“He must have a compass with him”
It was always destined to end. I mean, other than the fact that there was a deadline and Elon does have to run a bunch of companies, one of which is being destroyed by baby boomers who don’t have anything better to do than stand in front of Tesla dealerships and complain about fascism. But Elon also carried with him the conviction of a true libertarian: that less government was better and, more importantly, possible, and that is always doomed. There was no way this was going to last forever. Sooner or later, the harsh reality of realpolitik was going to appear, crush all the techbro libertarian’s dreams, and America would carry on much as it has for the last 250 years. As the savings created by DOGE started to become vapourware, you could hear the howls from even here, way up in Canada. The Libertarians are beside themselves with rage. They were right, everyone finally knows THEY WERE RIGHT! They were going to finally WIN. For ONCE. For once, the tide of silly bureaucratic nonsense was going to be pushed back, the cash hemorrhage stopped and people like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie could claim victory. It was right there. Everyone could see it! How could America possibly want to give more money to a government that was spending it on transgender musicals?
The betrayal is almost Shakespearean.
Autism and politics never works well together. It’s not that these two things don’t try. Having very smart people think very carefully and unemotionally about the big problems of the day is something of a neurodivergent specialty. Having someone to meticulously lay out all the externalities of any given party policy is something the electorate hungers for, even if they don’t always like it. In the political world, autistics are often called “wonks” and today they launch political podcasts and Substacks that no one hears or reads but should. But you see, for public wonks like Hilary Clinton and Jeb Bush, as soon as their pronouncements run afoul of whatever special interests a more powerful politician has, they are shoved into a political closet as fast as humanly possible. Whatever dreams they had of becoming someone with influence is quickly nipped in the bud. No one ever got elected by telling the truth.
It is possible to change things in Washington. Certainly, bills go through all the time in the Congress, so something has changed, but rarely do politicians vote for their own demise. When your lifeblood is dependent on you convincing your district, your neighbors, and anyone close to you, that you will watch out for their interests, above everyone else, you are just doing your job. You are doing the job you were sent to Congress to do. The fact that you have two Senators gives you just as much power as a state twice your size, equalizing and mitigating the influence of one part of the country on the other. An opportunity to get federal funds to build a dam or shore up a local employer would be wasted if you just give your vote away on practical things that make sense. You weren’t sent there to come back and explain to people, “yeah, I know it sucks, but there’s nothing in this bill for you. You have to take one for the team.” Congress is not in that business and never will be. And so when Americans vote for the President they invest their hope into this one man, that he is magical and can move mountains, and invariably are disappointed when it doesn’t work out.
Secretary to a leader of little squirts
I think it’s fair to say that people misunderstand the job of the President. They think it’s the President’s job to act as a moral leader, the embodiment of the American spirit and drive. He is it be unblemished in all things and all ways – a hero of men. And it’s nice when people like Abraham Lincoln and Barak Obama seem to represent that, even if they don’t when you look closely enough. History is kind to these men because they carry along the idea that America is great and Americans are great, and he is the best one we can find among us. But the President also has a job to do, a very important one, and sometimes being a hero isn’t embodying an ideal but exercising the possible in ugly ways.
By its very nature, the office of the President is authoritarian. It may require immense cruelty. It will keep secrets and lie. It will make decisions that appear completely nonsensical and arbitrary, only to be revealed decades later to have been necessary when everything is unclassified. It will make mistakes and curse the future in ways that cannot ever have been imagined. It will change. And then it will change again. The mercurial office, that serves at the pleasure of the people of the United States, is difficult and unwieldly for one person – for a nation, it is impossible.
In order to simplify this, the President only has three jobs: 1) to execute the laws that are given to him, 2) to vote up and down on legislation, and 3) to communicate the will of the people to the rest of the world. Often, he is seen as a “leader” of America and, by default, the world. When foreign press or leaders refer to him, particularly this current President, they refer to him as one man who is forwarding “his” policy. Sometimes that is expanded to include “the administration.” This is a mistake. The President is a servant. He is, as far as the American people are concerned, their employee, no better than a gardener. And truthfully, as powerful as the President is, he is limited by a vast constitutional apparatus that the American public holds sacrosanct, even if they can’t always agree on the details. Despite any trickery that may or may not be present, the cleverness of the founding fathers ensured that no one state and no one man could prevent the people from electing their chosen champion. Foreigners would be better served to view the President as a thermometer; a sort of temperature check on the temperament of the American people. Considering our current President, the Americans are quite annoyed.
I'm still asking myself--what is he--animal, vegetable, or mineral? A Senator! A United States Senator!
As the supreme leader of the executive branch of the government, the President “executes” the law, given to him by Congress who “makes” the law and the allowed to by SCOTUS who “judges” the law. He is, in his own realm, however, a fascist. He needs to be, otherwise, nothing would get done. Practically, there are just some decisions that can’t wait for committee, nor can the general public know all the grimy details – not if they know what is good for them. The most obvious one is the conduct of wars. To go to war may be a Congressional power, but once the President is given that power, he can exercise it in almost any way he sees fit. Or at least, that seems to be the case. The terse clauses of the Constitution don’t completely lay out the boundaries of each branch’s power and exactly what those boundaries are has been an ongoing debate since those clauses were written. However, America’s enemies will not hang back their hypersonic missiles until a quorum is reached, so, in 1973, Congress gave the President powers to bomb countries, detain foreigners, and tell your uncle Jack he can do some privateering with his Bayliner Element M15. Honestly, if I were a Russian nuclear sub, I would be worried about Jack. That guy is fucking nuts. He may own a cannon. No one is completely sure. He won’t allow UN inspections either.
The President can’t make up the law; that’s Congress’s job. Congress is the true voice of the people. If you want a new federal law that saves the lives of a special type of crawdad that lives in a stream behind your barn, you have to go to your Congress people and ask them to help you out. There’s not much the President can even do about that; he can’t even introduce the bill. Generally, you will have a member of the House of Representatives, that is elected by the district or parish you live in, and then you will have both of your two Senators and all of them will most likely have to agree. Now, they have to go back to Washington and get a majority of other Congresspeople from other states to agree with them.
This isn’t always easy. Each person you are going to encounter may have a very big stake in your fire. What if a certain state has a robust, but diminishing, supply of these crawdads and a thriving tourist industry that eats them? Well, they might not be too agreeable to your law. What if the state has no crawdads at all, but has a connection to this other state providing other things for their thriving tourist industry that would also be hurt by your bill? They might feel bad for your crawdads, but not enough to throw their state into poverty over it. And how does this help the nation anyway, your little crawdad bill? If these crustaceans vanished out of your stream would anyone but you notice? It seems like a lot of political capital to expend trying to save a few shrimps. But maybe you have something *they* want and that can always be your vote. Don’t write something into this new, big, beautiful spending bill about your little crawdads and they can forget your vote on the whole budget.
Keep in mind this bill is revised and revised and revised again. Weeks, and sometimes months pass, where the bill is turned inside out, examined from all angles and everyone has their own version of your crawdad bill they are also trying to get through. The clock may be ticking on your little crawdads in your little stream. Finally, after weeks of deliberation, Congress is going to have fish or cut bait. Or not, if the speaker hates your guts. After weeks of arguing, the bill comes up for a vote. Yeah, sure, put in something about your little crawdads. Who cares? The other state can still sell them, just not as many, and the federal government is going to kick in several million dollars to study the problem. Just vote on this bill, will ya? The debt ceiling is approaching, and everyone wants to get re-elected. Democracy in action; the republic has been saved again. Thomas Massie is going to still be pissed no matter what happens. Eventually Elon will be okay. He just needs a moment. Autistic meltdowns happen and we still need his rocket ships.
Some woman's composed a hymn to replace the Star-Spangled Banner. Want to hear it?
The second job of the President is to give a thumbs up or thumbs down on new laws. He has to accept or deny these bills wholesale. At this point, though, several things can happen. He can sign the bill, whereas it becomes law. He can veto the bill, basically sending it back to either the house or Senate and saying, “try again.” If Congress really wants the bill, they can override the veto by voting on it and getting two-thirds of the Congress to go along with it. Or he can do nothing. What happens to the bill after that depends on what the Congress does. If it stays in session for ten days, the bill becomes law, if it doesn’t, the bill vanishes down a hole in the legislative ocean, referred to as a “pocket veto.”
There are all kinds of reasons why Congress may adjourn on purpose to initiate a pocket veto, but since we are talking about the President here, we’ll leave that for another day. All that you need to know is that he can’t pick or choose what parts of the law he wants passed. This logic assumes that Congress designed the law in a certain way, as a sum of all its moving parts. For the President to presume he knows better is now straying in the territory of the Congress, who is tasked with making the law because they are representing the people, and this exact law is what the “people” want, crawdads and all[i]. The public deserves to get what it wants, not some watered-down version that is the preference of one man. The President is a public servant after all. He is not allowed to second guess The Public.
At least that’s what SCOTUS found when it shot down Clinton’s line-item veto power in 1998, deciding, IMO rightly, that being able to pick and choose which things stayed in a bill was a violation of the “presentment” clause of the Constitution. The President deciding what stayed in and what got kicked out strayed into the exclusive Congressional area of law making. This meant that the President had to pass the bill, pork and all. Democracy in action: the Republic has been saved.
This process, as far as I know, is unique in the world. Other countries may have similar systems, but none exactly mimic what was laid out in the Constitution. This is perhaps a wise choice. The American Constitution is a brave system. It is the only one to almost completely trust the people to decide how they want to live and who they want making decisions. It is perfect faith in the idea that no matter how irrational humans may be, that there is a consensus to be reached. This faith, the only true American religion, is reflected in everything about it; it is in its media, in its public discourse, in foreign policy, and in the respect that Americans generally have for each other. Debates in Congress display a decorum which is completely absent in the Parliament of Canada and the UK. There is no heckling or interruptions, and boorish behavior like it will find a congressperson ejected. Americans save their pointed barbs for their turn to speak generally. When they do however, they can hold that floor until doomsday. Despite all the flaws of trusting your average joe to make up the rules and even though the system is designed for gridlock, somehow enough comity is made that America presses forward, self-correcting and anti-fragile, while its northern neighbor continuously debates between existing and just throwing up their hands. (Or elbows, I guess…)
While this is not the main crux of my essay, I feel it important to point out how, in Canada, the sausage-making is different. Canada does have two parts of its lawmaking apparatus, the house of Commons (aka commoners) and the Senate. It debates bills, reads them out, compromises on certain features, and has committees. But the Senate isn’t elected; it’s appointed. Generally, to someone that the Prime Minister likes for some reason. The Prime Minister himself is part of the Parliament and can vote on bills, unlike the President who can’t even introduce them into Congress. Even though there are more of them, political parties play a bigger role in who votes for what and are expected to vote along party lines or find themselves sidelined or even ejected from the party. And finally, the final stamp of approval comes from the King of Canada by way of the “governor general” who is appointed by the King. Even so, the Prime Minister has a hand in selecting who that will be and giving advice on what should be approved. While it is true that the Governor General can reject a bill, it hasn’t happened in Canada in a very long time and most Canadians consider it a “rubber stamp,” ignoring the political implications that it represents. I suppose someone might think that having a Prime Minister is more democratic then all those elections Americans insist on having, but I don’t know a single one, personally.
To genteel crime, kid.
Not being a member of Parliament, not hand-selecting one whole house of the legislature, having to be elected by a majority of states, that generally follow their popular vote, and not being a King, the President has very little power comparatively when it comes to the actual people of the United States. Sure, he could (probably illegally) harass Matt Taibbi by sending the IRS to his house or drone striking his house overseas[ii], but generally the President doesn’t do those things en mass. Even if he does, he’s going to have a real issue as the American people have guns which make things like just coming into their homes problematic. He most certainly cannot personally order the seizure of someone’s bank account because they are inconvenient, and he mishandled a perfectly reasonable situation. To be fair, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau couldn’t either, but only because he claimed a state of emergency incorrectly and by then it was years later, and the damage was done.[iii] Nevertheless, he had wide support of the people when he did it. That would never happen in the USA. The President can’t even suspend Habeas Corpus without someone running to SCOTUS and getting on his ass.[iv]
Now, in all these things the President does enjoy some protection that ordinary people do not. I know people are fond of saying, “No one is above the law” in America, but actually, the President kind of is. Like most government officials he will be tasked with decisions that make people unhappy, decisions that will take away their property, or their liberty, or even their lives. Inevitably, he will have to do something that will make Sam Harris very unhappy.[v] He can’t be expected to find whatever delicate balance America needs between letting people have their free speech and not tearing ICE facilities down to the studs, while at the same time worrying about whether or not someone is going to start a lawsuit or charge him with a crime. That’s just not workable if you want any kind of government to make any decision at all. Everyone is a critic when it comes to the President and not everyone has the knowledge that the President does when he’s sitting in the Situation Room. Personally, I give him the benefit of the doubt, but so does the law, and that is why he has absolute immunity for all of his “presidential” acts. Nevertheless, district attorneys and district courts in America are busily pretending that they have the slightest power when it comes to power the President has by way of right.
And let’s not forget that the President ALSO can be given power by the Congress. Despite the wild representative that goes out and claims “supervisory” power over the President, Congress is considered a “co-equal” branch. Neither branch is subservient to the other and this is even more so when Congress expressly gives the President the power to do something. In the creation of the bill that would go on to become US AID, in numerous parts Congress lays out that it is up to the President how he should go about accomplishing the loose goals sketched out in the law. This allowed the President to zero out US Aid, cutting off any number of people, who inserted themselves into the pork gravy train that allowed for all kind of silly projects. Senators and Representatives and the like, appear to have used US Aid as a laundry to bring money, perhaps needed, into their pet projects; that the money possibly ended in their pockets, notwithstanding. Oh well, deficits don’t matter, to quote another President. (Until they are invested by the Chinese into real estate uncomfortably close to various military bases. Then they matter a whole fucking lot.)
If Congress has the power of the purse, the President still holds some power in that money’s distribution. He can shift money from priority to priority (National defense to building a border wall) but as the chief executive, once given the power he is unassailable. It’s not like Congress can go, “Oops, we didn’t mean it,” and therein lies their current conundrum. If they wanted to tell the President to use this money for a certain specific purpose, or not do something that really is the job of Congress, they probably shouldn’t fill their bills with language like this:
“In order to make possible consistent and informed judgments in this respect, the President shall assess the commitment and progress of countries in moving toward the objectives and purposes of this chapter by utilizing criteria, including but not limited to the following:”[vi]
Or this language:
“and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies.”
or this language
“And the President of the United States shall be, and he is hereby authorized, in any event, as aforesaid, by his proclamation thereof, or other public act, to direct the conduct to be observed, on the part of the United States, towards the aliens who shall become liable, as aforesaid; the manner and degree of the restraint to which they shall be subject, and in what cases, and upon what security their residence shall be permitted,”
Or this language
“the President of the United States may ascertain and declare such reasonable time as may be consistent with the public safety, and according to the dictates of humanity and national hospitality.”[vii]
Or this language
“…in situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, such use of the Armed Forces of the United States in hostilities pursuant to this Act shall be reported within 48 hours in writing by the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate, together with a full account of the circumstances under which such hostilities were initiated, the estimated scope and duration of such hostilities, and the constitutional and legislative authority under which the introduction of hostilities took place.”[viii]
Congress does this all the time (actually most legislatures do this – even Canada.) They are not going to get down into the petty details as to who or how the law is enacted. They don’t have time for that even if they could. And so, they leave that to the administrative bodies AKA the “deep state” that the President is in charge of. Besides, do they really want to take the blame if another war breaks out or some deportee turns out to be a bona fide terrorist? Gawd no, pass that buck onto the president and then he can be stool pigeon if shit hits the fan. The Supreme Court can sort it out. What? Did you think we all got elected so we could..like…work? Jesus. No.
Of course, once it gives the President the power to do something, it can’t come back and bitterly complain when he does it. Nevertheless, there is a considerable number of Americans (and others) who are under the impression that somehow the exercise of Presidential power, and the power given to him by Congress, is somehow more “fascist” than a prime minister who can have you arrested for a tweet.[ix] Of course, nothing can stop you from running to a district court and complaining and finding a sympathetic judge to give you an order that could and should be completely ignored for lack of jurisdiction, but even so these things are promptly brought to the Supreme Court to waste the court’s, and the President’s, time.
The fact is that most of (actually, maybe all of) the things that the current President is doing are legal. His exercise of rarely used or reinterpreted (correctly) statutes have given him the power to pull funding, eject aliens, arrest a mob, and bomb a country. The only reason he has those powers was he was given them by Congress. He was given them by the people of the United States. And by being elected, on the platform of, “Imma gonna use these powers you gave me” you would think that judges across the country would get that message that this is what the American people want to happen. Apparently, they did not. I guess it’s going to be a busy year for the Supreme Court.
You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked.
During President’s Trump first term, a Canadian said to me, “I think he’s the most American President America has ever had.” Brash, officious, more stand-up comedian than dignitary, Mr. Trump represents the kind of American that the rest of the West loves to revile. With his love for all things American tacky – gaudy buildings, gauche behavior, McDonalds – he creates the perfect foil for these sanctimonious assholes. “Look at that vulgarness,” they hiss, obviously completely delighted in their superiority over him, and therefore by default, any American who voted for him[x]. “Surely, this is it. This is the moment that America truly falls from being the great, moral, world power it claims to be. Americans should hang their heads in shame for electing such a crass figure. We finally have it on them.”
They couldn’t have been more satisfied with themselves. The Obama years were so boring, when Canadians had to pretend that the American president they adored wasn’t completely screwing Canada at every turn.[xi] When Trump lost in 2020, they moved on with a “that was weird,” seemingly totally oblivious to the fact that the President is allowed two terms, that Mr. Trump barely lost by a whisker, cheating or not, and that the man elected to run the most powerful military in the world was mostly dead. Now they are scrambling, but Mr. Trump learned the first time and it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy as he pummels them with tariffs and sends his personal rhetorical killer, JD Vance, to go insult them to their faces. From this vantage, as much as it pains me on my financial front, It. Is. Glorious. Perhaps next time they will afford “The Ugly American” a little grace. If Obama was the President for our enemies, Mr. Trump is the President for our “friends.”
And this is the most important job of the President: to deal with the rest of the world. Immigrants, dignitaries, diplomats, they must all hear Americans with one voice, and that is the voice of the President. Of course, having one, consistent voice would be easier if Americans didn’t decide every four to eight years to find a new one, but the voice of the people is what it is, and if it suddenly swings from one pole to the other, the rest of the world is going to have to suck it up and deal with it. Caveat emptor.
Mr. Trump is not naïve about how the world works and how it regards Americans. Surely, in his many years, he has learned how hard it is to build anything, anywhere. He is, after all, a real estate developer. He knows about permits and NIMBYS, but he also knows how easy it is to lose property to the locals who may become irate over any number of issues. His Trump Tower in Vancouver was reviled for just existing and eventually had to be sold to get the stink off of it. But Canada aside, he probably has had to deal with thugs and mobsters his entire life. While I don’t think he has ever said it, he couldn’t have gotten through all this time in New York City without having to deal with the criminals that run the unions, that populate the work crews, and who guard the sites at night. And that’s not including the ones that will actually shake you down. No, I’m sure Mr. Trump learned early on that a thug, a warlord, a dictator, and a king, are all the same man essentially, and to deal with them, you need to take a page from their books sometimes. Even the founders of America knew that and that’s why they created the office in the first place. That is the job of the President. That is the assignment.
They have come to see what they can't see at home--democracy in action.
Despite the plaintive dreams of libertarians, all civilizations in this world have to have someone in charge. I can’t seem to find it now but during an earlier election season, Fran Liebowitz did a PSA for get out the vote effort. I assume she was trying to help the democrats with this, but her bipartisan message was simple: humans always have someone, somewhere, in charge. And if you look at most civilizations over time and place, you will find some kind or warlord or dictator that controls or at least appears to control an entire population singlehandedly. These men are called many things, but they are all the same thing in the sense that they can do whatever they want, to whomever they want, for any reason that they want. The only distinction is how they got there in the first place – violence, luck, inheritance or divine right – and anyone who objects may suffer serious consequences. In reality, it is more probably a small group of powerful people with a figurehead running the show, but regardless, power is concentrated in a very small clique of men (usually) who decide the fate of the nation. It is extremely rare that nations deprive these men of the extensive power to order what they feel is necessary, especially in an emergency. Even rarer still, is the right for the people to own the guns that would be instrumental in effecting the demise of these men. Often, truly dictatorial regimes find ways of depriving the populace a means of removing it…permanently.
And true revolutions are rarer still. That is too chaotic, no one really wants to take that risk. So, most of the world tolerates the kinds of restrictions that Americans find inconceivable. They would never tolerate a government telling them what they could or could not wear or say on the internet (And they didn’t if you read the 2024 election correctly). They would never think that not only could the government come into their homes and rifle through their shit, just because it got bad mojo off them, but private individuals could do that too. And it certainly would never occur to them that a judge could stop a lawsuit in the middle of it, and dismiss the jury, just because he thought they were too stupid to understand what they were supposed to judge. The idea that the church and the police could come take all the children in a community away in one gigantic scoop?? Aw, hell, no. That would not even occur to Americans and if it did, regardless of party, they would all have the same instinct: “if you want him, you can come and take him!” Other countries may give their people some kinds of freedom, that is not mutually exclusive to Americans, but the libertarian dream of almost total anarchy only comes within kissing distance in the USA.
The freedom that Americans have is not the norm in the world, and not because of violence either. Kings, warlords, dictators, are often portrayed as the most violent men in society, and there is some truth to that. But they aren’t just violent; they are competent. Any man that poses a threat to everyone, without also offering any kind of benefit, is eventually going to be curbed in some way, because humans don’t like unpredictability. That’s why all these “raise awareness” campaigns to curry sympathy for the drug addled homeless never work: humans are naturally afraid of chaos.[xii] A violent, but useless, man in charge is a recipe for disaster. There may be chaotic regimes, but they rarely last long. The point of the violence is to maintain the status quo, to quiet the chaos inherent in life, and to efficiently dispatch any threat to that. That’s the benefit. That is why fascism, or as it’s better-known, monarchy, works. It works because it’s run by competent men.
People like fascism because it’s easy. Because it asks nothing of them. It keeps the trains running on time; it makes sure that no one pays too much rent. Decisions that might take months in the legislature take minutes in the Monarch’s mind. If you have a smart, wise, and astute monarch, your life might work out pretty well, as long as you don’t disagree. And if these last few years have proven anything, it’s that people will do almost anything to be agreeable if they are scared or impoverished. Women are especially prone to this because agreeableness comes more naturally to them and will viciously enforce compliance on any girl who steps out of line. It wasn’t just men that burned all those witches at the stake. It is an evolutionary advantage to be liked and to be liked by the fascist? Life saving. You can’t really blame them. It seems like, short of real war, nothing breaks that.
What Americans lose in efficiency, they gain in control. When Canadian truckers took to the streets, trying to regain some sort of voice during the Covid pandemic, they were shut down, tried and imprisoned with the speed and efficacy of a fascist state. Canada’s tin pot dictator, Justin Trudeau, a nepo baby with a good name and no natural political skill, paid a heavy price, but it wasn’t until after a meeting with Trump, did he bail completely on politics. As you may remember, prominent Americans, even some Democrats, were aghast. “What is happening in Canada?” they asked, bewildered. But nothing new was happening in Canada other than the rally happened at all. Sixty percent of British Columbians cheered on the government, ostensibly convinced that the truckers were maniacs who would have everyone dead of covid, even though, by that time, the schools had reopened entirely.[xiii],[xiv],[xv] It wasn’t that. The truckers had dared to challenge the status quo and *that* was unacceptable in Canada. How dare they? That was too American. They had to be put down. They needed to be squashed like bugs. They needed to learn to be “agreeable.”
The Canadians never threw Molotov cocktails at Rideau Hall or assaulted police officers by the gross (if they did at all, which I am unsure of.) By all reports, they obeyed orders to move trucks to certain areas and stop honking horns at certain times of night. They didn’t pull down any statutes or hang effigies of Trudeau as far as I know. Despite listening to eight interminable hours[xvi] of the inquiry, I never heard a single report of violence. Towards the end there was some, but the protestors seemed to come out the worser in the fight between them and the mounted police horses, mostly because they couldn’t get away fast enough. If I were to use any model of a “peaceful protest” I would have to use that one. I can think of no other that contained such joie de vivre despite the freezing cold and the ridiculous unfairness of it all.
To this day, I am convinced that the whole thing would have ended in less than a week if Trudeau had simply walked out into the square and spoke with them calmly and sympathetically, saying, “Hey, this is just what we know now. I know you don’t trust anyone because the Americans are constantly changing their story, but here, as Canadians, is what we know, and we have act in this manner because we can’t really win no matter what we do.” He could have trusted his people to trust him; they clearly desperately wanted to. But even as a violent dictator, he lacked the competence he needed to stay in control. Instead, he did the thing he always did, insult people and act like the wannbe he was, while his hench(wo)men smirked behind him. No wonder Trump made him cry. [xvii]
One must never forget that the President cannot have a private conversation with the American people. Everything he does, says, and is, is going to be parsed and examined under a white-hot light by both America’s friends and enemies. And our enemies are looking for something to fear. That’s how they know how far to push the envelope. But they will only fear that which is not only violent, but competent. America’s friends should fear it as well; Americans prize loyalty and will punish the disloyal in nasty ways. But generally, the things the President says are targeted at protecting the American people from those that would do them harm, however that is, and that is his job. If his public statements have to carry the imprimatur of believable menace to spook off an invasion of some foreign shithole country, then that’s who he is targeting – not some hapless genderqueer, teenager attending Brown. That Kamala/Biden were as spooky as four-year-olds, dressed up in a cut out sheet for Halloween, was unhelpful in that core mission of the presidency. That Trump channels a thug, a warlord, a dictator, and a king, is what makes him a great President, and the rest of the world knows it even if the American libertarians do not.
What he lacked in experience, he's made up in fight.
And that’s it. Three jobs. That’s all he does. Sure, he comes out and makes speeches and everyone complains and protests and lights votive candles and calls him all kinds of names, but it’s all just window dressing. No American should ever live in fear of the President because the second he steps out of line he will surely get caught. Someone, somewhere in America, usually a lawyer, will jump at the chance to make a name for himself by “protecting the system.” Ever since Watergate, the dreams of journalists have been to recreate the one thing that made the careers of halfwits, Woodword and Bernstein. America watches the President with the eyes of Sauron and is quick to put him in his place, whether it’s stopping a vaccine mandate in the workplace[xviii] or suspending habeas corpus during wartime. Woe betides the Presidential candidate that calls any American ugly names.
But when the President goes out, the rest of the world knows it, and they should. To them, he is a king. Sure, there are other world leaders, and if they treat Americans with grace, they will receive the same. But the President is tasked with doing whatever he has to ensure that America and Americans remain as they are. He maintains the status quo, it’s up to the people to change it. Whatever the cost is to the rest of the world, whatever country needs to be strong armed into not attacking our allies or letting America have some shelf space in the grocery, it’s up to the President to make that happen. He can’t always be so nice about it. Even if couched as a question, it’s not always a request.
It appears that most of the world has finally heard the message: Americans will not put up with your nonsense anymore. It’s time to stop shooting the messenger; you are not Leonidas. That Trump had to convey the message in the most aggressive way possible was a result of foreign intransigence; he cannot be blamed for that. He is, at core, the soul and protector of the American people. Even if I didn’t vote for him[xix], I tolerate a system that put him in that place. It is a mistake to separate the people from the President, no matter what Rachel Maddow says. We are him and he is us. He belongs to us, and us alone. And the last time I checked, Americans still were the most powerful people in the world. Compared to the rest of the world, we are all royalty. If the American President says something, you better listen to it. All hail, the King.
[i] This is what is referred to as “pork” stemming from the pre-Civil War plantation practice of distributing salted pork from barrels to slaves. The rush to grab portions of pork was likened to politicians eagerly securing funds for their districts. I suppose in Canada we should refer to the same thing as “milk piranha.”
[ii] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/obama-administration-claims-unchecked-authority-kill-americans-outside-combat-zones
[iii] https://www.jccf.ca/emergencies-act-finally-a-canadian-court-rules-against-government/
[iv] Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861) (No. 9,487)
[v] For President Trump, that appears to be existing in the world and being effective at doing the job the public asked him to do.
[vi] Sec. 102, FOREIGN ASSISTANCE ACT OF 1961 (P.L. 87–195)
[vii] https://www.nafsa.org/regulatory-information/alien-enemies-act-1798#:~:text=The%20Alien%20Enemies%20Act%20of%201798%20%28%22Act%22%29%20allows,original%20act%20at%20the%20bottom%20of%20this%20page%29.
[viii] https://www.Congress.gov/bill/93rd-Congress/house-joint-resolution/542
[ix] Okay, okay, Starmer probably isn’t *personally* responsible for it, but he hasn’t done much to stop it either.
[x] Really, there’s no “good American” MAGA or not, we are all in the same boat. Welcome to the far right.
[xi] https://www.vice.com/en/article/our-prime-minister-doesnt-like-barack-obama-canada-us-relations-under-the-microscope/
[xii] https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josi.12343 (I was looking for a particular study but couldn’t find it. It has possibly been delisted, but frankly, I’ve never seen it work and I’ve lived in cities with lots of nutty homeless people for a very long time- long after those “do gooders” have left.
[xiii] https://globalnews.ca/news/8580349/vancouver-trucker-convoy-covid/
[xiv] By early 2022, schools in B.C. had largely reopened for in-person learning, as the Omicron wave subsided and restrictions eased. For example, a web result notes that mask mandates for school students in Alberta ended by mid-February 2022, and similar trends occurred in B.C. as restrictions were lifted around Family Day (February 21, 2022).
[xv] A national Ipsos poll conducted for Global News provides the most direct evidence of B.C. public opinion on the trucker protests. It found that 64% of British Columbians believed that “what the people taking part in the truck protests in Ottawa have said and done is wrong and does not deserve any of our sympathy.”
[xvi] Here you can listen to all the hours of it if you want. IDK why you would though. Everyone in the government is totally insufferable. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/
[xvii] https://torontosun.com/news/national/i-put-canadians-first-justin-trudeau-cries-as-time-as-pm-winds-down
[xviii] https://www.dhillonlaw.com/lawsuits/the-daily-wire-challenges-biden-administration-vaccine-mandate/
[xix] I did. Three times and I would have voted for him a forth if I could.