When Trump first got elected in 2016 I was acutely aware of the bad possibilities: concentration camps, corruption, bad decisions on the international scene like withdrawing from Nato and cozying up to Putin, and, above all, the nightmare of an American invasion of Canada. But that all seemed rather paranoid during Trump 1.0 - he was in charge of an intact system of government that was historically stable, and there seemed to be guardrails in place. I kept saying to myself: “this is an emergency! This is an emergency!” At the time,I got no purchase on those claims, so I chalked it up to paranoia.
The second time that Trump was elected was shocking in a different way. This time,I didn’t feel like a paranoid anymore, because he was coming out and saying the quiet parts out loud: becoming a dictator on day one, in it for revenge and retribution, the concentration camps, the dropping of all pretense of the Rule of Law, and putting the Mafia lean on Media conglomerates. Now I feel vindicated for the fear I had during Trump 1.0. This isn’t a conspiracy in the shadows, it’s right out in the open.
Unfortunately, there is an ongoing danger that seems to me implicit in the thoughtless verbiage coming from the U.S. Ambassador, Pete Hoekstra. For a diplomat this guy is not very diplomatic. He’s basically insulting Canadians and appears to be tone deaf to any expression of Canadian concerns. But that is the point of Trump’s “diplomacy” I’m afraid. Hoekstra’s rants are a dominance display,in the same way that a male chimpanzee pounding a heavy branch on the ground is.
Trump is disengaging from America’s 20th Century role as the world’s policeman; he is disengaging from Nato, from any idea that Russia or any other rogue nation should be contained; he took the side of Russia in his attempt to end the Russia/Ukraine war; when it started he expressed his admiration for Putin taking so much of Ukrainian territory in what initially looked like a successful Russian "blitzkrieg"; after winning his last election, he mused about taking over Greenland, and annexing Canada, and, while he didn’t rule out taking Greenland by force, he talked about using “economic warfare” to defeat Canada.
And, if that isn’t enough, just yesterday Trump announced to all “his generals” that he would like his military to use Democrat-run cities as a training ground “so that they can go afar.” I think I know exactly what he means by “afar”. That emphasis on using the military on American citizens, withdrawal from those lands across the sea, but staying close to home, yes it all makes sense now.
This reminds me a lot of a certain twentieth Century politician’s fascination with the word “liebenstraum” or “livingspace”. An idea that actually led to WWII. In Trump’s mind “liebenstraum” translates to: “Fortress America” - the entire North American continent in Trump’s hands.
So, I think that Ambassador Hoekstra’s real job is to show Canadians how it’s going to be from here on in! Trump wants Canada to be a vassal state, and we will have no say in it, because when it comes to liebenstraum, our voices don’t count, just as the voices of Germany’s neighbours in the 1930’s were overridden by German tanks.
