> First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.
Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago.
The great irony with the current political climate is that America has truly been first for many decades, leading the world order to tremendous financial, military and material success. But nothing lasts forever.
We won’t know for many years if this moment represents America’s true descent into a has-been empire, but the message from our closest allies is very clear: world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it.
What i find fascinating is that, if we hold that Trump being elected twice was because of frustration and rage against society, this is the way they are now when the US is literally the most dominant country in the world. Can you imagine the rage, if the US actually saw real decline. Christ
America has already been living in a decline of living standards relative to Europe for many decades.
EU vs US Comparison
Life expectancy
EU: 82 yrs
US: 78 yrs
Infant mortality (per 1,000)
EU: 3.3
US: 5.6
Poverty rate (below 50% of median income)
EU: 15%
US: 18%
Public debt
EU: 81% of GDP
US: 120% of GDP
Top 1% wealth share
EU: ~25%
US: 40%
Student debt
EU: ~€0
US: $40k
Homicides (per 100k)
EU: 2
US: 5
Prison population (per 100k)
EU: 111
US: 531
Women in workforce
EU: 71%
US: 57%
Workplace deaths (per 100k)
EU: 1.63
US: 3.5
Source: OECD, Eurostat, CDC
All of those are true, yet the US's (PPP-adjusted) per capita GDP was over 37% higher than the EU's in 2024 [0], and GDP growth has significantly outpaced the EU for years. Basically, whenever there was a choice between anything and economic growth, the US chose growth. Other places made different choices. You can argue about which choices were better, and how the results are distributed, but the difference in salaries for most people using this site are even more stark.
Most of their numbers were about the quality of life. It's absolutely absurd to say,
> Well you're twice as likely to be killed, more likely to be sick and obese, will die earlier, are more likely to be in poverty under a tech baron, have a poisoned ecosystem, your babies or wife may die or your kids die in school, or they'll go in insane debt to go to their higher education, and if you're not a white man you're basically less human and risk becoming a part of the permanent ~~slave~~ criminal caste... But think of the moderately higher salary potential!!!!
>
> You know, as long as the economy grows forever and nobody calls any of your debts.
[deleted]
Yup, the worst and most dangerous time is yet to come. This is the country that has the worlds second largest nuclear arsenal. The biggest military logistics infrastructure on the planet and shown a constant willingness to use any force necessary to bend other people to their will.
One hopes, if it gets that far, somebody in the military will finally defy orders, and although the US has its first coup d'etat, the rule of law can return.
I still remember some redditor saying what happened in Nazi Germany couldn't happen in the US because of patriotism. Oh how smug I'd be to ask him "how did that work out?". Hopefully the military doesn't lock step into Armageddon, but "hope" is doing a lot of work there.
I hope so, too. But rule of law and democracy at it's core are cultural achievements - enough people must want it and believe in it. I feel like people start to forget why we have them in place.
ICE aka executive overstepping is a good example. Police actions are highly regulated for good reasons, it won't only affect "the right people".
From what I have heard, a lot of people who voted for Trump don't like the extend of ICE's actions. Even Joe Rogan spoke out. So maybe there's hope.
Europe is fighting the very same battle btw. it just has not manifested that obvious everywhere yet. I fear for Germany falling into the hands of fascists once again in the next years, though.
The US is considered to be a flawed democracy for about 10 years now[1]. Europe, especially the powerful west, has the most healthy democracies.
It's absolutely not a given that the European democracies will survive, people here need to step up in strengthening it against illiberal forces as well, but it's in a much better starting position.
Example: in the Netherlands there was a government with an illiberal far right party (Wilder's PVV). They didn't achieve much, but there was a year of stagnation and the far right talking points have become even more normalized. Other democratic institutions, like judges had to be more on the defense. However, nothing fundamental is broken.
I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it.
The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people and
The jobs market being brutal to graduates.
Things are not so great at the moment.
> I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it.
People talk about "worse prospects" all the time. It irks me: you know nothing what your "prospects" are. That's why they're prospects!
> The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people
The housing is still there. All those old people are gonna die. Who do you think will get the housing?
i think they'll be lots of kids out there banking on inheritance who will find themselves surprised by how much aged and end of life care cost soon
In the middle of it right now with a grandparent. $5000 - $8000 month and you might still find them frozen to death out in the snow if the staff drops the ball in the middle of the night.
The housing is a house, but it's also a financial vehicle to wealth accumulation. Younger generations have been shut out of that wealth. When the old people are dead can we be so sure the wealth enrichment mechanisms will be left standing?
We know for a fact it won't. Care systems and demograph-targeting machines (sunsetter vacations, scams, etc) are siphoning every drop of wealth from the elderly.
> What would you consider real decline?
Honestly? When America nukes someone or itself. Empires decline slowly then suddenly, and that final bit tends to involve a tantrum. The only exception is when they’re conquered.
It’s actually the opposite. It’s not about raging regarding the decline. It’s about many things going well and raging against prosperity for things they don’t agree with. They want to destroy America because it feels good, not because it makes sense.
I think you misunderstand where the rage is coming from.
If all their countrymen were equally down on their luck, then there would be no rage. Instead, it's the result of one group of people that used to enjoy success watching it all fall apart while different people just do better and better.
Exploding inequality simultaneous with DEI obsession was a perfect storm of radicalization. The only thing that's really surprising is that "smart" people didn't see it coming.
A CEO, a blue-collar worker, and an immigrant sit down together at a table upon which there is a plate of a dozen cookies. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, then whispers in the ear of the blue-collar worker "Hey, I think he wants your cookie."
> simultaneous with DEI obsession
there is a group obsessed with DEI, it's true. It's the MAGA folk
>If all their countrymen were equally down on their luck, then there would be no rage. Instead, it's the result of one group of people that used to enjoy success watching it all fall apart while different people just do better and better.
Sure, but hasn't that been the case the world over, or at least for developing economies? This isn't terribly unique to the US.
Most "smart" people could see this coming but as always the question is when? Just have to go back a small ways to the last heydays of communism and inequality was the stick to beat capitalism with.
The issue now is that if there is successful destabilisation of world economies in the way this could currently play out, if some brinkmanship isnt pulled back, you're left with a situation where the group of people who have already seen it fall apart realise it can fall apart even more for them, and the other group also see it start to fall apart.
All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage
"Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever?" - Joseph Heller, Catch-22
> Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed
Now count the centuries those cultures existed and exercised hegemony.
The dark thought is this: we may be at the crossroads for containing an imperial America. Because if America commits to global empire it will take WWIII to contain it.
Right, I mean the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned. That doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years.
> the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned
The Roman Republic was a rising power for centuries. It became the eminent Mediterranean power in 146 BCE and annexed Gaul under Caesar, right as it was collapsing. The Roman Empire then lasted for centuries more.
> doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years
Or America trying for that future. That’s WWIII.
Nuclear annihilation will go restrain growth outside of obvious geographic spheres in theory.
Industry was not globalized in the previous regimes of pre-World war imperialism. That is the novel difference now. And China requires globalized trade in order to support its overindustrialization and economy.
America also currently requires it because it doesn't have its industrial base anymore. It will probably re-industrialize over the next coming decades but that's something that happens over decades.
However, I feel the new rise of imperialism also marks the end of civilization's historical memory of industrial warfare of the world wars.
And that is a very very bad thing
> Nuclear annihilation will go restrain growth outside of obvious geographic spheres in theory
Russia has been itching to use tactical nukes. If America makes two, that’s the future.
This has happened 7 times before.
The last was Amsterdam.
My question is, why? This has been obvious to me over the past decade, and I just got into the financial world on the ground floor 2015-ish. Every damn trade agreement has in one way or another been projecting U.S. soft power through financial integration.
>world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it.
I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed.
This is merely Carney calling a spade, a spade.
A loss of the popular vote, followed by a near toss-up, was hardly a clear message. Roughly half of us didn't intend to send that message, and if polls are an indicator, even fewer now.
I'm mad about the election and what it seems to say about us, but I still haven't completely lost faith in the American people.
Let me be clear; the rest of the world no longer trusts your type of American to fix your country. After Trump 1, maybe. Trump 2, that's it. We'll start to untangle our commitments to you and look elsewhere.
What was my type of American supposed to have done? This is a sincere question, since I'm racking my brain over it. People debate this with one another constantly. We may have more common cause with you than it might seem on the surface.
Also, what commitments? Since this is a tech centric forum, the easy guess would be breaking the dominance of the US tech industry. I'm a cheerleader for that effort.
Nothing. American empire isn't yours to control - people can hate what America is doing without recommending any personal change to your involvement in it.
That's fair, but I'm open to change. In fact, coincidentally, my wife and I were talking about it tonight. We feel frustrated that we might not have done enough.
> ... By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message
That's how you read it. But the Trump election was americans sending other americans a clear an unambiguous message.
The other piece though is they sent an unintentional message to the rest of the world that American political system is hijackable in a way they ought to be concerned about.
Not American here. Reading your guys replies it almost feels like you are rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance. Doesn’t this enforce their argument and created this situation in th first place?
> rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance
I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.
I am unsurprised about the 2024 election and it's exactly what you'd imagine from a purely economic perspective.
The 2016 election, however, has been studied extensively, and it's clear that several aberrations (large contingent of Republican candidates, the first black president, Facebook, Comey) tipped things in a way that you wouldn't expect if voters are acting rationally.
So as someone who genuinely wishes to understand how people think about things, I don't know what's going on here. I can't tell what new lie will be pushed next week to distract us from the recently-disproven lie of last week. Were I outside all of this, I would have very little hope.
(edit: re sibling poster, Trump is not a representative of the median voter but instead a representative of the median electoral college elector. We can't have it both ways, rejecting the popular vote and then failing to acknowledge that our politics represent the electors and not the man on the street)
> I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.
same can be said about people on the opposite side.
> same can be said about people on the opposite side.
This is not true - the things that traditional Democrats supported in 1992 are largely the same things supported now.
The point is not the echo chamber. The point is that the echo chamber has changed the party orthodoxy.
> invalidating their stance
This is perhaps true to an extent. But what is also true to an unprecedented extent for Americans is that this 'stance' is almost pure demagoguery. For many, there is no 'stance', their 'stance' is Trump, whether he hews close to a principle or completely contradicts it.
Correct.
Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter. Progressive anericans refuse to accept that.
Why they won’t accept that is anyone’s guess.
"median American voter" implies a distribution of views like a normal distribution, with a lot of people in the middle and a few people on extremes. If that is the distribution, then the median is representative of most people. I am not sure that is really a great way of thinking about American voters these days. It seems to me that American's views on many issues are tending to cluster around extremes, with fewer people in the middle. So I am not sure the median is as meaningful.
Median does not assume anything about the distribution which is precisely why I use it. Median allows for us to count max total of one category because the variances are so small. Hence why medians can actually demonstrate the underlying distribution instead of commingling amplitude like the mean.
In this case it’s “American Voter” as the category. This is what messes most people up, because they read “American Citizen” but I’m describing only the subset of citizens who successfully vote.
Using that number you’ll see what the demographics demonstrate: there are not as many progressive voters as there are “conservative” voters and only 2/3 of eligible voters even cared to vote.
If you zoom out even further and you evaluate which candidates run, then it really does not matter who is voting or not because ultimately who is on the ballot is dictated by a small group of party leaders, who in turn are dictated by whomever has the most money for ad spending.
The median American voter voted for Obama, and then Trump, and then Biden, and then Trump. They are angry about inflation, hate billionaires, don't want to start a war, and don't know who pays tariffs.
Basically, the median American voter does not have a coherent position. It's futile trying to build a narrative around them.
Were Biden and Obama accurate representations of the median American when they won? Isn’t that a contradiction?
No, but they they were somewhat accurate representations of the median American voter (note here VOTER is the key) - less so than Trump, given what he’s been able to get away with.
> Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter
On foreign policy? Probably not.
Like, Biden wasn’t an accurate representation of the median American voter on e.g. transgender kids in school sports. That wasn’t just right-wing delusion.
My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been.
I have to say as an “other American” I’m still having a lot of trouble reading the supposedly unambiguous message. Was it “Hold my beer?”
The first message is “don’t open the border.” People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. If there weren’t videos of thousands of people streaming across the border every day during Biden’s presidency, we wouldn’t be dealing with Trump 2.0 today.
Second, don’t announce to the world you’re limiting your VP search to Black women, or any other Constitution-violating hiring criteria. Americans are tired of identity politics. And you’ve done a disservice to your running mate because they’ll be labeled as a “DEI hire” instead of the best person for the job.
Third, don’t nominate an idiot as your running mate.
Fourth, don’t force the idiot running mate on the world as a presidential candidate because you hid the president’s cognitive decline until the last possible moment in a humiliating live TV debate.
I could go on, but you probably get the message.
Well, thanks for explaining. That sure was a super expensive message to send, for all of us. And quite an astonishingly reckless way to send it.
Your actions have consequences. But who could have seen that coming?
If Trump only hires people best for the job, why am I only seeing old white men next to him 99% of the time? Are they the best of the best?
Who said Trump hires the best people for the job? That’s not what I said.
The message sent, perhaps more accurately, was that the USofA electorate fully bought into the Trump / Project 2025 framing of the "problems" facing the USofA.
eg:
> People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else.
And yet recently prior administrations famously did enforce contempory border protections and prioritised chasing down people with actual criminal records.
Past administrations, eg. the Republican Eisenhower, have been in favour of open borders for the cheap labour and boost to the agricultural industry.
His often cited border enforcement operation was undertaken at the request of the Mexican government who were losing labor to US agribusiness.
All that aside, the USofA Democrat party has a messaging and PR problem of epic proportions and the USofA has spiralled into a two party Hotelling's Law cesspit despite the founders largely disliking party politics - a fundemental flaw in the forward iteration of an "adequate for now" electoral system centuries old.
Sure, recent past administrations enforced border protections and prioritized deporting immigrants with criminal records. And that’s irrelevant.
The Biden administration did neither. They took active measures to strip the Customs and Border Protection Agency of its scope and authority through executive order from their first day in office. Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
This wasn’t policy they campaigned on or announced. It wasn’t something the American people wanted, and it polled terribly even among Democrats. But they did it anyway.
Conversely, Trump had the voter’s mandate to secure the border when he entered office, but he’s managed it so poorly, created terrible optics, and has Democrats marching in the streets in every major U.S. city in support of illegal immigration. The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
I'm not a partisan US voter.
> The Biden administration did neither.
This appears to be a partisan statement subject to data source and bias. eg:
The Biden administration took office amid heightened debate in some circles over the merits and tactics of deportations, yet it is on track to carry out as many removals and returns as the Trump administration did.
The 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2021 through February 2024 (the most recent data available) are on pace to match the 1.5 million deportations carried out during the four years President Donald Trump was in office. These deportations are in addition to the 3 million expulsions of migrants crossing the border irregularly that occurred under the pandemic-era Title 42 order between March 2020 and May 2023—the vast majority of which occurred under the Biden administration.
Combining deportations with expulsions and other actions to block migrants without permission to enter the United States, the Biden administration’s nearly 4.4 million repatriations are already more than any single presidential term since the George W. Bush administration (5 million in its second term).
> Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
Their policies or global events? Either way the sheer number of recorded border ecounters speaks to them being out and about and actively encountering people on the border ... when thought about, that's hardly a bad thing - it sounds more as if they were getting the job done.
To be clear, I have zero interest in debating this aside from noting it's hardly clearcut.
> The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
They are indeed superlative propagandadists, on this we can agree ...
they are, however, in a view from afar, falling well short of actually making middle North America great again, gutting essential infrastructure maintainance, etc. etc.
But few will ever know given they've also gutted many of the means of tracking the state of the country, the state of the environment, the activities of their administration.
[flagged]
You're glossing over January 6. There are few things more damning of the American electorate than their willingness to vote for a man who tried to use a coup to stay in power. The rest of the world sees it. And they'd be stupid to trust that Americans wouldn't do something so stupid again.
You could make a case that January 6th was a catastrophe.
But a Trump-led coup? That’s quite a reach. I’m sure Trump got a thrill from the show of support. But I don’t believe even Trump thought those protestors could stage a successful a coup and overthrow the U.S. government. It’s fantasy.
The way Trump thinks the world works, why the hell not? He thinks the government of Norway is the one who decides who gets the Nobel Peace Prize... He thinks he ended 8 wars (ok this might be him talking out of his ass, as usual, but do we know that for sure?)
> Both were bad options. Few expected a Trump administration would simultaneously be this unhinged and impactful this time around
He led an insurrection against our Constitution. He went along with folks who legitimately aimed to murder Senators.
Venezuela voted for Chavez. Gaza for Hamas. America for Trump.
“He led an insurrection against our Constitution” is extremely hyperbolic.
> Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed
The Electoral College is a Constitutional body. The Vice President, in his electoral duties, a Constitutional officer. These are limited roles with specific aims and they were directly, explicitly and violently attacked. The men who called for hanging the Vice President never repented and were pardoned.
[deleted]
The fact that Trump was even allowed to run for another election is the clearest sign that he has not and likely never will be held to account for his flagrant disregard for Democracy.
> The Trump fake electors plot was an attempt by U.S. president Donald Trump and associates to have him remain in power after losing the 2020 United States presidential election. After the results of the election determined Trump had lost, he, his associates, and Republican Party officials in seven battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin[1] – devised a scheme to submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment to falsely claim Trump had won the Electoral College vote in crucial states. The plot was one of Trump and his associates' attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
I normally disagree with `JumpCrissCross but he’s right on calling it an insurrection.
And I am not referring to the assault on the capitol, I am referring to the false slates of electors.
You are delusional if you think January 6th was not an insurrection. Anyone who willingly denies the reality of what happened that day is nothing more than a traitor to this country.
Trump organized riled up a mob that called for his own vice president to be hanged for certifying his own legitimate election loss.
His own campaign was involved with groups that led the breach of the Capitol, resulting in the death of many police officers, where the insurrectionists got within mere feet of our legally elected officials.
He called the Secretary of State in Georgia telling him needed to "find votes" so that he could claim he won.
Donald Trump tried to destroy American democracy with a violent mob that day. Denying the legitimate voice and vote of tens of millions of people for his own sick gain.
He is destroying democracy again, but you cannot deny January 6th was his doing.
> Anyone who willingly denies the reality of what happened that day is nothing more than a traitor to this country
No they’re not.
They most certainly are.
> They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed.
Let's be honest, Europeans haven't valued their "friendship" with America since the end of the cold war.
Europeans volunteered troops in Afghanistan to help America fight Al-Quaida. When America was not right about invading Iraq, European nations tried to help America to see the truth. When America took on Libyan dictator Kadhafi European nations provided some air support.
Europe helped America when they could and when they thought it was the right thing to do.
That's certainly Trump's claim, along with the Norway/Denmark joint government issuing Nobel prizes.
Do you feel Europeans have a better friendship with Canada for example? I mean before Trump was elected of course.
[dead]
> Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago
America (and China) a decade ago were still trying to make the (or at least a) rules-based international order work. Not perfectly. (China annexed Tibet. America invaded Iraq.) But there were many times sacrifices in self interest were made for the sake of alliances and international law.
Today, that is gone. None of the great or regional powers are playing by those rules. Outside Europe, nobody even pays them lip service.
We didn’t hear such language a decade ago because it wasn’t yet true, and it wasn’t necessary—that was the point of the rules-based institutions. You could adjudicate differences through them instead of calling for new systems of military alliances.
[deleted][deleted]
> Carney said Canada must be "principled and pragmatic" and turn inward to build up the country and diversify trading relationships to become less reliant on countries like the U.S., now that it's clear "integration" can lead to "subordination."
They surely needed some decades to underestand this.
Much quicker than the Europeans, though.
> "great powers" are using economic integration as "weapons."
This is so true and I think economic sanctions should be recognized as the weapons they actually are.
Just a taste:
No Amazon, No Gmail: Trump Sanctions Upend the Lives of I.C.C. Judges
President Trump’s retaliation against top officials at the International Criminal Court has shut them out of American services and made even routine daily tasks a challenge.
https://archive.is/KflDP
Now consider the US has been doing this to entire countries for decades. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran. Forget Amazon, the inability to use the SWIFT banking system has all sorts of nasty consequences that get elided by a clinical sounding term.
From the Lancet:
Our findings showed a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. We found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas we found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions. Mortality effects ranged from 8·4 log points (95% CI 3·9–13·0) for children younger than 5 years to 2·4 log points (0·9–4·0) for individuals aged 60–80 years. We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
> economic sanctions should be recognized as the weapons they actually are
You don’t need a study to conclude the mortality of actual weapons.
Sanctions are bad. But war is horrible.
Did you skip right over the Lancet sentence that concluded the annual toll caused by unilateral sanctions (over 564k) is comparable to armed conflict?
> the annual toll caused by unilateral sanctions (over 564k) is comparable to armed conflict?
In aggregate. America isn’t in armed conflict with those folks. If everyone we sanctioned were attacked, more people would die.
I am saying that sanctions are weapon of sorts and have worse effects than people realize, and you seem to be saying their effects are not as bad as those of kinetic weapons. Despite Lancet concluding their tolls are comparable.
What are the economic death tolls of wars? It seems like those should be included.
Moreover, it's kind of consequentialist morality ignores the distinction of active harm versus failure to Aid.
This should play a role when one considers something an attack or weapon.
Is less than maximal charity an attack?
Is it an attack when someone refuses to sleep with someone else?
Norms around choice versus entitlement distinguish the two.
If economic sanctions aren’t weapons, then why do sovereign nations deploy them against other sovereign nations to achieve their will?
Yup, the middle powers have to organize and work together to avoid being chum. The economic power is there, and they can shift from purchasing US weaponry (thus paying US workers) into purchasing middle-power weaponry (thus paying middle-power workers). Car/truck plants can be repurposed, and if Ukraine's lesson is valid then smaller, portable weaponry is now the preferred solution. Cheaper, and the middle powers don't have huge investments in tanks and ships.
All well meaning and good and all that, thank you Canadians.
.
.
but...
Invoking Thucydides's "and the weak suffer what they must" at a time when weak-on-strong warfare has fundamentally changed, in a fluid still-small world where for example:
-Some russian goons can poison someone on a bench in England.
-Some north korean hireling lady can poison someone in any airport.
-Some radicalized youths will go on rampages using easily-accessible assault weapons.
-So many systems that "strong" societies depend on are so so fragile and running close to many edges.
-Lethal FPVs are cheap cheap.
...is I think falling into the trap of adopting the mindset of the loudest man in the room (initials DJT) who's thinking in early 20th century terms, instead of looking at the world and conflict the way they really are.
The Theucydides quote Carney leads with, of course, recently rolled off the tongue of the white house deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. The days of might making right are, apparently, back.
Just in case anyone thought the genie could be stuffed back into the bottle once Trump is gone, Carney goes on to state that the rules-based world order we've been living under since WWII is somewhat of a sham. The rules have not been applied equally. Some nations, the powerful ones, have been given much more latitude to do what they want. Middle nations have gone along with this to avoid trouble.
The reward for avoiding trouble for so long is... big trouble (e.g. invasion threats for an ally of a big power and economic terrorism applied to its allies). So, why pretend the old system works to avoid trouble if the trouble lands on your doorstep anyways?
The answer seems obvious. Middle powers of the old rules-based order need to band together and put bigger powers in their place. It's not impossible. Just very, very difficult. France and Germany may be sticking up for Greenland, but where's Hungary (another EU member)? For this to work, you need everyone. Also, looking ahead, how would you prevent such an alliance of smaller powers, were it successful, from behaving like a bigger power?
Trump is currently showing off AI photos where he's meeting with world leaders in front of a map where both Greenland and Canada are a part of the U.S.[1]. As a Canadian, I think Carney gave a stirring speech here, but I suppose I'm biased given that he's our PM and his vision is one of the few things between us as being swallowed up by Trump's MAGA empire while the other big powers fall upon the respective apples of their eyes.
The fact we have a system that produced a Trump-like figure, and once in power, haven’t checked him internationally, shows the US will continue to be an unreliable partner.
We have kinds of political problems, and it’s not clear they’re going away post Trump.
Gerrymandering, money in politics, the electoral college, disproportional representation, failing checks and balances.
This isn't going to be solved in a decade, probably not even a couple of decades.
The funny thing is it’s all cultural. It’s not some intractable thing, the path to fixing all this has been available for a long time. It’s a well studied domain with practical solutions abound.
But enough of the US citizenry that I share the nation with seemingly can’t see beyond their own horizons. No matter how bad it is, there is still enough people who can’t possibly see the value of the government doing anything useful. Government is exclusively the enemy. And in turn those who seek to ransack the system do so under the guise of pushing back against so called “government overreach” (a deliberately vague term) and continue to give the general public the raw deal
All because the elites got too greedy and decided to destroy the only successful labor movement in America (the New Deal coalition) because they wanted more money.
> "Many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.
Sounds like an economic NATO (without the USA). It's good that other counties are waking up at last. Taking the hit now (and blaming it on Trump) will make them stronger on the long run.
Autonomy is the opposite of an alliance.
The idea that allied nations don't maintain strategic autonomy with respect to each other is very modern. Remember that Greenland is the second island dispute to divide NATO, after Cyprus in the 70s. The expectation for NATO to become one big happy family only really caught on in the 90s, and without a rules-based international order to prevent said allies from exploiting it the expectation won't last long.
> The idea that allied nations don't maintain strategic autonomy with respect to each other is very modern.
No it's not. The point of making an alliance is that you're not stuck with strategic autonomy. You can tell other people that if they mess with you, they're also messing with whoever you're allied with. If you were autonomous, that wouldn't be true.
Again, that's a very modern perspective. When Portugal faced colonial revolts in the 1960s and early 1970s, NATO didn't help at all, and some members including the United States actively hoped Portugal would lose and free their colonies. Nor did they help France in the Algerian War. (The terms of the NATO treaty anticipated these conflicts, formally excluding all territory outside of Europe and North America from collective defense obligations so there'd be no question that help wouldn't come.)
[deleted]
I highly recommend listening to the whole speech
The full video is at the top of this post's secondary (transcript) link, although that version doesn't translate his initial ~minute in French. If you want to skip to his (main) section in English: https://www.youtube.com/live/5UqQTqvhFRg?t=104s
One of those speeches that makes you feel like you're living in history^TM
Those are the worst times to be alive in. I'd rather have those speeches in the past, and live in uninteresting times.
Peter Zeihan has been predicting this for a decade which means there has been a lot of academics also predicting since he generally repackages academic work.
Really it isn't just a different order. Imo it is a reversion to imperialism with us eyeing Latin America, Russia Ukraine, China Taiwan.
I have said for many years that in the distant future, historians (those privileged by their patrons to claim the freedom of unfettered research), will read about the brief spasm in history, climaxing in the latter half of the 20th century, in which for half the globe, autocracy, dictatorship and absolute monarchy gave way to a system in which the proletariat believed they had (and amazingly in many circumstances actually had) the freedom to be, to think, to live, to flourish - largely as they wished! Those historians will wonder how this chaotic anarchy managed to not only survive, but momentarily flourish before the immense pressure of history brought about the reversal to the mean: the autocrats ruling, precious few flourishing at their feet, and the rest subsisting sullenly.
That's just history though, a paucity of human existence committed to script, nothing at all of, say, 70K years of libertarian utopia in post-Sahul, just the tantalising remnants of pre digital Instagram real silicon party posts.
> We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
> This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
An interesting observation I came across today:
> The genius of American foreign policy since 1941 was that it found a way to be both the single strongest state and the leader of the strongest coalition of states: power and legitimacy, together. That's the achievement Trump has jeopardized - and possibly permanently wrecked.
They would have gone right-wing in Carney's election if not for Trump meddling. He needs to get those cost of living issues fixed ASAP, probably starting with housing.
Canadian here: it has nothing to do with Trump, we just haven’t gone right-wing yet but are well on the way. It’s highly unlikely Carney will bring the country back from the economic collapse it’s going through because doling out speeches and doing staged photos is completely disconnected from having an actual forward-moving vision for a country, and that vision is something we haven’t heard and I doubt we will.
Everyone who has a chance to get out is getting out, and moving to US. The anti-US rhetoric is a false front in Canada - US money smells better and buys you a very comfortable life. Trump’s bullshit is a temporary blip in the grand scheme of things. “Elbows up” on your flight to Seattle.
Really? If I had to move to either, I would choose Canada 10 out of 10 times
Aren't all problems in Canada 5x worse in the US?
No, it’s bullshit posturing you read on the internet. Go talk to actual Canadians and ask them if they know anyone who has moved to the US. It’ll be eye-opening. I have many colleagues in-flight to get their paperwork sorted for US. Many have already gone.
“Money talks, bullshit walks” is all that needs to be said. Canadian salaries are half (if that) of US ones.
Go talk to actual Canadians. Lol. Only people that agree with you are Canadians now?
Everything I hear around me is people coming back from the US, they don’t feel safe with their family.
Oh, just saw you created your account an hour ago. Never mind then, just making shit up to troll.
> No, it’s bullshit posturing you read on the internet.
yeah, I don't believe you, random, anonymous, throwaway account on the Internet
Dude trump is NOT a temporary blip. His approval rating right now is slightly higher than it was at this point in his first term.
Last time it took a great depression to convince Americans to actually care about each other (socialism-lite), and I expect nothing less this time around.
the current world split starts to eerily look, while still far from it of course, like the 1939 split in Europe - totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler allied together against Europe's democratic countries. Here we have authoritarian leaning Trump starting to ally himself with totalitarian Putin and China against democratic countries by dividing the world in very similar way as Stalin and Hitler divided Europe between themselves.
> current world split starts to eerily look, while still far from it of course, like the 1939 split in Europe
I’m seeing the Sino-Soviet split.
Europe might have a unique opportunity to ally with China to pry it from Russia. America gets the Western Hemisphere. Eurasia contains itself.
> Here we have authoritarian leaning Trump starting to ally himself with totalitarian Putin and China against democratic countries
I haven't seen Trump allying himself with China. Any references?
It’s more looked like lavishing praise on their leader than allying himself with the country. There are some representative quotes here
Xi Jinping is probably gleeful, if he can manipulate that moron he'd have USA under his control. Putin already needs his support for Ukraine, add USA and he'd gain the title of the most powerful person on the planet.
But considering Trump is an uncontrollable toddler, I guess he knows that's a title he can never keep..
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what happened in WW2. The tl'dr is Hitler lost, fascism won.
Germany only became a national project in the 19th century. It was a collection of principalities before that. Unlike its neighbours, who were actual Great Powers at the time, it lacked colonial interests to exploit and get rich from. And then when oil became important in the early 20th century, Germany didn't have access to oil.
So Germany felt like it would get swallowed up by its neighbours at some point and sought to assert its dominance, throwing away the Bismarck order. When scores were settled, Germany was punished with devastating reparations that laid the groundwork for WW2 and, on the side, countries like Britain secured their oil interests in the Middle East.
Post-WWI brought the Spanish flu (pandemic anyone?), hyperinflation to Germany, a badly attempted coup (the Beer Hall Putsch; sound familiar?) and the rise of a populist fascist who blamed all of Germany's problems on undesirables, Jews and Communists (any modern parallels, at all?).
Europe had entered an era of appeasement, desperately seeking to not repeat the "Great War". Reunification of German peoples was used as an excuse to seize all sorts of land.
Now Stalin tried to warn Britain and France of the dangers of Hitler and form an alliance in 1939, which failed [1]. So instead Stalin formed what you'd have to call an uneasy alliance with Hitler.
WW2 breaks out, yada yada yada, Hitler betrays Stalin and Stalin basically defeated Hitler at a terrible cost. The US had 400k casulaties in the European theater of WW2. The estimates for Soviet military and civilian losses in the same period are between 26 and 29 million.
Where FDR had sought to rebalance the inequalities in the Depression and created lasting legacies we depend on today such as Social Security, Truman decided Communism was the enemy and, as such, the USSR was the Great Enemy, a decision that led directly to the Korean and Vietnam Wars and other smaller conflicts.
And who would be good at killing Communists? Nazis of course. Operation Paperclip is well known. Less well known is how hudnreds if not thousands of former Nazis were forgiven their "moral lapses" and joined the ranks of the CIA, the FBI and NATO as well as the new West German military command [2].
Hitler and Stalin were fundamentally different beasts. I'm not saying Stalin was a good guy. He commited his share of atrocities. So did every American president if we're keeping score. But one thing Stalin was really good at was killing Nazis.
So began almost 50 years of Cold War that saw the Red Scare and the near complete destruction of any form of organized labor in the US. All to fight Communism.
I say "fascism won" because the Nazis weren't wiped out and we're seeing fascism reborn in the US and Europe while people who survived the Holocaust are still alive. That's how little time it took.
> But one thing Stalin was really good at was killing Nazis.
He killed more of his own people then he did Germans, probably by ratio of 5:1
>Hitler and Stalin were fundamentally different beasts.
They built very similar totalitarian regimes. The only difference were the criteria they used to kill the millions of people.
Consider for a few minutes the contrast between Carney's speech and what daily babbles out of Trump's gaping maw. Carney's coherence is refreshing.
This is all eloquent and game-theoretic, but who is this being said too? Other davos attendees, and it will be the small people who must pay for this shift, through rising prices, worse labor conditions, austerity, etc. His astute observation about competing powers running to the lowest common denominator is intrinsically a property of capitalism.
It's a modern stage, it doesn't really matter who is physically there.
The EU aligned countries would be crazy to let the US set these rules for some temporary maintenance of income. They've all tended to social Democrats and socialist governments and have a better lifestyle than the US at half or 1/4 the GDP. That goes away if they let the US set pure power based rules, then 1/2 the GDP really is being half an American and if being a whole American was so great no one would have voted for Trump.
Canadian here: speeches are great, but you can’t take a speech to the bank and get a mortgage. The country is owned by the bankers and they’re looking out for each other. Carney is their mouthpiece. Large companies have preferential treatment and run monopolies. Everyone else? Get fucked. Pandemic in Canada was one great spectacle of corruption. Read up on ArriveCan and realize that’s just one (very public) example. There was much, much worse involving companies that would never get called out like ArriveCan did.
Rhetoric doesn’t make the economy recover and we are teetering on the brink of things. Businesses are struggling and many industries have hit a standstill. The best we can do is shift from being a vassal state of US to being a Chinese one.
The country is massive and yet we are so unproductive that Bank of Canada issued a warning late last year saying if productivity and wages don’t go up, the situation will get worse. Canada was one of the least productive countries in their analysis. Things have gotten worse since then. The only light at the end of this tunnel is the impending train wreck. Wages going up? Don’t make me laugh. My colleagues have moved to the US and are buying real estate with their tech salaries.
I wouldn’t blame Trump for Canada’s failings. I’d blame every layer of the government that is playing to lose and has brought this country to its knees. We are paying out of our asses in interest rates and taxes and our money is going nowhere. Inflation has eaten everything up and people have been getting progressively poorer over the decades. That’s got absolutely zero to do with Trump’s blowhard attitude.
Stop getting hoodwinked by professional speechwriters.
ouf, that's a lot of negativity and defeatism in one single comment.
I share your concern about growing inequality, but to lie down and give up does not help anyone
Posters downvoting without rebuking anything I said speaks for itself. It might be negative, but it’s the literal play-by-play of how things have been going for many years.
O
My one comment pales in comparison to what BoC and RCMP are warning about. I can’t do anything other than pack up and leave so I can’t be defeatist because there is no winning move here for the great majority. If we could try to do something, we would. We just get bent over and fucked.
A country that’s owned by bankers and we are supposed to believe a banker will pull us out of this. Yeah, now pull the other one.
You just put a whole lot of nonsense out there that it would take too much time to rebuke all of it. Tech workers buying property is a surprise? The US paying tech workers alot is a surprise? They literally pay the most on the planet. I'm a tech worker in Canada, guess what, me and my friends are buying property here too. We literally have a 60% home ownership rate in this country. The problem is social media is flooded with Canada doomer propaganda.
Much of the Canadian tech sector can’t afford real estate and has been priced out. Salaries are in general not moving much. The unicorns from Shopify are an obvious exception. Working for Toby is winning a lottery. Vancouver being “Silicon Valley North” is a joke.
People move to the US and they make twice the money. That is not “a whole lot of nonsense” and has nothing to do with “doomer propaganda” - it’s literally the brain drain that Canada has been dealing with for a long time.
Waterloo and other grads get poached by US companies before they finish schooling. This is nothing new. US just pays way better no matter how you look at it.
> People move to the US and they make twice the money. > This is nothing new. US just pays way better no matter how you look at it.
Not for long, Palantir CEO said that AI will displace so many jobs that it will eliminate immigration, plus there will be enough local jobs... if you have vocational training... that's the future! [1]
You say all the problems are man-made, but at the same time, that it's impossible to fix or improve anything?
> I wouldn’t blame Trump for Canada’s failings.
I wouldn't blame him for the US failings either, that would assume his role in the US is different than Carney's role in Canada and that'd be an assumption unsupported by evidence.
> The country is massive and yet we are so unproductive > I’d blame every layer of the government
What does the government have to do with it? The US gov isn't in control of the US econ, much less the Can gov of theirs - if you want to change that, you'll have to find a way to change it yourself.
> That’s got absolutely zero to do with Trump’s blowhard attitude.
Indeed zero to do with Trump but absolutely plenty to do with the attitude.
> Stop getting hoodwinked by professional speechwriters
You won't find amateurs up there, and they wouldn't be any better either, I'm not sure if it's worth it to be able to pick the speechwriters who hoodwink you.
I liked your heartfelt comment, please cheer up, this crisis is going to be harder than you think but, to make up for it, it's gonna last longer too...
The speech was surprisingly good. I think it's going to prove effective. This "taking the sign off" thing, good imagery.
But I can't help notice the inconsistency in this imagery. First, he says it himself a few minutes later. He doesn't "take the sign off" for NATO. We can understand why it's important to keep this facade.
But another one that bothers me is "energy, both clean and traditional". Oh, you didn't go for "clean and dirty"? Categories are clearer thus. Oh, not ready to take the sign off on the climate front? Too bad.
I don't think that's inconsistent - all but one member of NATO share the same values currently, and it's important they work together to resolve the current annexation threats from the US. That particular sign can be taken off later, if necessary.
> all but one member of NATO share the same values currently
Turkey? Hungary? Slovakia?
> For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order.
As an Indian listening to this, this comes across as absurd. Trudeau constantly invoked this phrase when dealing with India about the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won. In due course, the murderers turned out to be their own terrorists.
>It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won.
Canada's case was well corroborated by US and UK intelligence. India's claims of Mr Nijjar of being a terrorist was not.
>But nothing in the evidence India presented, the people say, met the standard for criminal charges in Canada, let alone for extradition. To press their case, officials in New Delhi frequently sent clippings from Indian media, which was rife with lurid stories about Nijjar’s alleged involvement in violence, instead of providing what the process required: hard evidence, obtained without coercion, that would stand up in a Western courtroom. When that didn’t work, the people say, the Indians suggested that Canadian police find a way to concoct the necessary evidence.
> India's claims of Mr Nijjar of being a terrorist was not.
But I'm not talking about this claim. I'm talking about the fact that Trudeau accused the Indian government being responsible for his murder. The onus was always on the Canadian government to prove it.
Are you saying a "Canadian Terrorist" murdered Nijjar? The article you link says nothing about any country (except India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) disputing Canada's claim.
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan_movement is not a significant movement in India. I have plenty of connections with Sikhs and Sikhism in India. Apart from a very tiny minority of people, who quickly set off to Canada, this movement does not exist in India. They are courted by Canadian parliamentarians, which included Trudeau.
First, this issue has nothing to do with what Carney is talking about, second - nobody in Canada wants anything to with your 'ethno nationalist wars', third - the frequency with which this issue is brought up and pigeon-holed into everything is absurd, but fourth - and most critically - you're lying: the 'murderers' by all accounts were Indian nationals and the link you provided literally indicates that 'Karan Brar, age 22, Kamal Preet Singh, age 22, and Karan Preet Singh, age 28' arrested for murder - are Indian Nationals on temporary visas in Canada.
> nobody in Canada wants anything to with your 'ethno nationalist wars'
Absurd. These are YOUR 'ethno nationalist wars' because your country has given them a safe haven. This problem does not exist in India. Not one Sikh I know sympathizes with these separatists, and I have plenty of Sikh friends, been to their homes, been to their hometowns.
These are literally murders by Indian nationals on other Indian nationals, involving Indian government.
We want nothing to do with this.
Nobody is getting 'safe haven' - we have 'laws' and 'citizenship' so we respect those things, otherwise, we'd prefer all of you who want to continue your infighting to go home. Totally unwelcome.
Crucially - has nothing to do with this post.
> These are literally murders by Indian nationals on other Indian nationals
They are all in your immigration pipeline or already through it. The crimes are all on Canadian soil. Who has jurisdiction in the so-called "rules-based international order"?
> involving Indian government
This is your fantasy. You're playing fast and loose with accusations, just like Carney and Trudeau were while calling it "rules-based international order".
> We want nothing to do with this.
Then stop providing asylum. Stop courting them for votes. Prosecute criminals.
> Crucially - has nothing to do with this post.
Refer to the first line that I quoted.
> This problem does not exist in India. Not one Sikh I know sympathizes with these separatists
Then problem solved! If there are no separatists there is nobody to offer asylum to!
Most of the asylum claims came before CY2025, which is when the false asylum crackdown began in Canada [0].
A major issue was the Truduea-era diplomatic spat that led to the expulsion of Canadian [1] and Indian [2] diplomatic staff who cooperated on background checks along with an MP in Punjab who ran a "cash for asylum claim" racket [3].
After Carney became PM and Anand became MFA, the Canada-India relationship went back on track, and Trudeau era appointees were largely sidelined.
As someone from the US, I thought we were the leaders in choosing strange government figureheads, until Canada elected the head of a foreign bank as their's.
That speech reminds me of the conclusion the main character in the movie Antz settled on. Being forced to be a cog in the machine is awful and no one should accept it. Instead we should be happy to volunteer ourselves to be cogs in the machine.
Technically Carney was never the head of a foreign central bank; he was the head of a Commonwealth central bank. Canada and the UK do not consider each other to be foreign nations, as evidenced by their exchange of High Commissioners rather than Ambassadors.
FWIW he was bank head of Canada before being bank head of uk.
[flagged]
Is that an allusion to changing colours?
So it might have been Chinese before.
It’s an allusion to him previously working as a Goldman sachs banker, Goldman sachs is lovingly referred to as a vampire squid, its tentacles are everywhere.
Ah so, I thought it was some Canadian slang.
Also: "lovingly" cracked me up.
I mean it's not just any old foreign bank either though, in Canada the King of England is still our head of state.
The King of England is not our head of state, the King of Canada is our head of state. It's an important distinction because the Canadian and British monarchies are legally distinct offices. Canada is not subordinate to Britain like it once was as a colony, and our succession laws, royal titles and even the powers of our monarch are all determined by our law and constitution - not British law.
Mark Carney is born and raised Canadian. Just because he has had an illustrious career internationally does not make him any less Canadian than someone who has lived here their entire lives.
Very interesting! I was surprised to learn that the King of Canada sometimes even visits to do some kinging[0].
Geez, what a gig. Lose your mom, become king of 15 nations...
He was here recently to read the speech from the throne and open his new government after the election. It was quite the event with a lot of pomp and circumstance. Very much welcome during these tumultuous times, and a nice reminder of our tradition and history that makes Canada what it is.
At least he can speak coherently and doesn't waffle off topic.
But, y'know, nuclear...!
He only won because trump said he wanted to make Canada the 51st state and the opposition party didn’t pivot or adjust their campaign to Trump’s rhetoric.
Consider that Trump is enough of a fucking lunatic that Canadians voted for the party of Justin Trudeau again.
I mean… we elect leaders to represent us and protect our country. If the other guy looked like he was willing to give the country away, well, that means he wasn’t the best person for the job. Trump rhetoric just showed us how ready Pierre Pollievre was to lead us: aka, he wasn’t.
That seems overly reductive.
He won because:
- the NDP and the CPC were both led by deeply unpopular leaders: Jagmeet Singh the silk clad, Rolex-wearing self styled "man of the people" and Pierre Poilievre who is so dislikeable he routinely polls double digits below his party
- Trump threatening to collapse the Canadian economy and/or annex us by force
- Flat economic growth
- Carney's credentials on the economy being unparalleled in Canadian politics (see previous point)
- Voters tired of the far-left big government nanny state philosophy that was the hallmark of the Trudeau governments and Carney successfully presented himself as a centrist
Interestingly, Carney was appointed to the Bank of Canada by a Conservative PM and I'd argue he's got a similar appeal that Trump initially had, but for different reasons: Trump positioned himself as an outsider, and Carney is similarly not a career politician. By contrast his only real challenger (Poilievre) hasn't had a real job in his life and has been living on the taxpayer's dime his entire career.
I think voters in both the US and Canada are sick of slimy politicians.
(Edit: can't reply because rate limited, better go back to pointless discussions about JavaScript. My usage of "far left" should be understood as being relative to the Canadian political spectrum. Justin Trudeau was definitely a very left-leaning PM by any rational measure)
There’s probably too much nuance in your answer for most, but thank you for taking the time to write it down.
It’s always interesting to read some thoughtful opinions, especially as an outsider(Australian) looking in.
CPC was firmly in the lead for the elections before Trumps' attention to Canada and the Liberals jumping on this to frame PP as another Trump or someone who would yield to Trump, both couldn't be farther away from his actual policy stances, but in the age of social media (and I guess major government owned media that does its bidding) that doesn't matter.
What mattered was that Pollievre waited weeks to defend Canada against the US threats. That scared a lot of voters. Showed us who he really was.
>Voters tired of the far-left big government....
Ah, yes; that communist fiend, Justin "Al Jolson" Trudeau, seizing all those means and abolishing hierarchies and redistributing the wealth.
>communist
Please quote where I said he was a communist. I'll wait.
Immaterial - no liberal government in Canada could be said to be “far left”.
In terms of social issues, he could not be much further left
Well, there’s the entire NDP…
substitute "communist" for "far-left" and the point still stands. No government in Canada has ever, EVER been far-left unless your definition of "far-left" is welfare capitalism.
> First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.
Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago.
The great irony with the current political climate is that America has truly been first for many decades, leading the world order to tremendous financial, military and material success. But nothing lasts forever.
We won’t know for many years if this moment represents America’s true descent into a has-been empire, but the message from our closest allies is very clear: world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it.
What i find fascinating is that, if we hold that Trump being elected twice was because of frustration and rage against society, this is the way they are now when the US is literally the most dominant country in the world. Can you imagine the rage, if the US actually saw real decline. Christ
America has already been living in a decline of living standards relative to Europe for many decades.
EU vs US Comparison
Life expectancy EU: 82 yrs US: 78 yrs
Infant mortality (per 1,000) EU: 3.3 US: 5.6
Poverty rate (below 50% of median income) EU: 15% US: 18%
Public debt EU: 81% of GDP US: 120% of GDP
Top 1% wealth share EU: ~25% US: 40%
Student debt EU: ~€0 US: $40k
Homicides (per 100k) EU: 2 US: 5
Prison population (per 100k) EU: 111 US: 531
Women in workforce EU: 71% US: 57%
Workplace deaths (per 100k) EU: 1.63 US: 3.5
Source: OECD, Eurostat, CDC
All of those are true, yet the US's (PPP-adjusted) per capita GDP was over 37% higher than the EU's in 2024 [0], and GDP growth has significantly outpaced the EU for years. Basically, whenever there was a choice between anything and economic growth, the US chose growth. Other places made different choices. You can argue about which choices were better, and how the results are distributed, but the difference in salaries for most people using this site are even more stark.
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
Most of their numbers were about the quality of life. It's absolutely absurd to say,
> Well you're twice as likely to be killed, more likely to be sick and obese, will die earlier, are more likely to be in poverty under a tech baron, have a poisoned ecosystem, your babies or wife may die or your kids die in school, or they'll go in insane debt to go to their higher education, and if you're not a white man you're basically less human and risk becoming a part of the permanent ~~slave~~ criminal caste... But think of the moderately higher salary potential!!!!
>
> You know, as long as the economy grows forever and nobody calls any of your debts.
Yup, the worst and most dangerous time is yet to come. This is the country that has the worlds second largest nuclear arsenal. The biggest military logistics infrastructure on the planet and shown a constant willingness to use any force necessary to bend other people to their will.
One hopes, if it gets that far, somebody in the military will finally defy orders, and although the US has its first coup d'etat, the rule of law can return.
I still remember some redditor saying what happened in Nazi Germany couldn't happen in the US because of patriotism. Oh how smug I'd be to ask him "how did that work out?". Hopefully the military doesn't lock step into Armageddon, but "hope" is doing a lot of work there.
I hope so, too. But rule of law and democracy at it's core are cultural achievements - enough people must want it and believe in it. I feel like people start to forget why we have them in place.
ICE aka executive overstepping is a good example. Police actions are highly regulated for good reasons, it won't only affect "the right people".
From what I have heard, a lot of people who voted for Trump don't like the extend of ICE's actions. Even Joe Rogan spoke out. So maybe there's hope.
Europe is fighting the very same battle btw. it just has not manifested that obvious everywhere yet. I fear for Germany falling into the hands of fascists once again in the next years, though.
The US is considered to be a flawed democracy for about 10 years now[1]. Europe, especially the powerful west, has the most healthy democracies.
It's absolutely not a given that the European democracies will survive, people here need to step up in strengthening it against illiberal forces as well, but it's in a much better starting position.
Example: in the Netherlands there was a government with an illiberal far right party (Wilder's PVV). They didn't achieve much, but there was a year of stagnation and the far right talking points have become even more normalized. Other democratic institutions, like judges had to be more on the defense. However, nothing fundamental is broken.
1. https://cpsblog.isr.umich.edu/?p=3417
What would you consider real decline?
I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it. The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people and The jobs market being brutal to graduates.
Things are not so great at the moment.
> I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it.
People talk about "worse prospects" all the time. It irks me: you know nothing what your "prospects" are. That's why they're prospects!
> The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people
The housing is still there. All those old people are gonna die. Who do you think will get the housing?
i think they'll be lots of kids out there banking on inheritance who will find themselves surprised by how much aged and end of life care cost soon
In the middle of it right now with a grandparent. $5000 - $8000 month and you might still find them frozen to death out in the snow if the staff drops the ball in the middle of the night.
The housing is a house, but it's also a financial vehicle to wealth accumulation. Younger generations have been shut out of that wealth. When the old people are dead can we be so sure the wealth enrichment mechanisms will be left standing?
We know for a fact it won't. Care systems and demograph-targeting machines (sunsetter vacations, scams, etc) are siphoning every drop of wealth from the elderly.
> What would you consider real decline?
Honestly? When America nukes someone or itself. Empires decline slowly then suddenly, and that final bit tends to involve a tantrum. The only exception is when they’re conquered.
It’s actually the opposite. It’s not about raging regarding the decline. It’s about many things going well and raging against prosperity for things they don’t agree with. They want to destroy America because it feels good, not because it makes sense.
I think you misunderstand where the rage is coming from.
If all their countrymen were equally down on their luck, then there would be no rage. Instead, it's the result of one group of people that used to enjoy success watching it all fall apart while different people just do better and better.
Exploding inequality simultaneous with DEI obsession was a perfect storm of radicalization. The only thing that's really surprising is that "smart" people didn't see it coming.
A CEO, a blue-collar worker, and an immigrant sit down together at a table upon which there is a plate of a dozen cookies. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, then whispers in the ear of the blue-collar worker "Hey, I think he wants your cookie."
> simultaneous with DEI obsession
there is a group obsessed with DEI, it's true. It's the MAGA folk
>If all their countrymen were equally down on their luck, then there would be no rage. Instead, it's the result of one group of people that used to enjoy success watching it all fall apart while different people just do better and better.
Sure, but hasn't that been the case the world over, or at least for developing economies? This isn't terribly unique to the US.
Most "smart" people could see this coming but as always the question is when? Just have to go back a small ways to the last heydays of communism and inequality was the stick to beat capitalism with.
The issue now is that if there is successful destabilisation of world economies in the way this could currently play out, if some brinkmanship isnt pulled back, you're left with a situation where the group of people who have already seen it fall apart realise it can fall apart even more for them, and the other group also see it start to fall apart.
All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage
"Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever?" - Joseph Heller, Catch-22
> Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed
Now count the centuries those cultures existed and exercised hegemony.
The dark thought is this: we may be at the crossroads for containing an imperial America. Because if America commits to global empire it will take WWIII to contain it.
Right, I mean the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned. That doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years.
> the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned
The Roman Republic was a rising power for centuries. It became the eminent Mediterranean power in 146 BCE and annexed Gaul under Caesar, right as it was collapsing. The Roman Empire then lasted for centuries more.
> doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years
Or America trying for that future. That’s WWIII.
Nuclear annihilation will go restrain growth outside of obvious geographic spheres in theory.
Industry was not globalized in the previous regimes of pre-World war imperialism. That is the novel difference now. And China requires globalized trade in order to support its overindustrialization and economy.
America also currently requires it because it doesn't have its industrial base anymore. It will probably re-industrialize over the next coming decades but that's something that happens over decades.
However, I feel the new rise of imperialism also marks the end of civilization's historical memory of industrial warfare of the world wars.
And that is a very very bad thing
> Nuclear annihilation will go restrain growth outside of obvious geographic spheres in theory
Russia has been itching to use tactical nukes. If America makes two, that’s the future.
This has happened 7 times before.
The last was Amsterdam.
My question is, why? This has been obvious to me over the past decade, and I just got into the financial world on the ground floor 2015-ish. Every damn trade agreement has in one way or another been projecting U.S. soft power through financial integration.
>world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it.
I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed.
This is merely Carney calling a spade, a spade.
A loss of the popular vote, followed by a near toss-up, was hardly a clear message. Roughly half of us didn't intend to send that message, and if polls are an indicator, even fewer now.
I'm mad about the election and what it seems to say about us, but I still haven't completely lost faith in the American people.
Let me be clear; the rest of the world no longer trusts your type of American to fix your country. After Trump 1, maybe. Trump 2, that's it. We'll start to untangle our commitments to you and look elsewhere.
What was my type of American supposed to have done? This is a sincere question, since I'm racking my brain over it. People debate this with one another constantly. We may have more common cause with you than it might seem on the surface.
Also, what commitments? Since this is a tech centric forum, the easy guess would be breaking the dominance of the US tech industry. I'm a cheerleader for that effort.
Nothing. American empire isn't yours to control - people can hate what America is doing without recommending any personal change to your involvement in it.
That's fair, but I'm open to change. In fact, coincidentally, my wife and I were talking about it tonight. We feel frustrated that we might not have done enough.
> ... By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message
That's how you read it. But the Trump election was americans sending other americans a clear an unambiguous message.
The other piece though is they sent an unintentional message to the rest of the world that American political system is hijackable in a way they ought to be concerned about.
Not American here. Reading your guys replies it almost feels like you are rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance. Doesn’t this enforce their argument and created this situation in th first place?
> rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance
I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.
I am unsurprised about the 2024 election and it's exactly what you'd imagine from a purely economic perspective.
The 2016 election, however, has been studied extensively, and it's clear that several aberrations (large contingent of Republican candidates, the first black president, Facebook, Comey) tipped things in a way that you wouldn't expect if voters are acting rationally.
So as someone who genuinely wishes to understand how people think about things, I don't know what's going on here. I can't tell what new lie will be pushed next week to distract us from the recently-disproven lie of last week. Were I outside all of this, I would have very little hope.
(edit: re sibling poster, Trump is not a representative of the median voter but instead a representative of the median electoral college elector. We can't have it both ways, rejecting the popular vote and then failing to acknowledge that our politics represent the electors and not the man on the street)
> I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.
same can be said about people on the opposite side.
> same can be said about people on the opposite side.
This is not true - the things that traditional Democrats supported in 1992 are largely the same things supported now.
The point is not the echo chamber. The point is that the echo chamber has changed the party orthodoxy.
> invalidating their stance
This is perhaps true to an extent. But what is also true to an unprecedented extent for Americans is that this 'stance' is almost pure demagoguery. For many, there is no 'stance', their 'stance' is Trump, whether he hews close to a principle or completely contradicts it.
Correct.
Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter. Progressive anericans refuse to accept that.
Why they won’t accept that is anyone’s guess.
"median American voter" implies a distribution of views like a normal distribution, with a lot of people in the middle and a few people on extremes. If that is the distribution, then the median is representative of most people. I am not sure that is really a great way of thinking about American voters these days. It seems to me that American's views on many issues are tending to cluster around extremes, with fewer people in the middle. So I am not sure the median is as meaningful.
Median does not assume anything about the distribution which is precisely why I use it. Median allows for us to count max total of one category because the variances are so small. Hence why medians can actually demonstrate the underlying distribution instead of commingling amplitude like the mean.
In this case it’s “American Voter” as the category. This is what messes most people up, because they read “American Citizen” but I’m describing only the subset of citizens who successfully vote.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...
Using that number you’ll see what the demographics demonstrate: there are not as many progressive voters as there are “conservative” voters and only 2/3 of eligible voters even cared to vote.
If you zoom out even further and you evaluate which candidates run, then it really does not matter who is voting or not because ultimately who is on the ballot is dictated by a small group of party leaders, who in turn are dictated by whomever has the most money for ad spending.
The median American voter voted for Obama, and then Trump, and then Biden, and then Trump. They are angry about inflation, hate billionaires, don't want to start a war, and don't know who pays tariffs.
Basically, the median American voter does not have a coherent position. It's futile trying to build a narrative around them.
Were Biden and Obama accurate representations of the median American when they won? Isn’t that a contradiction?
No, but they they were somewhat accurate representations of the median American voter (note here VOTER is the key) - less so than Trump, given what he’s been able to get away with.
> Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter
On foreign policy? Probably not.
Like, Biden wasn’t an accurate representation of the median American voter on e.g. transgender kids in school sports. That wasn’t just right-wing delusion.
My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been.
I have to say as an “other American” I’m still having a lot of trouble reading the supposedly unambiguous message. Was it “Hold my beer?”
The first message is “don’t open the border.” People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. If there weren’t videos of thousands of people streaming across the border every day during Biden’s presidency, we wouldn’t be dealing with Trump 2.0 today.
Second, don’t announce to the world you’re limiting your VP search to Black women, or any other Constitution-violating hiring criteria. Americans are tired of identity politics. And you’ve done a disservice to your running mate because they’ll be labeled as a “DEI hire” instead of the best person for the job.
Third, don’t nominate an idiot as your running mate.
Fourth, don’t force the idiot running mate on the world as a presidential candidate because you hid the president’s cognitive decline until the last possible moment in a humiliating live TV debate.
I could go on, but you probably get the message.
Well, thanks for explaining. That sure was a super expensive message to send, for all of us. And quite an astonishingly reckless way to send it.
Your actions have consequences. But who could have seen that coming?
If Trump only hires people best for the job, why am I only seeing old white men next to him 99% of the time? Are they the best of the best?
Who said Trump hires the best people for the job? That’s not what I said.
The message sent, perhaps more accurately, was that the USofA electorate fully bought into the Trump / Project 2025 framing of the "problems" facing the USofA.
eg:
> People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else.
And yet recently prior administrations famously did enforce contempory border protections and prioritised chasing down people with actual criminal records.
Past administrations, eg. the Republican Eisenhower, have been in favour of open borders for the cheap labour and boost to the agricultural industry.
His often cited border enforcement operation was undertaken at the request of the Mexican government who were losing labor to US agribusiness.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
All that aside, the USofA Democrat party has a messaging and PR problem of epic proportions and the USofA has spiralled into a two party Hotelling's Law cesspit despite the founders largely disliking party politics - a fundemental flaw in the forward iteration of an "adequate for now" electoral system centuries old.
Sure, recent past administrations enforced border protections and prioritized deporting immigrants with criminal records. And that’s irrelevant.
The Biden administration did neither. They took active measures to strip the Customs and Border Protection Agency of its scope and authority through executive order from their first day in office. Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
This wasn’t policy they campaigned on or announced. It wasn’t something the American people wanted, and it polled terribly even among Democrats. But they did it anyway.
Conversely, Trump had the voter’s mandate to secure the border when he entered office, but he’s managed it so poorly, created terrible optics, and has Democrats marching in the streets in every major U.S. city in support of illegal immigration. The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
I'm not a partisan US voter.
> The Biden administration did neither.
This appears to be a partisan statement subject to data source and bias. eg:
~ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-re...> Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
Their policies or global events? Either way the sheer number of recorded border ecounters speaks to them being out and about and actively encountering people on the border ... when thought about, that's hardly a bad thing - it sounds more as if they were getting the job done.
To be clear, I have zero interest in debating this aside from noting it's hardly clearcut.
> The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
They are indeed superlative propagandadists, on this we can agree ...
they are, however, in a view from afar, falling well short of actually making middle North America great again, gutting essential infrastructure maintainance, etc. etc.
But few will ever know given they've also gutted many of the means of tracking the state of the country, the state of the environment, the activities of their administration.
[flagged]
You're glossing over January 6. There are few things more damning of the American electorate than their willingness to vote for a man who tried to use a coup to stay in power. The rest of the world sees it. And they'd be stupid to trust that Americans wouldn't do something so stupid again.
You could make a case that January 6th was a catastrophe.
But a Trump-led coup? That’s quite a reach. I’m sure Trump got a thrill from the show of support. But I don’t believe even Trump thought those protestors could stage a successful a coup and overthrow the U.S. government. It’s fantasy.
The way Trump thinks the world works, why the hell not? He thinks the government of Norway is the one who decides who gets the Nobel Peace Prize... He thinks he ended 8 wars (ok this might be him talking out of his ass, as usual, but do we know that for sure?)
> Both were bad options. Few expected a Trump administration would simultaneously be this unhinged and impactful this time around
He led an insurrection against our Constitution. He went along with folks who legitimately aimed to murder Senators.
Venezuela voted for Chavez. Gaza for Hamas. America for Trump.
“He led an insurrection against our Constitution” is extremely hyperbolic.
> Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed
The Electoral College is a Constitutional body. The Vice President, in his electoral duties, a Constitutional officer. These are limited roles with specific aims and they were directly, explicitly and violently attacked. The men who called for hanging the Vice President never repented and were pardoned.
The fact that Trump was even allowed to run for another election is the clearest sign that he has not and likely never will be held to account for his flagrant disregard for Democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
> The Trump fake electors plot was an attempt by U.S. president Donald Trump and associates to have him remain in power after losing the 2020 United States presidential election. After the results of the election determined Trump had lost, he, his associates, and Republican Party officials in seven battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin[1] – devised a scheme to submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment to falsely claim Trump had won the Electoral College vote in crucial states. The plot was one of Trump and his associates' attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
I normally disagree with `JumpCrissCross but he’s right on calling it an insurrection.
And I am not referring to the assault on the capitol, I am referring to the false slates of electors.
You are delusional if you think January 6th was not an insurrection. Anyone who willingly denies the reality of what happened that day is nothing more than a traitor to this country.
Trump organized riled up a mob that called for his own vice president to be hanged for certifying his own legitimate election loss.
His own campaign was involved with groups that led the breach of the Capitol, resulting in the death of many police officers, where the insurrectionists got within mere feet of our legally elected officials.
He called the Secretary of State in Georgia telling him needed to "find votes" so that he could claim he won.
Donald Trump tried to destroy American democracy with a violent mob that day. Denying the legitimate voice and vote of tens of millions of people for his own sick gain.
He is destroying democracy again, but you cannot deny January 6th was his doing.
> Anyone who willingly denies the reality of what happened that day is nothing more than a traitor to this country
No they’re not.
They most certainly are.
> They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed.
Let's be honest, Europeans haven't valued their "friendship" with America since the end of the cold war.
Europeans volunteered troops in Afghanistan to help America fight Al-Quaida. When America was not right about invading Iraq, European nations tried to help America to see the truth. When America took on Libyan dictator Kadhafi European nations provided some air support.
Europe helped America when they could and when they thought it was the right thing to do.
That's certainly Trump's claim, along with the Norway/Denmark joint government issuing Nobel prizes.
Do you feel Europeans have a better friendship with Canada for example? I mean before Trump was elected of course.
[dead]
> Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago
America (and China) a decade ago were still trying to make the (or at least a) rules-based international order work. Not perfectly. (China annexed Tibet. America invaded Iraq.) But there were many times sacrifices in self interest were made for the sake of alliances and international law.
Today, that is gone. None of the great or regional powers are playing by those rules. Outside Europe, nobody even pays them lip service.
We didn’t hear such language a decade ago because it wasn’t yet true, and it wasn’t necessary—that was the point of the rules-based institutions. You could adjudicate differences through them instead of calling for new systems of military alliances.
> Carney said Canada must be "principled and pragmatic" and turn inward to build up the country and diversify trading relationships to become less reliant on countries like the U.S., now that it's clear "integration" can lead to "subordination."
They surely needed some decades to underestand this. Much quicker than the Europeans, though.
> "great powers" are using economic integration as "weapons."
This is so true and I think economic sanctions should be recognized as the weapons they actually are.
Just a taste: No Amazon, No Gmail: Trump Sanctions Upend the Lives of I.C.C. Judges President Trump’s retaliation against top officials at the International Criminal Court has shut them out of American services and made even routine daily tasks a challenge. https://archive.is/KflDP
Now consider the US has been doing this to entire countries for decades. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran. Forget Amazon, the inability to use the SWIFT banking system has all sorts of nasty consequences that get elided by a clinical sounding term.
From the Lancet:
Our findings showed a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. We found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas we found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions. Mortality effects ranged from 8·4 log points (95% CI 3·9–13·0) for children younger than 5 years to 2·4 log points (0·9–4·0) for individuals aged 60–80 years. We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
> economic sanctions should be recognized as the weapons they actually are
You don’t need a study to conclude the mortality of actual weapons.
Sanctions are bad. But war is horrible.
Did you skip right over the Lancet sentence that concluded the annual toll caused by unilateral sanctions (over 564k) is comparable to armed conflict?
> the annual toll caused by unilateral sanctions (over 564k) is comparable to armed conflict?
In aggregate. America isn’t in armed conflict with those folks. If everyone we sanctioned were attacked, more people would die.
I am saying that sanctions are weapon of sorts and have worse effects than people realize, and you seem to be saying their effects are not as bad as those of kinetic weapons. Despite Lancet concluding their tolls are comparable.
What are the economic death tolls of wars? It seems like those should be included.
Moreover, it's kind of consequentialist morality ignores the distinction of active harm versus failure to Aid.
This should play a role when one considers something an attack or weapon.
Is less than maximal charity an attack?
Is it an attack when someone refuses to sleep with someone else?
Norms around choice versus entitlement distinguish the two.
If economic sanctions aren’t weapons, then why do sovereign nations deploy them against other sovereign nations to achieve their will?
Yup, the middle powers have to organize and work together to avoid being chum. The economic power is there, and they can shift from purchasing US weaponry (thus paying US workers) into purchasing middle-power weaponry (thus paying middle-power workers). Car/truck plants can be repurposed, and if Ukraine's lesson is valid then smaller, portable weaponry is now the preferred solution. Cheaper, and the middle powers don't have huge investments in tanks and ships.
All well meaning and good and all that, thank you Canadians. . . but...
Invoking Thucydides's "and the weak suffer what they must" at a time when weak-on-strong warfare has fundamentally changed, in a fluid still-small world where for example:
-Some russian goons can poison someone on a bench in England.
-Some north korean hireling lady can poison someone in any airport.
-Some radicalized youths will go on rampages using easily-accessible assault weapons.
-So many systems that "strong" societies depend on are so so fragile and running close to many edges.
-Lethal FPVs are cheap cheap.
...is I think falling into the trap of adopting the mindset of the loudest man in the room (initials DJT) who's thinking in early 20th century terms, instead of looking at the world and conflict the way they really are.
The Theucydides quote Carney leads with, of course, recently rolled off the tongue of the white house deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. The days of might making right are, apparently, back.
Just in case anyone thought the genie could be stuffed back into the bottle once Trump is gone, Carney goes on to state that the rules-based world order we've been living under since WWII is somewhat of a sham. The rules have not been applied equally. Some nations, the powerful ones, have been given much more latitude to do what they want. Middle nations have gone along with this to avoid trouble.
The reward for avoiding trouble for so long is... big trouble (e.g. invasion threats for an ally of a big power and economic terrorism applied to its allies). So, why pretend the old system works to avoid trouble if the trouble lands on your doorstep anyways?
The answer seems obvious. Middle powers of the old rules-based order need to band together and put bigger powers in their place. It's not impossible. Just very, very difficult. France and Germany may be sticking up for Greenland, but where's Hungary (another EU member)? For this to work, you need everyone. Also, looking ahead, how would you prevent such an alliance of smaller powers, were it successful, from behaving like a bigger power?
Trump is currently showing off AI photos where he's meeting with world leaders in front of a map where both Greenland and Canada are a part of the U.S.[1]. As a Canadian, I think Carney gave a stirring speech here, but I suppose I'm biased given that he's our PM and his vision is one of the few things between us as being swallowed up by Trump's MAGA empire while the other big powers fall upon the respective apples of their eyes.
[1]https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/trump-shares-altered-m...
The fact we have a system that produced a Trump-like figure, and once in power, haven’t checked him internationally, shows the US will continue to be an unreliable partner.
We have kinds of political problems, and it’s not clear they’re going away post Trump.
Gerrymandering, money in politics, the electoral college, disproportional representation, failing checks and balances.
This isn't going to be solved in a decade, probably not even a couple of decades.
The funny thing is it’s all cultural. It’s not some intractable thing, the path to fixing all this has been available for a long time. It’s a well studied domain with practical solutions abound.
But enough of the US citizenry that I share the nation with seemingly can’t see beyond their own horizons. No matter how bad it is, there is still enough people who can’t possibly see the value of the government doing anything useful. Government is exclusively the enemy. And in turn those who seek to ransack the system do so under the guise of pushing back against so called “government overreach” (a deliberately vague term) and continue to give the general public the raw deal
All because the elites got too greedy and decided to destroy the only successful labor movement in America (the New Deal coalition) because they wanted more money.
> "Many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.
Sounds like an economic NATO (without the USA). It's good that other counties are waking up at last. Taking the hit now (and blaming it on Trump) will make them stronger on the long run.
Autonomy is the opposite of an alliance.
The idea that allied nations don't maintain strategic autonomy with respect to each other is very modern. Remember that Greenland is the second island dispute to divide NATO, after Cyprus in the 70s. The expectation for NATO to become one big happy family only really caught on in the 90s, and without a rules-based international order to prevent said allies from exploiting it the expectation won't last long.
> The idea that allied nations don't maintain strategic autonomy with respect to each other is very modern.
No it's not. The point of making an alliance is that you're not stuck with strategic autonomy. You can tell other people that if they mess with you, they're also messing with whoever you're allied with. If you were autonomous, that wouldn't be true.
Again, that's a very modern perspective. When Portugal faced colonial revolts in the 1960s and early 1970s, NATO didn't help at all, and some members including the United States actively hoped Portugal would lose and free their colonies. Nor did they help France in the Algerian War. (The terms of the NATO treaty anticipated these conflicts, formally excluding all territory outside of Europe and North America from collective defense obligations so there'd be no question that help wouldn't come.)
I highly recommend listening to the whole speech
The full video is at the top of this post's secondary (transcript) link, although that version doesn't translate his initial ~minute in French. If you want to skip to his (main) section in English: https://www.youtube.com/live/5UqQTqvhFRg?t=104s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE981Z_TaVo
One of those speeches that makes you feel like you're living in history^TM
Those are the worst times to be alive in. I'd rather have those speeches in the past, and live in uninteresting times.
Peter Zeihan has been predicting this for a decade which means there has been a lot of academics also predicting since he generally repackages academic work.
Really it isn't just a different order. Imo it is a reversion to imperialism with us eyeing Latin America, Russia Ukraine, China Taiwan.
I have said for many years that in the distant future, historians (those privileged by their patrons to claim the freedom of unfettered research), will read about the brief spasm in history, climaxing in the latter half of the 20th century, in which for half the globe, autocracy, dictatorship and absolute monarchy gave way to a system in which the proletariat believed they had (and amazingly in many circumstances actually had) the freedom to be, to think, to live, to flourish - largely as they wished! Those historians will wonder how this chaotic anarchy managed to not only survive, but momentarily flourish before the immense pressure of history brought about the reversal to the mean: the autocrats ruling, precious few flourishing at their feet, and the rest subsisting sullenly.
That's just history though, a paucity of human existence committed to script, nothing at all of, say, 70K years of libertarian utopia in post-Sahul, just the tantalising remnants of pre digital Instagram real silicon party posts.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwion_Gwion_rock_paintings
Transcript linked inside the submitted article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-speech-davos-ru...
From the transcript:
> We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
> This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
An interesting observation I came across today:
> The genius of American foreign policy since 1941 was that it found a way to be both the single strongest state and the leader of the strongest coalition of states: power and legitimacy, together. That's the achievement Trump has jeopardized - and possibly permanently wrecked.
* https://x.com/davidfrum/status/2013735844721349115#m
* https://xcancel.com/davidfrum/status/2013735844721349115#m
It's worth mentioning that David Frum is Canadian and a Republican (the author of "Axis of Evil")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Frum
I genuinely love the speech but scanning the WHR, Canada has been dropping in happiness almost as fast as America.
https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart
They would have gone right-wing in Carney's election if not for Trump meddling. He needs to get those cost of living issues fixed ASAP, probably starting with housing.
Canadian here: it has nothing to do with Trump, we just haven’t gone right-wing yet but are well on the way. It’s highly unlikely Carney will bring the country back from the economic collapse it’s going through because doling out speeches and doing staged photos is completely disconnected from having an actual forward-moving vision for a country, and that vision is something we haven’t heard and I doubt we will.
Everyone who has a chance to get out is getting out, and moving to US. The anti-US rhetoric is a false front in Canada - US money smells better and buys you a very comfortable life. Trump’s bullshit is a temporary blip in the grand scheme of things. “Elbows up” on your flight to Seattle.
Really? If I had to move to either, I would choose Canada 10 out of 10 times
Aren't all problems in Canada 5x worse in the US?
No, it’s bullshit posturing you read on the internet. Go talk to actual Canadians and ask them if they know anyone who has moved to the US. It’ll be eye-opening. I have many colleagues in-flight to get their paperwork sorted for US. Many have already gone.
“Money talks, bullshit walks” is all that needs to be said. Canadian salaries are half (if that) of US ones.
Go talk to actual Canadians. Lol. Only people that agree with you are Canadians now?
Everything I hear around me is people coming back from the US, they don’t feel safe with their family.
Oh, just saw you created your account an hour ago. Never mind then, just making shit up to troll.
> No, it’s bullshit posturing you read on the internet.
yeah, I don't believe you, random, anonymous, throwaway account on the Internet
Dude trump is NOT a temporary blip. His approval rating right now is slightly higher than it was at this point in his first term.
Last time it took a great depression to convince Americans to actually care about each other (socialism-lite), and I expect nothing less this time around.
the current world split starts to eerily look, while still far from it of course, like the 1939 split in Europe - totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler allied together against Europe's democratic countries. Here we have authoritarian leaning Trump starting to ally himself with totalitarian Putin and China against democratic countries by dividing the world in very similar way as Stalin and Hitler divided Europe between themselves.
> current world split starts to eerily look, while still far from it of course, like the 1939 split in Europe
I’m seeing the Sino-Soviet split.
Europe might have a unique opportunity to ally with China to pry it from Russia. America gets the Western Hemisphere. Eurasia contains itself.
> Here we have authoritarian leaning Trump starting to ally himself with totalitarian Putin and China against democratic countries
I haven't seen Trump allying himself with China. Any references?
It’s more looked like lavishing praise on their leader than allying himself with the country. There are some representative quotes here
https://www.belfercenter.org/programs/thucydidess-trap/repre...
Xi Jinping is probably gleeful, if he can manipulate that moron he'd have USA under his control. Putin already needs his support for Ukraine, add USA and he'd gain the title of the most powerful person on the planet.
But considering Trump is an uncontrollable toddler, I guess he knows that's a title he can never keep..
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what happened in WW2. The tl'dr is Hitler lost, fascism won.
Germany only became a national project in the 19th century. It was a collection of principalities before that. Unlike its neighbours, who were actual Great Powers at the time, it lacked colonial interests to exploit and get rich from. And then when oil became important in the early 20th century, Germany didn't have access to oil.
So Germany felt like it would get swallowed up by its neighbours at some point and sought to assert its dominance, throwing away the Bismarck order. When scores were settled, Germany was punished with devastating reparations that laid the groundwork for WW2 and, on the side, countries like Britain secured their oil interests in the Middle East.
Post-WWI brought the Spanish flu (pandemic anyone?), hyperinflation to Germany, a badly attempted coup (the Beer Hall Putsch; sound familiar?) and the rise of a populist fascist who blamed all of Germany's problems on undesirables, Jews and Communists (any modern parallels, at all?).
Europe had entered an era of appeasement, desperately seeking to not repeat the "Great War". Reunification of German peoples was used as an excuse to seize all sorts of land.
Now Stalin tried to warn Britain and France of the dangers of Hitler and form an alliance in 1939, which failed [1]. So instead Stalin formed what you'd have to call an uneasy alliance with Hitler.
WW2 breaks out, yada yada yada, Hitler betrays Stalin and Stalin basically defeated Hitler at a terrible cost. The US had 400k casulaties in the European theater of WW2. The estimates for Soviet military and civilian losses in the same period are between 26 and 29 million.
Where FDR had sought to rebalance the inequalities in the Depression and created lasting legacies we depend on today such as Social Security, Truman decided Communism was the enemy and, as such, the USSR was the Great Enemy, a decision that led directly to the Korean and Vietnam Wars and other smaller conflicts.
And who would be good at killing Communists? Nazis of course. Operation Paperclip is well known. Less well known is how hudnreds if not thousands of former Nazis were forgiven their "moral lapses" and joined the ranks of the CIA, the FBI and NATO as well as the new West German military command [2].
Hitler and Stalin were fundamentally different beasts. I'm not saying Stalin was a good guy. He commited his share of atrocities. So did every American president if we're keeping score. But one thing Stalin was really good at was killing Nazis.
So began almost 50 years of Cold War that saw the Red Scare and the near complete destruction of any form of organized labor in the US. All to fight Communism.
I say "fascism won" because the Nazis weren't wiped out and we're seeing fascism reborn in the US and Europe while people who survived the Holocaust are still alive. That's how little time it took.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_alliance_negotiations
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-na...
> But one thing Stalin was really good at was killing Nazis.
He killed more of his own people then he did Germans, probably by ratio of 5:1
>Hitler and Stalin were fundamentally different beasts.
They built very similar totalitarian regimes. The only difference were the criteria they used to kill the millions of people.
Consider for a few minutes the contrast between Carney's speech and what daily babbles out of Trump's gaping maw. Carney's coherence is refreshing.
This is all eloquent and game-theoretic, but who is this being said too? Other davos attendees, and it will be the small people who must pay for this shift, through rising prices, worse labor conditions, austerity, etc. His astute observation about competing powers running to the lowest common denominator is intrinsically a property of capitalism.
It's a modern stage, it doesn't really matter who is physically there.
The EU aligned countries would be crazy to let the US set these rules for some temporary maintenance of income. They've all tended to social Democrats and socialist governments and have a better lifestyle than the US at half or 1/4 the GDP. That goes away if they let the US set pure power based rules, then 1/2 the GDP really is being half an American and if being a whole American was so great no one would have voted for Trump.
Canadian here: speeches are great, but you can’t take a speech to the bank and get a mortgage. The country is owned by the bankers and they’re looking out for each other. Carney is their mouthpiece. Large companies have preferential treatment and run monopolies. Everyone else? Get fucked. Pandemic in Canada was one great spectacle of corruption. Read up on ArriveCan and realize that’s just one (very public) example. There was much, much worse involving companies that would never get called out like ArriveCan did.
Rhetoric doesn’t make the economy recover and we are teetering on the brink of things. Businesses are struggling and many industries have hit a standstill. The best we can do is shift from being a vassal state of US to being a Chinese one.
The country is massive and yet we are so unproductive that Bank of Canada issued a warning late last year saying if productivity and wages don’t go up, the situation will get worse. Canada was one of the least productive countries in their analysis. Things have gotten worse since then. The only light at the end of this tunnel is the impending train wreck. Wages going up? Don’t make me laugh. My colleagues have moved to the US and are buying real estate with their tech salaries.
I wouldn’t blame Trump for Canada’s failings. I’d blame every layer of the government that is playing to lose and has brought this country to its knees. We are paying out of our asses in interest rates and taxes and our money is going nowhere. Inflation has eaten everything up and people have been getting progressively poorer over the decades. That’s got absolutely zero to do with Trump’s blowhard attitude.
Stop getting hoodwinked by professional speechwriters.
ouf, that's a lot of negativity and defeatism in one single comment.
I share your concern about growing inequality, but to lie down and give up does not help anyone
Posters downvoting without rebuking anything I said speaks for itself. It might be negative, but it’s the literal play-by-play of how things have been going for many years. O My one comment pales in comparison to what BoC and RCMP are warning about. I can’t do anything other than pack up and leave so I can’t be defeatist because there is no winning move here for the great majority. If we could try to do something, we would. We just get bent over and fucked.
A country that’s owned by bankers and we are supposed to believe a banker will pull us out of this. Yeah, now pull the other one.
You just put a whole lot of nonsense out there that it would take too much time to rebuke all of it. Tech workers buying property is a surprise? The US paying tech workers alot is a surprise? They literally pay the most on the planet. I'm a tech worker in Canada, guess what, me and my friends are buying property here too. We literally have a 60% home ownership rate in this country. The problem is social media is flooded with Canada doomer propaganda.
Much of the Canadian tech sector can’t afford real estate and has been priced out. Salaries are in general not moving much. The unicorns from Shopify are an obvious exception. Working for Toby is winning a lottery. Vancouver being “Silicon Valley North” is a joke.
People move to the US and they make twice the money. That is not “a whole lot of nonsense” and has nothing to do with “doomer propaganda” - it’s literally the brain drain that Canada has been dealing with for a long time.
Waterloo and other grads get poached by US companies before they finish schooling. This is nothing new. US just pays way better no matter how you look at it.
> People move to the US and they make twice the money. > This is nothing new. US just pays way better no matter how you look at it.
Not for long, Palantir CEO said that AI will displace so many jobs that it will eliminate immigration, plus there will be enough local jobs... if you have vocational training... that's the future! [1]
[1] https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2026/01/20/palantir-ceo-says-ai...
You say all the problems are man-made, but at the same time, that it's impossible to fix or improve anything?
> I wouldn’t blame Trump for Canada’s failings.
I wouldn't blame him for the US failings either, that would assume his role in the US is different than Carney's role in Canada and that'd be an assumption unsupported by evidence.
> The country is massive and yet we are so unproductive > I’d blame every layer of the government
What does the government have to do with it? The US gov isn't in control of the US econ, much less the Can gov of theirs - if you want to change that, you'll have to find a way to change it yourself.
> That’s got absolutely zero to do with Trump’s blowhard attitude.
Indeed zero to do with Trump but absolutely plenty to do with the attitude.
> Stop getting hoodwinked by professional speechwriters
You won't find amateurs up there, and they wouldn't be any better either, I'm not sure if it's worth it to be able to pick the speechwriters who hoodwink you.
I liked your heartfelt comment, please cheer up, this crisis is going to be harder than you think but, to make up for it, it's gonna last longer too...
The speech was surprisingly good. I think it's going to prove effective. This "taking the sign off" thing, good imagery.
But I can't help notice the inconsistency in this imagery. First, he says it himself a few minutes later. He doesn't "take the sign off" for NATO. We can understand why it's important to keep this facade.
But another one that bothers me is "energy, both clean and traditional". Oh, you didn't go for "clean and dirty"? Categories are clearer thus. Oh, not ready to take the sign off on the climate front? Too bad.
I don't think that's inconsistent - all but one member of NATO share the same values currently, and it's important they work together to resolve the current annexation threats from the US. That particular sign can be taken off later, if necessary.
> all but one member of NATO share the same values currently
Turkey? Hungary? Slovakia?
> For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order.
As an Indian listening to this, this comes across as absurd. Trudeau constantly invoked this phrase when dealing with India about the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won. In due course, the murderers turned out to be their own terrorists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardeep_Singh_Nijjar#Diplomati...
>It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won.
Canada's case was well corroborated by US and UK intelligence. India's claims of Mr Nijjar of being a terrorist was not.
>But nothing in the evidence India presented, the people say, met the standard for criminal charges in Canada, let alone for extradition. To press their case, officials in New Delhi frequently sent clippings from Indian media, which was rife with lurid stories about Nijjar’s alleged involvement in violence, instead of providing what the process required: hard evidence, obtained without coercion, that would stand up in a Western courtroom. When that didn’t work, the people say, the Indians suggested that Canadian police find a way to concoct the necessary evidence.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-india-sikh-separatis...
> India's claims of Mr Nijjar of being a terrorist was not.
But I'm not talking about this claim. I'm talking about the fact that Trudeau accused the Indian government being responsible for his murder. The onus was always on the Canadian government to prove it.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-indian-government-n...
Are you saying a "Canadian Terrorist" murdered Nijjar? The article you link says nothing about any country (except India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) disputing Canada's claim.
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan_movement is not a significant movement in India. I have plenty of connections with Sikhs and Sikhism in India. Apart from a very tiny minority of people, who quickly set off to Canada, this movement does not exist in India. They are courted by Canadian parliamentarians, which included Trudeau.
This book has more details about the movement: https://www.amazon.in/Blood-Fifty-Global-Khalistan-Project/d...
First, this issue has nothing to do with what Carney is talking about, second - nobody in Canada wants anything to with your 'ethno nationalist wars', third - the frequency with which this issue is brought up and pigeon-holed into everything is absurd, but fourth - and most critically - you're lying: the 'murderers' by all accounts were Indian nationals and the link you provided literally indicates that 'Karan Brar, age 22, Kamal Preet Singh, age 22, and Karan Preet Singh, age 28' arrested for murder - are Indian Nationals on temporary visas in Canada.
> nobody in Canada wants anything to with your 'ethno nationalist wars'
Absurd. These are YOUR 'ethno nationalist wars' because your country has given them a safe haven. This problem does not exist in India. Not one Sikh I know sympathizes with these separatists, and I have plenty of Sikh friends, been to their homes, been to their hometowns.
These are literally murders by Indian nationals on other Indian nationals, involving Indian government.
We want nothing to do with this.
Nobody is getting 'safe haven' - we have 'laws' and 'citizenship' so we respect those things, otherwise, we'd prefer all of you who want to continue your infighting to go home. Totally unwelcome.
Crucially - has nothing to do with this post.
> These are literally murders by Indian nationals on other Indian nationals
They are all in your immigration pipeline or already through it. The crimes are all on Canadian soil. Who has jurisdiction in the so-called "rules-based international order"?
> involving Indian government
This is your fantasy. You're playing fast and loose with accusations, just like Carney and Trudeau were while calling it "rules-based international order".
> We want nothing to do with this.
Then stop providing asylum. Stop courting them for votes. Prosecute criminals.
> Crucially - has nothing to do with this post.
Refer to the first line that I quoted.
> This problem does not exist in India. Not one Sikh I know sympathizes with these separatists
Then problem solved! If there are no separatists there is nobody to offer asylum to!
It is that simple. Canada is not learning. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G76aXJOWkAA4CNy?format=jpg&name=...
Most of the asylum claims came before CY2025, which is when the false asylum crackdown began in Canada [0].
A major issue was the Truduea-era diplomatic spat that led to the expulsion of Canadian [1] and Indian [2] diplomatic staff who cooperated on background checks along with an MP in Punjab who ran a "cash for asylum claim" racket [3].
After Carney became PM and Anand became MFA, the Canada-India relationship went back on track, and Trudeau era appointees were largely sidelined.
[0] - https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/canada-c...
[1] - https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2024/10/ministe...
[2] - https://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/38420/India+ex...
[3] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/punjabi-illegal-migration...
As someone from the US, I thought we were the leaders in choosing strange government figureheads, until Canada elected the head of a foreign bank as their's.
That speech reminds me of the conclusion the main character in the movie Antz settled on. Being forced to be a cog in the machine is awful and no one should accept it. Instead we should be happy to volunteer ourselves to be cogs in the machine.
Technically Carney was never the head of a foreign central bank; he was the head of a Commonwealth central bank. Canada and the UK do not consider each other to be foreign nations, as evidenced by their exchange of High Commissioners rather than Ambassadors.
FWIW he was bank head of Canada before being bank head of uk.
[flagged]
Is that an allusion to changing colours?
So it might have been Chinese before.
It’s an allusion to him previously working as a Goldman sachs banker, Goldman sachs is lovingly referred to as a vampire squid, its tentacles are everywhere.
Ah so, I thought it was some Canadian slang.
Also: "lovingly" cracked me up.
I mean it's not just any old foreign bank either though, in Canada the King of England is still our head of state.
The King of England is not our head of state, the King of Canada is our head of state. It's an important distinction because the Canadian and British monarchies are legally distinct offices. Canada is not subordinate to Britain like it once was as a colony, and our succession laws, royal titles and even the powers of our monarch are all determined by our law and constitution - not British law.
Mark Carney is born and raised Canadian. Just because he has had an illustrious career internationally does not make him any less Canadian than someone who has lived here their entire lives.
Very interesting! I was surprised to learn that the King of Canada sometimes even visits to do some kinging[0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Canada
Geez, what a gig. Lose your mom, become king of 15 nations...
He was here recently to read the speech from the throne and open his new government after the election. It was quite the event with a lot of pomp and circumstance. Very much welcome during these tumultuous times, and a nice reminder of our tradition and history that makes Canada what it is.
At least he can speak coherently and doesn't waffle off topic.
But, y'know, nuclear...!
He only won because trump said he wanted to make Canada the 51st state and the opposition party didn’t pivot or adjust their campaign to Trump’s rhetoric.
Consider that Trump is enough of a fucking lunatic that Canadians voted for the party of Justin Trudeau again.
I mean… we elect leaders to represent us and protect our country. If the other guy looked like he was willing to give the country away, well, that means he wasn’t the best person for the job. Trump rhetoric just showed us how ready Pierre Pollievre was to lead us: aka, he wasn’t.
That seems overly reductive.
He won because:
- the NDP and the CPC were both led by deeply unpopular leaders: Jagmeet Singh the silk clad, Rolex-wearing self styled "man of the people" and Pierre Poilievre who is so dislikeable he routinely polls double digits below his party
- Trump threatening to collapse the Canadian economy and/or annex us by force
- Flat economic growth
- Carney's credentials on the economy being unparalleled in Canadian politics (see previous point)
- Voters tired of the far-left big government nanny state philosophy that was the hallmark of the Trudeau governments and Carney successfully presented himself as a centrist
Interestingly, Carney was appointed to the Bank of Canada by a Conservative PM and I'd argue he's got a similar appeal that Trump initially had, but for different reasons: Trump positioned himself as an outsider, and Carney is similarly not a career politician. By contrast his only real challenger (Poilievre) hasn't had a real job in his life and has been living on the taxpayer's dime his entire career.
I think voters in both the US and Canada are sick of slimy politicians.
(Edit: can't reply because rate limited, better go back to pointless discussions about JavaScript. My usage of "far left" should be understood as being relative to the Canadian political spectrum. Justin Trudeau was definitely a very left-leaning PM by any rational measure)
There’s probably too much nuance in your answer for most, but thank you for taking the time to write it down.
It’s always interesting to read some thoughtful opinions, especially as an outsider(Australian) looking in.
You're right that PP doesn't have great polls: https://angusreid.org/federal-politics-poilievre-favourabili...
But he polled better than Trudeau: https://angusreid.org/trudeau-tracker/
CPC was firmly in the lead for the elections before Trumps' attention to Canada and the Liberals jumping on this to frame PP as another Trump or someone who would yield to Trump, both couldn't be farther away from his actual policy stances, but in the age of social media (and I guess major government owned media that does its bidding) that doesn't matter.
What mattered was that Pollievre waited weeks to defend Canada against the US threats. That scared a lot of voters. Showed us who he really was.
>Voters tired of the far-left big government....
Ah, yes; that communist fiend, Justin "Al Jolson" Trudeau, seizing all those means and abolishing hierarchies and redistributing the wealth.
>communist
Please quote where I said he was a communist. I'll wait.
Immaterial - no liberal government in Canada could be said to be “far left”.
In terms of social issues, he could not be much further left
Well, there’s the entire NDP…
substitute "communist" for "far-left" and the point still stands. No government in Canada has ever, EVER been far-left unless your definition of "far-left" is welfare capitalism.