A message to Canadians and a wake-up call to Americans
You do your worst and we will do our best.
— Winston Churchill
Donald Trump’s assaults against Canada are a disgrace.
They defile the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers on a hundred battlefields around the world where they fought and died for freedom. They kept the peace often side-by- side with their American brothers and sisters in arms.
Canada is a giant nation, not because of her immense geography, but rather the magnitude of her immense contributions towards peace, justice and human progress.
Donald Trump’s aggression will fail because Trump is small, and Canada is great. Yet, this season of abject idiocy and insult will long linger.
It will long stain our national honor.
If that formulation of words seems strange or antiquated to you then please consider that might be a major cause of our current dilemma.
A great nation cannot remain so for long when virtue becomes an endangered species, and nobility becomes an alien concept in a society that is built on a foundation of ideas about human liberty — not nihilistic philosophies about the rights of the strong to destroy as they please, and take what they want — whether it be from a person, a family, a community, or a smaller nation.
The overwhelming majority of Americans find Trump’s bluster around Canada to be incomprehensibly asinine. They do not take his threats seriously, which is a mistake. It is well past the hour when the White House gangster should be taken both literally and seriously.
It should also be acknowledged that there are far too many Americans walking around with a frightening gleam in their eyes. These are the people who have become excited and enthralled around the idea of smashing and burning everything they see so it can be great.
What I am describing is a human sickness. It is manifesting itself in a place — the United States — where generations thought it could not.
Yet, it has.
Donald Trump’s inaugural tirade was a declaration of repudiation against the Atlantic Charter signed in Placentia Bay, The Bretton Woods Agreement, the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and NATO.
It is time to appreciate his intentions and understand that if he could make what he is saying so, he would in an instant. The failure to fiercely object to his insanity from the first instance only encourages more of his aggression.
No sane person should think Donald Trump possesses the capacity for restraint. Each day’s actions are a probing attack at the boundaries of what might be possible or achievable.
Would Donald Trump imprison journalists and kill his opposition if he could?
The answer is yes, and only a fool would debate the point. When Donald Trump puts his head down at night he does so dissatisfied. He dreams of becoming Putin, a man with no constraints. He dreams of being a czar. The biggest mistake of the last 10 years has been the singular inability by anyone to tell Donald Trump, “NO!”
The time has come. He must feel the wall. He must be turned back, or he will move forward.
What makes this current situation truly despicable from an American perspective is the lack of apoplexy and disgust from America’s elected representatives, including governors, US senators and US representatives.
Where is the outrage from Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and JB Pritzker of Illinois? What about Kathy Hochul of New York? Tony Evers of Wisconsin? What about Tim Walz of Minnesota?
How about California’s Gavin Newsom? Maybe he could have taken a moment from his congress with the leader of the Trump jungen, the Christian Nationalist fascist, Charlie Kirk.
Where are the voices of decent Americans and Canada’s American friends on this issue?
Why have no American leaders stood side-by-side with Ontario Premier Doug Ford and (almost former) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa, and denounced Trump’s sinister recklessness — and the real harm to real people, who are being made to feel great anxiety about their economic well-being, safety and futures.
Canada is being squeezed by MAGA maliciousness on one side, and the pathetic weakness of the Schumer Democrats on the other. They are bound on one side by menace, and on the other with fecklessness.
It is an awful situation.
Show me the speeches on the floor of the US House and US Senate rising in moral indignation around threats to our ally, neighbor and friend by the American Nero.
Where are they?
There are none. Not a peep.
There is silence from America’s governors and silence from America’s business leaders. There is silence everywhere from everyone about something every American should be shamed by, and ready to scream in the street to Trump that “you will dare not do this in our name.”
Donald Trump is directly, repeatedly and consistently threatening Canadian sovereignty and the liberty of 40,000,000 people.
This aggression is both real and a staggering betrayal.
Canadians and Americans have fought together, bled together, and died together. Their shared cause and faith was the liberation of the oppressed and enslaved. Neither country has waged wars of conquest for territories and empires. The sons of each can be found buried in French soil, where the graves all face home towards the free nations of the North American continent.
This is not who we are. We must never become what Donald Trump’s dark dreams imagine we might become as he seeks to remake America in his image, while pulling Washington, Lincoln and King’s portraits off of the wall. One thing is for sure: the placement of Winston Churchill’s bust in the Trump Oval Office is like inviting a convent of nuns to a whorehouse happy hour.
There are Canadian-American families on both sides of the border. Donald Trump is attacking each and every one as he seeks to take what is not his — and never will be.
Canada is not for sale and the United States of America is not Putin’s Russia, regardless of whatever sick fantasy swirls in the head of Orange Nero, his ludicrous vice president, or his Ketamine-addicted unelected prime minister.
What is it that MAGA fanatics are proposing?
After Canada, what sovereign nation will be the next target of Trump’s aggression? When will the American people wake up to the fact that Donald Trump has the power to make his aggressions those of America? Then, we will all be guilty of his crimes.
Donald Trump is a fraud and a liar, but I seem to recall his objections to what he said were “ridiculous endless wars” that America lost over the last 20 years. There is no war more conceivably stupid than the one Donald Trump is waging to impoverish Canada so that he can annex it for the trees, minerals, oil and gold.
What I am describing here is not an objectionable and obnoxious foreign policy vision.
Rather it is a disease of the mind — specifically Donald’s — and of the heart — again also Donald’s. It is also one of his twisted court filled with imbeciles, ne’er do wells, criminals, fraudsters, sociopaths, thugs and wannabe gangsters, who have succumbed to arrogance and fever dreams that preface a catastrophe before the fall.
Because Donald Trump is a predator with a deformed character, brittle ego and absolute incapacity to see the world beyond the edge of his interests and money, this obscenity may seem normal to him, but that doesn’t make it so.
The record shows that he cares for no one. He has never encountered a cause, idea or ideal that transcends anything beyond his malignant narcissism.
Trump shares a deformed personality trait with Hitler.
Hitler thought he was a world-class artist with an unparalleled artistic and architectural vision that would turn Berlin and the conquered nations into a new Rome with structures that would endure for thousands of years past the Thousand-Year Reich.
When the Nazis conquered Paris, Hitler did not enter the city to shoot Jews. He went on an architectural sight-seeing tour with Albert Speer.
This is precisely how Trump behaves, except for him, the art we are talking about is the ‘art of the deal.’
It is all nonsense.
Trump is no dealmaker. There are no deals that he can cite beyond the redevelopment of the Hyatt at Grand Central Station. It takes a special type of imbecile to go bankrupt running a casino. What Trump shares with both Hitler and Musk, who is a Nazi, is an unbridled megalomania that is incomprehensible to any normal person unless they have some fluency with history or expertise in psychology.
Have no doubt that each time Donald Trump threatens Canada, Lindsey Graham is somewhere close by, on his knees, in a closet, somewhere close, telling Nero that he is Churchill.
Let me share one of my favorite flags of the American Revolution.
It’s called the Gadsden flag:
Don’t tread on me.
Canada must become the rattlesnake. When Trump extends his arm where it should not be, he must feel a powerful strike. The first rule of avoiding snakebites has always been simple: don’t pick up the snake.
Of course, this is a flawed analogy because the only snake involved in this unnecessary crisis is Trump.
The point is that the time for wishful thinking and pretending on both sides of the longest, oldest, undefended border in world history must come to an immediate end.
For the record, Donald Trump is a thug and a bully.
He is from Queens, not Kingston. Politeness is not something he understands nor respects. He appreciates fierceness. Like all bullies, the only language that he understands is getting knocked on his ass.
The American people would do well to remember some things about Canada.
Canadian forces landed on Juno Beach on June 6, 1944.
Canada is a nation that helped save the world.
When the Iranian Ayatollahs held 52 Americans for 444 days it was Canada who daringly rescued six Americans.
When American airspace was closed after the atrocities of 9/11 it was ordinary Canadians in Gander, Newfoundland, who took thousands of American strangers, who were terrified, grief-stricken and dazed, into their homes.
Lastly, for me, this has become very personal.
My country is attacking my family, and it makes me sick.
Donald Trump sickens me. That is why this American will stand firmly with Canada against American aggression and indecency.
Those were hard words to write, but Donald Trump will inflict misery, hard times and hard choices on all of us before this travesty ends, and decency is restored.
Until then, I choose to stand up for what’s right, and what is happening to Canada is not right.
Canada is not controlled by the Mexican cartels like Trump’s demented advisor Peter Navarro claimed. America is being run like one of Trump’s companies, which means we are combining lies, fraud, aggression and stupidity into a new national ethos.
The old ethos was much better.
Can you remember it?
America stands for freedom, and so does Canada.
Every day I am dumbfounded by the silence from ANY member of congress or from the State's governors. While there is still some push back by the courts it seems that the ultimate court, the Supreme Court is nearly all in now...
Corporate media is a pathetic joke as well. They have been neutered... Willingly!
It's going to take people power to refocus the attention and spark from the dullards in government to find their courage and support the people IN THE STREETS.
I heard the argument that that is exactly what Trump is waiting for so he can issue a state of emergency. He may do that, but at least WE will have taken some action to put down and fight against this Coup de retardés!
Steve wrote, "scream in the street to Trump that “you will dare not do this in our name.”"
YES! This bothers me the most. In fact I am so upset about this I am thinking about not paying my taxes in April, and I have NEVER thought this way.
Scream in the streets? Yep, been to 2 protests in the last month. Going to the next one too.
See you in the streets.