Summary
Donald Trump’s return to office and his aggressive trade policies have dramatically reshaped Canadian politics.
His 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, combined with disparaging comments about Canada’s sovereignty, have sparked widespread anti-Trump sentiment.
Formerly struggling, the Liberal Party has seen a surge in support, nearly erasing a 20-point Conservative lead.
Newly appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney, a financial expert with no prior elected experience, now faces the challenge of responding to Trump’s actions. Meanwhile, Canada has retaliated with tariffs, boycotts, and diplomatic resistance, escalating tensions between the two nations.
It’s like drowning, but when you were first plunged into the drowning experience at least you were dying of thirst.
That’s probably fair, at least to a point.
Trump is loud, crazed, and vulgar, but at the end of the day all he really is is just a louder, exceedingly public version of the things the US already does outside of the public eye.
It was just an excuse to weave an old Dimitri Martin joke into my day.
To your point, exhausting as it is, I (almost) kind of appreciate how Trump’s and GOP’s blatant behavior has made me, and probably many more in the population, much more aware of events than normal…because things seemed boring and steady enough that it didn’t seem like it was worth the effort to remain well-informed. These days I care much more about civics and voting and activism…so I guess that’s a good thing? Dang, I wish I and everyone else had cared more back before things had gotten this bad. But yeah, the US has historically done some really shitty covert stuff.
TBH, watching one of the 49% partisan blocs seeming absolutely giddy that people are starving, or suffering from fascism, or whatever, because they voted Republican kind of makes me vomit in my mouth a little. I wish we could agree that maybe we want our friends and neighbors to have their basic needs met even it if makes the other team’s guy look good.
I just really hate that, no matter who we elect, there’s always 49% of the electorate actively rooting for the country’s failure.
Well said. One of the reasons I really miss the era before 2016, when the president seemed to care just as much about people experiencing natural and manmade disasters in opposing states as he did in supporting states. At least that’s how I remember it with Katrina and Deepwater Horizon and California wildfires.
At the very least, there wasn’t a reflexive antipathy towards the states governed by the other party.
And now, I fear, and feel, meetings akin to this one have convened, their seeds carefully germinated and cultivated in tilled social soil, the saplings beginning to bare their first blossoms to be pollinated by ever more inciteful rhetoric, and their thin-skinned, caustically-juiced fruits of actionable vitriol ready for harvest upon the onset of the next seasonal upset.