17 Comments
User's avatar
Wendy Shelley's avatar

Great news for Canada and NATO. Glad they’ve wised up to FF47’s dazzling charisma and are going their own way! Not only have they been paying attention to the rest of the world’s problems but are completely discounting the disgusting traitor in the WH. Can’t wait for his final comeuppance!

Expand full comment
elliott oberman's avatar

Jamelle Bouie

ICE Will See You Now For President Trump, the United States is little more than his personal playground, Mar-a-Lago gone national.

In his mind, the nation has become his private property and he is entitled to do with it what he pleases. Accordingly, Trump seems to lack any sense of obligation or responsibility to the public. His chaotic and haphazard policymaking — if you can even call it that — is as disrespectful to the American people as any imaginable insult.

The president’s sense of his total impunity extends beyond him to his allies and agents. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the roving bands of immigration agents tasked with seizing anyone deemed “illegal.” In cities across the country, masked men and women are snatching people off the streets, forcing them into unmarked cars to be detained, without offering them the chance to contact family members or a lawyer. Just last week, bystanders captured footage of Narciso Barranco, a landscaper, being pinned down and battered by a group of masked agents. His son reported that Barranco was working when several masked men approached him. When he quite understandably ran away, his son said, he was pepper sprayed and beaten.

That ICE has claimed this right to anonymity — which is to say, the right to evade responsibility for its actions in the field — is a testament to the ways that Trump has, in his pursuit of impunity, warped and undermined the idea of a public trust.

What Trump has done, building on decades of near impunity for wrongdoing among American officeholders, is completely invert this dynamic in the most egregious way imaginable. Accountability separates those who govern from those who rule, and Trump, of course, intends to rule. It is fitting that on the other side of the president’s authoritarian contempt for responsibility, accountability and the public trust is his demand for total compliance from ordinary people, under threat of state scrutiny and harassment.

The SAD FACT is that it is difficult to extricate a nation from authoritarian habits of mind and reorient a people toward liberty and equality. It takes time and effort to dismantle a democracy, but if you can bend citizens into subjects, then you’ve already won the most important battle, if not the war.

Expand full comment
kdsherpa's avatar

Fabulous article! Thank you for sharing it.

Expand full comment
kdsherpa's avatar

"Here’s the twist: Trump and Putin never wanted this. They tried to destabilize NATO. What they got instead was the most unified alliance in generations—and a once-in-a-century commitment to spend trillions protecting democratic life." When the orange sadist tried to pull us out of NATO during regime 1.0, I was deeply concerned about what this would mean for the future of NATO. Now a beautiful surprise: NATO allies have turned lemons into refreshing lemonade! Way to go!

Expand full comment
Dannys's avatar

I love it when oligarchs plans backfire.

🇨🇦🇺🇦🇪🇺

Expand full comment
Courtney M 🇨🇦's avatar

Great outcome, shitty catalyst.

It's like thanking a mugger for helping you realize you should invest in self-defense classes. Sure, you'll end up being more of a badass, but that doesn't make the mugger any less of a violent douchenozzle who needs to be dealt with.

Expand full comment
Cat's avatar

You're making me want to come to Canada even quicker!

Carney is just amazing... and clearly setting the bar high for our Allies --thank God, since has been so low. This is great news for ALL democracies, and I hope the others will step up in similar fashion.

Expand full comment
Dannys's avatar

Well done Canada/NATO 🇨🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦

Expand full comment
elliott oberman's avatar

NATO's new five per cent defense spending target would cost Canada up to $150 billion a year, Prime Minister Mark Carney said.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand says she is concerned about foreign interference by Iran's regime, and potential terrorist sleeper cells in Canada.

Expand full comment
DBS's avatar

Yet they haven’t followed through with removing the top Iranian officials from Canada see the CBC report about this alongside her announcement.

Expand full comment
Mary Barnes's avatar

Let's add the Supreme Court to the entitled list, please

Expand full comment
Michael Ann Ochs's avatar

Thank God they are doing this. So ashamed my government is working to enact Putin's wishes.

Expand full comment
BJ Zamora's avatar

The only issue I have, because I am totally supportive of Europe, Canada, and NATO, is that Trump will try to take full credit for the increase of European rearming.

Expand full comment
Frau Katze's avatar

Of course he will!

Expand full comment
Graeme Thompson's avatar

Very good news that we are breaking out of a constrained 'continentalism' which has made us weak.

Expand full comment
DBS's avatar
1dEdited

White power hungry men love war it is very profitable, so what if innocent children die in the process. It also locks the people back into the endless cycle of repression. The nations could have stood behind and in cooperation with Ukraine way earlier but they feared Russia, yet Ukraine has stood tall. Ukraine has a true leader.

Expand full comment
John Griessen's avatar

calling the Trump Regime and “Imperialistic Threat”

should be:

calling the Trump Regime an “Imperialistic Threat” t

Expand full comment