I was originally going to post this as a response to a different thread and realized it would make a better post by itself.

One of my favourte expressions:

When America sneezes, Canada gets a cold.

When I was growing up and American and Canadian media were still relatively separate, it was widespread Canadian opinion that America was a political shitshow at the best of times and we were grateful that we weren’t like it. I would even go as far as to say there was widespread cultural anti-Americanism.

Fast-forward to 2024 where most people are getting news/entertainment from almost exclusively American-dominated sources like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on, and increasingly our political culture has become blended in with theirs, and frankly, we have begun to inherit what I feel to be their distasteful way of doing politics.

An example: The sheer amount of hyperventilation I saw among my left-leaning Canadian friends over the Trump election victory in 2016 was unbelievable. I’m rarely shocked by things, but some of my friends were genuinely insisting that a second Holocaust was unironically about to unfold. I mean they were fully committed to the idea that minorities were actually going to be rounded up and put into death camps. Totally bonkers stuff. (Nevermind any of the economic or political context that lead to pre-WW2 Germany).

What’s more, this election had felt extremely personal to Canadians in a way American politics had rarely if ever been before. And there was a certain point where I stopped and said “Huh, this is weird. How did we get here?”

I felt for perhaps the first time that politically my fellow Canadians had completely lost their minds in ways that felt previously reserved for the Americans. And increasingly I see Canadians wrapped up in American political slogans and battles that largely don’t apply to the Canadian context.

Ex: People seem to think Canada’s got some similar lines to Democrats vs Republicans but in the past mock elections I’ve seen the Democrats would win in Canada with something crazy like 80% of the vote. Trying to impose those dichotomies onto the Canadian political context (Conservatives vs Liberals) just doesn’t make sense, but people still do it because it’s what they’re being shown.

I would say the government itself has been largely ineffective in ensuring that the Canadian voice doesn’t get completely drowned out by the American perspective. (Canadian content laws have largely not worked with the internet, and it’s been difficult to make tech giants like Facebook comply, as we’ve already seen).

So, am I the only person who’s seen this and feels this way? Americans, if you’re here, what’s it like from your angle? Interested to hear people’s thoughts.