I’m a Mexican-Born Canadian Hoping to Become an American: This is Why the U.S. is So Special

In praise of the anti-fragile City Upon a Hill

I’ve come to believe that the genius of American culture is not its bluster, not its global dominance, not even its mythology—but its deep anti-fragility. A system so audaciously built on liberty and responsibility that it paradoxically grows stronger the more it is challenged.

I write this not as a citizen but as someone who has spent much of his life orbiting the American idea. I grew up in the weird space between Mexico and the United States, a place where cultures don’t so much collide as entangle. From childhood, I absorbed America not as an abstraction but as a daily presence—on the radio, on TV, and in the sharp contrast it offered to the country on the other side of the border.

I learned English from American TV shows—Sesame Street taught me my first English words, and ‘80s TV shows introduced me to a world that felt bigger, faster, and filled with possibility. I don’t even remember a time when I didn’t cross the border. America wasn’t some far-off ideal—it was just part of life.

From the time I was eight until almost eighteen, my mother drove me across into the U.S. nearly every day after school to train with American swim teams—first with The Water Ranch, and later with the Fort Bliss Sharks inside the base. The drives often meant waiting in long lines at the border crossing bridge, inching forward one car at a time. But it was worth it.