“What were Americans thinking?”

      There was a time, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Americans traveling abroad wore maple-leaf pins. The idea, of course, was to be taken as Canadians, not that country responsible for the reprehensible Vietnam war.
      We are traveling abroad now, and I wish I had that pin. I wish we didn’t represent the country that might be electing as sociopath.

       We’re not the only country, of course, facing a rising fascist wave. And the wave has already crested in places like Hungary. But we are the country that used to tout itself as the bastion of democracy, of freedom.

       And where we may be heading seems more than scary and inconceivable. It seems embarrassing. It seems humiliating. 
      The other day, in an art gallery in the old town of the port of the island of Naxos, in Greece, we fell into conversation with the gallery owner. He asked where we were from.
      We told him, the states. And then he said, somewhat tentatively, you have an election coming up, don’t you? 
      We replied, yes, we do, and we’re very scared about it.
      The gallery owner seemed relieved – not that we had an election, but that we were apparently on the same side as he was.
      He began talking, much less tentatively. He couldn’t understand, he said, how Trump was popular, how Trump could win, how Americans might be letting this happen.
      The gallery owner, who turned out to be of French origin but lived in Greece, said he had encountered a number of Americans, who were indeed Trump supporters, people who had come into his gallery. When they started talking politics, he said, no politics.
      Now, with us, he wanted to talk politics. He kept repeating that he just didn’t understand. What were Americans thinking? Why didn’t they see what was happening?
      We had few answers for him. We didn’t understand either. When we left the gallery, he wished us well – not just personally, but, clearly, electorally.
      Knock on wood, we said, in French, touche le bois.