Thank you for your dignified, unflinching response to the assault on our status as an indpendent nation by the president of the United States. Your measured but unwavering pushback to Donald Trump’s crass bullying has exemplified the true nature of Canadianism—modest pride. You have shown by your example the difference between ‘strength’ and ‘power.’
A strong leader doesn’t bluster and blunder. He doesn’t resort to threatening insinuations and unwarranted punishments. He acts on principle and treats others who hold different views respectfully as he works toward resolution. He doesn’t back down when confronted by taunts and threats. A strong leader respects the rights and boundaries of others because he knows when mutual respect collapses irreparable damage ensues.
A ‘leader’ who relies on power to get his way is the antithesis of ‘strong.’ The word that sums up that brand of ‘leadership’ best is ‘fascism.’ The hallmarks of fascism are: a cult mentality demanding hero worship; the selective targeting of enemies, who become the focus of militant, xenophobic reaction; denigration and vilification of political opponents—who can never be seen as colleagues; the usurpation and abuse of power that is rightly vested in the state and its offices; the unprincipled use of that power.
You, Prime Minister Trudeau, have demonstrated strength in the face of unmitigated power. You have done so on behalf of Canadians and the international community of nations. You have truly represented the majority of Canadians, and we are proud of your resolve.
I say this as a citizen whose vote has not gone to the Liberal Party of Canada but has admired your restraint and focus during a turbulent epoch. Donald Trump isn’t the first politician or activist to use the divisive tactics of the extreme right to undermine your stature as the elected leader of Canada. The vituperative practitioners of right-wing character assassination have sown the seeds of hatred and virulent abuse from within, and you have been a target of their rage.
You continued to lead the nation with dignity and focus.
Under your leadership, the negative intent of Donald Trump’s assaults has resulted in a positive outcome. They have galvanized Canadians to ‘stand on guard’ for their nation and its true values. We have reclaimed our flag and will fly it with resilience and modest pride.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk aren’t stupid in the normal sense of the word. They share what might be called ‘lizard smarts.’ They have perfected the ‘art of the deal’, know how to zero in with lazer-focus exclusively on self-interest, and have egos that can’t adapt to any sense of common good or even decency. Which is to say, they’re smart enough to be stupid on a monumental scale. They conflate the meanings of ‘strength’ and ‘power,’ and, as a result, are taking the world down a disastrous road with their grand project: the United States of America Inc.
What’s the difference between a government and a corporation? Two phrases sum up that distinction quite nicely: governments, to quote Abraham Lincoln, are ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’; the corporate mentality is ‘survival of the fittest’ in a dog-eat-dog world where corporate loyalty is to shareholders, not citizens.
Trump, Musk, and Company are not just blurring those lines; they’re going as far as they can as fast as they can to erase them entirely, imposing corporate ethics and strategies on institutions intended to serve a totally different purpose.
One of the first tenets sworn to by members of the business elite is to shun all ‘externalities’—that is, don’t factor environmental, social, or political costs into anything you have to do to sustain and grow profitability. Global warming is a negative byproduct of our operations? Not my problem. People are forced to work in unsafe, unhealthy environments to keep costs down? Let ’em find a job somewhere else. Our operations can only continue with the support of a brutal, fascist regime? Just make sure that doesn’t make it into our annual report to shareholders, especially if that fascist regime is taking root in the Oval Office.
So what will the United States of America Inc. look like once it’s fully fledged? Well, let’s just say no self-respecting eagle would deign to be the avian embodiment of a nation governed by such crass, shortsighted ideals.
Let’s look at a couple of emergent examples. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was asked to leave the White House recently after a public row with Trump. One of Trump’s comments was “you’ve got no cards to play,” when Zelinskyy refused to knuckle under to the CEO of USA Inc.’s demands that he sign an agreement granting USA Inc. access to Ukraine’s rare metals without having negotiated any adequate provisions for future security for Ukraine from attacks by USA Inc.’s friend and partner, Russia.
Trump sees the weaponry and money provided to Ukraine in the war with Russia as a drain on USA Inc.’s balance sheet that requires payback; Zelenskyy, who has seen more than 400,000 Ukrainians soldiers and 12,500 civilians killed or wouded since Russia invaded in 2022, sees Ukraine as the bulwark against Russia’s military ambitions in Europe. That this Oval Office disagreement was vented in public, with the TV cameras rolling, is yet another instance of Trump’s gameshow politics, which got very high ratings in Putin’s Russia.
‘You’re Fired!’ has become the clarion call of the Trump-Musk administration and United States of America Inc. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was fired at a staged event, while the cameras rolled and the world watched with shock and disgusted awe. Canada’s ‘governor’ Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was fired with what some took to be a dismissive troll, but are now realizing is a gangster’s tactic to persuade citizens of the 51st State to knuckle under and make the threat of unjustified trade tariffs ‘go away.’ A ‘Fork in the Road’ buyout was thrust into the inboxes of 2.3 million American federal employees Jan. 28 giving them until Feb. 6 to accept or else…
There’s a common thread to all these examples—and plenty more in the works. Federal employees, allies, anyone who doesn’t fit into the corporate gameplan of United States of America Inc. is treated like an enemy and tossed into the street like human garbage.
What does this business model mean for the future of United States of America Inc.’s citizens, and citizens of the world?
People will be excluded from the government’s calculations and society’s benefits unless they contribute to ‘profitability.’
Other nations are not the concern of USA Inc. unless they contribute to profitability.
Global stability and sustainability are of no concern to USA Inc. because they represent a net loss and don’t contribute to short-term profitability.
Morality, decency, and compassion in any form become unsupported and insupportable burdens because they do not contribute to USA Inc.’s profitability.
Question: Who will benefit most from all the newfound profits that are going to be wrung out of the domestic market and the world by United States of America Inc.?
Clue: It’s not likely to be the ordinary guys MAGA man pretends are his buddies.
Follow-up question: What’s are the biggest cards Trump thinks gives him an unbeatable hand—the ace-king combo he just knows will make him winner in this corporate takeover?
To anticipate the decisions and actions of Donald Trump you have to set aside many things you value most and likely take for granted. Do you respect treaties and friendships? Forget it. Do you value straightforward, honest answers to questions instead of slippery deceptions and outright lies? How naive! Do you think the ultimate purpose of a nation is to benefit all its citizens? You rube!
Only when we blinker ourselves with lizard-like focus on self-interest, insatiable greed, billionaire cronyism, and bloated egoism will we begin to gain an approximate understanding of the unprecedented national vandalism that is being perpetrated in the USA from the Oval Office. I say ‘approximate’ because, for most of us a perspective from the bawling scowling vantage of what has become America’s lowest office is unimaginable—we simply cannot become depraved and psychopathic enough to appreciate how bad the worst of humanity can be.
Let’s consider a couple of examples: Trump’s bluster and bullying about Ukraine; And his success in getting Canadians to boo the American National Anthem at sporting events.
Trump said he would end the war in Ukraine within days of coming into office. He never said how, and his virulent supporters didn’t care to ask. Even his opponents didn’t press him very hard on that one, but I don’t think everyone is surprised that his first step is a tête-à-tête with his good friend Vladimir Putin that excludes everyone else, representatives from Ukraine not excepted.
We have to ask ourselves: What is Trump really hoping to achieve with this stratagem, which has the leaders of Europe in a flap? What is the ultimate gameplan from a lizard’s-eye point of view—a prospect so unsettling that no one is daring to articulate it pubically lest it come true?
Could he be signalling his pal Putin with an under-the-table offer to divide North America and Europe into separate spheres of influence? Does he know from the outset that the terms of any possible agreement negotiated between the US and Russia will almost certainly be unacceptable to Ukraine, and will be rejected by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which in turn would allow the US to end its support for Ukraine?
Or better yet, that a deal could be forced on Ukraine, which would allow Trump to crow and the US to stand down, get out, and leave it up to Putin to decide when the time might be right to break the truce and invade again?
Not saying that’s a fact, but I think it should be on the whiteboard as a strong possibility as world leaders consider their responses to MAGA Round 2—as in Make America Gangsterland Again—especially the part about divvying the world up into spheres of influence. Just wondering when China might be invited to take over its Asian sphere of influence.
Then there’s the chorus of booing whenever the American National Anthem is played at any arena on Canadian soil. That’s music to Trump’s ears. It means he’s got us just where he wants us—drowning out a song every red-blooded American has been taught to reverence since kindergarten, a desecration committed on network TV, no less. What better way to inflame the patriotic fervour of his most loyal supporters, and give them a cudgel to pummel any traitor who would dare defend such sacrilege or the nation that committed it?
Never mind that Trump has repeatedly denigrated our own nation and its Prime Minister, or that he has welcomed Canada to become the 51st state with jests worthy of a clown and threats revealing his true nature as a gangster. Forget the fact that some of his more virulent thugs are calling for the immediate ‘violent’ invasion of Canada and its takeover as a ‘territory,’ not a state. All that pales in significance compared to the booing of ‘the land of the free’ and ‘the home of the brave’ at a hockey game.
Again, the wizard of sleaze has us in a lose-lose bind: Express our anger and disgust, and give him more ammunition to pummel us with, preparing the ground for some type of final aggression; or keep our yaps shut and be characterized as a nation of wimps, easily overrun and not worthy of statehood at any level.
Trump’s version of ‘freedom’ means the right of the powerful to dictatorial control over the rest of us. It’s the oligarchs’ and fascists’ destiny—the right of the fittest—to take over the earth, and they’re not going to wait around to inherit it. They are banking on the pervasive surveillance, propagandizing, and control mechanisms of the digital era to keep them from the fate of their fascist predecessors.
Will history prove them right? Or will the rest of the world—including at least half the citizens of the US—prove them wrong?
Our American friends are too shell-shocked with the wrecking ball makeover of their own homeland under the rule of Trump and Elon Musk to protest loudly against a wholly unjustified assault on a neighbour and former ally. That’s part of Trump’s master plan—hurricane politics. The civilized world should be preparing for the worst and, at the same time, reaching out to those in America who want to restore decency and integrity to the White House.
The Good Book says: Know thine enemy. For most of us, it’s impossible to plumb the depths of Trump’s truly psychopathic mind or the extent of his unrestrained power. But we have to imagine the unimaginable to prepare ourselves for what’s to come.
Note: Beta edtions of Mural Gazer stories at MuralGazer.ca
…when he saw his mother’s purse, sitting on the kitchen counter that day of his downfall, he froze, a tightrope walker quavering, struggling to regain his balance. The moral math was simple: He craved his cola; his mother had deprived him of the sugary libations that made life oh so sweet; tit-for-tat, he would deprive her of enough grocery money to buy himself a pleasure-sustaining supply of Kik. Still, he wavered. Get a Kik out of life, his jingoistic nature crooned; get a kick in the arse with a pointy shoe, a fatherly voice from up on high threatened. He teetered on the edge for a moment, then…
Harry glanced through the window, out into the garden, where his mother was busy weeding and pruning. Opportunity had presented itself, the thirst was upon him, he could either take his chance or leave it, and not expect another any time soon.
Still, he resisted the gravity of his yearning, aghast. How could he even think something so dastardly, so cunning, as to steal from his own mother… As he excoriated, himself his body slipped into an altered state, beyond the pale of ordinary consciousness. He witnessed sadly, as if in a dream, his hand reach out, fingers scrabbling like spider’s legs, prying open her purse’s lips, rummaging its contents for her wallet. He pulled it out. His breathing quickened and eyes widened as he riffled through the week’s house money, a sheaf of bills neatly sorted into their coloured denominations…
Paddling with my good friend Craig Harris yesterday down the western shore of Penelakut Island, I was haunted by an inkling of what it must have been like for a First Nations inhabitant, gliding through the same waters before the colonial era.
Much as I am enthralled by nature, I realized that I am but a tourist on the region’s land and sea; I can only imagine the deeper connection of a hunter-gatherer society, whose people ‘lived off the land’ and whose spiritual awareness was as deeply rooted and binding as that of the surrounding forests.
Before going any farther, an explanatory note: I am a Canadian of European ancestry. The influences that define me have been shaped and interpreted in that context and from that perspective. I do not want to be anything or anyone else. I do want to accept the challenges European social, scientific, and economic development and innovation have led to. The late-20th and 21st centuries have been a necessary time of reckoning. We either take responsibility for creating a better, more inclusive, more sustainable world, or accept the consequences and blame for our selfish, shortsighted decisions and behaviour.
It was from that perspective that I asked: What knowledge could we have gained from the indigenous peoples of North America and the world if only we had restrained our colonial incursions and taken time to learn from them what we had unlearned through centuries of abstracting technological and cultural development that had distanced us from the ‘natural world’?
That haunting question leapfrogged me into the present day, and a more timely consideration. What might we learn through the process of Truth and Reconciliation, as we honour the survivors of our colonial depredations and build a new relationship with them? That we are attempting such a feat makes me hopeful; if we can actually succeed, I will be truly proud as a Canadian of European ancestry.
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A recent Facebook conversation triggered by the graphic above has shed some light on why I am a spiritual existentialist, and what that means. Before the concluding reply below, I had described my daily morning mediation, which includes a vow to ‘value life’…
‘Value life’ is an interesting ethical statement, one I affirm daily, even though it inevitably and immediately leads to contradiction. To live, I must kill. How can I square that with my ideal of valuing life?
I think that’s pertinent to the original question: What are the limits of comprehension? Try as I might, I can’t round that square ethical peg. I have to decide, and reaffirm my beliefs in spite of uncertainty. That tension between believing and knowing keeps us questioning and reevaluating who, what and why we are. It’s the essence of existentialism.
My spiritual self is always looking into the world and saying there’s more to life than I’ve learned and experienced so far. There’s a love that’s larger then what I can conceive, an idea grander than anything I can imagine, a sensation more vibrant than anything I’ve felt.
Over the years I have been contemplating and expanding a set of practical ethical statements that give structure and meaning to my day-to-day activities. A clearly defined ethics synchronizes my behaviour with the world around me in a way that accords with my core beliefs.
I meditate upon the following statements most mornings, centring myself and trying to better understand my role in society and nature.
Value Life
I am defined by what I am-not, as much as by who I think I am
Give with joy and grace
Receive with gratitude and appreciation
Live the tetrahedron, express my physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects
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Reminding myself of these principles every day helps me become the type of person I want to be, and deepens my commitment to living well. I have no desire to convince others that these are ethical standards they should adopt; on the other hand, I believe an adult should not hesitate to articulate and explain the roots of his purposes and behaviour.
In future posts, I hope to explain more fully the implications and relationships between each of these ethical statements, and look forward to sharing ideas with others, who question their place in society and hope to make the world a better place,
