Whoever forms the next Canadian government, no matter how sympathetic they may be right now to next January’s MAGA Restoration south of the Medicine Line, the next four years at least are bound to be interesting ones for Canada.
Interesting, that is, in the sense of that famous folk curse.
This also goes for provincial governments like Alberta’s, whose leaders may think that with Donald J. Trump in the White House again it’ll be smooth sailing for oilsands bitumen all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Alas for all of us, the next president of the United States, just as when he was the next to last president of the United States, is a fellow who believes that every game must be a zero-sum game, with a clear winner and a clear loser. Every. Single. Time.
And so Canada, and Alberta too, are sure to be cast in the role of losers, even if Mr. Trump didn’t mean that stuff he said about bitumen on Super Tuesday last spring. “I call it tar. It’s not oil. It’s terrible. … So for all of the environmentalists, you ought to look at that because all of that tar is going right up into the atmosphere!”
Yes, Alberta may finally get its Keystone XL Pipeline, but we’ll have to pay for it. Again.
As for that billion and a half Loonies former Alberta premier Jason Kenney gave away to get it built almost five years ago, you can count on it to stay gone. Remember where you heard it first.
Anyway, as the author of The Art of the Deal no doubt understands better than most, fanboys and girls who just can’t walk away from a deal make lousy negotiators. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party Government are straining like greyhounds in the slips to prove that all over again.
We may have the longest undefended border on earth, but we can no longer assume for at least as long as Mr. Trump is president that the United States will automatically be our ally. Both our increasingly unpopular Liberal prime minister and his Conservative rival will try to persuade us that they have the secret sauce required to deal with Mr. Trump’s next administration. Neither is likely to have gotten that right.
We can probably blame former PM Brian Mulroney for tying our economy so closely to the United States 36 years ago, and we will now have to live with the consequences of a relationship gone bad that critics of the deal warned us about.
Oh well. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and, in truth, there might not have been much alternative even then. Why speak ill of the dead? Mr. Mulroney may have bought us some time. Too bad we didn’t use it very well.
Mr. Trump’s planned 10-per-cent tariff may not do much good for the U.S. economy either, but it’s bound to do more harm to ours. That may just be fine with Mr. Trump’s supporters Stateside, as long as someone else is hurt even more than they are. Indeed, understanding that is the key to understanding Mr. Trump’s unlikely and undeniable success.
Where there were once many guardrails to keep Mr. Trump from running off the road, now there will be none for the life of what numerous commentators are calling Trump 2.0.
So let’s just say Stephen Harper’s oft-reviled 2012 trade deal with China, despite the current brouhaha about foreign interference in Canadian elections and the former prime minister’s recent endorsement of Mr. Trump, may soon start to look wise and far-sighted!
I know, dear readers, that some of you don’t like it when I venture into geopolitics, but here are a few more hot-take predictions about the second Trump presidency in the aftermath of yesterday’s U.S. presidential election.
First, there’s no need to do an Andrei Amalrik and wonder if the United States can survive another 15 years. It will certainly celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2026, despite the dire warnings made by Mr. Trump’s opponents in the leadup to Tuesday’s vote, and will likely last another half-century or so without changes to its borders. But there is no way Mr. Trump is going to make it great again. The U.S. is in an irreversible post-imperial slide, and we are living in a multi-polar world again.
If you doubt me, watch what happens under the next Trump presidency to the carefully curated international agreements and institutions that did make America great. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for example, sure feels like it’s done for. Now, a great bureaucracy like NATO will never just disappear – but it may have to turn its headquarters in Brussels into a tourist attraction to justify its existence. The Wittelsbach monarchy of Bavaria is long gone, too, but you can still visit their Residenz in Munich.
Letting the United States blow up the Nord Stream pipeline in 2022 is going to start to look like a hell of a mistake to Europe, and especially Germany, now that Old Unreliable is back in the White House. Will the Europeans take control of their own fate now that the U.S.A. is folding into itself, or will they fall to squabbling amongst one another like 1914? My crystal ball is cloudy, but change there will have to be over there if there is no change over here.
How long will it take for the AUKUS nuclear sub scheme to fall apart, by most accounts a spectacularly terrible deal for Australia, now that the Biden Presidency is fading into history? Mr. Trump is no friend of China, but in addition to the costs and loss of Australian sovereignty, one imagines that the Aussies will realize that in a crunch it may be more dangerous to be America’s friend than it is to be its enemy, just as Henry Kissinger famously pointed out. (Or didn’t. The provenance of almost all great lines is disputed.) We’ll soon realize we were lucky not to get caught in that expensive trap.
International courts? Currency trading deals? Your Visa card that works in Europe? All these things were designed in part to ensure the economic primacy of America and the status of the Greenback as the world’s reserve currency. Under Mr. Trump, all are likely to be at risk.
And in what form will Trumpism survive when the undeniably charismatic Mr. Trump fails from dementia or dyspepsia before the end of his second term? In that event – quite likely, it is said here – his automatic replacement is scheduled to be the utterly uncharismatic J.D. Vance. Or will Ivanka step forward to be America’s first electable female president?
One final prediction, hordes of disillusioned progressives are not likely to stream across the border to escape Mr. Trump, despite pre-election warnings, but enough well-heeled liberal Americans will buy a pied- à-terre in one of Canada’s nicer coastal cities to keep the housing and cost-of-living crisis here at a boil. They’ll come not just because the next president is an autocrat, or even a fascist, but because he’s an embarrassment.
Where does one start with all of this? Yes, I agree it would be a mistake to assume Trump’s love of fossil fuels applies to foreign fossil fuel quite as much. Although if a pipeline from Alberta keeps costs down for the US, it may be ok for him.
It will probably be hard to dissuade Trump from his tariff agenda. He can use them to punish or influence foreign counties and they bring in revenue. So for Trump that is a trifecta win. Sadly we don’t have Mulroney anymore who might have been one of the few Canadians who could get through to him and his circle.
I have to wonder if the current PM wants to devote most of his government’s attention over its remaining life to dealing with the US and Trump. So it might be a good time now to pack it in and leave this exhausting and consuming task for someone else. I’m not sure any of our eager PM want to bees are looking forward to this part of the job either. I suppose our Premiers are a bit more insulated, but their economies can easily be unpredictably blindsided by the orange menace too. For instance BC and lumber duties, Quebec’s dairy farmers and so on.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the world, the western one in particular, finally realized it could carry on without the US being a predictable and reliable leader of them?. Yes it is a powerful country, but lest we forget six of the economically most powerful G7 countries are not the US.
If we figured out how to get by without them, this would truly frustrate and annoy those who want to make the US great again. It is true they are still a great power, but the era of US world dominance may soon be ending, in part due to their own isolationism and belligerence. Imperial powers often eventually realize the costs of their over reach are greater than they want to bear.
Geopolitics? The five eyes are now blind. Ukraine is under the bus, and Taiwan is up for grabs! South Korea? God save them. Georgia? Fait accompli! Transnistria? Moldova? Hors d’oeuvre! Sound about right? https://youtu.be/ZWijx_AgPiA?t=1
” I told him; Bobby, go for it ( health/ FDA etc.) but stay away from the oil Bobby ”
And Elon being in charge of firing all those “unproductive ” people, with backup by his mom on Fox news ( I was verifying a statement) and what ever he’s got planned for all those starlink satellites.
Courtesy of Comfortably numb/bluesky— ‘Aussies don’t hold back’ — clip of DT getting into the garage truck– news anchor said ” and we have to buy submarines from them?lol
When I turned on the news this morning, my first thought was if Skippy and the gang were snapping chihuahuas before, well SH will take them off the leashes now and sic’em.
Marlaina was up bright and early (5:33 am) on X
yada, yada, …” Alberta and the United States have a long standing trading partnership that has strengthened both economies and improved quality of life in both jurisdictions “…..( I would hope that whomever wrote that, had a fire extinguisher and/ or a garbage can handy.)
Skippy, must have slept in (7:24am) and hurried to catch up, because on X he posts congrats, then proceeds to say that
” my mission : save our jobs”
I’m beginning to think that those sunglasses are going to need resizing, forthwith…
Groan!!!! Slogan man, to the rescue. Next thing you know, he’ll be selling NFT’s of himself in his Captain Canada outfit.
So this is a real thing with the CONservatives, that they have to be a embarrassment to the country, for people to vote for them?? WHY??
Well 2 months before the official writing on the wall is presented to the public. And yes I do believe that the border will become a concern, if for no other reason than spite. He did say mass deportations from day 1, so I wonder how Marlaina is going to handle that crisis ?
Turn on any news channel the past few weeks and months and you would have found a cast of Harris cheerleaders (the excitement is palatable!). Yep, there is growing divide between the “information industrial complex” and the ordinary folks, the eighty percent who turn up each day in low wage jobs and pay their taxes.
Step two was to portray Trump supporters as ignorant, uneducated slugs who should never be allowed anywhere near a voting machine. Democracy is only for enlightened beings. Oh yes, the average Trump voter is a racist slob. Never mind the fact Trump won with a working class coalition of blacks, Hispanics and whites.
Trump pulled roughly the same numbers he did in 2016 (love how you just need constant fact checking) what caused him to have such a decisive victory this time out is actual LEFTISTS stayed home, or voted green ( or spoiled their ballot, or wrote in undecided etc etc)
Why? They finally grew a spine and decided they weren’t going to endorse a candidate doing an UNREPENTANT genocide.
Good for them. Maybe now they can work on dismantling their rapacious demon infested government that’s hell bent on dominating or killing us all.
So anyone who falls for an ocean of lies from a serial rapist, misogynist, racist, convicted felon, con man, scammer and wanna-be dictator is informed, educated and enlightened?
tRump supporters are uneducated, of that there is no dispute. The educated folks almost all voted for Harris.
One of the great American institutions is advertising. It’s the most profitable business in America and considering it’s reach, the greatest in size and power. Advertising works so well on the uneducated rubes, especially when there is no requirement for truth and no penalty for lies. You, yourself Ron are a testament to that.
The tRump campaign was lying and cheating from day one, from one end to the other. And the rubes, slobs and ignorant masses had no protection or defense against it.
The pied piper came to town and played a sweet sounding melody which the masses fell under the spell; they will come to their senses, or not, when they realize they’ve been left naked, broke and defenseless out in the wilderness.
I am so glad I only have maybe a couple decades of life left. Humanity has failed.
Cool Xenu – humanity is failing, we have not seen nothing yet.
Trump is going to want to punish Canada because we are here. Joining the BRICS just got a lot more attractive.
When Canadian are rounded up and deported, their belongings will be forfeit. When they arrive there wiill be a refugee crisis but this time it will be white people who need help.
The Republicans, and the cons, have some time ago implemented a policy of engendering hate of the opposition in their followers. The idea comes from the military and has been decades in the making but is now bearing fruit. In fact, there is so now much hate of the democrats in the MAGA crowd today that Trump can talk utter nonsense and get away with it. Don’t be surprised if the hate turns so ugly that Trump will dragging the dead bodies of his opposition through the streets.
This will be very interesting to see what happens next. Donald Trump wants tarrifs on imports into the USA. That could include oil from Alberta. This MAGA malarkey has crept into Alberta, and it was there at the UCP’s AGM. Their policy ideas seem to reflect that. What a travesty.
After all the whining we heard from Smith and Poilievre about all the emigrants Trudeau allowed into the country maybe they can tell us how they are going to stop the Americans who didn’t support Trump from walking across our unprotected border like we saw when Trump was in power before?
Trump has said he is going to round up “undocumented” people and deport them. I do think he mentioned 10Million or so. If even a tenth of them head north, we will not be able to defend our borders. We don’t have the soliders or the equipment. I’m sure any number of wealth individuals have purchased second homes in other countries which they can move to if things go sideways in the U.S.A. Many of them may have acquired citizenship in some countries.
When Trump was elected last time, wondered how the U.S.A. would survive and it did. This time, they may well do so. They are fairly resilent and may object to what Trump tries to do
Trump is 78, so he may not make it through 4 years. That gives Vance the job but he will have enemies within his country.
About all we can do is put up our feet and watch the show. If we become an part of the play, we had better be prepared and our politicians need to clearly understand trump and his gang are not going to do anything which will benefit them or this country.
The Canadian economy will be taking a hit, so people might want to give some thought to paying off their credit cards, etc.
A couple of days prior to the American election a not in the business section advised Warren Buffet had taken a wack of cash out of his stock holdings. Then Trump won.
We will survive this as will the Americans. People like Trump make mistakes and sometimes they are fatal. As to Musk, don’t think he will last long. His money will be welcome but once that is gone, so is he. Lets not forget his behavior after he purchased Twitter. Expect to see more of that.
Yes, I agree. The simple fact of the orange retard sitting in the White House is going to be enough for any number of highly intelligent, reasonable and responsible leaders around the world to begin making changes. These actions will be incremental and at least, designed for benefits to the local constituency.
Nonetheless, the criminal POS at the head of government in the US will have the 2025 guidebook to fall back on. You can be sure that interviews and other activities to make this playbook a reality on January 21 are already underway.
The orange idiot doesn’t have a clue how to implement anything but how to inflict misery and harm on others. But there will be capable and somewhat competent others able to follow the carefully laid out steps, all just waiting for his nutjobbery to draw his idiotic signature on the order paper.
Then all hell will break loose.
We have no comprehension of how fast, how far reaching or how devastating any one of his numerous crazy ideas will result.
His fawning friendships with Putin, Kim and Netinyahoo can ignite the whole sane world in an instant.
His mentally retarded grasp of economics may start a trade war that makes the inflation of the last few years look mild and decimate the family budgets of millions.
Don’t underestimate or downplay this dangerous toxic sociopath for one second!
The U.S. has made its bed. It has made our bed, too, and the beds of our NATO allies. For what? Gas was cheaper in 2016 and so were groceries, according to Trump voters. Really? For that, they’ll get the consequences of their own actions, and maybe, as promised, they’ll never have to vote ever again. Freedom!
Inflation played a role, but so did racism and bigotry.
Yes the racism and bigotry of the Democratic Party who were convinced they could pay for upwards of two hundred thousand Palestinian lives by switching horses midstream to a woman of colour. (A former prosecutor who’s never actually WON an election mind you).
People just stayed home, especially in the swing states. I mean, folks were literally calling him genocide Joe, KH made it abundantly clear her loyalties lay with the Zionist entity, it’s not hard to figure out.
Bird: An appropriate comment, directed at the Dems, might be: “It’s the genocide, stupid!” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/opinion/democrats-israel-gaza-war.html DJC
With the Trumpists demanding a big increase in our spending on defense, we could likely see more pressure on the health care system as funding flows to defense contractors rather than nurses, doctors and hospitals. With our cult of low taxes, especially on the oil and gas sector along with the use of public funding to clean up their mess, there will be more privatization of education, health care and infrastructure so taxes can remain low and those with the financial means will still access these essential services. Provincially our taxes may go into a billion dollar KeyStone pipeline or to clean up multi-billion dollar abandoned wells.
So, perhaps a re-alignment of our alliances with the USA is in order. Perhaps we should pull out of NATO and NORAD. A few years ago Ed Broadbent suggested a new alliance of middle power countries. The time may have arrived.
Survivor: If Mr. Trump has his way, it’s more likely NATO will pull out of us, as it were. DJC
Ah, point of order Mr. Climenhaga, in re the NordStream 2 sabotage.
Please refer to Anders Puck Nielsen (Danish Navy military intelligence). He is regarded as a competent analyst. My son-in-law serves in the CAF (and regularly trains NATO troops in Latvia), so I asked his opinion of Mr. Nielsen.
The Ukrainian national named in the German warrant is highly likely a Russian agent. Mr. Nielsen goes into more depth in his videos, but the executive summary is Putin blew the line to punish Germany.
In many ways, that backfired, as the Germans, and western Europe, rather rapidly weaned themselves off Russian methane. The slack was taken up by American, Canadian, Norwegian & British production.
Gerald: Thanks for your comment. I will take a look at Prof. Nielsen’s commentary. The blowing of Nord Stream 2 was a secret military operation, so it’s impossible to know for certain who was behind the explosion, at least for now. Still, the Putin-did-it story strikes me as extremely unlikely for a variety of commonsense reasons, among them the expense and effort Russia put into building the line, the difficulty for Russian divers to operate in that area undetected even long before the explosion (surely we would have heard about them!), and the loss of prestige, business and influence by the Russians, which the theory you cite acknowledges. There is a tendency in the West to treat the Russians as devilishly clever and determined and at the same time remarkably stupid and unsophisticated. Such things are possible, I suppose, but unlikely. On the other hand, we have President Joe Biden saying that if Russia invaded Ukraine, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it. … I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.” I’m willing to take him at his word. Germany does seem to have found other more expensive sources of gas, but its economy is weak, its government unpopular, and, according to The Economist, the de-industrialization of the country is continuing apace. So whose policies regarding Ukraine have backfired, it seems to me, remains an open question. DJC
Russian competence … is situational.
The FSB (equivalent to CIA), yes, very. Multiple sucessful assinations (mostly in Britain). Multiple penetration of American/British/other intelligence agencies. After all, they did have the Manhattan Project infiltrated and managed to accelerate their nuclear weapons program by at least 5 years.
Russian Army, no. They are just large. After all, they failed to take Kiev at the start of the war. And that failure was mix of incompetence and hubris. They did not learn from their disaster in Afghanistan.
Politically, the verdict is mixed. Cutting off oil & natural gas to Western Europe has not ceased support for the Ukraine. The only country dancing Putin’s tune appears to be Hungary. Sweden & Finland ditched their neutrality and joined Nato.
Gerald: Institutions’, and I suppose nations’, levels of competence change over decades. If I recall correctly, many or most of the Russians’ successful assassinations were carried out by the GRU, a completely different agency from the KGB/FSB. Yet, nowadays, it is mostly thought of in the West as incompetent – because of botched assassinations. But credit where credit is due. Recent evidence would suggest that the Russian armed forces have been learning from their initial mistakes in Ukraine. World War II started badly for them too, partly because they had decimated their own officer corps. But we all know how that ended. Be that as it may, there are real advantages to having a large land army, even if significant parts of it are incompetent, in a war of attrition. There’s something to attrit! The Western model of well-trained but numerically limited special forces for quick campaigns against weak Third World enemies is deeply flawed. I would suggest that large parts of the U.S. Army, not the famous elite units, are just as bad as large parts of the Russian Army, although they have better logistics, which counts for a lot. The Russians have shorter supply lines to make up for that. Afghanistan and Ukraine, in my opinion, are not comparable. Nor are the Soviet Union and Russia the same country, quite. No one can win in Afghanistan because you can’t defeat a resistance manned by subsistence farmers who have nothing to lose and a strong faith. The U.S. lasted more than a decade longer, but suffered the same fate. And the Russians weren’t arming the Taliban during the U.S.-NATO occupation, or not much, anyway. This suggests the Soviets could read the tea leaves better than the Americans can, a point in their favour if we’re arguing intelligence. Politically, it is said here, again, they didn’t cut off gas to Europe, the Americans did. Wait until after the next cycle of elections, which is starting, to see how many countries in Europe are dancing to Putin’s tune. Sweden and Finland ditched their neutrality years ago, they just made it official recently. Whether or not they come to regret that remains to be seen. On that front, my crystal ball is cloudy. DJC
I disagree in re the Americans cutting off Russian gas. They certainly benefitted, but the call was made by the Germans.
Scholz refused to certify Nord Stream 2, it never went into production. To my knowledge, it did not even get filled. Twin pipes, 1 of them now holed.
Nord Stream 1 was shut down by Putin in fall of 2021 (for “maintenance”), then sabotaged in 2022. It is now inoperable (twin pipes, both holed).
As for comparing Afghanistan and Ukraine, both countries have the will power to not be subjagated, but for different reasons. The Ukrainians remember the Iron Curtain (Zelensky is old enough). So are other former Warsaw Pact leaders (Tusk in Poland).
American army competence: I am relying on my son in law here, and he finds them competent. He is a training officer, ands spends a large part of the year in US on exercises.
However, your criticism of them being well trained and equipped for quick campaigns is warranted.
The FSB has carried out successful assinations, (Litivenko with Polonium), and even their misses have had salutatory effect (Skripal with Novachek, Yankovich with dioxin). I’m not counting the defenestrations etc, because they happened in Russia.
Russian army learning: yes and no. Drone warfare, yes. They are still using cell phones for God sake. It’s cost them, last I counted, 10 general’s killed from insecure comms.
As for logistics, even having much shorter lines than Afghanistan, they still screw it up. The convoy on Kiev, the forced retreat from Kherson. Ukrainians are regularly destroying their forward depots and are now striking rear and deep depots.
Side note here, NATO is giving them AWACs data & US is giving them satellite data.
What the Russians are really good at mis & dis information campaigns. Only failure that comes to mind is the recent Moldava pro EU vote. And that was close as is.
And you are right; it is war of attrition now. I don’t know what is going to happen with the Donvict reelected. The crystal ball is turning opaque.
Gerald: You’re correct about Nord Stream 1 and 2. My mistake. It’s so easy to mix up exploded undersea pipelines – they all look the same under the water! At the risk of being nerdy about Russian security agencies, the British suspect in the Litivenko poisoning was an agent of the Federal Protective Service (FSO) which appears to be an equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service. The unsuccessful would-be assassins of Skirpal were identified by the British as GRU. As for Yankovich, I assume you mean Viktor Yushchenko, who was said to have been poisoned with Dioxin – according to Mr. Yushchenko it was his brother-in-law and fellow Ukrainian politician Davyd Zhvania whodunnit. Now, I don’t have a dog in this fight and no reason to protect the FSB, but this doesn’t sound like a slam-dunk case for that agency being the culprit. Finally, as to why so many Russians seem to exit life via a window, I suggest you read Chapter 9 of War and Peace by dear old Leo Tolstoy for an alternative explanation. DJC
German press published yet another bombshell w/r/t Nordstream ; leading forensic divers in Germany who regularly dive in deep water have now come forward and alleged the “Ukrainian yacht” story is basically physically impossible, for one, a vessel of that size would almost certainly capsize under the weight of the explosives needed to carry out the four explosions.
But an even more basic read is available, the explosions took place in one of the most heavily monitored areas of the sea floor and its extremely unlikely that the Norwegians and the Swedes, at the very least were aware that “something” was going to happen. The explosions severed a crucial partnership between Europe and Russia, cost Russia untold billions in damages and lost revenue, and hobbled the German manufacturing sector making it wholly subservient to America, and American LNG.
Qui Bono really ?
The Democratic political establishment was so busy shrieking its rage and hatred at Trump that it failed to do anything about the issues that brought him to power – like closing down American manufacturing by the corporations so they could reap bigger profits by using low tax and low wage workers in Mexico and China [among increasing others], supported by both parties through the 1980’s forward to today. This guaranteed, in turn, that the issues in question would become more pressing and draw even more support away from the political mainstream [including Harris’s “moderate” Republicans] and toward Trump and those who aligned themselves with him. The ‘established’ group in power, benighted to their corporate guides, never did address the people who were disestablished within their own country. So where were they supposed to go for relief? No ‘factual’ campaign for these people would overcome their realities. And Trump and associates knew that the fear campaign was much more relevant. After all, “humans are rationalizing beings much more than rational beings”!
And into the near future we can be assured that the reality that the wealthiest 10% of Americans who now own 93% of stocks, with continuing tax cuts for them, will reap a greater ownership % . This ‘wealth effect’ of the neo-liberal era will continue with renewed vigour.
Among all the predictions about the future for the people of the Excited States, only one that I have not heard is that there will be increased poverty.
As for those who rule in Alberta [Oil and their politicians], they can hope that Orange Julius will forget that he has claimed that “tar” is not really as bad as he has said.
Once Trump gets going on his quests will the little guy get bit? Most likely. Will the UCP and CPC supporters realize that Smith and PP are trying to do the same here and stop supporting them? Will they be shocked when the policies hurt them as well as their so called enemies? Owning the woke and the libs will also own them.
For everyone here that’s leaning towards panic, it doesn’t matter who the president of the United States is, they will always see themselves as the exception to the rule, and they’ll consort themselves as such. City on a hill and all that, Americans, especially the political class, deeply hold that to be true; and it guarantees that everyone will always be their adversary, “allies” or no. I mean, speaking of Australia, I’m old enough to remember when the CIA replaced their government.
If you’re hoping to get along on the good graces of the better nature of the Americans, you should probably read a little more history, or you know at least talk to someone who lives outside of the five eyes bubble.
A brief second thought, the goals of any organization are subject to the ability of the folks within the organization to carry them out. I remember the first trump admin , and they spent more time arguing with each other, getting fired, and going to friggin jail than accomplishing anything. I don’t have a crystal ball? But I really doubt DJT or anyone in his circle has spent the last four years getting their act together. Expect chaos.
“Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake”
I quite agree, Bird. We have also seen that American presidents don’t really seem to control American foreign policy. This is what is so interesting about Trump. He really does seem to be setting out to do just that, with considerable popular support. This strikes one as a fairly dangerous thing to do. DJC
I don’t disagree that it is very likely his desire to do so, but his ability to do so is another question entirely. I’m not even talking about the resistance he is likely to receive from the massive and entrenched bureaucracy that actually runs the United States, like the interference he almost certainly will receive from the CIA, who despise him, but just logistically speaking.
What folks are saying right now, tribunals for enemies, show trials, MASS DEPORTATIONS, those thing s require a level of coordination and logistical planning that I actually very much doubt the United States government is capable of.
I could be wrong, I’ve been wrong before, but I’m guessing Trump is so focused on his own legacy, not getting shot, and keeping his ass out of legal jeopardy they accomplish even less this time around.
Most of these people couldn’t organize a card game and they want to run the world. Good luck with all that.
Bird: You’re probably right. Personally, I’m inclined to think the U.S. Government is in fact capable of organizing the list of things you mention, but that Mr. Trump and his political and administrative allies are unlikely to be able to do so in the face of opposition from the U.S. Government. I’ve never thought Mr. Trump would be shot, by the way, which is why I was extremely surprised when someone tried and almost succeeded. That had to be a one-off loon. No, if the so-called deep state decides he has to be eliminated, he’ll conveniently die in his sleep after a nice dinner and the cause of death will be assigned to too-much cholesterol from too many McDonald’s Quarter-Pounders. No one at an American three-letter agency is going to make the mistakes that were make with JFK ever again. But – who knows? – Donald may just turn out to be as lucky as Fidel. Stranger thing shave happened. Indeed, they happened to Fidel! DJC
your observations regarding the geo political decline of america, it’s economy, the erosion of nato, compromise of economic and security treaties are hardly new. the russians have been saying the same since the current tyrant took over 20 some years ago.
indeed he again reinforced many of them again at a propaganda confab today, stating nato is an anachronistic concept. this from a guy who pines for the communist soviet empire collapsed in the 90’s, believing he is the most recent lunatic on the cusp of another 1000 year empire; if only us pesky democrats would shut up and get out of the way.
One wag suggested a job for RFK Jr., the Emperor’s official food taster.
Tom— Bear burgers and untouched French fries from that French fry thingy?? Whale oil??
Step in POGO– I’m thinking some Dr Hook for Bobby(….ya’ll)
Knock, knock, knock….
But I can’t help feeling that Barrie Maguire /EF Sloan is a sign of the times.
Good grief, we were such young innocents way back then, looking in on older kids talking about wars and protests and people ‘escaping’ to Canada.
Ironic?
Three times does it for me! https://youtu.be/Jne9t8sHpUc
Those of us who have been on cruise ships over the past two years and talked to people from all over the world can prove how stupid Pierre Poilievre is. His whining about our high cost of living while blaming it all on Trudeau doesn’t make him look very smart when it seems to be the COVID pandemic that’s to blame. Manufacturers are using it as an excuse to jack up prices and it’s happening everywhere.
Alan K. Spiller: You can see for yourself how there are easy to fool people. Look who attended the UCP’s AGM. There’s also the other reality of emissions from the oilsands. The UCP believes CO2 is necessary for life.
https://www.westernstandard.news/alberta/ucp-members-cheer-for-alberta-becoming-own-country-at-agm/59152
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/bakx-s-p-birn-oilsands-emissions-2024-1.7376849
Please tell me that Stephen Harper didn’t endorse Donald Trump.
Expat: He is chairman of the so-called International Democracy Union. Pretty sure this counts: https://x.com/idualliance/status/1813314767265706158 DJC
DJC— so this time out in public, instead of sneaking in side doors? (I rest my case!)
Ah yes, the IDU, the lobby group for Autocracy Inc.
A very long time ago, I received a mediocrity ribbon in Psych 100. So, that gives me full confidence in diagnosing myself with acute Polpression. Yes, political depression.
Republicans and Conservatives have pulled off two important feats that deserve attention and alarm. They have made people angry, and made the electorate more dumb than ever before. It really is a clever trick. I’d venture to say that the most solid, large demographic that supports the right now is the no-college male. How in the world of Ed Broadbent did the Monday to Friday, ham and egger, clock watching, time card punching working stiff now become the backbone of conservatism? Somehow, they’ve done it. A further nod to my modest first year Psych learnings: it’s not hard to deceive the receptive ears of the gullible, but next to impossible to convince them they’ve been deceived. This doesn’t bode well for my fellow travellers.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
Thanks to Expat for his comment, and to you for the link to the IDU’s comment on X. My only comment is Eek!!. Not exactly an analytical comment on my part, but I’m sure that it expresses my concern and consternation.
I said for most of Stephen Harper’s “reign” that he had dictatorial tendencies.
Just listening to Ian Hanomansing on the MoCo (as I call the CBC, “Mother Corp,” because I know it drives certain partisanship —of which I’m not—absolutely crazy): a commentator mentioned how many “F-Trudeau” bumper stickers there are on pickup bumpers driven by young, mostly male—I’m guessing, rural— Canadians. There’s even one in our little Gulf Island community whose odious demeanour makes him doubly unpopular and pathetic. But when I go to the ‘big smoke’ to grocery shop, I see plenty of such bumper stickers—not on farm pickups but on Grizzlies and Hummers driven by servicemen (all men) from nearby Comox CFB. While I wonder why such insignia is even allowed on the Base at all, I do have to admit this evident tRumpublican attitude has moved into BC, as the recent provincial election indicated when an an upstart “conservative” party rose out of the ashes of the once-powerful, right-wing BC Liberal party (that suddenly withdrew from the race as it was just beginning), and came as close as possible to winning a majority over the two-term NDP. The BC Cons adopted a disturbing amount of course, derisive, wildly exaggerated or more-tamely false rhetoric as well as policy proposals which, predictably, included all the poison groups for an unhealthy political diet: incessant, disengaged hyperbole, long-proved unhelpful “War-on-Drugs” prescriptions, climate-change denial, anti-vaxxerism and, very conspicuously (because two conservative provincial governments which went to the polls over the next fortnight also resorted to it), trans-gender issues. Yep, tRumpublicanism’s here already, ain’t no doubt about it.
Now, I’d written in various places that, at the final tally of the Saskatchewan election (where the party of the right won a fifth mandate, but with a much reduced majority —the riding map neatly bifurcated by urban NDP and F-Trudeau-pickup Sask Party rural ridings), I’m heartened by what I see as the continuing throes of globalizing neoliberalism which completely usurped traditional conservative parties virtually everywhere in the Western world by 9/11, 2001 but is in steep decline right now. I’ll start, if I may, to roll out my defence before getting to Orange Spray-Goo-Tanned elephant in the room: I always said the demise of the “neo-right” will be a gradual process, mostly because a small but critically shrinking number of traditional Tories have yet to abandon the neo-right parties which many of their moderate kind have already done. I pointed to the defeats of the BC and New Brunswick Conservatives, the much reduced majority the Sask party won, last year’s the defeat of the Manitoba Tory majority and the much reduced majority of Alberta’s UCP. I also noted the growing unpopularity of right-wing governing parties in Ontario and Quebec (whose next scheduled elections aren’t until 2026). I predicted Poilievre’s 20-point lead over Turdeau will start to shrink if tRump won. Hey, it hasn’t even been a week yet; give it time…
Then tRump won just a week after that recent spate of Canadian elections and people said to me something to effect: So, how’s your (stupid) theory of right-wing demise working out now, Scotty, (you smart-ass!) And I say, It’s working just fine, thank you (happily I’m unlikely to be accosted by that lone F-Trudeau guy: I rather doubt he can read, anyway).
What makes us Canadians—even Albertans, I dare say—different from Americans in this regard is universal public healthcare: we have it and they don’t. Of all Canadians, Albertans are grappling with the possibility of the UCP government completely unravelling the single-pay heart of the Canada Health Act by buffaloing North Texas Wexteerism towards the American model. I still think public healthcare is the great equalizer of rich and poor by which Canadian society has benefited in more ways than just medical for six decades. Now, before my critics on the right say, what about Roe v Wade which fell after 50 years?—I might add that it didn’t really fall (many US states still permit access to abortions) and there are pathways by which it could be restored federally—still as fraught with partisan angst, for sure, but as even so-called Red States see ballot propositions and petitions to overturn their respective abortion bans, it definitely exposes the claim to final victory as premature.
I just wonder why the Harris campaign didn’t let the abortion issue keep on taking care of itself and focus on the bigger picture of healthcare of which access to safe abortion is merely a small part—although not as vanishingly small as trans-gender rights which Harris tended to give more weight that it warranted or, in other words, used both of these sub-issues symbolically when the electorate was legitimately more concerned with tangible, pocketbook issues like the high cost of everything.
The fact is, tRump is out to destroy “ObamaCare” (actually, finish what he began in his first term, 2016-20). Bernie Sanders, Independent congressionally affiliated with the Democratic party, has implored the Dems to swallow hard, gird their loins and punch through the oligopoly of Big Pharma and private medicine in the USA. The issue was always there, waiting for Harris to pick up when she realized her campaign wasn’t resonating broadly enough. As Sanders has been railing for years, over 70% of Americans surveyed actually want public healthcare. She didn’t go for it. It was, I think, her biggest mistake (avoiding the border issue was another which tRump easily bested her as she lamely shrieked “Fascist!” And “Rapist” at him).
The US election was Harris’ to lose and she did by essentially abandoning working people in whom a mysterious ache or pain strikes absolute terror of being literally ruined by medical expenses.
Okay, that said, I don’t believe tRump’s win indicates longevity of his essentially neo-right movement. Americans, remember, suffered more than Canada through Covid (funny how Harris neglected to remind how tRump was largely responsible for the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of US citizens —especially in Red States which followed tRump’s dismissal of the pandemic—which probably factored into his 2020 loss to Biden) and are getting pounded by climate-change effects much more than Canadians are. They have proportionately much bigger poverty, homelessness and drug addiction problems. They are hurting and, as a product of their own history, very susceptible to demagoguery of which tRump is indisputably the proven master. Voters’ alarm isn’t totally ginned: some of it is real and legitimate. Harris balked for some reason I’ll let bigger minds figure out; tRump promised to tackle the perceived problems (granted some, like Tran-gender rights, misperceived), she promised Oprah and Beyoncé while Bernie cried aloe in the corner.
The reason I don’t give tRump the full marks he always gives himself is that he can’t make good on those promises, promises more hopefully prayed for than ever. The expectation is immense—which presents danger if tRump tries too hard to do the unconstitutional, undiplomatic, impolitic, or the impossible.
David Frum, right-wing columnist for Atlantic magazine, has rescinded his Republican membership. Many haven’t, but still advised voters to cast for Harris’s just to get rid of tRump. Will the result finally prompt them to do what needs to be done?—completely eschew the extremist tRumpublican party and organize a new moderate centre-right party? I’d say the odds are higher now than they were, so that’s progress towards what I’ve been saying for a long time.
I take exception to DJC’s quip that all Canadian political parties are neoliberal. While I admit the nominal “socialist” NDP has effectively moved to the centre everywhere the party counts in Canada, but neoliberalism, like all true liberalism, doesn’t own a piece of the communitarian spectrum, it only rents in the neighbourhood it likes—and now it’s shacked-up on the right end of the spectrum. So what makes the NDP different when it takes up residence nearer the centre? Why should that make it “neoliberal”? It doesn’t because, no matter how fiscally conservative it gets it’s still seen as protector of Canada’s public healthcare for which it claims origin (somewhat inaccurately: Diefenbaker’s ProgCons and Pearson’s Liberals also contributed). In many ways that makes Alberta the outlier—at least insofar as the NDP didn’t attack the UCP healthcare policy in last year’s election, offering instead a rather lame tax-the-rich-a-little-tiny-bit policy which very probably lost it the election.
Public healthcare, not position on the spectrum, is what keeps the left fundamentally different from the furthering-right like the TBAUCP. Does neoliberalism ever intersect the left spectrum? It tried and nearly destroyed the traditionally left and centrist parties as they (successfully) fought the decade-long fever—which is why globalizing neoliberalism entrenched so firmly in the lower-hanging, overripe conservative part of the spectrum. And then turned it way to the right, past the defines of traditional conservatism.
The worst thing tRump did and will continue to do is something that neither the ordinary American citizen nor even himself fully appreciates; it’s not domestic—federated US systems are strong, as tRump ironically proved—but, rather, diplomatic and strategic. He will continue to diminish to some degree the hegemony the US holds right now by a gormless process, less restrained in a nevertheless more-forewarned Biden administration, of transactional “deals” and purely tactical operations distracted by his personal proclivities and prejudices. Funny how Harris never reminded of that, either—not even when irrefutable evidence was available. Perhaps she felt that Americans simply wouldn’t believe it, and she might have been right. Anyway, there’s no telling how much the first tRump presiduncy damaged its strategic alliances on which its continued hegemony depends —because most of it is top secret, now even from the USA itself. As John Bolton, one of many tRump advisors whom he fired for sycophancy deficiency syndrome, wrote in his account that tRump is not the peacenik he makes out but, rather, is terrified by the realities of war and, Bolton noted, looked a little green around the gills when visiting hospitalized servicemen with horrible injuries while never gaving a thought about the wonders of modern medicine without which almost all of them, like most soldiers before them, would have died. This was another area of weakness the Dems did not take advantage of, no doubt a more difficult argument in isolationist times.
(Still, Harris came amazingly close given she’s a coloured woman Democrat who got to skip the primary process when she took over Biden’s flagging campaign, also saddling her with a late start. Still, when it’s that close, she could have pulled up some heavier artillery—but didn’t. Phone Bernie, that is…or even Johns Kelly and Bolton…)
But the Dems are different than Canada’s so-called left —oh, yes, although similar in many respects of passivity—mainly because it hasn’t got a public healthcare system to defend, which is easier than attacking the awesome forces protecting greedy profiteers for which the vast majority of Americans should recognize as their most terrifying bogeymen. Well, at least the issue won’t be going anywhere, still be around
When Bernie is old and grey.
I think tRump voters are going to be disappointed.
It’s not a quip, Scotty, it’s a sincere belief based on the evidence. DJC