Respectfully to you personally as your heart is absolutely in the right place, Americans do not need or at this point want Canadian forgiveness. Canadians have their own problems with their far right neighbors that they will continue to underestimate until it’s too late. And when that happens, the majority of Americans — who respect and support Canada and its people, who were outraged over the governments treatment of Canada, and who turned that outrage into action through protests and yesterdays rejection of the current government, will remember how Canadians turned on them.

The global rise of far-right authoritarianism defies borders and those of us standing against it should have been standing shoulder to shoulder, but instead Canada would rather blame all Americans while burying its head in the sand and pretending like the same thing couldn’t happen there. As if America is somehow uniquely susceptible to a problem that has been plaguing the entire world. First they doubted Americans would deliver on the rejection of its government, and now that they have, they disqualify it.

We should and we have to put things to rights with Canada because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s what our northern neighbors deserve, but frankly the holier-than-thou pearl clutching that has dominated online Canadian-American discourse has sucked the well of Canadian sympathy dry for a lot of people.