I know whenever I meet new people from a different country, the first thing we talk about is how they feel about the different political parties in their country, and they always feel super strongly positively about their government. If there’s one thing Americans traveling abroad just won’t shut up about, it is their good feelings about the American Democratic Party.
When we traveled out of the country for the 1st admin, we got treated with suspicion until we said truthfully we voted for the Democratic Party options.
To be clear: People were great until they (usually) guessed we were Canadian, then we’d get side-eye when they found out we weren’t.
The difference in land border crossing experience into Canada got more overall hostile the further into 2018-19.
We haven’t traveled like that since Covid. But I imagine voicing your distaste for fascism is required in polite circles now. Saying you voted Kamala and for the Dems is a good short-hand, even if you recognize they aren’t anywhere close to Perfect-Good.
Oh yeah, that side of it made perfect sense to me, like I said.
What the commenter was saying was a little bit different though. They said they, as a Canadian, were upset with the heinous nature of the Democratic party, and then they were sick of obnoxious Americans coming to their town and trying to defend the Democrats. And, also, there’s a housing crisis, and immigrants are making it worse.
If they’d said what you said, I would have been far less suspicious about what they were saying. They did switch after the fact to saying that they were sick of Americans who were using being Democrats as a shield against criticism of their country, which again makes good sense to me.
I thought about mounting a disagreement with the believability of this. Not about the obnoxious Americans – that I can wholeheartedly believe – but about your primary complaint being that the Democrats “have done some heinous shit” and then Americans come up to your town and what they want to talk about is defending Democrats. That is weird and makes no sense (not to mention the super smooth way of bringing up the housing crisis and blaming it on immigrants, I guess?).
But then I saw the rate of downvotes and said, oh, I’m not the only one who thinks this whole story is bizarre. Got it.
I know whenever I meet new people from a different country, the first thing we talk about is how they feel about the different political parties in their country, and they always feel super strongly positively about their government. If there’s one thing Americans traveling abroad just won’t shut up about, it is their good feelings about the American Democratic Party.
When we traveled out of the country for the 1st admin, we got treated with suspicion until we said truthfully we voted for the Democratic Party options.
To be clear: People were great until they (usually) guessed we were Canadian, then we’d get side-eye when they found out we weren’t.
The difference in land border crossing experience into Canada got more overall hostile the further into 2018-19.
We haven’t traveled like that since Covid. But I imagine voicing your distaste for fascism is required in polite circles now. Saying you voted Kamala and for the Dems is a good short-hand, even if you recognize they aren’t anywhere close to Perfect-Good.
Oh yeah, that side of it made perfect sense to me, like I said.
What the commenter was saying was a little bit different though. They said they, as a Canadian, were upset with the heinous nature of the Democratic party, and then they were sick of obnoxious Americans coming to their town and trying to defend the Democrats. And, also, there’s a housing crisis, and immigrants are making it worse.
If they’d said what you said, I would have been far less suspicious about what they were saying. They did switch after the fact to saying that they were sick of Americans who were using being Democrats as a shield against criticism of their country, which again makes good sense to me.
Removed by mod
I thought about mounting a disagreement with the believability of this. Not about the obnoxious Americans – that I can wholeheartedly believe – but about your primary complaint being that the Democrats “have done some heinous shit” and then Americans come up to your town and what they want to talk about is defending Democrats. That is weird and makes no sense (not to mention the super smooth way of bringing up the housing crisis and blaming it on immigrants, I guess?).
But then I saw the rate of downvotes and said, oh, I’m not the only one who thinks this whole story is bizarre. Got it.
Removed by mod