Canadians rallying at Parliament Hill in Ottawa (NBC)
EA-UK in a Changing Europe Podcast: Will Trump 2.0 Break the US System?
I joined Times Radio’s Maddie Hale on Friday for a 43-minute VideoCast on Donald Trump’s latest threats — and how some people are pushing back.
We set out the reality about Trump’s attempted demolition of the US Department of Education, the maneuvers around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Canada’s response to Trump’s effort to make it the “51st state”.
I think it would be a strange irony to see Trump’s ambition resulting in changes within American social and political culture that the US political class and corporate elite detest. Can you imagine more Americans changing their viewpoint on their pay-or-die health care system? How would the political class respond to a growing consensus among the general public, that health care is a fundamental human right? I don’t think Trump is contemplating the long-term consequences.
Even if Canada were to join the US, would making it the 51st state be possible? Canada consists of ten provinces. I think the likely scenario would be the ten provinces joining the US as states; and a few of them might split into two. If half of those provinces were to split, that would would result in 30 seats added to the Senate. The Canadian influence on federal and state policymaking would be significant, especially when you consider the French Catholic element entering the US national public discourse. Policy decisions concerning health care, education, and labour laws, paid vs unpaid maternity leave, etc. would challenge the value systems and beliefs that Americans espouse. That kind of blowback might bring about buyers’ remorse among conservative and libertarian Republicans. Trump is talking about annexing a social-democratic state that has many things in common with its motherland (Britain) and continental Europe and re-making it in America’s own image.
I recently came across an article written by an American woman who married a Canadian man and emigrated to Canada. One of the words she used to describe Canadian society was “collectivist”. She used this world to express the appreciation she had for the social solidarity practiced among the Canadians in her community. Well, the American readers branded her a “socialist” and “Marxist” in the comments section.
If a third party was the complete a competency audit of all the people Trump has hired, the only person who has been competent to do the job they were hired for was Stormy Daniels. Just saying.