When you’re type­cast as ter­mi­nal­ly polite and stuck next to a fam­i­ly deter­mined to rev­el in being the stereo­typ­i­cal “neigh­bours from Hell,” the cour­te­ous thing to do is offer them a copy of Robert Burns’ poem, “To a Louse”.

 Writ­ten in the 18^th cen­tu­ry, it uses the image of a louse climb­ing on a fine lady sit­ting in church, to explore themes of self-aware­ness, social jus­tice and the impor­tance of all life.
It’s most famous line is: “O wad some Pow­er the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” (In mod­ern Eng­lish, “Oh would some Pow­er the gift give us, to see our­selves as oth­ers see us.”)
I realise few mem­bers of the MAGA fam­i­ly are like­ly to appre­ci­ate either ver­sion, but it neat­ly sums up what they need, and one can but try.
Also, it might help those Amer­i­cans who fear that  the “Again” part of the MAGA acronym might turn out to be “Nev­er Again”,  that there remains a mod­icum of sym­pa­thy for their plight.
Trump’s tar­iffs are a source of deep resent­ment and anger in Cana­da, but that doesn’t mean Amer­i­cans are no longer wel­come here.
In the month and a half I’ve been back at our cot­tage, the most antag­o­nis­tic ges­ture I’ve seen was “FUCK TRUMP” paint­ed across the back of the cab of a pick­up truck.

My lake­side neigh­bours have no prob­lem fly­ing the Stars and Stripes,  as they have always done, respect­ing the con­ven­tion that the host country’s flag is always on the top of the pole.
A CBC morn­ing radio show recent­ly asked a ran­dom sam­ple of peo­ple on the street in Toron­to what they thought of Trump. In a rein­force­ment of the stereo­type of Cana­di­an polite­ness,  a grand­moth­er­ly-sound­ing lady replied: “I real­ly don’t  want to say any­thing nasty, But you know, I don’t think that man could  have grad­u­at­ed from kindergarten.”
Sit­ting in a cof­fee shop, I  over­heard two men my age dis­cussing Trump’s America.
“He cut food aid for peo­ple who need it.” one said. “What are they sup­posed to do? Steal to eat?”
“And the gun laws,” his com­pan­ion replied. “Who the hell are they afraid of, anyway?”
The answer seems to be, every­body and everything.
After right-wing ding­bat Lau­ra Loomer post­ed on social media that vis­i­tor visas for peo­ple from Gaza, includ­ing chil­dren in need of urgent med­ical treat­ment, was a “nation­al secu­ri­ty threat”, the visa pro­gramme was cancelled.
Pause for a moment to pon­der that.
 In spite of its pre­pon­der­ance of mil­i­tary might, nuclear capa­bil­i­ty and (for now but how much longer) finan­cial dom­i­nance, sick, wound­ed and maimed chil­dren from a war zone thou­sands of miles away rep­re­sent some kind of clear and present dan­ger to the Unit­ed States.
So too, alleged­ly, do Cana­da and Green­land not being part of the Unit­ed States, Brazil putting its for­mer pres­i­dent on tri­al for plot­ting to over­throw an elec­tion he lost, and for­eign stu­dents at Har­vard, to name but a few.
On the same basis, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion banned cit­i­zens from 12 coun­tries, most of them Moslem, from enter­ing the U.S.
Immi­grants seek­ing a bet­ter life (which, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, is how both the U.S. and Cana­da came to be what they are today) appar­ent­ly pose a threat so grave it has to be met with armed, masked, uniden­ti­fied men forcibly detain­ing any­one they choose to view as a “nation­al secu­ri­ty threat”, gen­er­al­ly based on per­ceived ethnicity.
Even a cur­so­ry look at all of that car­ries the les­son that the real dan­ger is the hatred it will fos­ter in future gen­er­a­tions, whose view of the U.S. will be that it spurned them when they were most in need, and did not under­stand, or care, that great­ness only exists if it is shared.
                           THE CYNICAL VIEW
Why is every­one sup­posed to pay atten­tion to and wor­ry, which is anoth­er way of say­ing be fear­ful, of what Trump says or might do?
Espe­cial­ly when he doesn’t seem to have any ideas that last longer than the space between what­ev­er he hears.
Exces­sive flat­tery is now stan­dard prac­tice for for­eign lead­ers and dig­ni­taries: “All in all, the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent thanked Trump about 11 times…joining the oth­er Euro­pean and NATO lead­ers in a cho­rus of grat­i­tude singing Trump’s praises.”
Nat­u­ral­ly, Trump saw that through the prism of his ego, and claimed: “A year ago, they wouldn’t have come. They wouldn’t have even thought about it.”
That’s because they’d have under­stood with­out ask­ing that the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States would rep­re­sent their com­mon values.
What they under­stand now is that they have to look after their own inter­ests, together.
The full title of Burns’ poem is: ‘To a Louse, On See­ing one on a Lady’s Bon­net at Church’.
Like the lady who thought she was a regal being, the nation that styles itself “Amer­i­ca”  can­not, but would do well, to see itself as oth­ers see it.

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