Choices

It is hard not to get emotionally involved with current bullying from the south. If you google bullying, It mainly responds to school-yard events. It’s tempting but not too productive to think of it that way. Even mainstream news media reports with a “Can you believe this?” without any correction.

Canadians need to stay calm, but at the same time respond to threats with firmness and name the lies. A US president proclaims that things have never been better in his country one minute and then plays victim in the next. While the constitution names some rights to impose tariffs, in several cases, this guy is just breaking the law to assert personal power.

We might do a few things:

• Say “STOP LYING”.

• Say nothing.

• Laugh at someone who is being rediculous and pathetic.

• Be unimpressed.

• Stop negotiating.

• Wait.

• Talk to friends - personal and international.

• Trust those who are trustworthy.

Other

It’s Pride Month in Canada and there will be the usual parades across the country. While I don’t normally attend them, I commend that they still happen as a reminder, even though we also have a charter of rights and freedoms. That’s why reading American Supreme Court and other legal decisions is so depressing. A side issue is the way news media always names the party in power when a judge was appointed as a rationale for the decision... I have no idea of the party affiliation of any Canadian judge, nor do I care. I still trust judges to be nonpartisan – and I still trust the system as a whole. If there have been bad decisions in the past, new knowledge and new understandings can change them for the better.

But what is common to recent decisions is the US political sphere in almost a knee jerk reaction – cynical acceptance of the decision in advance or even surprise. What is sobering is the dismissal of the “other.” It’s everyone for themselves” in a dog-eat-dog world. But it’s deeper than that. Whether believing, agnostic or atheist, the speaker often reveals his definition of the divine.

I continue to be a person who tries to practise my understanding of my faith. Karen Armstrong quotes a monk who once stated, “It doesn’t matter what you believe – but it does matter what you practice.” Maybe that idea gets it right. If you believe in a deity that punishes, you live in fear – for yourself and for those you care about. You need to do whatever it takes to feel safe. Protecting leads to becoming defensive – and the right to defend seems now to be the right to be violent against anyone who is perceived as the other.

In a recent hearing here was a response to Senator Slotkin who quoted from a memoire, “Senator, I’d be careful of what you read in books and believing it — except for the Bible,” he said. The speaker was the United States Secretary of Defense. What does he believe?

And that’s where we now - in serious trouble. Even though he and I both might call ourselves Christian, we seem to have big differences about the contents and directives of that book, Reading it in many translations, seeing splits and wars in empires based on interpretations as small as the single word, “and” in a creed –. Beliefs lead to actions.

I don’t always know what I believe. Unlike most of my family and friends, I stick it out in a faith community because I’d rather be able to attack it from the inside if I need to. But it is because of what all its community teaches me – not just the official leaders or hierarchies, though some of them are models too. Thar community saves me from that fear of the other.

When I do see that fear in action in other parts of my life, I try not to become fearful of its consequences. If life is a gift, we are neither gods nor objects. As Simone Weil said, the past and the future are our only treasures. We have the gift of insight into ways our world could be better – and we can do some small things to make that happen.

We all depend on those others – first parents, then friends and colleagues and so many others, past and present, that make our lives possible in ways we can never know. To humiliate others, to torture others, to remove others is never the answer. We are watching a regime unfold in which everyone is suddenly becoming the enemy – a different color of skin, a different political party, a different view of the law, a different gender or orientation, a different view of science. It's not just sad. We can learn from history. It’s another country on a route of self-destruction. It’s even more important to live in my own country and take steps, however small, to make it the place I want it to be – compassionate, creative, courageous – and beautiful.

Serious - here in Canada

I have found that reading conventional news articles is somewhat lacking in their reporting of how strange the US now really is. Outlets like the New York Times dutifully report the outrageous things that Mr. Trump says. as though these were the normal way for a world leader to talk. I know the difference between reporting and opinion columns, and I admire the distinction when it is made. But are endless lawsuits, violent arrests, attacks on universities normal? I am also aware that news outlets are moderating articles and that explains why Paul Krugman and Jennifer Rubin are now writing on Substack. You cannot keep them down. Freed from scrutiny, they are posting at least once every day.

I am also paying much more attention to local news. We recently had a half hour show from CBC featuring Timothy Snyder – later clipped for TV inserts, but the full interview is much better. The local morning newspaper is full of reports about our Canadian coping in the face of ongoing threats of tariffs. Paul Krugman is right about the unseriousness at home. Jennfer Rubin is right about words that have been highjacked – like “emergency.” We are serious here in Canada – even optimistic that our new government is taking our new reality seriously.

And Snyder has been moved to explain why he moved to Canada, because resident Americans have accused him and his wife of forsaking them. He is at pains to respond to the charges on his own Substack with some fact checks:

·       Charge: He left during the Trump administration. Untrue. He left during the Biden administration and even after the move, he was frequently campaigning in the US. Have a look at the number of YouTube videos that feature him.

·       Charge: His move relates to the election. Untrue. Both he and his wife have been courted by the University of Toronto three times in the past 20 years and the third was the decisive one. People migrate. People also look for new opportunities and this move provided some good ones, including lecturing to far greater numbers of students than at Yale and influencing them. Cross border countries have an influence on the US now as they have done in the past.

·       Charge: Snyder is a coward. Fact Check. How many of his critics have visited Ukraine and put themselves in the line of fire as he has done? People need to be as courageous as they can be, wherever they are.

·       Charge: The move is not progressive enough; Fact Check: Toronto, of all the Great Lake Cities he has known since he was a child, has done the best job compared to the others. As a large public one, The University of Toronto allows him to reach more students, who are multiculturally diverse and pay lower fees. The new assignment does not negate his love of and respect for Yale. Coming to this new situation represents a positive development for an academic like him.

·       Charge: He is not engaged with America. Fact Check. Simply look at the record, much too lengthy to summarize here. Through his books and their many translations, he is known and respected as a writer and speaker in America and around the world. His books are about the present and the future of America. Both Vance and Musk have loudly criticized him.

·       Charge: Canada cannot be taken seriously. Fact Check. American provincialism and exceptionalism blind folks to the reality of other places, their characteristics and importance. But some of the countries like Canada are ones working to hold Mr. Trump back. Resistance can happen without staying. The US is too often adapting, rationalizing and buck-passing. Canada is acting and developing solidarity to deal with a crisis it did not create. You can do democracy work from anywhere and he has done so in living in many parts of the world.

The lesson. In speaking personally he says, “Stop sweeping people away that you don’t agree with.” Criticism or dismissiveness are not actions. They are exactly how authoritarianism works. Dismissiveness is Trumpism – how he came to power and how he stays in it, where all that matters is power and spectacle. Instead, work with somebody else or groups to do things, however small, to make the world better - or as the Canadian national anthem says – strong and free. Action means imperfect people working together.

Revival

The previous post reminded me of a verse of the British National Anthem – dropped some time ago, might be useful to revive.  We don’t sing the anthem very often in Canada, but I did play it for an occasion on Victoria Day. I’m not sure the original applied to either Canada or tariffs, but it still seems strangely timely - even as there has been a whiff of improvement. I like that Bob Rae made the comment that the US President’s offer on the Golden Dome could be described as a “protection racket:. Usually ambassadors don’t have to be so frank. Here is how it goes:

O Lord our God arise,

Scatter our enemies,

And make them fall!

Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks,

On Thee our hopes we fix,

God save us all.

Adventures with Royalty

Canada has a King. The USA has a wannabee king.

In twenty-four hours we relearned something about ourselves and our history. Even Andrew Coyne a leading columnist who is often critical of anything the government does, notes that the royal visit has given us a move away from the old definition of Dominion of Canada to Kingdom of Canada.

Americans do not get that. CNN’s commentator, Dana Bash talked about Canada as still part of the British Empire – when there has not been any such empire for a long time. Americans love the Royals in the same way that they move movie stars – as celebrities. Unless some of us read Hello among the magazines at the hairdresser, we pay less attention to the royals until we find them useful. In the last couple of days, we did. The US king could not find anything better to do after watching the Speech from the Throne than offer a bribe. Shouldn’t Americans find something wrong with that? Didn’t they impeach somebody for that once upon a time?

My first memory of the royals goes back to 1939. I am three years old and have been taken to the train station and am sitting on my father’s shoulders. A huge crowd is there. I see a man and a woman a long way away at the back of the paused train and everyone is shouting and waving. The drama of the scene with no understanding of its significance is still there. Some thirty years later, my oldest son is in a play at the National Arts Centre - James Reaney’s Colours in the Dark with the scene, “When the King came to Stratford.” The local citizens are all lined up and cheering in exactly the same way when the royal train approaches – but by accident, does not stop.

And then there were the Little Princesses, a tell-all book about Elizabeth and Margaret which we read and imagined ourselves in their roles. We cut out printed paper dolls with all kinds of fancy clothes – royal robes, tiaras. Do paper dolls still exist? When did they die?

The Royal Family faded into a Canadian background, but emerged now and then with royal weddings, baptisms and visits – and funerals. I was within feet of the Queen Mum toward the end of the last century, when she dedicated a plaque to Canadian composer, Healey Willan. He was our church organist for many decades and the only non-British composer at that point to compose a work for a royal wedding. She was also in town for the horse races as well and asked to stop on the drive to have a look at the new CN Tower. When told that they were getting behind schedule, she remarked. “Don’t worry, they can’t start anything until I get there.”

The children of Queen Elizabeth grew up like many of their contemporaries, with missteps and failed marriages. A young Prince Charles seemed to be perpetually in waiting. Over time, though he has seemed to suit the moment. Making a transatlantic journey in the midst of weekly Cancer treatment is no small commitment.

 We enjoyed watching carefully staged activities – a hastily created farmer’s market rather than the ByWard Market to allow lots of space for exposure to more people, with handshakes and chats. Canadians, new and old travelled great distances to be able to see him. A few Americans travelled in as well. The new prime minister never looked so happy about it all.

So where are we now?

·       We think your president gets more ridiculous by the day. That would matter a lot less if you had not given him extraordinary power to wreck your world and a wider one. What made it possible for you to be so unwilling to question that? You did have the courage to impeach him twice not so long ago.

·       We have a new sense of national identity – less than perfect because many of our young and middle aged, like yours, have not studied their own history. For older ones like me, we have absorbed our constitutional monarchy without knowing it, but it has re-emerged in a clever way.

·       We are in for interesting times here with a minority government that has nevertheless made an impact and got us all interested in politics again. We hope for more civility with a new speaker of the House of Parliament.

·       We leave you to work on all those problems at home – retribution, lack of respect for the rule of law, cutting at the heart of preeminence in education, corruption, cronyism, oligarchy. We are watching CNN and even PBS less. While we generally support the latter, Canadians cannot be expected to bail it out since we did not elect the president who wants to demolish it. We hope you are up to all of this.