They are not wrong.
So today’s post is a brief tour of American civics for my Canadian friends — and maybe a reminder for the rest of us.
But the oddity of American politics is not simply that the country is polarized, angry, or confused. Many democracies are polarized. The deeper problem is that the United States has never been a simple national democracy in the first place. It is a federal republic built from bargains among states, compromises among factions, and a deep suspicion that majority rule, left unchecked, could become another form of tyranny.
That suspicion produced some of the country’s greatest protections. It also produced some of its strangest distortions.
To understand American politics, it helps to begin not with Washington, but with a question: What is democracy supposed to do?
At a minimum, most people would say it should let citizens choose their leaders, make votes count roughly equally, allow majorities to govern while protecting minorities, and provide a peaceful way to correct mistakes.
The United States does all of that, sometimes. It also interrupts all of that, often.
Fannie Lou Hamer understood this before most Americans were willing to admit it. In 1962, she tried to register to vote in Mississippi. For that, she lost her job, faced threats, and was later beaten so badly in a jailhouse that she never fully recovered. Her story is not ancient history. It is a reminder that the right to vote in America has never simply meant showing up on Election Day. It has also meant fighting over who gets registered, who draws the districts, who counts the votes, and who has the power to change the rules.
Ohio in 2026 is not Mississippi in 1962. But the lesson still applies. In America, the battle over democracy often begins before the ballot is cast.