As a Canadian, I can only watch US politics from afar, albeit with unease. My comments on events and issues there are those from an armchair observer who has no dog in the ongoing, and increasingly bitter partisan fights. Like a lot of voices on social media, mine is that of an outsider. But… like any citizen of this planet who is concerned about our collective future, I have an interest in the outcome of the upcoming US election, just as I have one in our own, next federal election. What happens to politics in other nations — particularly in our biggest trading partner, our closest neighbour, ally, and biggest cultural influencer — also affects Canada. Hyperbolic as it may sound, the future of democracy is at stake.
Seeing the rise of fascism among billionaire-funded American Repugnicans (MAGA cultists who transformed the GOP into the Stalinist PoT: Party of Trump; and yes, it is very much a cult) and Canadian CONservatives (aka the Maple MAGA), and billionaire-backed libertarianism lurking behind them both — an ideology of self-interest for the rich elites at the expense of the working and middle classes — I am deeply concerned about the future of democracy everywhere. As should be every one of us, even those who live in other nations.
Democracy, we see now, is far too easily overcome by populists and opportunists preaching their gospel of anger, pseudoscience, fake Christianity, nationalism, racism, and misogyny to the gullibles and the disenchanted afflicted with alluenza. As both the convicted felon Donald Trump and our own skinny Trump, Pierre PoiLIEvre, have been doing, and gaining support through their firehoses of lies, insults, gaslighting, and disinformation. Cui bono? Cui prodest? Well, Putin and his cabal of far-right dictator allies for one. And the leaders of these domestic rightwing movements know that, all too well. Trump, for example, is well known for publicly praising dictators. On July 26, he did it again:
This chilling statement comes after Trump praised autocratic Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán in his speech at the Republican National Convention last week and then publicly praised China’s president Xi Jinping for being “brilliant” because he “controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” It should also be read against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his “official duties.”
In Canada, CONservative MPs have openly met with avowed neo-Nazis, wining and dining with them, yet the CPC leader, Pierre PoiLIEvre — who mimics Trump’s every tactic, gesture, ideology, and lies —rather than distance himself and the party from them, said nothing. Instead, he has photo ops of himself with known far-right extremists like Diagolon leaders, He pandered to the convoy insurrectionists who occupied Ottawa in an attempt to overthrow the government, and has met with and been photographed with other far-right leaders since:
If you aren’t already familiar with something called the “Diagolon” movement, well, you will be. That’s because Pierre Poilievre, the prohibitive favourite in the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race, was photographed at a recent event with its founder, Jeremy MacKenzie. A far-right activist and former member of the Canadian military who was arrested earlier this year on numerous weapons charges, MacKenzie is at the forefront of an increasingly dangerous community of anti-government agitators. And for some reason, he wanted to have his picture taken with Poilievre. (from 2022)
This is ongoing with him, and he does it often enough to make sure everyone is aware of his allegiance to their cause and to extremism. You cannot mistake his overt Trumpism for anything else. Even recently, this spring PoiLIEvre again met with Diagolon members in Nova Scotia for photo ops:
Canada’s leader of the official opposition pulled over on the side of a highway Tuesday evening and paid a surprise visit to a group of far-right extremists who have staged protests at the Nova Scotia–New Brunswick border for the last three years. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was seen posing for selfies and giving pep talks to members of the group, which subscribes to a range of fringe conspiracies and extreme views, in livestream videos posted on social media.
PoiLIEvre has further mimicked Trump this year by attending churches to speak — this month making political speeches during services at evangelical churches, pandering to the Talibangelists and Christofascists among them — making himself seen even more of an American-style pseudo-Christian extremist ideologue. Typically, spineless Canadian media failed to call him out on his blatantly hypocritical, pseudo-Christian self-promotion, just like American media fails to call out Trump for his fake Christianity.
So, yes, Canadians should be concerned about what happens in the USA because our own CONservatives are doing their best to make sure the rightwing dismantling of democracy happens here, too. In his book Our Own Worst Enemy (p. xiii, Oxford University Press, 2021). author Tom Nichols wrote in 2022:
The citizens of the world’s democracies now must live with the undeniable knowledge that they are capable of embracing illiberal movements and attacking their own liberties as a matter of their own free will rather than as the result of a disaster or foreign conquest. Worse, the budding authoritarians who live among us now know it too. They have a demonstrated market for what they are selling. They will be back, and the next time they will bring glossier and better-packaged versions of dictatorship than the ragged prototypes this first wave of loud and pushy salesmen offered.
However, I think recent events south of the border show we have reason for optimism: the substitution of the accomplished, witty, intelligent, and feisty Kamala Harris for Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee has created a wave of support for democracy against the MAGA plans for authoritarian, pseudo-Christian theocracy. And if you have not yet read or heard about Trump’s Project 2025, you really need to do so RIGHT NOW because it is the blueprint for the implementation of that.*
I personally liked and respected Biden. He has an excellent record, one of the best records of accomplishment and economic growth — and arguably the best — in American presidential history. But in a culture that does not respect its elders, and has a long history of ageism, Trump was easily able to portray Biden as old and weak. And the mainstream media — predominantly conservative if not outright pro-fascist (Fox Newz, NewsMax, Breitbart) in the USA and even Canada (Rebel Media, National Post) — enabled him to do so because it was both easier for reporters than fact-checking or contracting Trump’s lies, and it pandered to their advertisers. As Becca Levy wrote in Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live:
In the US, it was a different cultural picture… it was everywhere: the billboards for “age-defying” skin treatments, late-night ads for local plastic surgeons going on about wrinkles as if they were generals describing hostile enemy forces, the infantilizing greetings older people endured in restaurants and movie theaters. Everywhere I looked, in TV shows, in fairy tales, and online, old age was treated as though it meant forgetfulness, weakness, and decline.
(Ageism — stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination against individuals or groups based on their age — is an equal or perhaps even larger problem in Canada according to a recent study. that also found the media guilty os perpetuating the same stereotypes Trump was using against Biden: “The media, including television, movies, and advertising, often perpetuates ageist stereotypes and reinforces negative attitudes towards aging. Older adults are often portrayed as frail, forgetful, or unable to keep up with modern technology. This can lead to ageist attitudes that view older adults as less valuable or less capable than younger adults.”)
Trump spent the previous year selling his “Biden is too old” and in cognitive decline song and dance, only to find himself the oldest candidate (older, in fact by five months, than Biden when he won the election in 2020…). Trump’s speeches continue to indicate a severe mental decline, with forgotten names, slurred words, rambling, often incoherent stories, obsession with the fictional Hannibal Lector (who he appears to believe was a real person), and repetition of debunked conspiracies about wind turbines and whales. He was mentally unfit and unequipped for the job in 2016; eight years later he is much worse. On Xitter, Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski, Editor-in Chief of MeidasTouch.com, Attorney, Marine, Former Federal and State Prosecutor) wrote of Trump’s latest speech:
His brain is fried. He’s like a Vegas lounge act from 1965 who is still up on stage 40 years later at a dive off the strip trying to come up with new material while his fans humor him… He’s so old, decrepit, and washed up that “she’s a bum” is all he can come up with after a week. Great line, Donnie. You really got her. Devastating. She’s a bum. That really hurts. He is one tough guy.
And he is now a convicted felon (with more court cases pending) facing an experienced prosecutor. As Harris said in a recent speech:
“I took on perpetrators of all kinds — predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said. “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
Little wonder he was so afraid of her that he almost immediately backed out of the scheduled debate in September, despite his boast to debate “anywhere, anytime, any place.” She knows his type of criminal all to well and has bested them in the past.
The delicious irony is that now Trump is visibly the candidate who is everything he claimed Biden was. So he has had to change the tone of his insults to racism and misogyny instead of ageism. He now sounds just like he really is: a lying, aging, racist and sexist in severe cognitive decline. A Klansman without the hood. It’s often said that Trump’s accusations against others are mere projection: he is everything he insults them with.
And the second piece of good news was Trump’s choice of his running mate for vice president: J.D. Vance, a man remarkably lacking in charisma, experience, credibility, and talent; a choice allegedly foisted on him by his two low-IQ sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. With such a lame candidate, Harris has the opportunity to select as her own running mate someone smart like she is, someone progressive, who can help unify the party. And come without any of the baggage Vance carries. In fact, it seems the choice has seriously angered some of Trump’s big-ticket donors.**
In a piece titled, The Moral Collapse of J. D. Vance in The Atlantic, author Tom Nicols wrote, “Instead of a truth-teller in his own community, Vance as a candidate has become a contemptible and cringe-inducing clown….”
What do we call a man who turns on everything he once claimed to believe? For a practitioner of petty and self-serving duplicity, we use “sellout” or “backstabber.” (Sometimes we impugn the animal kingdom and call him a rat, a skunk, or a weasel.) For grand betrayals of weightier loyalties—country and faith—we invoke the more solemn terms of “traitor” or “apostate.”
But what should we call J. D. Vance, the self-described hillbilly turned Marine turned Ivy League law-school graduate turned venture capitalist turned Senate candidate? Words fail. His perfidy to his own people in Ohio is too big to allow him to escape with the label of “opportunist,” and yet the shabbiness and absurdity of his Senate campaign is too small to brand him a defector or a heretic.
No doubt Vance will take the blame when Trump loses. And while Vance’s public appearances have in short time become a meme about dullness and failure, Trump has amplified his totalitarian platform, not even pretending any more to care about democracy. This past weekend, Trump himself said aloud what he plans if re-elected:
Tonight, speaking to [pseudo-]Christians at the Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump made his plans to become a strongman clear: “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians…. Get out, you’ve got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
Got that? Trump has openly stated that, within the next four years, there will be no more open federal elections in the USA. And, likely, at other levels of government, because he will “fix” things to get rid of democracy. This is what Project 2025 says, and what other MAGA extremists have already said openly during the campaign:
Far-right speaker tells CPAC attendees that his goal is to ‘overthrow’ democracy. CNN’s SE Cupp reacts to far-right conspiracy theorist, Jack Posobiec, speaking at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, to “replace” democracy.
Against the MAGA tide of anger, hate, rage-farming, authoritarianism, misogyny, racism, lies, insults, accusations, and pseudo-Christian theocracy Harris has positioned herself as moving forward; restoring women’s freedoms and rights, curtailling the rogue, partisan, and corrupt Supreme Court, embracing all Americans, not just the elites, offering clear policies and platforms (instead of Trump’s windy, substanceless bloviations). She has made her slogan “We are not going back,” to which the crowds she addresses always break into applause. Harris is the best hope for democracy’s future in the USA. And it might cause Canadian CONservatives in PoiLIEvre’s far-right house of hate to collapse. So yes, I believe she will be good for democracy everywhere.
I don’t get to vote there, but if I could, it would be for Harris.
Notes:
*Among other despicable, authoritarian plans and policies it lists, Project 2025 lays out plans to completely overhaul the American government and its institutions within the first 180 days, fire all non-partisan government employees and replace them with loyalists who swear allegiance to Trump, “ending law enforcement activities of independent agencies or ending their independent status” and operate them as enforcement and retribution arms of Trump’s White House,” resurrect the Comstock Act from the 1800s to ban abortion nationwide (that includes all abortions, not just medication abortions; incest and rape would not have exceptions), jail health care providers ban chemical abortion drugs, force states to report miscarriages, allow employers to deny workers access to birth control coverage, rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics, cut taxes for Trump and his rich friends: “The corporate income tax should be reduced to 18 percent,” and “erstructure the tax code to benefit wealthy families” and make lower-wage families pay more (a middle-class family with two children and an annual income of $100,000 would pay $2,600 in additional federal income tax, and when the Child Tax Credit is also eliminated, they would pay an additional $6,600; by comparison, a married couple with two children and earnings of $5 million a year would enjoy a $325,000 tax cut), end prescription drug price caps for seniors and ban Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices, cut entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, drastically cut overtime pay or eliminate it outright, reinstate crippling student debt payments, mass deportations of millions of immigrants, make pseudo- Christianity central to a theocratic government’s policies, roll back environmental regulations, lift the ban on arctic drilling, remove energy efficiency standards for household appliances, remove pollution limits on industries, and more.
** Vance’s career has been the creation of his backer and job finder, Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of Paypal and major Trump backer since 2016. Thiel is on record saying giving women the right to vote was a blow to democracy. He has been quoted saying, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” In 2016, Theil hosted a “Right Wing Dinner Squad” that included far-right white nationalist and outspoken racist Kevin DeAnna who called for the “creation of a white ethnostate.” From USA Today:
Vance would go on to work for Thiel at his venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. More than a decade after they met, Thiel would help Vance win a seat in the U.S. Senate with $15 million to support his campaign, which launched Vance to his selection Monday as former President Donald Trump’s running mate.
Words: 2,757
https://nationalnewswatch.com/2024/07/29/heres-why-non-americans-have-a-big-stake-in-the-u-s-election-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-politics
Here’s why non-Americans have a (big) stake in the U.S. election and what it means for the future of politics.
While the global economy, climate change, and the pandemic are conspicuous examples of our growing interdependence, the signs are everywhere: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens international security; waves of immigration challenge established values; and social media sites flood the planet with memes. In a generation, a massive and irreversible surge of interdependence has transformed our societies – which brings us back to the US election.
Making America First in a Global Political Ecosystem
“America First” is a cry to halt the spread of interdependence. Globalization has overturned economies and uprooted communities. For many, the price has been high and the rewards precarious. People feel they have lost control over their institutions and their future.
The impulse to withdraw and regroup is understandable. We saw it with Brexit, and it underlies the West’s growing tensions with China. But regrouping does not mean opting out. Countries cannot just withdraw from the international community and become an island. We’re all part of a new and emerging political, social, and economic ecosystem where changes to one part affect the others.
Not that the world is becoming a single global entity. The nation-state is not about to disappear, but efforts to reestablish 20th-century models of governance and social organization deny the obvious. These institutions were designed for a different era. They are like old buildings with drafty hallways, leaky ceilings, and crumbling foundations. The challenge is not to restore them but to modernize them. This starts with reflection and debate about their mission and their roles.
Whatever one feels about US “leadership” in this new interdependent world, America’s presence—economically, culturally, militarily—is a massive force that helps shape and hopefully stabilize the system. The new data management and AI tools coming online will change how geopolitics works, as did CNN’s global network. Nothing assures that this will be for good rather than ill, to enhance personal freedom rather than to limit it. These are the real stakes in this election.
https://link.chtbl.com/UYIyzPYC
Will Donald Trump come for Canada’s water?
According to the former and future US President, Canada’s water is like a ‘very large faucet’ that one could turn on, say, to help California in a drought, or any other Pacific Northwest state that might need it. According to scientists, it’s … not like that at all. But still, Canada has water. And increasingly, the United States needs it.
Does Trump actually intend to ask for, buy or even take Canadian water? Would it even be possible if he wanted to? What do Canadians need to know about their abundant natural resource as the climate crisis makes it scarcer around the world? How worried should we be about Canadian water?
GUEST: Dr. Jay Famiglietti, hydrologist and Global Futures Professor at Arizona State University; former Executive Director Emeritus of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan