In general I think Canadians are appalled but not necessarily surprised by the unrolling of events south of the border. U.S. foreign policy has always had very ideological and coercive aspects that  other countries don't think very highly of. For example, the U.S. government actively managed the illegal and violent overthrow of the legally elected government of Iran in the 1950s. Is it surprising that they distrust American promises and policies forever since (religious issues and Israeli politics aside)?

The U.S. also has a recurrent domestic history of bigotry and racism, plus a propensity to violence out of proportion with its stated belief in law and order. In the current situation I see threads going back to right-wing mistrust both of FDR and the New Deal, and of LBJ's courting of minorities following on the various civil rights acts. I also blame the Democrats (the party, not the political philosophy) for kowtowing to its own oligarchs and giving a real third party candidate (which Trump effectively was, although he also co-opted the right wing of the GOP) its best chance since Ross Perot.

All of that said, the weakness of the social contract is a real part of American society, and not just on the right (read Morris Berman for example). Although the rebellions of the 1960's were at least partly driven by real unfairness to minorities and women in issues social, legal and economic, they also tied in to the traditional individualism of America's self-image. The success of the me generation was a little too easy to be put down to just a few "hippies".

In retrospect, the most telling moment for me was not when Obama was elected, but when the Dems took such a large loss in his first mid-term elections. Obama had just saved the economy and enacted some semblance of universal health care (as much as was possible at that time and place). Although there were bailouts of some big companies, they came with very strong financial oversight and indeed do seem to have helped not hurt the economy. The rejection of these policies was too overwhelming to be due just to extreme right wing fringes of the Republicans, or some poor messaging (after all, Obama won the election through his strength in messaging and his sophistication). It seems that most american voters, and not just Republicans, do not really want anything looking like socialism, and would rather be unnecessarily poor or even die themselves of untreated medical problems than give up their ideological belief in the autonomy of the individual in a complex techno-industrial society (which seriously limits that autonomy), or that the individual can somehow "triumph" against adversity in all situations.

In terms of the rejection of globalism, of course the people being hit hardest in the US are probably the same ones who were rapid anti-communist/socialist. When a billion chinese suddenly became capitalists willing to work for much lower wages than americans for the same jobs, what did they think would happen? The rest of the world basically accepted neoliberal capitalism, which meant the US no longer had the specific advantages that system offers, but still had to deal with the disadvantages.

One has to acknowledge that Trump was much clearer about stating some of these things than the other candidates of both parties. Demagogues arise so frequently in such situations that the surprising aspect is only the amount of resistance he's facing in his own country. His solutions of course are non-sensical and will either not work at all or will eventually lead to some real wars - and the destruction caused by wars is one of the sure-fire ways to restart moribund economies unfortunately. Trump may actually know this, at least intuitively, and be working towards it. Needless to say there's a lot of suffering and violence that goes with that approach to economics, versus actual fair wealth redistribution.