Not far from how it started in Donetsk
I missed Kristi Noem’s stunt last week.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently toured a library that straddled the United States-Canada border, and one remark she made repeatedly is angering both Americans and Canadians.
The Boston Globe reported that Noem made the remark during an appearance at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in Stanstead, Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont. The library has both American and Canadian flags and a line of black electrical tape on the floor that marks the international border for visitors.
During her visit, the Globe reported that Noem stood on the American side of the library and said “USA number one,” before stepping to the Canadian side and saying: “The 51st state.”
What is she, six? Does she know how to tie her shoes yet?
Noem’s comments garnered outrage on social media. University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris called it “insulting, shameful and professional. But most of all… childish.” Reason editor-at-large Matt Welch lamented: “We are governed by four year-olds.” Former Obama administration appointee Bart Acocella characterized it as “utterly deranged behavior.” And Doug Saunders, who is an international affairs columnist for the Canadian publication Globe and Mail, grimly made a comparison to the Ukraine war, tweeting: “This is not too far from how it started in Donetsk.”
Well that would explain it. Trump wants to make war on a neighbor just like his buddy Vlad the Impaler.
It’s astonishing to me how much and how often I can still be shocked — surprised, dumbfounded, and deeply shocked — by the unthinkably and unspeakably stupid, cruel, and evil things these people do and say. In a million years, I could never imagine doing anything like what these crazies do routinely, casually, and without an ounce of self-awareness.
JFC.
This is a sign of madness and a policy objective at the same time. The repeated utterance of the “51st State” bullshit by yet another official is an indication that this is something Trump is serious about. This is 25th Ammendment level insanity. It amazes me that this is a cabinet-level official behaving like this. It is as clear an indication as any that Trump has surrounded himself with empty-headed sycophants whose only talent is fellating his ego. America is now threatened by its own government. Not only by the erosion of its democratic institutions, and Trump’s accelerating authoritarianism, but also by the installation of idiots in key positions. Mass firings of experienced civil servants is lobotomizing the country’s institutional memory. Getting rid of people who know how things work is a great way to get the things to stop working, and since Trump (and Musk) haven’t bothered to learn how the systems they’re destroying work, they are going to find out the hard way. They actually need some of the people they’re getting rid of, but those who are still around (or who are hurriedly being rehired once the need for their talents is accidentally discovered) are now working for a very different government, a very different country, from the one which originally hired them. How much of the original America will they be able to preserve and protect in the face of Trump’s MAGAmerica? Can they work for America without working for Trump? Working for Trump is working against America. It is clear that you cannot be loyal to both. This is the dilemma that many of those fired are going to be facing.
America’s enemies can see as plainly as the rest of us, that Trump is weakening America. Filling posts with people whose only qualifications are personal loyalty to him, rather than any experience or talent for the jobs they’ve been handed, means the United States is being run by people who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, who don’t know that they don’t know what fuck they’re doing. His all-consuming narcissism keeps him from seeing beyond his own ego-gratification, and his government reflects and is directed by his petty grievances, and his pathological need to “win.” How can you see where you’re going if all you’re paying attention to is your own reflection in the rear view mirror?
It’s all play-acting from the top down. Trump is the stupid person’s idea of a tough guy. He thinks he’s a tough guy. (I rest my case.) He’s a parody of himself, a living, breathing cartoon character, armed with nuclear weapons. He thinks he only has to issue orders for things to happen, that his words have the power to shape reality. He can certainly shape reality, but not in the way he thinks he can, not even in the way he would like. His botching of the pandemic left hundreds of thousands more dead than should have died. The raking of forests, the “watering” of Califiornia to stop wildfires, his delusions about “developing” Mar-a-Gaza, are all symptoms of his detachment from reality, and his grandiose belief in his ability to control it. Trump thinks he can change the world with an Executive Order and a Sharpie. Canute would like to have a word with him; he knew he did not have the power to stop the rising tide.
It’s strange; even though as a Canadian, I feel threatened by Trump’s insanity in a way that I have never felt threatened before (not even during the mid 80’s with Reagan’s rhetoric, tens of thousands more nuclear weapons, etc*), and I have no idea what’s going to happen, I have come to realize that Americans have it worse. We might live next door to him, but Trump lives in your house. He’s your monster, and he’s not alone. Tens of millions of Americans voted for him, and are cheering him on.
Canadians are uniting and rallying around our shared rejection of Trump’s unasked-for “offer” to make us part of the United States. America is dangerously divided, with Trump well on the way to criminalizing dissent and oppostion to his regime, both of which are unacceptable obstacles to the MAGA project. Trump and his “movement” represent the greatest threat to the United States since the Civil War, because he is a domestic enemy with frighteningly widespread support. A homegrown dictatorship like his is a greater danger to America than overseas dictatorships ever could be. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan could never have been the kind of existential threat that Trump is; yes, the USSR threatened nuclear annihilation, but none of these foreign totalitarian regimes was ever going to invade, take over, and destroy the country. America could only ever do that to itself. And now it has. With any luck, Trump’s greed, narcissism, and stupidity can be turned against him by Americans themselves, that they might save their country from its descent into tyranny. Like I said, America has it worse.
Trump is so easily fooled and so easily led. He has no long game; he has no grasp of subtlety or nuance, no sense of public service, sacrifice, duty, or honour. He is not a genius, he is not a good or decent human being. He is not good for America. His personal corruption goes far beyond Nixon’s, his continuing crimes are more widespread, and corrosive to the very fabric and foundations of America itself. And those who work for him are as corrupt and shallow as he is, otherwise they wouldn’t be working for him. It is naive to think that America’s enemies will not encourage and take advantage of the spreading brain-rot and ineptitude in the American government. Trump and his cronies won’t see it coming, because they’ll all be too busy looking at him.
*My mom, who experienced the Depression as a child, and saw her dad march off to war overseas in WWII, once told me that the only time she was ever really scared was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’m not “there” yet, but I can feel things edging closer.
Thank you very much, YNnB. Spot on.
To the extent there’s a plan, it’s to make a sort of “white worker’s paradise”… Zero immigration, barely any imports, occasional exports if anyone will buy. Of course, such a program should have been started from the other end (build plant with deficit spending *then* ruin trade relationships) and in any case are decade(s) away from fruition by which point he’ll be dead.
I can’t predict the future but I have no fucking clue how my employer is going to be above water in five or ten years and I don’t really know what I should do about that. My job for all its flaws is pretty comfortable, decently compensated, and I’m now a valuable repository of its (welding) institutional knowledge. I’m getting too old to start going into fabrication/millwright work.
The majority of my coworkers haven’t realized what a threat all of this is to their jobs in particular; defense work kept us solvent when the commercial aircraft orders dove off a bloody cliff during COVID but with Boeing in such rough shape, Europeans/Asians probably discontinuing purchases of our planes, and air travel safety concerns, well, we’re fucked, right?
It’s certainly a dark time. The USA was a haven for eg Jewish scientists fleeing the Nazi regime, who contributed to the war effort. I can Europe and Australia taking in scientists who are fleeing from random defunding of research institutions.
Vlad Vexler, ex Soviet public intellectual, has a video about Trump’s narcissism – which leads him to humiliate and destroy weaker opponents, and bathe in reflected glory from “strong men” like Putin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmTeg0B9tH8
I feel nothing but dread. This will finally go too far and someone will get hurt. And then all bets are off.
Anyone who thinks Canada will join the United States is dreaming in technicolor.
Anyone who thinks the la belle province will join the United States is having a full-blown psychotic break.
KBPlayer: I now have that on my ToWatch list
This one is an interesting take on
Why TRUMP Supporters Really Believe In Him
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=074gEsTCLMY
The first true victims of Trump’s madness and cruelty will be the millions who have relied on the assistance of USAID. That agency’s destruction will result in untold disease, misery and death for those millions of people. Whatever Canada and the United States go through in this needless, idiotic trade war, it will be nothing compared to the famine and epidemic disease that will sweep into the regions that Trump and Musk have cut aid from, for the supposed “savings” of a tiny percentage of the US budget.
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