It’s been a fairly long time since I wrote a blog entry. I had an unusual job opportunity – to compete for my own job – that I had a test component for which I had to study, and an interview for which I both studied and panicked. In the end, I won my position permanently. Yay me! Between that stuff, children moving, chess events, intermittent spells of intoxication, and various household duties, I had writing on the back burner. Life really got in the way.
Since the last post, Donald Trump has taken office in the US. He has said and done so many poorly thought out things it’s hard to believe that it has only been 58 days as of today. I could have a laugh at some stupid things, but mostly they have been tinged with evil – greed and revenge primarily. Nothing comedic. But for me the number one ominous threat is that he thinks Canada should join the USA. We would be better off he says! I see lists all the time of happiest countries, best educated countries, best overall countries, most peaceful countries, etc etc. Very rarely do I ever see a list where the USA is ahead of Canada in a good way. I guess if there was a list of school shootings, gun ownership and electing functionally incompetent assholes, then we would clearly fall in behind our southern neighbours, and I will happily take a loss in those categories. I have travelled around the states quite a bit and I quite like Americans for the most part. We are friends and neighbours, and we have (or had?) a long partnership that has enriched us all. So I’m not being anti-American for the most part, just against a few people. Trump is a mindless bully who wants our lunch money, and who’s gonna stop me?! There are people around him who could talk him down from taking Russia’s side in world politics, or tell him to be nice to their allies, but those people are so fucking scared of protecting their comfy little nests that they won’t stand up to the bully. Those people are gutless wretches who should be unelected immediately for being exactly the opposite of the leaders they promised to be.
The trade war. Ah yes, Canada has been ripping off the USA for ages. We couldn’t survive without the “subsidy” money we receive from the American tax payers. Our drugs are flooding the USA with fentanyl, and raping immigrants are free to unleash terror on them after they sneak out of Canada. Except not one word of any of that is true. Which again, would be amusing and might be in years to come, but millions of uninformed Americans hear that bullshit and believe it. So he is going to force us to submit through economic pressure. A little school yard arm twisting, if you will. Of course, I’m not sure he understands that the tariffs he puts on our goods are paid by Americans, not us; and I’m not sure he understands that anything that gets from Canada into the USA goes through his borders, not ours. But as long as enough people to get him re-elected swallow this load of shit without doing any research, I doubt he cares.
All the lies are the pretext to Manifest Destiny which has suddenly come back to life after being dormant for a century or more. To refresh your memory, that is the doctrine that says America has a God-given destiny to rule all of North America. It was the undoing of the natives. Just as the Vietnam war was escalated with the bullshit Gulf of Tonkin incident, and Iraq was invaded for non-existent weapons of mass destruction, so Canada is under threat because America needs to expand and find new resources to plunder, under the false pretense of Canada being an unfair trading partner.
I told myself I wasn’t going to rant about this, but it’s been weighing on people, me included, and I haven’t had a good cathartic tirade for a while. One day, I half expect to be held up at the border while some deadly serious American Nazi Party official reads this back to me.
One day soon I plan to write something a little lighter, but it wouldn’t seem right to tack it on the end of this little rant of mine.