I returned from six weeks in Sri Lanka and India, a trip back in time, in the company of beautiful people, great food, and warm breezes, and was looking forward to capturing my travels on paper and reliving the memories, only to find my adopted homeland of Canada in the middle of climate-challenging winter storms and a newly ascendent US president vowing to annex us as his 51st state while launching tariff wars to destroy wealth instead of create it.
“It’s a negotiating ploy,” say the naysayers who refuse to lift their heads from the sand of entitlement and safety they have enjoyed all their lives in North America. “It’s Hitler Redux,” say others who have immigrated here from war-torn countries that went down the tubes under dictators, and who see the creeping menace of Fascist forces destroying the truth, usurping power one stroke at a time, and reducing us to frogs in the cauldron, while we meekly thank them for their brilliance in displacing one despised elite with another.
Social media is no help either, unlike in the days of Obama and Trump I, because echo-chambers have tightened, non-believers are locked out of each other’s domains, and everyone is chest-thumping with their “bases” inside these enclaves. Invitations to debate are met with insults and crude jokes from the other side.
And the irony is that our Prime Minister is currently unemployed but finally performed his job during his exit lap by playing Captain Canada and giving Number 47 conniptions by daring to speak truth to power. His replacement, who will take some time to get into the saddle, is a choice between a skilled banker and a mini-Trump who has never held a real job in his life. The only real opposition during this leadership vacuum to the annexation threat is the will of ordinary Canadians who have risen to what matters – saving their country. Ninety percent of Canadians do not want to be the 51st state of the USA. Even our brethren in Quebec are now waving the Maple Leaf flag with gusto, and a Western Canadian premier has her hand on the oil spigot, dithering whether to turn it off, while her Ontario counterpart has no such qualms – heck, he is even going to renegotiate the USMCA on behalf of his absentee Federal colleagues.
But what about that remaining ten percent – those who are either not bothered about what’s going on (“After all, it can’t happen to us, can it?”) or who secretly espouse becoming part of the Land of the Oligarch (formerly the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave)? Call them Fifth Columnists, Traitors, Magas, or whatever you like – they are the Enemy Within. They suck off our largesse and dump on our flag. Thankfully, they are active only on social media for now (largely ineffective due to that echo-chamber lockdown I mentioned), and, hopefully, not spread to other spheres of influence, like a political party, government, law enforcement, or the military (or, are they?)
The Enemy Within are those who act to weaken the country during a time of crisis, be it with glib comments, alt-views, or votes, sowing the seed of discord, and making us ripe for the plucking by the foreign invader who will say, “See, they want to be taken over.” I combed the internet to find such groups but they are not readily searchable, being usually mixed in with coups and putschs conducted by a country’s military. Besides, you don’t normally see a country’s citizens, openly or subtly, asking to be occupied by the Other, especially when their country is constantly ranked in the top three to live in and the Other ranks only at the bottom of the top 20. Personally, I would like this Enemy Within to be given paid airfare to go and live in their Promised Land where they will have to figure out Medicare, hustle for work, and drink watered-down beer. And they can pray not to get deported with other “illegals.” We don’t need a dagger in our back as we face the Enemy Without.
But even if we pack these traitors in our midst off to Florida, we may not have much of a chance if Number 47 decides to rip-up NATO, ignore all norms of civilized behaviour, and invade Canada. Given our relative sizes and military strengths, the surface outcome will be clear. But we will have access to another Enemy Within, and this one will be our asset and secret weapon: the Resistant 90% who will work towards liberating our country by stealth, aka The Resistance. And this goes beyond slogans of “Buy Canadian” and winning a Four Nations Hockey Final, to guerilla warfare.
There have been so many resistance movements in every major conflict around the world that Wikipedia has lists of these movements by each war dating back to the first century BC. And in most cases, if their motives were honorable and their cause gathered strength, the resistance prevailed, because they had time on their side, and the most at stake. Alas, that may be the only option open to us if the teetering stock market and 47’s sinking popularity rankings don’t rein him in. Guerilla warfare is something America has always lost, be it in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq (or even in Canada back in 1812). I pray it does not come to that, because the cost will be huge on both sides. But when the ideals that brought many of us to Canada – freedom, opportunity, acceptance, tolerance, justice, and peace – are at risk, then it is time to pick up arms with time-worn hands and blend into the undergrowth, and keep those upturned elbows out of sight.
Of course, “51st state” could end up being only an uber-negotiating ploy, and Canada could make concessions on dairy, lumber, steel, electricity, autos (on whatever else you need, Don), and peace may prevail until the greedy beast returns for more. But negotiations won’t be the same because trust, all around the world, has been broken. Why? Because you can’t trust a trading partner who plays “win-lose.” Because the rest of America, the ones we love and who claim to love us, did not say boo while all this was going down. Because the Brits and Europeans and Latin Americans and Asians and Australians did not say boo either – they remained on the sidelines and let us battle this behemoth alone, hoping to be spared for good behaviour. And they weren’t spared when the steel and aluminum tariffs came down globally. It will take years to heal these rifts, and it proves that when cut to the chase, Canada is on its own, like every other small and middle power is, no matter how many international groupings we join. Self-interest rules the day.
As for America, its role in the world has changed irretrievably. Its hallowed Constitution was designed for a leader who walked in the footsteps of the founding Puritan fathers – a tenacious but honorable human being. But honour has now morphed into “might is right.” In the post-WWII New World Order, America’s role was that of leader, custodian, and supporter of the free world in all the international institutions it formed (UN, NATO, WHO, World Bank et al), in return for a seat at the head table of all these organizations, with access to set up military bases overseas to protect its interests and effect subtle regime changes to further those interests while the rest of us turned a blind eye, to get preferred merchant status in trade, and become the issuer of the de-facto global currency with it’s accompanying benefits. And in six weeks, in as quick a time as it took Hitler to dismantle the Weimar Republic, that role is now toast.
And as for the man who started it all, a man who is great at “breaking,” yet does not have an alternate plan for “making” (other than for a cheesy baseball cap that says “Make America Great Again”), but who only holds “the concept of a plan,” America needs to take a hard look at him and ask themselves whether he is their saviour, or their Enemy Within.
As for the travelogue I planned to write, that is for another day, when all this is behind us, if it ever goes away.
(Thanks to Maxime Doré – Unsplash for the photo)
