Given the social and political environment, I hesitate to admit that I was born and raised in the United States. Yet, I think my argument is strengthened by having grown up pledging allegiance to the American flag at the beginning of every school day, blowing things up in my driveway to celebrate American independence every July and knowing several songs about America by heart. Read More
Given the social and political environment, I hesitate to admit that I was born and raised in the United States. Yet, I think my argument is strengthened by having grown up pledging allegiance to the American flag at the beginning of every school day, blowing things up in my driveway to celebrate American independence every
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Given the social and political environment, I hesitate to admit that I was born and raised in the United States. Yet, I think my argument is strengthened by having grown up pledging allegiance to the American flag at the beginning of every school day, blowing things up in my driveway to celebrate American independence every July and knowing several songs about America by heart.
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I don’t always like it, but I have to admit it: America knows how to do nationalism.
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Noon News Roundup
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I have lived in Calgary for 18 years, and President Donald Trump’s tariff threats and “51st state” remarks have sparked a rise in Canadian nationalism that exceeds anything I have experienced during that time.
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Has everyone seen the cartoon of a goose in a Canadian hockey jersey squashing an eagle in an American hockey jersey? Canadians are riled up.
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And for good reason. I’m riled up, too. These political flexes seem harmful to working-class people on both sides of the border. Plus, the impoliteness of it all just seems so unnecessary.
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But this new nationalist attitude doesn’t sit right with me. In fact, it almost seems like it is feeding into an imperialism designed to create a divide between Americans and Canadians that will clear the way for Trump to go on an even more unhinged power trip. It feels like we are pulling a Sharpie out of the junk drawer and thickening the line along the 49th parallel.
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At the end of the day, nationalism is not the antidote to nationalism; Canada is not going to beat America at its own game. Their head start is centuries long, and our attempts to catch up are hard to watch.
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The Canadian flag is, unfortunately, becoming synonymous with a middle finger instead of standing for something better to aspire to. If we only pull the Maple Leaf out when we are mad at someone, that’s what it ends up meaning.
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Nationalism is a double-edged sword. On one edge, it can provide a meaningful sense of identity to communities that might have a hard time understanding what they have in common (take, for example, a blue-collar worker from Alberta and a bureaucrat from Ottawa). If our national identity leads to positive outcomes for working-class people, we might be inspired to embrace Canada.
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On the other edge of that sword, though, nationalism forces us to be Canadians first. The collective goal becomes whatever is good for the nation, and we forget that the nation is something we constructed for the good of its people.
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