The American Circus Act Risks Canada
Trump and Poilievre is not good for our autonomy
For Canadians, Trump’s probable return to office isn’t a mere circus act for us to watch from the bleachers. Monday, a state Senator introducing Trump’s VP pick JD Vance, stated “it’s going to take a civil war to save the country” if they don’t win this fall’s election. Coupled with an intelligent, capable, and completely disingenuous Pierre Poilievre, the threat to our sovereignty is tangible.
Trump’s rambling 90 minute long convention speech this past weekend, transcribed and posted by the New York Times, was billed as a unity speech. The Weekly Sift writer Doug Muder watched the whole thing so you don’t have to, and has this assessment:
I think the mainstream media completely missed his point. They saw two speeches: the call for national unity that they predicted and wanted to see, followed by Trump’s usual divisive rhetoric. I saw one speech: It was all about unity, but not the kind of unity the media had imagined. Throughout, Trump was calling for his enemies to surrender to his domination. Then we can be one unified nation, he promised, and stop wasting our energies fighting each other.
The Germans have a word for that kind of unity: gleichschaltung, which is pretty much untranslatable. It’s an old engineering term, but they coined its political usage in the 1930s, for some reason.
It’s an important insight. Trump is not asking for the United States to come together to be a united people per se, he wants them to abandon all other ideas and candidates and consolidate around him. He sees himself as greater than the country he seeks to lead.
The bizarre spectacle of Trump supporters — who largely refused to wear masks during Covid — sporting fake bandages on their right ears in solidarity with their idol’s wound speaks to his cult rather than philosophical following.
It is not clear that most of his followers have any idea what he actually stands for beyond ‘owning the libtards’ and whatnot. But it doesn’t take much to figure it out. I’ve already warned of the Heritage Foundation document known as Project 2025. Since then, James David Vance’s selection as Trump’s Vice Presidential candidate has only confirmed the authenticity of this agenda. Refer to this introduction to the Heritage Foundation’s annual report called the Index of Culture and Opportunity by JD Vance himself, posted on their website in 2017.
Biden stepping down as the Democratic candidate following the Republican convention this week, and less than two weeks after saying that leaving was out of the question, was a much-needed boost to the Democrats, at least in theory. It is late in the game to be changing candidates; Biden should have never been running for re-election in the first place.
Vice President Kamala Harris as the new heir apparent to the Democratic ticket has an early polling lead, but will only make a real difference if she does not follow the mistakes her party has consistently made of embracing and defending the status quo, a status quo that no longer works for the common people and is the basis of the support of the increasingly far right. Who she picks as her own Vice Presidential running mate will tell us all a great deal of how seriously she understands the challenges, and where her values truly lie.
Back, then, to Canada.
Trudeau, I suspect, is anticipating a Trump win south of the border, and intends to use it to galvanise Canada by warning of the scenario I am warning of here. However, like Biden, he is no longer the right messenger. Trudeau, even moreso than Biden, has come to represent the status quo and people simply want a change. Ignatieffing former Banks of Canada and England governor Mark Carney isn’t the change people are looking for, either, although corporate Canada is, worryingly, excited by the idea.
Neither Trudeau nor Biden understand that Trump is not the problem, but rather his popularity is the response to the problem.
Pierre Poilievre, on the other hand, completely understands the malaise in the public with a status quo that does not work for the average person, and it is putting him on the path to his own apparent ascension to the Canadian throne.
The Conservatives are celebrating the close personal friendship of Vance and newly elected Conservative MP Jamil Jivani. On its own, it’s an interesting footnote. But Poilievre and his party have been courting the Republican Party and cross-pollinating their teams for several years. We saw it out in the open during the convoy rebellion in Ottawa in the spring of 2021.
My concern is that Trump’s gleichschaltung will be applied to Canada, with our leaders being brought to heel behind his totalitarian aspirations. Poilievre, understanding the masses and with an ideological ally rambling his way back into the White House, is already falling in line.
It is not hard from there to imagine Poilievre turning over Canada’s autonomy to Trump in a peaceful de facto absorption of Canada into greater America in what is reflective of another German term from the 1930s: Anschluss.