For decades, Canada and the UK were among America’s most trusted allies. Now? A political divide is rewriting reality... and it’s showing up in the numbers.
I was in a bar in Florida, when a resident of the U.S. asked where I was from. I replied "Canada" and he smiled knowingly and said, "yeah, it's pretty cold up there. I don't know how you folks can live there." Rather than defend my country, I said "the day will come when the U.S. will want to own our country, even as cold as it is." Provocative, I know, but the answer was even more so; "why do you think that? You haven't got anything we would want!" And now the end of the story...that was fifty years ago.
So Trump weaponized the have-nots of the U.S. and redirected their anger and resentment to wherever it suited him, all the while sympathizing with their plight. Right now that means Canada. There were lots of willing participants. As you can see from the story above, our worthlessness was an easy sell.
In the U.S. there's an underlying resentment of anything that serves as a reminder of the lower social position of at least 20% of the country. That includes people who have universal medicare, the highest education in the world and can afford to travel.
Before we become dismayed at this situation, remember that 20% of Canadians resent and blame Canada for their position in life, as well. Pierre tries to harness their angst every day.
“As of early 2026, roughly 63% to 64% of Canadians hold an unfavourable view of the United States, with some data suggesting up to 69% feel the U.S. is a "potential threat" or requires a cautious approach. This historically high level of negativity is driven by trade disputes, with 55% of Canadians in recent polling identifying the U.S. as a top threat to their national security, even surpassing Russia and China.”
I agree that a large proportion Canadians have a dim view of the US but it is different, Canada has not threatened the US; the defended itself against constant attacks from the US Administration. This is like the bully who hits you all the time, gets you to do his homework, steals your lunch money and he’s mad because you hid your lunch money and complains that you are nasty because you you won’t do his homework.
As you know, it is the US that started the whole thing, imposing stiff, unjust tariffs on Canada, dismissing Canadian sovereignty, threatening to forcefully crush the country economically in order to take it over, as well as insulting our Prime Ministers.
Canada responded but in the spirit of reopening channels, removed some regulations and counter tariffs. Canadian provinces affected by the crushing tariffs decided they would no longer sell their booze, Canadians at the grassroots level decided that we would boycott American products when possible and not travel to the US as a boycott but also in part because of their ICE/CBT policies that could provide Canadians a life-changing experience during their trip or while crossing the border. The movement is grassroots, provinces that decided to put US booze on the shelves found out that demand for US booze had almost disappeared.
I guess that the situation is hard to grasp for the average Fox viewer, so the talking heads are giving the marching orders.
Sad but precise Fred! The orange ball loves Hitler, he has been "playing" Hitler for awhile as far as I'm concerned! ICE, ya, let's pick up strangers, throw them in jail, throw them in old buildings, old factories, etc. & let them starve, rot, die, & still tries to get his followers thinking HE is great & the rest of the world isn't. Let's frighten people into submission by driving through different states & killing a few people or at least throw some in jail. NO regard for life! How can people still love that creature? ONLY if they are LIKE him! My thoughts anyway...
It really doesn't matter what the narrative or question is, you will always get around 20% of the population to accept or reject it.. The world is flat, there will be a zombie apocalypse, zombies exist, aliens walk amongst us, vaccines are necessary, you should use a seat belt while driving, etc.... pose this as fact, an sure enough 20% will agree or disagree.
With an education level of basically grade 5 for roughly 54% of Americans, I'm surprised that the percentage is just 20%.
Tricky one. The UK is a bit of a misnomer, it does not have a united attitude, or united political leaning, three of the four nations are quite largely at odds with Westminster and the burgeoning privately funded business ‘Reform’ party headed by a ‘trump wannabe’
We are hoping we are regarded Internationally as countries
Just to cross the Ts and dot the Is, what were the previous recent values of this current-20% value? You always get at least a few douchebags. If it was already, say, 18%, then jumping only two percentage points higher is awful, agreed, but not squeamishly surprising.
In this case, Trump might be getting a bad rap. When we finally challenged their sense of entitlement, it wasn’t going to be well-received under any government. And a more suave incumbent might have been able to keep on patting us on the back to find the soft spots.
If we’d put Jack Layton in Sussex Drive in 2011, he would have gone the same way as Salvador Allende. They never were FRIENDS but they thought they were…parents? Mortgage holders…? It took this incumbent’s abrasive overreach to wake us up.
You’re pointing at something real — but I’d frame it slightly differently.
It’s rarely “one man” who turns a country against itself.
What happens instead is that one figure exposes and accelerates divisions that were already there.
The U.S. didn’t suddenly become polarized.
It had:
long-standing institutional mistrust
media fragmentation
economic divergence between regions and classes
and a political culture increasingly built on identity rather than compromise
A strong political figure doesn’t create that from scratch —
but he can weaponize it, simplify it, and make it visible.
That’s the key shift.
What used to be underlying tension becomes daily political reality.
And once that happens, the system starts feeding itself:
outrage drives attention
attention drives media incentives
media incentives deepen division
So the question isn’t really who caused it —
but why the system was so ready for it.
That’s the more uncomfortable — and more important — answer.
Agreed... the system was ready.
But readiness isn’t ignition.
Plenty of places have the same underlying tensions.
Not all of them end up torching relationships with their closest allies.
That takes a spark... and someone willing to keep it burning.
Exactly
I was in a bar in Florida, when a resident of the U.S. asked where I was from. I replied "Canada" and he smiled knowingly and said, "yeah, it's pretty cold up there. I don't know how you folks can live there." Rather than defend my country, I said "the day will come when the U.S. will want to own our country, even as cold as it is." Provocative, I know, but the answer was even more so; "why do you think that? You haven't got anything we would want!" And now the end of the story...that was fifty years ago.
So Trump weaponized the have-nots of the U.S. and redirected their anger and resentment to wherever it suited him, all the while sympathizing with their plight. Right now that means Canada. There were lots of willing participants. As you can see from the story above, our worthlessness was an easy sell.
In the U.S. there's an underlying resentment of anything that serves as a reminder of the lower social position of at least 20% of the country. That includes people who have universal medicare, the highest education in the world and can afford to travel.
Before we become dismayed at this situation, remember that 20% of Canadians resent and blame Canada for their position in life, as well. Pierre tries to harness their angst every day.
Thank you Jim for sharing this.
“As of early 2026, roughly 63% to 64% of Canadians hold an unfavourable view of the United States, with some data suggesting up to 69% feel the U.S. is a "potential threat" or requires a cautious approach. This historically high level of negativity is driven by trade disputes, with 55% of Canadians in recent polling identifying the U.S. as a top threat to their national security, even surpassing Russia and China.”
Pew Research Center
Exactly... and that’s the mirror image of what’s happening.
You push the idea that allies are “taking advantage”… don’t be surprised when those allies start seeing you as a risk.
Trust isn’t one-way.
What’s taken decades to build can get chewed up in a couple of years if the messaging is loud enough.
I agree that a large proportion Canadians have a dim view of the US but it is different, Canada has not threatened the US; the defended itself against constant attacks from the US Administration. This is like the bully who hits you all the time, gets you to do his homework, steals your lunch money and he’s mad because you hid your lunch money and complains that you are nasty because you you won’t do his homework.
As you know, it is the US that started the whole thing, imposing stiff, unjust tariffs on Canada, dismissing Canadian sovereignty, threatening to forcefully crush the country economically in order to take it over, as well as insulting our Prime Ministers.
Canada responded but in the spirit of reopening channels, removed some regulations and counter tariffs. Canadian provinces affected by the crushing tariffs decided they would no longer sell their booze, Canadians at the grassroots level decided that we would boycott American products when possible and not travel to the US as a boycott but also in part because of their ICE/CBT policies that could provide Canadians a life-changing experience during their trip or while crossing the border. The movement is grassroots, provinces that decided to put US booze on the shelves found out that demand for US booze had almost disappeared.
I guess that the situation is hard to grasp for the average Fox viewer, so the talking heads are giving the marching orders.
There’s truth in what you’re saying Luc... Canada didn’t wake up one morning looking for a fight.
Most of what we’re seeing is reaction, not initiation.
But here’s the catch…
On the U.S. side, that reaction often gets framed as hostility, not response.
So both sides feel justified... and that’s how this kind of thing feeds itself.
That’s the real problem now... not just what happened, but how differently it’s being interpreted.
Sad but precise Fred! The orange ball loves Hitler, he has been "playing" Hitler for awhile as far as I'm concerned! ICE, ya, let's pick up strangers, throw them in jail, throw them in old buildings, old factories, etc. & let them starve, rot, die, & still tries to get his followers thinking HE is great & the rest of the world isn't. Let's frighten people into submission by driving through different states & killing a few people or at least throw some in jail. NO regard for life! How can people still love that creature? ONLY if they are LIKE him! My thoughts anyway...
There’s no question emotions are running hot right now.
But once we start reducing people to monsters or saying “they’re all like him,” we’re playing the same game... just from the other side.
What worries me more is how normalized the division has become.
That’s the real damage… because it sticks long after the headlines fade.
Gut punch
It really doesn't matter what the narrative or question is, you will always get around 20% of the population to accept or reject it.. The world is flat, there will be a zombie apocalypse, zombies exist, aliens walk amongst us, vaccines are necessary, you should use a seat belt while driving, etc.... pose this as fact, an sure enough 20% will agree or disagree.
With an education level of basically grade 5 for roughly 54% of Americans, I'm surprised that the percentage is just 20%.
There’s definitely a “baseline 20%” effect... I’ve seen that too.
But I think the bigger issue isn’t that the 20% exists… it’s when that group gets targeted, organized, and amplified.
That’s when it stops being background noise and starts shaping how people see reality... including how they see other countries.
I’d be careful tying it strictly to education levels though.
This kind of shift cuts across all kinds of people.
It’s less about how smart someone is… and more about repetition, identity, and who they trust.
That’s where the real leverage is.
Repeat a lie often enough and, well you know.
And he keeps repeating it on National Television...deadly!
Tricky one. The UK is a bit of a misnomer, it does not have a united attitude, or united political leaning, three of the four nations are quite largely at odds with Westminster and the burgeoning privately funded business ‘Reform’ party headed by a ‘trump wannabe’
We are hoping we are regarded Internationally as countries
Fair point... and you’re not wrong.
“UK” gets lumped together in polling, but on the ground it’s anything but unified.
Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland… very different political moods from Westminster.
The problem is, that nuance doesn’t travel well.
From the outside, people don’t see four distinct perspectives... they see one label.
And once that label gets tied to a narrative, it sticks.
So even if the reality is fragmented… the perception isn’t.
And right now, perception is doing most of the damage.
You are going to be right,very sadly, but no worse than the Americans swept along against their will.
Thank you so much for sharing ❤️ 💕
Just to cross the Ts and dot the Is, what were the previous recent values of this current-20% value? You always get at least a few douchebags. If it was already, say, 18%, then jumping only two percentage points higher is awful, agreed, but not squeamishly surprising.
Good question Mikey... and that’s exactly where the story gets more interesting.
It’s not that there were zero negatives before... there’s always a baseline.
For years, Canada typically sat in the mid-to-high 80s (sometimes even low 90s) in U.S. favourability.
So you’d expect roughly 10–15% unfavourable as background noise.
What’s changed is that it’s now closer to 20%, and more importantly, who makes up that 20%.
It’s no longer a random mix... it’s become politically concentrated, with a much sharper drop on one side.
So yeah... on paper it might look like “just a few points.”
But in reality, it’s a shift from broad, stable goodwill… to polarized perception tied to identity and narrative.
And that kind of shift tends to matter a lot more than the raw number.
In this case, Trump might be getting a bad rap. When we finally challenged their sense of entitlement, it wasn’t going to be well-received under any government. And a more suave incumbent might have been able to keep on patting us on the back to find the soft spots.
Fair point... any pushback on long-standing arrangements was bound to ruffle feathers.
But there’s a difference between tightening terms… and trashing the relationship while you do it.
You don’t call your closest partners freeloaders and expect things to stay steady.
That’s not strategy... that’s messaging with consequences.
If we’d put Jack Layton in Sussex Drive in 2011, he would have gone the same way as Salvador Allende. They never were FRIENDS but they thought they were…parents? Mortgage holders…? It took this incumbent’s abrasive overreach to wake us up.
I think I get where you’re going with this.
There’s always been an imbalance... no question.
Geography alone guarantees that.
But I wouldn’t go as far as saying the relationship was never real.
For decades it worked because there was mutual benefit and a baseline of respect.
What’s changed isn’t the imbalance... it’s how openly it’s being framed and used.
That’s the shift people are reacting to.
🇨🇦💙 If that means yanks stop visiting Canada, I’m all in. 👏🏻