Most Canadian Prime Ministers Are A Whole Lot Cooler & More Real Than Most American Presidents Tend To Be

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It never fails.              

Every time that I hear a Canadian Prime Minister, either present or past, they seem a whole lot more likeable than most American presidents. I might make an exception with Jimmy Carter, who is just a phenomenal human being and an inspiration.              

Otherwise, though, many Canadian leaders just seem a bit cooler, more in touch with their people. This is a point that I have always felt and expressed before, but it seems to me part of the reason for this may very well be that Canada is a much smaller country than the United States, and so the leaders are just a bit more relaxed, and perhaps do not take themselves quite so seriously. This particular truth has never been quite as apparent as it is now, with the man who currently occupies the Oval Office being a legendary narcissist, like almost no one we have seen or heard of before. When you seriously inquire about your image going up on Mount Rushmore, you just might be a MAGAlomaniac.              

But I digress. Indeed, many Canadian leaders seem to be a whole lot cooler on many levels than their counterparts south of the border.             

This became clear to me some years ago, when former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien joked about enjoying some marijuana shortly after it had become legal in that country. Frankly, it is hard to imagine any American president joking in that kind of a relaxed way.              

More recently, I tried to read a book about former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Admittedly, I did not get through it entirely. In fact, it seems that I may have misplaced the book, and it may even be gone. But what I did learn while reading that book impressed me. He was from northern Quebec, and had defended that province’s efforts to preserve the French language, saying that it did not need to take any lessons from people in other provinces about language. In a more recent interview, Mulroney, a conservative, took environmental concerns and climate change seriously. In other words, he did not mock these concerns, or come up with some kind of pseudo-science to counter the seriousness of this threat, like many American politicians seem to like to do.              

Of course, a lot of Americans themselves have commentated about Justin Trudeau seems far more desirable as a leader than the man currently leading this country. Of course, a lot of that has to do with Trudeau being considered a sex symbol, and being able to make a good speech, or having cool quotes. Trudeau is certainly far from perfect, but when the leader of the United States is Trump, almost anyone else looks damn good by way of comparison.              

The political dialogue in Canada is radically different than the popular political dialogue here in the United States as well. Again, science is not mocked north of the border, as it too often is here, whether it is about evolution, climate change, or more recently, the coronavirus pandemic. It is refreshing to listen to Canadian political discussion, because it often seems just way more enlightened than that which is offered here in the United States.              

Over there, there is indeed much more of a presence for Native Americans, and concerns for Native Americans, and for the crimes against them historically. Here in the United States, they are too often barely even mentioned, and then, often seemingly as an afterthought for many. There are even some clueless morons who dared to suggest that they are not "real" Americans. Obviously, when you look at how pipelines keep being constructed on or very near their ancestral lands, against their wishes, it becomes all too clear that they are not taken as anything more than an afterthought, if even that much.

As I have mentioned before, Americans really could have a better country in so many ways, if they could, on occasion, look beyond their own sacred borders and actually look at what is going on in the rest of the world. Of course, that would mean having to give up their own sense of exceptionalism, which I would argue is nothing more than a ruse by a corporate supremacist regime that tries to keep people distracted with feelings of superiority, so that they do not too closely examine the declining standards of living with the country now. While other countries elect governments that, for all their faults, nevertheless have some basic minimum standards for protecting their own people, Americans continually elect so-called leaders who tirelessly work to make things irrevocably worse for Americans.

Perhaps Americans would do well to look at the example of Canadians, who are right next door, and who enjoy a higher overall standard of living than Americans now do - and have for many years, even decades, now - to find a new direction for this country. A direction that a majority of Americans - although admittedly not all Americans - can believe in, if they give it a chance. Frankly, it is fine if not all Americans agree, because not all Americans agree with how the system is working now. In fact, poll after poll shows a uniform sense that Americans feel that this country is going in the wrong direction. Seriously, if we as a nation want to change the course of this downward spiral that this country seems to be trapped in for many years now, we could do worse, and far worse at that, then to look at Canada as an example for us to follow.