Cana­di­an and Amer­i­can hock­ey fans boo­ing each other’s nation­al anthems is a clear and unchar­ac­ter­is­tic indi­ca­tor of how low Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s for­eign pol­i­cy has dri­ven America’s image and stand­ing in the are­na of world opinion.

In 2023, when the anthem singer’s micro­phone failed part­way through the Amer­i­can nation­al anthem at a Toron­to Maple Leafs — Buf­fa­lo Sabres game, Cana­di­an fans fin­ished it in what was described as “ a full throat­ed ges­ture of friend­ship and respect.”
In 2014, Nashville Preda­tors fans picked up ‘O Cana­da’ when the singer’s micro­phone cut out.
It seems to me that for­eign pol­i­cy and rela­tions could do worse than being a metaphor for a hock­ey game.
On the ice, you skate fast, hit hard and respect the rules or go to the penal­ty box. In the stands, the norm is cheer like hell for your side, respect the oth­er team and fans, and accept the outcome.
Fel­low Cana­di­an and ardent hock­ey fan Tom Clark, (Full Dis­clo­sure: a friend since our teens and loy­al “Perch” read­er), lament­ed what has come to pass this way:
“I might pre­fer the fans just not stand up. Sit in silence, heads bowed and reflect on the loss of a friend. But Amer­i­cans are not good with nuance. Sub­tle­ty is lost on them.
So I’m going to do that most Cana­di­an of things and go out and blow the snow off my garage roof. I hope in my life­time our fair weath­er friends to the south can sim­i­lar­ly blow away the bur­den of hate that lies deep and thick on the polit­i­cal path­ways of America.”

                    IN THE REAL WORLD ARENA

What’s cur­rent­ly on dis­play as U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy is a melange of  immoral, ille­gal, insen­si­tive and frankly insane state­ments, ges­tures and actions. If it was food, the end prod­uct would come with a pages-long health and side effects warning.
Instead, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is being giv­en the Meta and X fact-check­ing pass: wait for users to decide what’s tox­ic or palatable.
So far, that also seems to be the game plan of Trump’s polit­i­cal oppo­nents and —  it pains me to say —  a con­se­quen­tial sec­tor of the main­stream media.
Both are allow­ing them­selves to be skat­ed around and ille­gal­ly body-checked by rapa­cious oli­garchs and a cab­i­net of under-qual­i­fied lick­spit­tles who ought to be in the penal­ty box or on the bench, with­out hit­ting back.
Instead of let­ting remon­stra­tive ver­bal slap shots rip when the oth­er side trips over their own skates, “the notion of Cana­da as a state, how­ev­er far­ci­cal and unlike­ly, has intrigued the polit­i­cal class and been the source of par­lor games in Washington.”
The piece that jaw-drop­per appeared in also not­ed: “Trump isn’t going to send in the 82^nd Airborne.”
What is it with the appar­ent obses­sion that even men­tion­ing the unit will send every­one else into parox­ysms of fear?
One would have thought seri­ous Democ­rats, jour­nal­ists, pun­dits and thinkers in the U.S. had bet­ter things to do with their time, col­umn inch­es and grey matter.
As has been made clear in Op Eds, polls and com­men­taries from the moment Trump spia out  his “51^st state” fan­ta­sy, America’s friend­liest neigh­bours are no more going to become a star on the span­gled ban­ner than we are to for­sake Tim Horton’s for Dunkin’ Donuts.
More blunt­ly, we’re not going to swap – ever — what we are and have, to  join what is becom­ing an inter­na­tion­al joke to observers who find schaden­freude sat­is­fy­ing, and an object of pity to the more generous-minded.
Trump’s mixed mes­sages, scat­tered with lies, insults, ego, tru­cu­lence and revi­sion­ist his­to­ry (e.g. Ukraine start­ed war with Rus­sia) make it emi­nent­ly clear that noth­ing he says or agrees to do, can be relied on.

                   WHAT WAS AND OUGHT TO BE

At the end of his cam­paign speech­es, Pres­i­dent John F Kennedy often  quot­ed lines from  Robert Frost’s poem “Stop­ping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”:
“But I have promis­es to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
With the focus (to the extent that there is any) on shut­ting off long-stand­ing friends and allies with fig­u­ra­tive (or where pos­si­ble, phys­i­cal) walls, Trump, Elon Musk and their acolytes are summed up in Frost’s 1914  poem, “Mend­ing Wall.”
It’s most mem­o­rable phrase, “good fences make good neigh­bors”, has been inter­pret­ed as “… an indict­ment against our culture’s col­lec­tive fail­ure to be hos­pitable and neigh­bor­ly, where we only share a com­mit­ment to not shar­ing anything.”
When neigh­bours with the world’s longest unde­fend­ed bor­der  can’t even watch hock­ey in a spir­it of respect for the game and each oth­er,  the score in the game of pol­i­cy and diplo­ma­cy isn’t a win, or even a tie, it’s FAILURE.
The Peace Arch, con­struct­ed to mark the end of the war of 1812–1814 , the last time Amer­i­cans and Cana­di­ans were real ene­mies, sits exact­ly on the bor­der between Wash­ing­ton State and British Columbia .
The inscrip­tion on the  Amer­i­can side reads: “Chil­dren Of a Com­mon Mother,”
The Cana­di­an inscrip­tion is: “Brethren Dwelling Togeth­er in Unity.”
To bring us back to the hock­ey metaphor: How about that as a face off spot for for­eign relations?
P.S. For non-hock­ey fan read­ers, that’s where the ref­er­ee drops the puck  between two oppos­ing for­wards to start each peri­od and after every goal.

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