Standing Up to Donald Trump – Fear and Despair Not the Right Response To A Bully
Monday 3 February 2025
by Asaju Tunde
As a fresh #Canadian, a journalist on sabbatical from active reporting, I feel completely disappointed with all the reports I have been reading, watching and hearing about the threats from the orange blubber in Washington DC against our beloved nation, #Canada. I have lived in this beautiful country for 15 solid years. I have gone through the #Conservative and #Liberal governments and all the hues between. I have my personal preferences from watching politics from the sidelines.
Four decades of active reporting probably put me in a good place to make comparisons about governance (at the superficial level) and the impenetrable force of #unity especially in the face of existential threat to a nation’s sovereignty.
I have watched with dismay how some #Canadians have been reacting to the looming economic Armageddon since the outcome of American elections. I am appalled that there are Canadians who align themselves with ideas that would make us mortgage our hard-won, globally attractive sovereignty for the superficial highs of the emperor in DC. I shake my head in disbelief that when duty called to rally against a bully, there are people missing in action or others straddling the fence for cheap political gains. We are more than that. We got this.
If we stop winging and winning over how horrible we think our current leadership is and rally our support for our government, offering useful advice, we will pull out of this as eternal victors. We are #Canada, we don’t keel, bend or bow before tyrants. We got this!
While I personally hate the antics of bullies and believe that bullies should be met force with force, we may be at a disadvantage here because of the disparity between the very numbers of the American population compared to ours. Economics is numbers first, every other thing is figures – in a war between figures and numbers, the numbers always win. That is what makes America such a paper superpower, but no nation survives on its own and America under Trump is burning its firewood at both ends. It is creating confusion and alienation at home and making enemies of long-term friends abroad. I don’t see how this would be to its all-time advantage.
I just come off the telephone with a patriot who expressed the views that our best way out is to stoop to conquer. We should adopt the smart approach as Mexico, Panama, China and Colombia. We should avoid matching tariffs with tariffs because we do not have the immediate capacity to win in such strategy. By pandering to the ever-bloated ego of the blubber, we win against the immediate threat of being submerged and time to replan and reposition our beloved country to stand against being bullied into submission in future.
To reassure the dictator that we are complying with his erratic and insane demands may be the way to go. To make him see that we have put in place all that is needed to meet his wants. To tell him that we are deploying Canadian troops to the borders supported by the RCMP. To convince him that we have even created a special force ready to deploy to the borders to prevent Canadian flies, moths and mosquitoes from sneaking through our impenetrable borders. That we are awarding contracts for high-tech motion-activated cameras and helicopters to follow any motion detection to prevent ‘aliens’ from Mars, Jupiter and Saturn using Canadian borders to excrete their cargo of drugs to feed American insatiable appetite for addiction.
This approach will buy us time to return home and re-strategize, reappraise and reposition our beautiful country against, preserve our sovereignty and prevent future bullying.
America may appear to be winning this war, its victory is pyrrhic. History teaches lessons that only fools ignore. It was by upturning the apple cart and realigning the strategic order of things that Britain lost the ‘great’ behind its name. We hope for all our sakes that America does not consume itself from its current grandstanding. The legendary Goliath believed he had it all – height advantage, depth of reach, stealth of armour until a stone from a lad called David positioned itself on his forehead.
We should not bother ourselves with what becomes of America when it has torn all the treaties on which its power is sustained. As Donne eternally said – no man is an island. It is setting itself up to lose the power to rally the coalition of the unwilling and the cajoled to its needless wars to grab of everything within its sight.
What Canada needs to do is to be strategic in its thinking, wise as a slithering serpent but gentle as a dove in its response to the prevailing order. But for God’s sake, we should stop succumbing to fear and despair and work to fortify our country against a plan to annex it as an appendage of a superpower whose glory days are on its way out.
In the meantime, think #Canada, live #Canada, buy #Canada – Support #Canada
Vive le Canada, le vrai nord, fort et libre et il en sera tourjours ainsi!