Canada

> But in the US, when I step outside the walled gardens of my community, I notice the brittleness underneath the shining streets, the way the wealth is not load-bearing. I notice the medical self-serve kiosks in grocery stores, the necessities behind locked shelves at CVS. Parents there are not given five hundred dollars a month to buy infant formula for their babies, even with a GDP per capita twice ours. To the extent that feeding our infants preclude Canada from investing more in The Next Big Technology, the regret I can muster up about it is half-hearted at best.

> When I think about the counterfactual me that grew up in a large American city, New York or L.A. instead of Toronto, I see someone who's more stunted than me, in important ways. No skating classes, libraries too far to walk to on a regular basis and more poorly stocked. Student debt. Without generous public incentives, that version of me would only have the life that her own parents can afford to provide for her.

I wonder if the author would have a better outlook on their counterfactual American self if that person had grown up in a smaller town like myself. I can walk to the library, grocery store, school, park and coffee shop; nothing is locked behind shelves in our pharmacies or stores; my nephews are in skating classes and play in a little league Hockey team, in rural Iowa of all places.

Yes, infant formula, and yes, student debt. Canada has the US beat for sure in social safety nets.

As a tangent: I wonder how writing a piece on appreciating my own upbringing in rural America might be received.

> The US is not one country. It's two that are radically different.

If you live even just comfortably, you are the 1%. Such has been and continues to be the prevailing squalor of the world as a whole.

In the US, the polarisation between the poor (and working poor) and the wealthy is stark. But let's be clear that this is (sadly) nothing new in the history of human society. When the poor have had a chance, they have occasionally risen in starving, ragged fury against plutocrats.

But the US is still one nation under its current federal government. This government has consolidated its power over its own citizens. People are being seized without warrants; people are being killed by armed, masked government agents who appear to murder with impunity. The rule of law has vanished. Previously independent (or arm's length) government entities are now run by toadies and cronies of a brazen regime.

In perhaps the most tragic _self-own_ in modern history, the US has fallen to insidious elements from within. Other countries are watching not just a former ally -- but a former leading light -- extinguish itself and collapse into destructive dementia.

> If Canada didn't have an air of superiority to comfort itself with, it would have nothing at all.

Canada might be known for many things, but you're the first I've heard refer to an "air of superiority" that we carry around. "Nice" and "polite" maybe. Sorry you feel this way. Have a good day.

Most importantly—and this is not mentioned in the blog—Canadians take comfort in the fact that someone like Trump will never come to power in Canada. The Prime Minister is not chosen by direct popular vote. Rather, the leader of the party that wins control of the House becomes Prime Minister.

As to who becomes a party leader: Party leaders are picked internally by party members via leadership races, not by the general public. This is good because the leader is selected not by "Low Information Voters" swayed by short-term issues like egg prices (as in the US), but by people who have gone through a qualification filter.

Post-election, the PM must sustain the House's confidence, with no-confidence votes possible anytime. So it is not necessary to watch helplessly for 4 years while your PM destroys the country.

My less cynical side hopes for that too, because English and my first language are worlds apart compared to how similar in some ways English is to French. I also live in a more bilingual area than others and get plenty of exposure to French. But it's a chicken-and-egg problem - to permanently live there for the immersion, you need to have a job there, and to have a job there you need to have perfect French.