…should be laughed at. And then taken very, very seriously.

Imagine, if you can hoist your face out of that highball glass filled with any alcohol you could afford, a powerful, increasingly authoritarian country ruled by a psychopath that seeks to expand its territory by any means available: economic terrorism and actual military action being the two means proposed.
(Why would it do this? Just because it can. On a whim. It admires rape for the rush of power it brings. It wants to impose itself; it cannot bear under any circumstances the cries of the victim, and especially its resistance. Resistance brings out-of-control rage.)
Imagine the target victim being labeled a “failed nation”, both by the aggressor and even the enemies within that country (“Canada is broken”).
Imagine that the citizens of aggressor nation have swallowed lies from the psychopath-in-chief so that they live virtually in an alternative reality. Imagine that they have no knowledge of the target country, but mostly believe it is “socialist”.
Am I talking about Ukraine? Or Canada?
For one thousand days and counting, Russia has continued its onslaught against the people of Ukraine. It broadcasts the lie that Ukraine is in the grip of “Nazis”, that it is a failed nation, and a failed democracy; in fact, it seeks to demonstrate that all western democracies are failed or failing states.
Ukraine has held fast, but I’m aware that powerful voices are saying, “Enough with your little war. Time to make peace with Russia. Time to build bridges.” Trump suggests ceding some of Ukraine’s territory to Russia, for what reason I can’t imagine, because this amounts to validation of Russia’s strategy of aggression. It would tell Putin and every marauding autocrat world wide that naked unprovoked aggression is the accepted method of annexing any desired territory.
You cannot build bridges with a psychopath; you cannot settle for an uneasy cease-fire that validates the aggressor; you cannot imagine that the aggressor would honor any pact. It never has and it never will. You long for peace: but a just peace.
You cannot signal every would-be aggressor that their aggression will be honored with concessions, with a reward. Democracy is not just about being comfortable and material plenty.
It is a moral commitment to the equality and dignity of everyone in your, or any, society.
Trump, let’s remind ourselves, is the closest thing to a brainless Mafia boss we have that’s in charge of a gigantic army and nuclear arsenal. Trump can barely remember in the afternoon the policies, if they are policies and not actually just whims, that he promoted in the morning. He’s a monster of inconsistency. That’s how he seeks, this time round, to rule by fear, rather than just giving us the “didja hear the one about the traveling salesman?” dog and pony show he gave us the first time.
Putin seeks to crush Ukraine; Trump seeks to crush Canada.
Why would Putin want to absorb Ukraine, why couldn’t he just have regular trade and diplomatic relations with other countries? (The question seems ridiculously naive, which tells you how normalized the idea has become that there are “failed nations”—nations that have no identity and no means of surviving independently).
Putin longs for a return of the Soviet Union; he has openly declared so. He regards the end of the USSR as one of the great catastrophes of the 20th century. If he didn’t think so, he could simply recognize Ukraine as a sovereign nation.
Putin, with his insecurity, his penis envy, his realization that he can never admit to that he is a nothing, is the impotent ruler of a vast country so unused to freedom that it fell flat on its face when the door to the cage was opened. Feudalism, absolute monarchy; a travesty of Marxism that replaced a Tsar with totalitarianism, a brief flowering of democracy and hope; then a rapid collapse into oligarchy and repression. Putin is the brutal Daddy of Sylvia Plath: “Every woman adores a fascist; the boot in the face, the brute brute heart of a brute like you.” Democracy, truth, peace: these concepts are too complicated for him, too nuanced.
Putin, like Trump, is human-as-emptiness, a blank which would be better filled by almost any human on the planet. And he is suffering the rage of the rapist whose victim unexpectedly strikes back. He wants to stand embarrassingly shirtless, beating his chest with his fists, with one foot placed in contemptuous triumph on the body of the wild beast he’s just shot. He doesn’t give a damn about trade or diplomacy, because you can’t win those.
Trump has been engaged in public worship and emulation of Putin ever since he assumed the role of President, that daddy’s suit that fits him like a sack, all swimming shirt sleeves and floods of pant cuffs. It is a man’s suit on a boy; a suit that he’ll never grow into. He’ll die lost in that suit.
And still he seems to have learned something. Well, even a dog can learn tricks; they have the intelligence of a slightly challenged four-year-old, so the comparison is apt. He’s learned to rule by fear (lose your security detail, endure an investigation, submit to public humiliation as “Governor Justin of the 51st State”. When that’s treated as a joke, when no one asserts their dignity and walks out of the room, he thinks, “hey, that’s a pretty good idea. Maybe I’ll just do that…”)
Just like we told Putin, in so many words, that the annexation of Crimea was a pretty good idea, because we looked the other way. No one stood up to the bully.
Trump and Putin are soul-mates. They share the childish trait of temper tantrums. When they don’t get their way, they’re hurt, so they hurt back: flail their arms and scream and break anything and anybody within reach.
For example: A few days ago, Trump rang the prime minister of Denmark for a “conversation”, that is, he opened the negotiations for the purchase of Greenland. When he was told that Greenland was not for sale, that Greenland’s people had a say in their political future, he went berserk. He needs Greenland for US security! After forty-five minutes of this gaslighting, Mette Frederiksen was, so to speak, no longer the Little Mermaid; more like pickled herring. Denmark was in crisis.
Gotcha! You thought it was a joke, didn’t you? But I wonder why. The only reason he didn’t carry out his agenda the first time is that there were decent people refusing his orders. They’re not in Cabinet this time. This time we have, and I do not use this phrase lightly, a freak show of Trump sycophants, and already the Executive Orders are a veritable blizzard of told you so. This includes a direct challenge to the Constitution, which he swore to uphold and defend, but maybe when he swore the oath his toes were crossed. That would mean he’s not bound. You just do that when you want to swear an oath in bad faith. OK? OK.
Specifically, the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the principle of birthright citizenship for anyone born in the US, as long as their parents would be subject to the laws of the US, which means basically everyone except diplomats and Indigenous people. Trump wants to end this, because the idea that he hates only illegal immigrants is a sham; he hates all immigrants, all non-white people, “legal” or “illegal”. If it’s brown, flush it down!
“We’re the only country that has this!” he says, backing up his assertion with irrefutable data he just made up in his head. Nearly every country in North, South, and Central America has this.
It’s standard procedure by now. Float an insane idea: annex Greenland! Have a third, a fourth term! Make the second largest country in the world a state! and gauge the response. If there’s no response except faint applause (scared, remember?) then you can start repeating the idea until it’s a real, achievable goal, with its insanity not even a barrier to entry that you have to work out. If there’s negative response: go ahead and do it anyway. You’re the President!
You have to laugh when MAGAs online try to refute all of Trump’s lies. “He DID NOT say that! Show me the proof!!” they demand. But quite often the proof isn’t in what he said, because he’s a loose cannon; he’s looser than a topless sophomore on crystal. What he DOES is the proof of the pudding that’s in the eating.
The only common thread: what he does is bound to be more bizarre than what he promised. He’d be a natural at a fetish party. He’d keep ’em guessing! (what, FLAMING needles through my nipples?? HOT DAMN!!)
Canada is not broken or a “failed nation”; no more than is Ukraine. It’s the success of our democracy, it’s the success of our diverse society that’s intolerable to autocrats. They don’t get that we’re not like them. Instead of finishing them off with a stiletto across the jugular, we bandage them up and go there, there, and they cannot, will not accept that that quiet peaceable society that strives to be more fair, more inclusive, but eschews fireworks and uniforms and hail to the chief, ends up with greater good for all people.
They must be subsidizing us, they must be propping us up, because it’s inconceivable that we wouldn’t want the glory. All they understand is power at any price. But: Peace, order, and good government. Canada’s quiet mantra is, to them, the badge of failure.
The annexation of Canada has morphed from a “joke” (which it never was, it was the floating of an idea that has become a desire and then a NEED) into a policy. A demand, a must-have. He wouldn’t know what to do with Canada; in fact, all he wants to do is ruin it.
I fully expect a phone call from Trump to Justin, or Melanie Joly, or any of our party leaders, within the next month.
And because there is really no mechanism for this annexation to happen, in either Canada or the US, I predict a military assault; that is, unless one of our leaders gives in. After all, an offer of a seat in the Trump treehouse (“Gurlz keep owt”) is the biggest reward anyone with a naked lust for power could hope for.
A military assault. We would be hopelessly outnumbered militarily.
Then again, there’s NATO.
Maybe little, unassuming, feisty Canada, will be the catalyst for that world war they’ve been shopping around.
Putin would be proud. On your knees, Donald. Big Boss Vlad has unzipped and, once again, it’s time to pay tribute.
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A briliant and witty exploration of that parallel!