Canada

Growing up in America, at least back when I did, you get taught about America as this mythical thing.

• A shining city on a hill
• Manifest destiny
• Defenders of democracy

And when I was young we were also taught how these were our ideals and how we had failed to live up to them and done horrible things to get them.

I was always pretty happy with my public education, we learned about all the aspects, manifest destiny and the trail of tears and the overall genocide of our native Americans to get the land that god said we could have (he said it in secret to some white people doing the genociding). The blight of slavery, the birth out of compromise, etc.

The message I took away from my education was that America was an idea, one we have failed to live up to but one that we forever strive towards, making slow painful progress towards a more perfect union.

And maybe that was true, maybe that was propaganda. What I know now is that my fellow countrymen largely don’t want to consider the bad parts, wouldn’t it be easier if instead of having to do work to live up to our ideals we actually already had it all figured out. We actually aren’t shit, we are great, but we just let some bad stuff get in the way of our greatness. We don’t need to grow and struggle and grapple with how to solve these problems, we actually are already perfect and the most powerful and the bigliest and all we need to do is get rid of this damn scapegoat that ruined it.

And the scapegoat can be anything you like, trans people, Mexicans, an unfair trade deal with Canada. Don’t worry, no one is going to really think too hard about what these things are or how they ruined our perfect greatness, we can just say “hey it’s bad and if we get rid of it we will be great” and that’s just how it is now.

I always thought America’s true greatness, if it ever had any, came from our willingness to confront our problems and strive towards our ideals. All around me I see cowards now that are afraid of the real world and retreating into a fantasy. I loathe them.

Do not forgot this betrayal. My fellow countrymen, a large amount at least, are unmoored by reality, unbothered by reality, living out an infantile fantasy. People like that will hurt others to keep their make believe world going. You should not trust us, for your own sake you must not.

As an American that still has love in my heart for my Canadian neighbors, protect yourself from us. Protect your nation from becoming what we have become. The forces that broke our people will try to break yours too. Stay strong Canada, elbows up.

Canada won The War of 1812. Look it up.

which elicits the exact opposite effect.

They're more likely to burn them

It's not so much they won't. They can't.

That makes sense, it is a really cool story and I love that the donation from the philanthropists to create an international feeling of solidarity between Canadian and U.S. neighbors has been so effective of a symbol AND practical space for things that are denied reality elsewhere for so long to so many people.

I was making a broader joke about the sentiment of people in my country (US) attacking other people and then loudly complaining the victim is a jerk for reacting in an unfriendly way, but you are right, this architecture and organization simply could not exist in an intolerant or overly bigoted place. The very architecture of the library and performance venue subverts and challenges bigotry, isolationism and xenophobia in a way that doesn't allow those kinds of beliefs to casually slip in the back door like they do in other places.