I’m a U.S. citizen and also hold legal Canadian permanent resident status. First and foremost, I feel a great need to apologize to the Canadian government and people for the behaviour of the unhinged, miscreant menace who currently (and illegitimately) infests the American government – along with his cadre of fascist cockroaches he has appointed to destroy every American agency and institution. Donald Trump has been accurately described by many psychologists who have studied his behaviour as being a ‘malignant narcissist’. And a now strong majority of the American electorate (including an ever-increasing number of those who voted for him and his party) know what a danger Trump is to life as we’ve known it.
Toxic xenophobia and ignorance has always habitually permeated American society, and has been a factor in the absolute, widespread corruption and outright fraud associated with the American electoral system. Since our general election last November, an increasing number of experienced statisticians/academics who study the numbers in elections are raising the concern that Trump, hand in glove with his party and the richest man in the world Elon Musk, rigged and stole the election*. This was done by various voter suppression tactics, including outright purging of ballots in the so-called ‘red’ (republican) states. The non-standardized, fraud-ridden American electoral system stands in contrast to virtually that of nearly every other developed country in the world.
*Based on the analysis done by one such professor of statistics, Greg Palast (gregpalast.com), who has several decades of experience analyzing electoral processes and outcomes of not only American elections but those of several other countries, has concluded that over 4.5 million votes were challenged or outright purged – the vast majority of those votes from people who had a high likelihood of voting against Trump and his party. Had it been a fair election, Palast calculated that Kamala Harris would’ve won by 1.6 million votes, and would not have lost by what was still a razor-thin margin of 1.4% - a far cry from the ‘mandate from the people’ that those now in power claim to have to justify their ugly and unrelenting damage to government agencies and programs upon which millions of Americans depend. That bogus mandate is precisely the excuse they continue to use – along with a plethora of other lies – to justify their rapid, largely unchecked dismantling of American government and democracy.
What you are witnessing now in real time are predator capitalists, led by an obscenely wealthy foreign espionage agent with no lawful permission who, along with his little band of nazi youth wiz brats, are invading the data privacy and security of every American, disrupting government operations under the guise of ‘rooting out fraud’. Their real intent is to take away critical benefits and services from the weakest, poorest and most vulnerable in our society, by eliminating, privatizing or replacing those government agencies with a central monarchy run by Trump and the wealthiest oligarchs and corporations of, by and for their personal benefit. All oversight and regulatory functions of the American government put in place over several decades for the protection and improvement of the lives of the people and of our environment are being eliminated in a matter of weeks. Our congress – both parties – are doing nothing about it. The courts are trying, but it’s always too little too late. For example, when a federal judge finally enters orders to restrict or block the aforementioned data invasions by these kleptocrats, the ship has already long sailed. One of Musk’s nazi youth hackers has domains on Russian and Chinese servers. I’m willing to bet money I don’t have that a significant portion (if not most) of our sensitive personal and government data has been copied and is likely already for sale on the dark web.
In the not too distant past, many of these people – Musk, his young hackers, Trump himself, his agency appointees and many congressional members of his party would be charged, tried, convicted and receive long prison sentences or the death penalty for espionage and treason. But today, they act with impunity. America is now an upside-down system, a daily distopian nightmare for everyone but the uber-rich and the worst dictators in the world, many of whom are our enemies but are now partners in crime with the current American government. Putin, Un, and a few other dictators with names I can’t pronounce or remember, are now not only Trump’s role models, but are literally his soul mates for whom he has great admiration. At this writing, Trump’s strategy of allowing oligarchs a free hand in anything they want to do long as their actions do not conflict with (and are favourable to) his personal interests are virtually indistinguishable from how Putin and other dictators run their countries.
We’re now seeing disturbing news about some outrageous incidents being perpetrated by an American organization, ICE, whose mission is enforcing immigration laws but has in practice been turned into the Trump Gestapo. Recently some innocent Canadians who find it necessary to cross into the U.S. for activities related to their businesses, art/film projects, relatives or friends on the American side, etc have been arrested, detained and transferred to detention sites in the U.S., often for several days and potentially much longer. Then told they’re ‘not under arrest and have not committed any crimes’. Why? Because, as many progressive organizations who fight the emerging American fascism have repeatedly pointed out, the cruelty is the point, to scare the snot out of anyone who dares question anything the lawless, out of control miscreants in our government do. Within the U.S there have actually been verbal threats made by Trump’s people (including the top brass of his Dept. of Justice, head of ICE, etc) that anyone who opposes anything they’re doing should be arrested and ‘deported’, and even some suggestion of employing the death penalty against protesters! None of this is hyperbole, it is in fact what we in the U.S. are living with daily now. Welcome back to 1930s Germany.
Millions of Americans outraged over what is happening in real time are with you. We intend to continue our efforts in trying to remove these people - most of all an illegitimate president - before they can perpetrate more damage. The U.S. Constitution prohibits one as unfit and unstable as Trump from holding any federal office let alone the presidency. The opposition party (Democrats) had several opportunities to legally block his inauguration but as usual in the name of ‘decorum’, ‘civility’ and ‘tradition’ refused the peoples’ demand to not certify his ‘victory’. Everything they’ve done since has been ineffective in checking the Trump administration’s domestic abuses and absurd threats to (countries that used to be) our allies. I like referring to the American Democratic Party as the Party of Neville Chamberlain (in reference to the British politician whose unsuccessful strategy to avoid military conflict with Hitler was appeasement of his expansionist appetites). Weak, spineless, and useless against a menace who is copying to the letter Hitler’s playbook of rapidly consolidating dictatorial power.
In Part II, we’ll look at the multi-faceted threat Trump poses to America’s allies, and conservatism’s incompatibility with democracy.
Bill Cavanaugh is an American citizen and Canadian resident writer who intermittently resides in the Kootenay Boundary region, and Washington state.
