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.
I have never been called upon until now to defend my country and the democratic values our flag stands for. But I won’t shirk, now that there is a need for Canadians of every generation to stand on guard.
Before I get into that, though, I want to reach out to our friends south of the world’s longest undefended border and say: I am not your enemy, but the actions of your president and his ardent supporters are forcing me to think like one.
Whether you label it ‘trolling’ or ‘hard bargaining,’ when the leader of the world’s most powerful nation mocks my prime minister and refers to my 40 million fellow citizens as residents of ‘the 51st state’ alarm bells go off. It’s all hands on deck.
I’m too old to lace up my boots, shoulder a rifle, and march off to war, but I won’t sit idly by and watch an aggressive, crude, tyrant threaten my country and seemingly position himself to wage war against us.
President Trump’s political sleights of hand are as insidious and odious as they are obvious. Create an enemy, focus your supporters’ attention on your strength and determination to defeat the target of your concocted rhetoric, and get on with the business of dismantling your own nation amidst the mayhem.
If you can’t stop this madness from your side of the border, I can assure you, we will martial every resource and take whatever steps we must to stop him from this side. I don’t mean this as an insult, but I will never be an American; I am and always will be Canadian.
My father, along with thousands of Canadians, enlisted in the fight against fascism in the Second World War. Never in my bleakest imaginings did I foresee the need for similar commitments and vows against our closest friend and ally nine decades later.
But our determination must be voiced now so our neighbours to the south will know what they are getting into if they allow their president to continue down the road he’s taking. There will be no winners if our friendship is damaged, only losers – except for the few who believe that ‘survival of the fittest’ is the only tenet of sound policy, and that warfare in any manifestation, doesn’t need any sort of justification other than the dictates of sheer greed, power, and unbridled egotism.
Celebrate your dreams come true, and the other selves that become you, and the future self that must evolve, because all is said, but all’s not solved.
Today bleeds into our longest night, much to the murdering crows’ delight. specks of darkness on swishing wings they announce the fact with their squabblings. Emmisaries in jet black cowls, companions to the hooting owls. “Beware,” they gabble. “Take Fright! Take Fright! Your time approaches, Take Flight! Take Flight!”
Oh! How I love this gathering flock that portends what I am, and what I am not Like puzzle pieces scrabbling thin air, they congregate in raucus pairs, stark ormanemts in naked trees that jangle wonted harmonies. “Beware,” they gabble. “Take Fright! Take Fright! Your time approaches, Take Flight! Take Flight!”
T’is the season of madness and awful deeds, of blathering speeches and insane creeds. Of fascist swarmings in angry minds, fanatical theories, and brutal designs, of demons belching half-baked ‘facts’ and believers poised for bloody acts. “Beware,” they gabble. “Take Fright! Take Fright! Your time approaches, Take Flight! Take Flight!”
I am grateful for this ominous breed flocked in the branches of my blasted tree… Crows, the harbingers a future tense that lacks all kindness, all humane sense. They are puzzled pieces of a darkening despair, black fabric rustling in our benighted air. “Beware, they gabble, “Take Fright! Take Fright! The time is come for your longest night!”
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.
It’s the dawn Of a new day In an old era In the same old way.
It’s the cycle renewed Again and again without end A ceaseless iteration Of nation against nation Of despair strangling hope Shoots of hatred Tendrils of fear A choking underbrush Infesting our gardens of Eden
Who was it said We must kill, and kill, and kill Until all are dead Who would become invasive species? Whose god roared that battle cry Under the glaring sun Denying even the possibility of innocence Declaring even the unborn ‘Enemies of our state’ Infected with murderous intent? Vermin only fit to hate?
Bloodlines. Worm like veins Through our sacred soils Rooting the detritus That defines us. Ancient scrolls And chiseled texts Implacable as tombstones.
North Cowichan Council made the right decision last night when, by a 4-3 margin, it decided to uphold the principles of the municipality’s new Official Community Plan.
But the tenor of the debate left me feeling we’re not yet at the point where we can say it made this crucial decision for all the right reasons.
Municipal politics have never been more complex or important than they are today, and the 2022 update of our OCP is a case in point. As a document that will guide decision-making for the next decade or so it will have to be read and re-read for its full reach and implications to be appreciated.
It speaks to environmental issues from a global-to-local perspective; provides guidance on essentially humanitarian issues like homelessness; looks to sustainability and stability by focusing on a ‘regenerative economy’.
If you wanted to design a course in principled decision-making, it would make a pretty good syllabus. Perhaps the day will come when historians look at documents like our OCP and say, ‘It was ahead of its time.’ Hopefully the survivors of the environmental and social degradations we are now witnessing won’t end up saying, ‘It was too late in coming.’
Councillor Bruce Findlay, whose motion to offer a two-year ‘amnesty’ to property owners whose land was removed from the municipality’s Urban Containment Boundaries, said he was acting on behalf of the people who elected him.
That’s old school any way you look at it. The election’s over, councillors are now tasked with thinking and acting on behalf of all the citizens of North Cowichan, and (here’s the rub) to do that job properly in the 21st Century they have to place their decision-making in a global, humanitarian context.
I voted for a council that takes all that into consideration when it approves zoning, influences community policing, builds a road.
Note: I am a board member of the Chemainus Residents Association, and attended the Feb. 1, 2023 meeting of North Cowichan Council from that perspective.
