When a child is having a tantrum, often the best thing to do is wait him out. Eventually, after enough screaming, he will probably puke and then fall asleep. There will be a bit of cleaning up to do, but then you’ll be able to get on with your day.
The world’s biggest baby’s latest tantrum has him renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, and his doting uncle Google has acquiesced, displaying the name change to Maps users everywhere except Canada.
The president’s tantrum once again belies what little thinking goes on in his head. For him, it is all about symbolism, image, and the bully’s need to win. Renaming Lake Ontario, to the extent that one can rename something whose name was established by a treaty signed between the United Staets and the Seneca by none other than George Washington, is the same kind of offensively weird and generally pointless symbolism as when he attempted to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of, well, America. You have to accept that his vocabulary is limited. My three year old’s is, too.
There is no longer any advantage or reason to play nice with the American administration, if there ever had been. As has been discussed quite a bit, Trump’s objective is to annex Canada, seize our assets and resources, and have the symbolism of one really big beautiful country.
Two can play the distraction game, though.
The United States has an embassy and seven consulates in Canada.
Their addresses are:
U.S. Embassy, 490 Sussex Drive Ottawa, Ontario K1N 1G8
1075 West Pender Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6E 2M6
615 Macleod Trail SE, Rocky Mountain Plaza Building, Calgary, AB T2G 4T8
201 Portage Avenue, Suite 860 Winnipeg, MB, R3B 3K6
360 University Avenue Toronto, Ontario M5G 1S4
1134 Sainte-Catherine Street West Montréal, Québec H3B 1H4
2, rue de la Terrasse-Dufferin Quebec, Quebec G1R 4T9
1973 Upper Water Street Halifax, NS B3J 0A9
Unlike the president, the municipalities involved do have the ability to authoritatively change the names of the streets on which those embassies exist, even just for one block. I would recommend names such as Harriet Tubman, Levi Coffin, Laura Secord, or Tecumseh. These consular addresses should appropriately recognise, say, the underground railroad or the last American attack on Canada, and then let Trump explain why he is opposed to them.
Most municipalities have or share what we politely call the local “eco centre” but mostly we refer to them as “the dump.” There is no standardised naming convention for these, but I would encourage every municipality in Canada to refer to the road leading to theirs as “Trump Way.”
While Google Maps honours Trump by listing “Lake America” and the “Gulf of America,” let them also show that, in Canada, Trump Way always leads to a pile of trash.
It is hard to be serious in these ridiculous times, but what is happening is as serious as it gets.
Trump is waging a hot war in the middle east and a trade war with his allies to hide the fact that he has yet to release the entirety of the Epstein Files, as required by an act of congress most of a year ago. He is distracting from the billions he is grafting from the abuse of the power of his office. He is rounding up residents by the thousands for concentration camps and deportations while turning the country into a corporatist police state. He is doing everything possible for himself, while doing nothing to govern his country for the benefit of his people.
Meanwhile, China is rising as a — and likely soon to be the — global superpower, Canada is imagining a post-American world into reality, Europe is more united than at any time in recorded history, and the American people are too busy trying to pay rent on $7.25 an hour to have any idea what is happening to them.
At this point, we have to accept that this is the America Americans want. They put this lunatic back in office after having already experienced him. They’re allowing him to destroy their country with impunity, vainly relying on the function of institutions that he has already destroyed to save them, still deluding themselves that the mid-terms will reset their domestic and international clocks to 2016.
Distracting them with our own symbolism while we redirect Canada’s economic and political attention toward the rest of the world seems like the safest course of action. The Americans are destroying themselves and do not need anyone’s help, but there is no great advantage to letting them see that we have moved on. Rename a few key streets in front of US consulates and they won’t notice far less significant events like our conversations with China or the acquisition of Swedish combat aircraft.
Why not? What’s left of our relationship with the United States is well down Trump Way regardless, and that road is always a dead end.