Back in the late 1980s, the first President Bush expressed a wish for a kinder, gentler nation.
A joke going around at the time, I recall, was that he had found it — it was called Canada and now he was going to buy it.
Fast forward almost 40 years and the U.S. has a president whose whole approach seems based in nastiness and cruelty, the very opposite of kindness and gentleness.
Indeed, I am struck by how often in the past couple of weeks I have heard the word cruel used in describing Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the U.S. government as a whole.
We see that cruelty in Trump’s childish name-calling and belittling of people, his attack on the federal workforce, his crushing of policies and entire agencies intended to protect and lift up the weak and disadvantaged.
Who can forget Musk’s disgusting celebration of the destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the single largest aid program in the world?
We fed it into the wood-chipper, he exulted — chainsaw in hand. How can anyone other than a psychopath celebrate the destruction of the lives and health of millions of people that will result from such cruelty?
We also see it in Trump’s bullying, not just of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy but of the entire nation of Ukraine, or his contempt for entire peoples and nations, be they Palestinians or those who live in Lesotho or Canada.
We see it in his heartless and racist attitude towards immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. He has not yet got around to proposing a final solution, but I won’t be surprised if he does.
That cruelty extends beyond humanity to the planet as a whole. We see it in his rejection of the reality of human-induced climate change and his commitment to expanding fossil-fuel use, as well as in the wholesale abolition of environmental protections and the slashing of environmental science staff.
Indeed, George Monbiot, a renowned environmental writer, wrote in the Guardian recently that Trump, Musk and their followers are waging war against life on Earth.
As James Parker wrote recently in The Atlantic, it seems as if “kindness has become countercultural.”
So perhaps Trump sees Canada as a threat because we are proof, right on his border, that it is possible to be kinder, gentler, more caring, more committed to the rule of law.
If so, he intends to eliminate that threat by taking us over, crushing our economy, our independence, our sovereignty, our culture, our very existence. And if that sounds like Vladimir Putin’s attitude towards Ukraine — well, bingo, two peas in a pod!
Now I am not suggesting we are a beacon of rectitude. There is plenty of cruelty and nastiness here in Canada. But the big difference is that kindness, caring and gentleness towards others is still an underlying, if at times somewhat threatened, motivating force for us as a nation.
We see it in our social programs, which are a social contract expressing solidarity and caring for each other.
We see it in the mosaic of multi-culturalism that doesn’t just recognize but celebrates diversity.
We see it in our proud, if now somewhat tattered but still extant, commitment to peacekeeping — and the same could be said of our commitment to protecting the environment.
We see it in our slow groping towards truth-telling in the history of our relationship with Indigenous people and our moves toward recognition and reconciliation.
Kindness, gentleness and consideration toward others has also been the underlying rationale for a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, which Trump and his fellow-travellers contemptuously dismiss as “woke.”
Now I am not going to defend every aspect of “wokeness” — there are times when I, too, find it silly, irritating, performative and exasperating.
But what I see at its heart is an attempt to recognize, protect and promote the inherent worth, dignity and rights of individuals, and that is a good thing.
Given that we have a cruel tyrant to our south, maybe our most important job right now as Canadians is to keep alive the flame of kindness, gentleness and caring, of compassion toward others, no matter who or where they are, and of respecting and protecting our environment.
That must be Canada’s response to Trump.
Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy
