Letters and Editorials 3125 Views Peter Tremblay

Why calls for Americans in Canada to vote in U.S. elections fall on deaf ears



Americans like Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse who are working hard to court the supposed American vote in Canada for the upcoming U.S. presidential election in November are wasting their time, just like U.S. President James Madison was back in 1812.

Then-president Madison had launched an attack against Canada to start the War of 1812 based upon the pretext that numerous Americans in Canada would help to support invading U.S. armies. But instead, these American migrants in what is now Toronto and elsewhere in Canada took up arms to side with the Canadians, First Nations and Brits when the United States attacked Canada. These Americans in Canada helped Canadians to push back invading U.S. armies, creating an alliance to restore and re-affirm Canada's sovereignty against the Americans’ oppressive pursuit of “Manifest Destiny.”

Having been socialized into thinking that America is the greatest country in the world, Americans who decide to move from the United States to Canada or abroad have gone through a lot of soul-searching that their country may not, in fact, be the best the world has to offer.

I have spoken to many Americans in Canada who are very grateful to be living in Canada and feel that they can now express themselves politically and otherwise in ways that they could not as Americans living in the United States. By and large, Americans in Canada share a profound sense of frustration and alienation from the entire American political system.

The CBC cites a U.S. federal report documenting that there were 622,492 American citizens living in Canada who were eligible to vote in the U.S. election in 2016— and only 5.3 per cent cast a ballot.

Apart from maintaining connections with family members in the United States, Americans are simply, by and large not interested in wasting more of their time in what many Americans perceive to be the futile exercise of American politics. The choice to vote for either the "Democrats" or the "Republicans "has become, for many Americans in Canada, a tired old script they now want little to do with.

Both American political parties are highly beholden to the American political-military-industrial complex in general and Big Business interests specifically, which collectively works to frustrate substantive progress on most issues, and Americans in Canada realize the futility of it.

Sure, Americans in Canada still carry a U.S. passport, but their minds have become "Canadianized." These Americans have found a society that seems to think much like they do, and they can be themselves in a society where things are getting done and advancing in ways that remain impossible for their compatriots in the United States. This knowledge in the United States has been inspiring more and more Americans to alleviate their frustration and alienation by relocating to Canada. 

For Americans who now reside north of the border, Canada has become the 'Promised Land' — a place that embraces a forward-thinking multicultural policy and a diverse and universal public healthcare system which supports the well-being of themselves and their families. Alongside this is a relatively low crime rate.

Americans in Canada realize that their continued security relies on constructively participating in the continued development of a strong and socially progressive Canada, which is their new home, not in voting in U.S. elections. After all, many of these Americans in Canada realize U.S. elections are being substantively controlled by one capitalistocratic group, which has ensured that these elites always win, no matter who the American voter chooses.

The last American presidential candidates that really sought to position themselves to truly make a difference in the lives of Americans were JFK and RFK, and look what happened to them.

The supposed differences between Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden largely are in what comes out of their mouths and not in their allegiance systems that form the basis of what they have done and will do. These presidential candidates have been orchestrated by the same “Big Money” that in turn controls U.S. television networks to magnify their differences to dupe the American voter.

The choice that the American voter is left with is no more “real” than a Hollywood movie. Americans in Canada that observe the shit show that has become the American political process see America for what it has become, and have sought to embrace Canada for our ideals and the progress that we achieve — progress that is little more than a pipe dream in America.

It is not hard to imagine that, for the average American in Canada, it would be understandably apparent that whoever wins in November 2020 and thus the outcome for American society has been pre-determined, with the Office of the President as the figurehead of “Big Money.”

Having lived in the States, you begin to realize that the average American politician is like a sad broken record who keeps repeating the same clichés in a system run by psychopaths who have no regard for the social responsibility that inspires the Canadian body politic.

That’s why these Americans love to call us “socialists.” In their minds, they are putting us down, but for us Canadians who are inspired by the pursuit of social justice, we take it as a compliment. It is our “socialist mind” that Americans in Canada have sought to embrace that has inspired Canadians in general to flatten the curve against the prevailing pandemic.

It was one of my history teachers at a venerated Canadian university who once said that “the American Revolution was a mistake.” Indeed, for the Americans who called themselves “Loyalists” and who fled to Canada, America’s revolutionary War of Independence during the 1770s was a mistake.

For these Americans, Canada represented an opportunity to truly perfect democracy, inspired in part by the values of the Old World that rebelling American colonists sought to break away from.

The unfolding of the pandemic in the United States under the substantively incompetent direction of U.S. Republican and Democrat politicians serves to further assure Americans in Canada that, like the Americans who sought to migrate to Canada at the time of America’s War of Independence, they made the right decision in their move to join our multicultural society and to choose Canada as the “True North strong and free.”

About the writer:

Peter Tremblay is the author of Justin Trudeau, Judicial Corruption and the Supreme Court of Canada: Aliens and Archons in Our Midst.


Comments

There are 0 comments on this post

Leave A Comment