Um canadense indignado: Andrew Coyne (Toronto and Globe Mail)

 Article carried by Andrew Coyne of the Toronto Globe and Mail

"In the end, nothing really matters. Nor the probable dementia, unfathomable ignorance, emotional incontinence; nor, certainly, the unruly hate-filled campaign, nor the ridiculously unapplicable anti-politics.

The candidate on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the convicted rapist and serial sexual predator, the usual banker, Vladimir Putin's slum, the man who tried to overturn the result of the last elections and his whole series of thugs, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all of this and said yes please.

There is no sense in underestimating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetime. The United States government has been entrusted to a gangster whose only goal by showing up, other than avoiding jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage that Donald Trump and his nihilist accomplices can do — to America, but also to his democratic allies and to world peace and security — is incalculable. We are living in the age of Nero.

The first six months will be a period of maximum danger. NATO must, from this moment on, be considered effectively obsolete, without the assurance of American security that has always been its cornerstone. We could see further incursions from Russia into Europe - the poor Ukrainians are probably finished, but now it's the Baltics and the Poles who have to worry - before Europeans have time to plan an alternative. China could also step up its Taiwanese ambitions.

At home, Mr. Trump will be eager to consolidate his power. Part of this will be institutional - the replacement of tens of thousands of career officials with Trumpist loyalists. But another part will be.... atmospheric.

At some point, someone — a company whose CEO disliked it, a media critic who has annoyed it — will find themselves under the Trump administration’s undesirable attention. It might not be as brutal as a police arrest. It could just be a small regulatory question, a fiscal audit, something like that. They will seek protection of the courts and find out there is none.

Judges are also Trump loyalists, maybe, or too scared to confront him. Or they could make a decision and find it has no effect - which the administration has called the fundamental bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in a crisis, those in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments, the courts, as everything else. the world. So everyone will follow their example. Leaders will line up to court Trump. Big media organizations, anyway, those that count, will find reason to be optimistic.

Of course, in reality, things will start falling apart pretty fast. The massive tariffs he imposes will sink the world economy. Massive deficits, fuelled by his badly-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will trigger a new round of inflation.

But above all else, the mindless project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of concentration camps across the country, likely for years, before deporting them – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.

We shouldn't count on the majority of Americans to regain their common sense. They were not able to see Mr. Trump as he was before: why would that change? Wouldn't they, on the contrary, be even more brutally trained to see their neighbors taken away by the police, or the military, more determined to do "hard things" to "restore order"?

Of course some won’t. But they will eventually discover that the Democratic levers they once could have acted to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been changed: there are some obstacles, some disadvantages if you're not on the side of power. Trying to change things on the inside will seem easier at first. Then it will be easier not to change anything.

This will all unfold on Canada in many ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees flee camps; others less so, like the brutalization of our own politics, the degradation of morals and standards by politicians who have discovered there is no way. political price to pay for this. And who will benefit from their boss's support in Washington.

All my life, I have been a fan of the United States and its people. But I'm scared of them now, and I'm even more scared of them. "

Andrew Coyne

P.S. - And to all who shared this, thank you, keep spreading the message.