefinger to grab the corner or, as most of the cooler kids seemed to do, launching them between forefinger and middle finger. I was lousy at both techniques. It was a fragile time in my life, with my mother having died a couple of years earlier and my father eyeing a transatlantic sailing adventure and time to heal. Our friend Kathy—and Canada—welcomed me.
I therefore take Trump’s deeply disrespectful rhetoric as both an affront to the country that sheltered me and a betrayal of my own. My instinct is to say that Trump does not speak for me, yet that would be disingenuous. He was elected—again—and while I certainly did not vote for him, I accept that, collectively, we Americans gave him the microphone he wields like a machete.
I have not followed Canadian news outlets, but my hunch is that Trump’s bullying has stirred Canadian patriotism and rallied Canadians in common defense against the threats coming from south of the border. We Americans felt something similar after the attacks of September 11. That week I went out to buy an American flag, but the shelves were bare; the flags had been cleared out by my neighbors, who were feeling similarly stirred. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few more Maple Leaves in your parts these days.
In researching my book, Learning to Depolarize, I learned how deeply programmed we humans are to seek the safety of our tribe and guard against danger from beyond. We fall naturally, evolutionarily, into a tendency to divide the world into us and them. Donald Trump has always shown a facility for leveraging this phenomenon to his advantage, issuing a ceaseless stream of warnings about DEI, “wokeism,” immigrants, a shadowy deep state, tyrannical elites in academia or the sciences. The common theme: that “we” are in peril, that “they” are at the gates.
This tactic has had the intended effect on many of us Americans, with a fearful majority of the electorate swallowing their misgivings and ceding power to the authority whom they believe will keep them safe and assure their prosperity. Some are nakedly racist, or xenophobic, but in my work over the past few years I have come to understand that most are not. They are humans, their motivations—like all of us—defying simplistic categorization. Their support of Donald Trump does not disqualify them from earning my empathy, my curiosity, or my respect.
As I apologize for the demeaning stance of our president, I want you to know we’re hard at work down here. I don’t just mean the usual political resistance to Trump—the Democratic congressional delegation from my home state, Massachusetts, for example, which will reliably oppose Trump’s agenda and condemn his personal affronts. I mean also those of us who are leaning into the challenge of communicating and collaborating across the political divide. Having been a classroom teacher for twenty years, this is what I now do—arm students with the skills and dispositions to help them ease political polarization. And there are hundreds of other organizations doing similar work across all sectors of American society, many of which have joined the Listen First Coalition.
I am mortified by what our president has said, and I apologize. As an engaged member of this representative democracy, I accept responsibility for his words. That responsibility includes not just expressions of outrage, which are largely performative, but the real work of reconciliation among American citizens. Trump draws power from the cleaving of American society, and many of us are trying hard to stitch us back together, to muster genuine curiosity about and empathy toward those with whom we disagree. Division fuels Trump and excuses his words and actions. We are trying so hard to ease that divide.
We’re sorry. Please don’t give up on us.
