FOR NEARLY A YEAR, Canadians have been discussing the danger posed by the United States. The anxiety shows up everywhere—online forums, polling questions, and in the unusually blunt asides from officials. This is good. We need to get in the habit of having hard conversations about who threatens us, the extent of that threat, and what we can and must do if we are to survive as an independent country.
For CANADA, the diagnosis of the US administration is not academic. It is the difference between managing a relationship with a flawed but crucial ally and planning a campaign of resistance against a powerful neighbour no longer reliably constrained by its domestic institutions.
Unfortunately, we see signs of deference everywhere.
Congress has effectively abandoned its role in holding the president to account. It has failed to uphold its power of the purse on things like international development assistance, bowing to the administration’s decision to simply not spend the money. The loss of that funding has already led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition. It has failed to uphold congressional power to declare war, ignoring military actions in the Caribbean that culminated in the unlawful capture of Venezuela’s authoritarian president. It declined to act when the administration sidestepped the Senate’s confirmation power by allowing Elon Musk to wield cabinet-level authority without ever being confirmed. Congress has also largely demurred in defence of its power to regulate import tariffs. It is, in effect, a presidential lapdog.
One battle after another did a great job of showing what fascism in the US would look like. It’s not going to be guys in nazi outfits giving speeches to everyone about racial purity. It’s gonna be a couple rich guys at the top wearing Patagonia vests making policies that create “racial purity” without saying it out loud and sending militarized cops in camo to go enforce those policies.
Gross, put a NSFL tag and blur that piece of shit.
“This is what American fascism looks like”
It sure is ugly.
Don’t worry… Our next president will be a center right candidate and be declared both a rabid leftist and simultaneously the saviour of democracy. They’ll only predator drone strike a few weddings, thus securing their Nobel peace prize. Everything will return to normal, with just a little shift of the Overton window to the right. But hey, at least it won’t be Trump and full on fascism…
All sarcasm aside, the older I get the more headlines give me dejavu. I can remember article like this after the Gulf war where I felt like other countries were actually stepping away from America’s lead, and then the Clinton’s rose to power to make things better. Then Bush v2 and Afghanistan and then Obama promised to make it all better. Now we have trump and I’m beginning to wonder what kind of centerist compromise the Democrats are cooking up.
History may not repeat itself but it sure does rhyme, and seemingly the tune it does it to just gets worse every iteration.
Trump is incredibly different from everything in your lifetime. You either haven’t been paying attention, or your a frog in a pot and just didn’t notice the temperature rising.
For all of your life things just kinda worked out, things were never super great under either party but your country didn’t collapse either. So you’re expecting things to go on like that for the rest of your life.
History does indeed rhyme, but it’s not rhyming with W Bush, or Obama or anything else in your lifetime. It rhymes with guys like Putin, Erdogan, Mussolini, and Hitler.
Trump is incompetent and a clown. But still he’s doing a lot of damage because Americans won’t stop him because of the false sense of complacency.
But while Americans stick the sand, the rest of the world is noticing. And we don’t see Trump as the cause of the problems, he’s a symptom of the rot in American culture. It’s scary having someone as deranged as Trump in power. But even more scary is what may follow him. Trump is at the top of a fascist movement, but he’s deranged and incompetent. The next leader of American fascism may not be so incompetent.
We all hoped you would just vote for the black lady and things would have indeed gone back to normal. But that didn’t happen. Americans either voted for fascism or were complacent about it as you are. So now the world has to change. Trade will be routed around the US. Alliances with the US are just paper now, they’re meaningless. The US will be isolated as Spain was under Franco.
You could’ve just voted in primaries and got some people in power that would tax the wealthy. The US is the wealthiest country in the world, just the wealth didn’t trickle down as Reagan told you it would. But if you thought being a wealthy country with a population indoctrinated into apathy on wealth distribution was bad? What happens when that wealth just isn’t there and you’ll still have a population too apathetic to think about wealth distribution?
The US is fucked and the rest of the world is trying to distance itself from you before it all collapses. But go on and keep thinking everything is going to keep on as it always has.
Trump is incredibly different from everything in your lifetime. You either haven’t been paying attention, or your a frog in a pot and just didn’t notice the temperature rising.
Did you miss the part where I said worse…?
things were never super great under either party but your country didn’t collapse either. So you’re expecting things to go on like that for the rest of your life.
It has been in perpetual decline for decades. Trump didn’t just happen overnight, nor will America be ghosted overnight, Empires die slow deaths.
It rhymes with guys like Putin, Erdogan, Mussolini, and Hitler.
Not a fan of Putin or erdogan… But I think falsely conflating them with Mussolini or Hitler is a bit much.
Americans won’t stop him because of the false sense of complacency.
Fascism is rising in all western democracies as a response to late stage capitalism. It’s not inherent to America, nor is from a false sense of complacency.
while Americans stick the sand, the rest of the world is noticing. And we don’t see Trump as the cause of the problems, he’s a symptom of the rot in American culture.
Yeah… I don’t think the fascist movements ballooning all over Europe have been made aware they appropriating American culture.
all hoped you would just vote for the black lady and things would have indeed gone back to normal. But that didn’t happen. Americans either voted for fascism or were complacent about it as you are.
Lol, who said I didn’t vote for as you said “the black lady”?
Trade will be routed around the US. Alliances with the US are just paper now, they’re meaningless. The US will be isolated as Spain was under Franco.
I’m willing to bet the corporations in your country still care more about money than they do about policy. America still has a bunch of capital to swing around and in the end that’s really what liberal democracies care about.
I think nations should boycot America, I just don’t really expect them too.
You could’ve just voted in primaries and got some people in power that would tax the wealthy.
When did I say I didn’t?
The US is the wealthiest country in the world, just the wealth didn’t trickle down as Reagan told you it would. But if you thought being a wealthy country with a population indoctrinated into apathy on wealth distribution was bad?
Do you think everyone in America shares a hive mind or something?
The US is fucked and the rest of the world is trying to distance itself from you before it all collapses. But go on and keep thinking everything is going to keep on as it always has.
Again… What do you think everything progressively getting worse means? What do you think a “collapse” actually means? How exactly is a country like Canada going to shield itself from a collapsing America when America is by far its largest trading party?
If you think this problem is just in America, or that canda doesn’t have a problem with income inequality… I really don’t know what to tell you. This is just what happens to any nation who bases their economy on the idea that infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is possible.
Americans expect a lot from their Presidents. But the real problem is Congress.
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In the US, you need a super-majority in the Senate to pass any legislation.
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The Senate size is so small that a single individual Senator has huge power. That create incentives for corruption.
Joe Biden tried to increase taxes on Wall Street. One single Senator, Kyrsten Sinema, sabotaged him.
The Biden Administration introduce a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act to to bring down drug prices. Again. One single Senator was enough to weaken his reform.
Sinema was never going to play ball, she made it clear the moment she was elected, she was pretty much poor like mtg and boebart before being elected, shes a millionaire from all those donations now.
Good points, but the contention between branches is just kabuki theatre. It’s fake bro. There are always a rotating cast of “spoiler villains,” and if too many of them are facing reelection then they just make something up like “senate parliamentarian won’t let them.”
If the Dem president actually wanted to get something done then he’d use the bully pulpit like Trump does to make it so. This happened approximately 0 times during Biden’s 4 year slumber.
I’ve always bought up this sort of thing; but I’ve had to rethink it… not thar its wrong, but the executive orders that this (and many other presidents) sign which starts massive changes that don’t go through Congress completely short circuit the process. Even if they eventually get overturned, it’s typically way too late to go back to what was. It’s a short cut to get things done that isn’t popular and wouldn’t have passed as a bill.
Much like destroying the east wing, you can’t ever get things back you lost. People lose jobs, land gets torn up, foreign trust gets destroyed… it so much easier to sign an executive order, make a change that destroys that which took decades to build and then have it overturned. Then you say “well, congress has that power not the president” but it’s too late.
Americans expect a lot from their Presidents. But the real problem is Congress.
I mean it’s definitely both… Congress has empowered the executive to an incredible degree, and this has been rarified by the judiciary.
Plus, most people ignore most elections other than when electing a new president. So your presidential candidate has a huge influence over the makeup and political agenda of Congress.
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Okay, but the reason we have had centerist presidents is because that’s as far left as the people running the government and the media were willing to go. The voters are a symptom of that. That’s why they’re going after schools, you can’t have symptoms that are smart to what’s going on. Read anything about inside Korea, and they really love their dear leader if they’re young because it’s like a religion.
Okay, but the reason we have had centerist presidents is because that’s as far left as the people running the government and the media were willing to go.
Eh… That’s debatable. The modern democratic party being center right is kinda a byproduct of Thirdway politics. Which was largely popularized by the party leaders itself, specifically by the Clinton’s.
Bill Clinton rose to power by advocating for compromise as a way to get through the growing gridlock in Congress. This worked for his career, but it gave the Republican party a huge amount of influence over defining what that middle ground was. They would work with Democratic candidates with policy that served their purposes and completely ignore the ones that served anyone left of center.
This had the overall effect of not only controlling policy in congress, but actually being able to vicariously control the opposition. As time went on the only people who reached seniority in the DNC were those who would compromise with the rnc to create a “mutually” beneficial policy.
Pretty sure that we’re saying the same thing.
My point of contention is largely that the issue isn’t with the will of the voters, and that the direction of policy is largely directed from the top down.
Most American progressives are vastly more progressive than their representatives. It’s just that the DNC’s leadership is filled with thirdway democrats who refuse to support anyone left of center.
Edit: just reread you original comment. I misread it the first time round and thought you had said it was as far left as the people were willing to go. My bad.
It’s all good. I do that a lot myself, lol. One thing trump has shown and been extremely transparent about, is that the billionaires don’t give one shit about us and they run everything.
The US gov is a corporation, run by greedy business people and CEOs and whatnot. A government serves and works for the people, but this one is faaaaaaar from it. Poor citizens of the US.
no trump. they might as well be poland watching germany take czechoslovakia. you can’t watch all this bull trump going on with worrying about when the trump will hit the fan.
I sure as trump like to see what you’re doing here, keep that trump up.
Regardless of who sits in the seat of power in the US, it is a garbage country with garbage values and always has been. Fascism is just the logical conclusion.
“I Am the Walrus”
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