New York delegates take a photo next to an image of Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. president Donald Trump during the Republican National Convention on July 17 in Milwaukee.Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press
Donald Trump loves Canada’s immigration system. Yes, you read that right.
When he was president, Mr. Make America Great Again repeatedly said our country’s approach to immigration was great. He often praised the Canadian immigration system, or at least the system as it long operated, before the Trudeau government broke it.
In his first address to a joint session of Congress, on Feb. 28, 2017, Mr. Trump called for U.S. immigration reform, to secure the borders, reduce low-wage immigration and increase highly-skilled immigration. He cited Canada as his model.
“Nations around the world, like Canada,” said Mr. Trump, “have a merit-based immigration system.” He correctly described ours as focused on selecting economic immigrants with skills and advanced education. He called on the United States to copy that.
In January, 2018, he again said that he wanted an immigration system “like they have in Canada.” Five months later, in a speech titled Modernizing our Immigration System for a Stronger America, Mr. Trump mentioned Canada three times. He argued that the U.S. needed to, “like Canada, create a clear path for top talent” to immigrate, and, “like Canada,” the U.S. had to create “an easy-to-navigate points-based selection system.”
Does the preceding give you Trump Derangement Syndrome?
Does it fill you with a compulsion to hold the opposite opinion? Mr. Trump is a grifter, a charlatan and a threat to democracy, so if he also happens to agree with a central plank of the traditional Canadian approach to immigration, does that mean you must disagree? If he says we got it right, does that mean we must have got it wrong?
Journalist Fareed Zakaria in 2017 defined Trump Derangement Syndrome as “hatred of President Trump so intense that it impairs people’s judgment.”
TDS is a widespread affliction. It’s also easy to catch. So is the genetically similar Trump Worship Syndrome – a fealty to Mr. Trump so intense that it impairs people’s judgment. TWS was on full display this week at the Republican National Convention. It’s eaten the brain of American conservatism.
As for TDS, it has chewed through the left, and it’s hollowing out common ground in the centre.
In a time of hyperpolarization, people increasingly start by picking their enemies, and reasoning back from there. That offers the simplicity and convenience of a compass that always points North – which is always the opposite of whatever the other side believes. About anything.
It’s how you end up with a conservative movement focused on “owning the libs.” It’s how you end up with progressives determined to discount or deny issues raised by conservatives. Whatever the other side says is false, by definition. No need for inquiry. No need for empathy. No need for thought.
In Canada, there’s Justin Trudeau Derangement Syndrome on the right – if the Prime Minister favours it, they’re enraged against it – and Pierre Poilievre- and Danielle Smith-based equivalents on the left.
For example, those infected with Smith Derangement Syndrome, and the related Alberta Derangement Syndrome, assume that truth, justice and good policy can be measured by looking at what Ms. Smith’s government is doing or saying, and embracing the opposite. Love what they hate, do what they don’t, and vice-versa.
One major Canadian issue beset by these competing left-right derangements is the national epidemic of drug addictions and overdose deaths.
My colleague Marcus Gee wrote this week about Larry Campbell, a former pro-decriminalization mayor of Vancouver, who now favours reversing course on some aspects of that policy and even – gasp – giving some consideration to heretic Alberta’s focus on addiction treatment.
Mr. Campbell’s goals haven’t changed. He wants to save lives, he wants to fight addiction, he wants to make people healthy and communities safe. But he’s come to the conclusion that reaching the destination calls for a course correction. Which is anathema to ideologues who thought he was on their “side.”
It feels like Europe’s Wars of Religion, from the 16th to the 18th centuries, in which people killed one another over the nature of the Holy Trinity, or whether eternal salvation was achieved by faith or works. In Canada in 2024, people are ready to excommunicate one another in a battle between two drug-addiction creeds.
The most extreme voices say you have to pick a side. Mr. Campbell, by coming out and arguing that British Columbia had good intentions but went too far, and that Alberta is not entirely wrong, has betrayed his side.
Good for him. We need more of that. Or else we, and our politics, will become ever more addicted to the most extreme and irrational derangements.