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I’m Watching the US Midterms from Canada. I’m Not Feeling Safe

I came of age during Vietnam and watched Watergate unfold. This election frightens me in ways neither did

We are on the cusp of the United States midterm elections, and it’s still not entirely clear whether there will be a free and fair vote. Once we get past the uncertainties of Election Day (will federal agents show up at the polls?) there could be post-election battles—in the courts, in the House of Representatives, and possibly even in the streets.

The worries are legitimate, given the insurrection after the presidential vote in 2020. Canadians are watching events closely—as they always have, but especially now—because their economic and political independence could hinge on the outcome.

I was born in the US and lived there more than three decades, but I’ve never seen it like this. I came of age during the time of Vietnam, when Americans were deeply divided and clashing in the streets. I eventually joined the anti-war protests, too, after a twenty-year-old from my home town, Jeffrey Miller, was gunned down with three other students at Kent State in Ohio, on May 4, 1970. You might know the photo of him lying dead on the ground, with a girl wailing over his body.

After Kent State, I began to read newspapers in a critical way. I learned that the White House and the generals were lying to us about the war. I marched more and read more. I got swept up in the counterculture, read books by the likes of Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, let my hair grow long, and found a new community and common cause.

As I was letting go of the American story I was raised on, Canada entered the picture. It offered a safe haven for Americans who opposed the war. Draft resisters now had a third choice: go to war, go to jail, or go to Canada. By the time I reached draft age in 1973, the draft had ended. But Canada lingered in our anti-war conversations. Canada gave us Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and was also supporting the No side against the war.

In 1987, I met a Canadian, married her, and moved to Montreal, working as an editor at the city’s English-language daily, the Gazette, and later teaching journalism at Concordia. When I wasn’t marking papers, I was preaching the importance of a free and vigorous press for democracy to work.

The country of my birth is divided again, and I can’t stay quiet. President Donald Trump has a following in the tens of millions. He tried to overthrow the government nearly six years ago, yet he’s still here. The next pressure point for democracy will be November 3.

Before we entertain predictions of whether Trump will succeed in upending the midterms, consider this: No one, anywhere, can safely predict what the president will do next and whether the law can stop him.

To comprehend what he has done so far, we have to condense the events of the past six years into a chapter of a history book. Ignore the busy news feeds. Imagine it’s 2126 and look back from the future to today. This is the history that we have been living: Trump loses the 2020 election, attempts a violent coup to overturn the results and is never prosecuted for it, wins back the White House four years later, releases the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, threatens to invade Greenland, taunts Canada about making it a fifty-first state, upends the postwar Western alliance, uses his Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents, and terrorizes immigrants, including legal ones, through violent arrests and detention. All this before........

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