Cover Photo: Illustration by the author. Photo of President Trump
Dear America, don’t make the mistake of not voting
Ifyou forego the accent on the ‘e’, “trompé” is exactly how we French speakers say “Trump” in French. It makes me grin every time. The word basically means “mistake”, from the verb “Se tromper”. “Je me trompe” means “I am mistaken”. If you wrote it like “je me Trump”, it would sound exactly the same in French.
I couldn’t help but laugh at that fact when I read that President Trump made 18,000 false or misleading claims in 1,170 days. Is he simply mistaken? Maybe, “il se trompe?”
For the rest of this article, “il s’est Trumpé” will mean “he was mistaken”.
Linda Caroll, shared a great piece about 5 things she doesn’t understand about America because she’s Canadian. It’s true, we Canadians don’t get your elections (no offence). I find it strange that we each call our countries democratic yet have a very different approach to it. Yours is 10x more complicated. I still don’t get it, so I never write about it (until now I guess).
The thing is, we can never escape your presidential elections. The last time they happened, I was travelling around the world. Even Cambodian TV was talking about them!
This time, in Canada, it’s on-air probably 50 percent of the time. Vous vous Trumpez (you are mistaken) if you think we care that much about the US elections.
The one thing I find interesting about your presidential elections is the fact that very influential people are open in telling you who they think you should vote for.
I don’t think I know a single Canadian personality who said publicly who they were voting for. Céline Dion, who are you voting for? I really have no clue. Okay, I guess we all know who Justin Trudeau is voting for.
In the USA, you even make movies about politics. That new Borat movie… damn, what a moviefilm that was… It’s definitely one way to get your point across. I don’t think any Canadian would have the guts to do what Sasha Baron Cohen did. I wonder if he’s going to think that il s’est Trumpé one day.
Anyway, I’m not here to influence anyone’s vote. It’s not my country, though we are influenced by it both directly and indirectly. As someone who used to think elections didn’t matter, I’m glad to say today that I was wrong. They do matter.
Not enough people use their right to vote. The USA fares better than we do just north of the border, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. Here’s the proof:
Source: USA Today
You’re still missing close to 40 percent of your population not voting. To put real numbers to it, that’s over 100 million people. We’re 38 million people in all of Canada. So, 2.6x the population of Canada isn’t voting for the US elections. That’s pretty significant if you ask me!
You want a guy out? You know what you have to do. You want a guy in? You also know what you have to do. Screw the “fact” that your state has an “allegiance”. You won’t change anything by not doing anything.
In Canada, we’ve seen provinces go from all red (Liberals) to all orange (New Democratic Party) during one provincial election. Then back to all red the next time. It’s volatile, and it’s exactly how it should be.
All that to say, “ne vous Trumpez pas, votez!” (don’t make a mistake, vote)
— Your Canadian friends