So everyone is doing the “end-of-year” awards thing. I’ll pitch in my thoughts. Man of the Year? Well that’s Trump of course; the fact that he’s coming back to town with a naughty-nice list is the greatest comeback in American political history.
Boss Move of the Year? That goes to Trump as well for his reaction to the assassination attempt in Butler this past July.
Second place in the boss move category? I nominate Trump for his starring role in “Justin Trudeau’s Trip to Mar-a-Lago.”
First of all I just want to say I like Canada. I have spent a lot of time there, have many Canadian friends, and I like the people in general. We are very fortunate as a country to have them as a neighbor. You don’t think having good neighbors is important? Go read Polish history.
First some background.
Justin Trudeau is the prime minister of Canada, for now. He has a reputation, depending on your point of view, as something between a cosmopolitan man of the future and a fop.
Justin is the dashing son of Pierre Trudeau, who in turn was also a dashing foppish cosmopolitan of a prime minister, and one who tried very hard to let the world know that Canada was not America. Pierre took Canada’s historic contribution to western defense through two world wars and as a founding member of NATO and traded it all for some magic beans and participation in UN peacekeeping operations. Canada was too small of a stage and “Peace, Order, and Good Government” too belittling for a man of Pierre’s stature.
One thing to note about the Trudeau “dynasty” is that, assuming Justin can make it to the end of the week, a Trudeau will have been prime minister of Canada for 28 of the last 57 years — just about half of this total period. Bushes, eat your hearts out.
The other thing to know about Justin is that he’s like Pierre in another important respect: he is a thug. Pierre liked to mix it up with Quebec separatists, especially with a rag-tag group called the FLQ. He made headlines by sending tanks into Montreal’s streets during the FLQ crisis and had a notorious response to illegal RCMP activities: if people were upset about the illegality, perhaps he should just make those activities legal — which sounds like something out of a Soviet bar exam.
Justin couldn’t really top that because it’s not clear if Canada has that many tanks left. However, Justin has invoked confiscatory gun policies and proposed legislation to combat “misinformation.” Then there was the COVID two-step, when in response to his draconian COVID policies a national protest in the form of a convoy of truckers occupied downtown Ottawa. Justin responded to their grievances by first calling them Nazis, then skipping town, and then invoking the Emergencies Act to crush the truckers, who had made themselves enemies of the state with their bouncy castles and infernal honking. Canadian nice indeed.
The other backgrounder is the relationship Canada has with the US. While much of Canada’s national identity centers around not being American, with many Canadians thinking that Americans are just a bunch of wild, watered-down-beer swilling, gun-owning yahoos, Americans return the favor by not thinking about Canadians at all. To the extent the Americans do think of Canada, they wonder why those nice American-seeming people up north just don’t admit it and come on board as the 51st state (minus the metric system, three-down football, and strange spelling habits).
So let’s move on to Justin’s big trip to Mar-a-Lago.
Soon after being re-elected, Trump mused about imposing some pretty big tariffs on imports from Canada. Justin, as prime minister, understood that such a move would devastate the Canadian economy, and sprang into action by getting on a plane to fly to Mar-a-Lago.
So let that sink in. The Canadian prime minster, on a matter of critical importance to his country, gets on a plane not to see the incumbent US president, but rather flies past the White House for another 1,000 miles in order to meet Trump (who is still a private citizen) at his private residence. During dinner, when Justin tells Trump that the proposed tariffs would devastate the Canadian economy, Trump tells him that if Canada cannot exist without ripping off the American people, then maybe Canada should become the 51st state and that he (Justin) can be its governor.
That’s a boss move: When, before you even take office, you get the sitting prime minister (a man who is the antithesis of Trump) to come to your home as if a vassal and then go on to humiliate him by pressing the biggest buttons in the Canadian psyche regarding its national sovereignty.
Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, probably the next prime minster, gets it.
Honorable mention in the boss move category (2023 edition)? Poilievre, who took down a simpering journalist while calmly munching on an apple.
My local hometown, Sacramento, actually had a team in the Canadian football league for a few years. And I have to tell you I think Canadian football is more exciting than the NFL
Three downs which encourages passing. And I think the field is wider.
As far as Justin Trudeau from my little vantage point I’d have to say he is a survivor. Canadians supposedly have hated him for over a decade and yet he still hangs on
Although I think he’s more popular in the east than the west
Trump can be pretty funny but I see his point about all of these NATO members that aren’t pulling their weight and expect the US to defend them.
I had a wonderful trip up to Victoria a year ago and I was reminded that while we think our Canadian neighbors are just like us every now and then you come up across a word out of the blue that is completely strange.
“Garburator” is my favorite
That’s the Canadian garbage disposal
I had forgotten about the CFL expansion into the US in the 90s.
I came to well maybe not appreciate three down football. It works up there I do appreciate the CFL it’s a league with a lot of history and tradition and important part of a number of communities up there. Back in the days before expansion a lot of NFL hours such as Warren Moon and Bud Grant had their roots there
The one interesting fact for a number of decades till the original Ottawa went defunct there were two teams named the Roughriders….. The one team was two words and the other is a single
I believe the agreement with the NFL still exists that keeps them out of Canada.
As far as Justin survival yeah he is tenacious. 10 years is a long time in politics and really he was on the ropes back in 2021 on the minority government. He survived in large part because the conservative parties pathetic. Westerners can’t stand the Liberals. Something like 12% of the liberal caucus in Parliament comes from west of Ontario and almost all of those from British Columbia
It’s important to remember that hardly anyone in Canada has ever or will ever vote for Trudeau. Although the prairies and Arctic are over represented by population, Ontario and Quebec have a super majority of 199 out of 338. Of that, 108 are liberal and 33 are Bloc Québécois, so 141 out of a majority+1 of 170. the rest of Canada east of Quebec also votes 23/32 lib. It’s easy to believe that there are large areas of Canada where Justin is not going to show his face if he can help it and no reason for him to do so. When you add 25 NDP(hard left) and 3 Greens, it’s not likely that the Canadian government will become reality based any time soon, Trudeau or no Trudeau.