Chris: America.
The beautiful.
I don't know if regular Americans can
appreciate the mental gaslighting being
done to Canadians by elected leaders in
the USA and media outlets like Fox News.
For most of my life, being
Canadian was something Americans
mocked in pop culture and media.
Now that same country is talking about
taking Canada not as a joke, but as
a serious political talking point.
They believe they need Canada to
quote, make America great again.
End quote.
It's making me anxious, scared and angry.
The American way.
Take what you want,
quote, Make America great again.
End quote, by stealing from others is
unfortunately one of the most on-brand
things For Trump to push, it reflects a
broader trend in American business and
politics, Facebook doesn't innovate.
It buys or crushes competition.
The US government can't compete
with TikTok, so it bans it.
Elon Musk hasn't had an
original thought in years.
He just buys his way into companies others
built and gets rewarded with influence
literally next to the seat of power.
Now the same mindset extends
to national identity.
If you can't build something
better, just take it.
America is an idea.
I first heard of this concept via my love
of the band U2, where in the mid 2010s
bono would often say something like,
quote, America isn't just a country.
America is an idea Quote, as you can
hear at the 50 minute mark in his
2013 speech at Georgetown University.
And again, at the band's 2016 Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame induction,
and even Joe Biden used the
phrase in his 2020 campaign.
It's a beautiful sentiment.
I wanted to believe it.
But what happens when the idea of
America shifts from ambition to envy?
Envy over ambition In a 2013 article
entitled Envy in the American Dream,
former Harvard Business School, Dean
Nitin Nora warned about a cultural shift.
begin.
Lately there are signs that America
is shifting from an orientation of
ambition toward one of envy, Whether it
is the 99% who envy the 1% or the 53%
who resent the 47% who are receiving
government distributions, we are
beginning to show signs of focusing
more on others than on ourselves.
That's a shift we want to avoid.
Over time, envy has a corrosive,
pernicious effect on an economy.
It reduces agency and encourages
people to attribute outcomes
to forces beyond their control.
It shifts people's gaze towards
others in a negative way and takes
their focus off their own goals.
In an ambitious economy, people
generally enjoy watching others get
ahead because it reinforces their
sense that they too can succeed.
In an envy economy, in contrast, people
often feel like they're playing in a zero
sum game, and that if someone else gets
ahead, it comes at their own expense.
End quote.
Little do you realize that within
three years, one of the most
spiteful, envious men in America
would be leading the country?
The mask is off.
America has always been about expansion,
but now the mask is off instead of
offering opportunity, it's about
grabbing what you want from others.
I'm automatically attracted to beautiful.
I just start kissing them.
It's like a magnet.
Just kiss.
I don't even wait.
Trump said, when you're a
star, they let you do it.
You can do anything.
Grab 'em by the P word.
You can do anything from a Vox
quote, October, 2016 end quote.
The American idea has been fully unmasked.
Grab what you want from the rest
of the world and just take it.
You can do anything.
Grab 'em.
You can do anything.
Life just keeps on The strangest part
of all this as America's neighbor is
that daily life just keeps going on.
Most of my clients are American.
We don't hate each other.
We don't argue over tariffs or borders.
We collaborate and work together
just as thousands of Canadians
and Americans do in remote jobs,
sports, entertainment, and tech.
But even as Canadians try to
prioritize buying local, our lives
are intertwined with American culture.
We'll still buy the next iPhone.
We'll still watch American movies.
Our sports teams will
still travel to away games.
Social media, like Instagram X
Blue Sky is mostly American owned.
And despite our frustrations, we stay
because our relationships are there.
What a mess.
What now?
I am not smart enough to know how to
give advice to Americans to stop the
path their leadership is taking them on.
To think that because 75 million of them
voted for one leader and 77 million voted
for one of the smallest men to ever live,
and so now the rest of the world lives in
chaos and fear is a hard pill to swallow.
Wishing that Americans did more to
get people out to vote in 2024 isn't
gonna change where we're at now.
And I don't hold the situation against
any one individual in America personally.
I'm not expecting the smart, interesting
tech and web developer nerds from
America I know to fix it on their own.
I'm not expecting any of the U2 fans
I've met over the years from America
to be able to fix it on their own.
I'm not expecting Jason Kottke
whose blog I've read for
decades to fix it on his own.
I'm not expecting the Twitch streamers I
watched to be able to fix it on their own.
But I do know this.
America the idea needs
Americans, the people to act.
Not just by liking posts on Threads
or sharing memes on X, but by
standing up, physically, in the
real world and demanding change.
Because if you don't stop the bully you
created, the rest of the world suffers
with you, and that's a terrible idea.