Quico Toro at Persuasion:
We can give ourselves far, far more than Donald Trump can ever take away, but it will—it will take extraordinary efforts. It won’t be business as usual. We will have to do things we haven’t imagined before, at speeds we didn’t think possible. […] I know, I know that these are dark days, dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust. We are getting over the shock, but let us never forget the lessons: we have to look after ourselves and we have to look out for each other. We need to pull together in the tough days ahead.
These lines, spoken by Mark Carney on Sunday moments after he was chosen to lead the governing Liberal Party of Canada, paint a startling picture of a suddenly unrecognizable relationship with our giant neighbor. For a leader on the cusp of becoming Canadian prime minister to just matter-of-factly assert that Canada can no longer trust the United States is geopolitics through the looking glass. Managing the fallout from this impossibility will now be the thing a Canadian prime minister has to do.
Americans, in their endless self-regard, have always vaguely figured Canadian politics must be largely about the United States. When you live in Canada—as I did from 2009 to 2024—you soon learn how silly that is.
More here.
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