How does Rick Rosner compare Canadian courtesy, American zero-sum politics, and cultural stereotypes in conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen?

In this exchange, Rick Rosner reflects on Canada through a brief Vancouver and Victoria cruise stop, contrasting Canadian courtesy with rising American zero-sum politics. Scott Douglas Jacobsen probes stereotypes, comparative cultural analysis, and anti-West sentiment, while Rosner links national self-image to public conduct. The conversation moves from coyotes at YVR and British Columbia architecture to NAFTA, MAGA, Moldova, vampires, and the comic possibility of immortal productivity within a brisk, observational interview about travel and identity.

Rick Rosner: I was downstairs picking up dog shit. Our dog has an upset stomach and is a little incontinent, so I stepped in it barefoot this morning. We keep finding little piles.

For our 35th wedding anniversary, we went on what is called a repositioning cruise. Cruise ships run their regular routes, but sometimes they have to move from one region to another between seasons. They offer these repositioning trips for less money because they usually stop in fewer ports. We got on in Los Angeles and did not stop until Victoria/Vancouver. It was not a multi-port cruise. They needed to move the ship north for the Alaska cruise season.

The ports are not that great unless you have a friend there to show you around. You end up walking through touristy areas. In Sooke, near Victoria, we went to a tea house, which was nice. We had scones with clotted cream and jam. Still, it is never a particularly exciting excursion, so I do not mind going on a cruise that does not stop in many places.

On the way back, I saw a coyote near the runway at Vancouver International Airport, so apparently you have airport coyotes.

What struck me about Canada is that it is like the United States, but nicer. Canadians are known internationally for being courteous, not in a pretentious way, but just as regular people who are probably kind. In the United States, everyone is more riled up. There was a recent incident involving a man allegedly attempting to attack the White House Correspondents’ Dinner while armed, and the political blame followed quickly. Canada seems like the United States without quite as much strife.

That said, Canada has its own issues. You have bears, which I assume are a form of strife if you run into one. Frostbite is also fairly strifey, though that is just the natural world. In politics, you have figures like Doug Ford and his late brother Rob Ford, who were controversial in their own ways. There are also fringe movements, like the 2022 Freedom Convoy, which began over COVID-19 vaccine rules for cross-border truckers and broadened into protests against pandemic restrictions. People were frustrated with Justin Trudeau toward the end of his time in office.

We did not make it to Tim Hortons. There was one at the airport, but by then we had already had enough to eat. Overall, Canada just feels calmer.

Jacobsen: What struck you about Canada as Canada?

Rosner: I do not know—Canada just seems like a good place to live, except for the winters. In British Columbia, though, you do not get the extreme cold. You get a lot of rain, but not as much snow, especially around Vancouver and Victoria.

We were only there for about a day. We barely got off the ship. We were supposed to have time walking around Vancouver, but for logistical reasons they did not dock us until around 6 p.m., even though the trip from Victoria to Vancouver only takes a few hours. They stretched it into a full day and got us in late, so we were walking around as the sun was setting. I cannot really generalize. My total time in Canada—including a previous Alaska cruise years ago—is less than three days.

We went into a Mountie souvenir shop in downtown Vancouver—lots of Royal Canadian Mounted Police gear and T-shirts. There is also that steam clock in Gastown that plays a tune like an old calliope. None of that is enough to form a serious judgment.

The architecture stood out, though. We walked for miles around Victoria, and the houses—at least where we were—were beautiful, with a lot of variety. We also passed a lot of those Little Free Libraries, the small book boxes people put in their yards. Victoria does have a large number of them, though not literally a thousand.

Victoria itself was bigger than I expected. The metropolitan area is around 400,000 people, not quite half a million, but still substantial. Our ship docked near a modern wastewater treatment facility, which, for what it does, looked surprisingly well designed.

For Americans, things feel cheaper because of the exchange rate. The Canadian dollar is typically weaker than the U.S. dollar, though the exact rate fluctuates—it is not fixed at something like 1.33.

That is about all I have. What are the stereotypes about Canadians that you do not agree with?

Jacobsen: The stereotype I do not agree with? Honestly, people do not talk about Canada that much. When they do, they tend to mention figures like Mark Carney or say Canadians are nice. If they are negative, it is usually from people generalizing about “the West.”

One example: in Ukraine, a small number of people express anti-West sentiment. One feature of that critique is that they describe “the West” as overly comparative, always interpreting one thing through another. Yet in making that critique, they are themselves engaging in comparison, which introduces a kind of contradiction.

It says less about “West versus East” -however those are defined – and more about general human tendencies. Sometimes people engage with situations on their own terms; other times, they interpret everything through analogy and comparison.

In the process, they make a separate critical comparison of what they are protecting. The larger point is that people sometimes engage with cultures and people on their own terms, and other times in comparative terms. I do not think that is good or bad, or an East-versus-West thing. That is just how people do things.

Rosner: I have to say, the Canadian stereotype of niceness probably goes a long way toward making Canadians nice, because I think people like to live up to positive stereotypes.

For decades after World War II, Americans thought of themselves as good and noble. I thought that would last forever. But over the last couple of decades, and especially under MAGA, the United States has been decoupled from altruism, nobility, and goodness. A big part of the population no longer thinks of America as one of the good guys of the world.

The opposite of that is zero-sum thinking: if you pride yourself on being nice and good, you are naïve and going to get screwed over. The idea becomes that the world is taking advantage of you, that you are being played for a sucker, and that your survival depends on not being a sucker—on screwing the world before the world can screw you. That is certainly part of the MAGA attitude. I think it is terrible for the country.

It is also a dumb and not very applicable point of view. There is generally more to be gained from economic cooperation. The United States did suffer job losses under NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which helped make it easier for some jobs to move to Mexico, where wages were lower. But while NAFTA may have been ill-advised in that respect, most of the job losses the United States has suffered were not because it was too willing to cooperate with other countries.

There were many other economic forces at play: technology destroying a lot of good old-school jobs, other countries having lower average wages and costs of living, and manufacturing shifting to China. Even without NAFTA, the United States was going to lose manufacturing jobs to China. I do not think that happened because America was trying to do good in the world.

Comments?

Jacobsen: That is it for me. 

Rosner: All right. Travel safely. What do you have on tap for Moldova?

Jacobsen: Chișinău and a hostel.

Rosner: When Americans hear of Moldova, they do not think much of anything. If anything, they think it sounds like a country with castles full of vampires. Well, enjoy the vampires.

Jacobsen: I appreciate it. Thank you.

Rosner: If you get turned into a vampire, you could end up owning the record for most words written in a lifetime. If you end up living for 300 years, you could possibly crank out half a billion words.

Jacobsen: All right. Talk to you tomorrow.

Rosner: I will talk to you tomorrow. Thanks so much again.

Jacobsen: Thank you.

Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

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