While we’re putting our elbows up, let’s not forget solidarity

In my graduating yearbook for Mathieu Martin high school, I decided to fill in a field for biggest fear with the answer “Americanisation.” Please note the “s” in place of the “z” for emphasis. That’s the word I used, back in 2003, two years after that terrible day in September.

We can recognize the lives we lived after Sept. 11, 2001, but we know something forever “changed” after that day. Michel Foucault called this an epistemic shift. The term is designed to explain how people, after a certain time, can’t remember what it was like to live in a prior age of human history.

Indeed, between 9/11 and the mass commodification of the Internet, a living memory of these changes is whatever separates a Millennial (me) from the next generation (Gen Z, those born after 2000). Put another way, we’ve already reached a point where what life was like in the 1990s seems alien and strange, nevermind what it was like in 1925, or even 1955.

The sins of the U.S. empire are vast and wide, and some of that has impacted Canada negatively over the years since the Second World War.

We all know, you don’t pick a fight with the U.S.: their economic and military might crushes Canada by a factor of ten, represented by the fact their nation is ten times more populous. And, they’ve crushed smaller nations, more than once.

It’s okay to be scared of the moment we’re in, but we cannot be afraid to face it

Do you remember when Trump used to be a funny joke in the early 2000s? The host of a dumb reality TV show we all knew was fake. We didn’t know how much it would help Trump win the U.S. Presidency, twice.

The reality is only a third of the United States wants that man as President, and some are finally waking up to the nightmare they’ve helped inflict on themselves. We need to believe our southern cousins can dig themselves out of their own trench.

The reality of our relationship with the United States is this: it’s not actually about how our government acts with respect to theirs. It’s about how we act with our neighbours. How the Maritimes and New England (broadly speaking) aren’t just “spiritual” cousins, they’re part of the same ancestral territory.

When you look at the old maps and those reconstructed as part of efforts for reconciliation, Wabanaki territory covers that portion of North America where the Wabanaki forest grows. Our kinship to that part of the United States goes back longer than the Canada and U.S. borders.

We need to be there for our U.S. friends, it’s the right thing to do

If we deploy some Two-Eyed Seeing in the style of Elder Albert Marshall, we might see things in a more “Wabanaki” way: ie. where the Maritimes and New England see themselves in each other. The forest, the waters and rivers, the Atlantic Ocean’s atmosphere, we share it all.

How is someone across the border truly different from us?

Even further south, Florida is home to progressive commentators like Farron Cousins who is as on the left as me. They are trying to eke out a living in an otherwise ridiculous political climate. Cousins isn’t giving up on his home nation. Nor should we.

Some of my dearest friends are U.S. citizens. I’m not turning my back on them, or their fellow citizens either.

My response to trauma and fear in my own life hasn’t been to run: I’m staying in New Brunswick to fight for its soul, and we’re not doing much better than in the U.S., for that matter. We need to stop pointing the finger and start doing better here at home.

I’m not going anywhere, and neither is two-thirds of the United States which is still fighting for its soul

When they’re ready for our help: we need to be there. Those U.S. citizens whose minds are still their own will fight and are fighting the rising fascism in their country.

People like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are fighting with their words, not with guns, lies, threats, or false promises.

It’s not the fault of the average U.S. citizens that their government abandoned them. It’s not the trans athlete who is guilty of their own oppression. It’s not the children whom Matt Gaetz took advantage of who are responsible for his alleged crimes.

The United States is not more defined by Trump than we were by Blaine Higgs or by Susan Holt, now.

Yes, keep your elbows up, but later, be ready to extend a helping hand. Because, according to our own cultural myths, we do that too and often.

U.S. citizens will need us, someday, when they fight their way back, after their empire finishes collapsing. The end of that empire is good for the world, but even when Rome fell, Italy endured.

Dani McLean [they/he; iel/elle/eux] is a Millennial writer and editor living in Moncton with their partner of two decades and their menagerie of pet children.