Unmasked. President Trump, Presumptive and Pretentious
TORONTO – How dare he!!! Pluuueese. One is almost tempted to dial 911 to provide emergency medical relief to all the virtue signalers and “political moralists” who have gone into “apoplectic shock” because of President Trump’s dead of night coup d’etat against Nicolas Maduro, [now formerly] President of Venezuela.
Even petroleum market analysts and “global economists” have started to question the financial wisdom of the move. Others have discovered a heretofore unnoticeable instability in international affairs going forward. They are in a unique class of pundits consisting of people who have never leafed through the pages of a serious periodical, much less a history book; or are sympathizers of the platform presented by the latest candidate for the leadership of one of the Parliamentary political groupings – not to be confused with those holding official party status.
They need help; the rest of us are looking for accommodations that will allow us to avoid the fate of Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, the reputation of Israel, the interminable, internecine fratricide among African “nation-states” – the list goes on. Those who were raised in an environment nostalgically known as a Constitutional [law-based] democracy will know that Canada has long preferred the principle of “Peace, Order and good Government” as the overriding principle of governance. And with reasons in abundance.
A “Trumpian-style” President has been at our doorstep ever since the Revolution of American colonies (thirteen along the Atlantic seaboard) resulted in the creation of the USA in 1783. For the next one hundred years, “by Hook or by Crook” the original thirteen expanded Westward, Northward and even into Pacific Islands.
Every acquisition whetted appetite for the next. In 1803, they bought title to all French possessions in what is now approximately one-third the land south of Canada. Wars of occupation and ethnic cleansing of Aboriginal tribes followed and expanded to wrest Texas, the Southwest and Florida from Spain (here below is a map of some of the territories acquired by the original 13 US states in the past).
Not all British North American colonies joined them. Their lands became targets as well.
A handful of ambitious colonial politicians along the Lower Great Lakes, the St Lawrence River, and the Atlantic colonies (now Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and later Prince Edward Island) began to debate a new geopolitical configuration.
Under the leadership of, now much-maligned, Sir John A. MacDonald, who became Canada’s first Prime Minister, they devised a plan to unify and administer the British Colonies and territories in North America for “mother Britain”, and, to “keep them safe” from the rapacious neighbours to the South, freshly emerged from a brutal Civil War, in 1861-65.
Their “success” speaks for itself: except for some losses in the Alaska panhandle on the Westcoast and northern Maine, over the next 85 years, the Canada we know today emerged as a viable geopolitical entity. It still needs a lot of work; the world has changed and continues to do so. The basic ingredients of sound population policy, agricultural industry, investments in multi-faceted transportation routes, manufacturing research and development and a political system to make it work have been in evidence from the very beginning. The product so far is pretty enviable.
President Trump is in line with the traditional, predictable America view of Canada: gotta have it. This is not the time for wailing and gnashing of teeth.
