It's America that threatens Canadian freedom

It breaks my heart that the Orange Toddler has made Canada and Canadians our enemies. Understand, I don't begrudge Canadians anything they have to do to escape the clutches of the regime currently in power in Washington. But our necessary estrangement tears at me.

This display of flags marked the center of the Peace Bridge over the Niagara River between Buffalo. NY, and Fort Erie, Ontario, in 2007. (That middle one is the UN.) I assume this display no longer marks the border today, It's probably been replaced, perhaps by a threatening sign.

Canada was very nearby when growing up in Buffalo a long time ago. In fact, I sailed my Sunfish across the river and landed in a foreign country without concern. Driving to Canada was regular part of learning to drive. 

No longer.

Canadian author Stephen Marche explains the look of things from Toronto: 

... American aggression and American decline are of a piece. As Mr. Carney has announced a slew of measures aimed at boosting Canada’s electric vehicle industry, nobody has argued for a moment that American equivalents could compete. By ending E.V. tax credits, Mr. Trump may have all but ensured that the American electric vehicle will one day be a thing of the past. America has decided not to compete. It would rather pose. If you are integrating yourself into the American sphere of influence, or whatever Mr. Trump’s national security apparatus calls it, you are integrating yourself into antiquity — or worse.

At the same time, America is becoming synonymous with dangerous randomness. The constitutional system is in collapse. The legislative branch, made up of both Democrats and Republicans, is missing in action. The Supreme Court debates the legal equivalent of how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, while the legal order that has held the country together for 250 years sputters toward an ignominious end. Nobody knows what America is anymore — not Americans, not their enemies, not their friends.

Coming to terms with this reality has not been easy in Canada. American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug; it’s hard to break the habit of thinking of Americans as the good guys. For Canadians, what is unfolding in Minnesota and elsewhere is happening to our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, our kin — it is happening to people we love and understand better than anybody. But “the rupture,” as Mr. Carney calls it, is nothing more than seeing clearly. Today, it’s America that poses a threat to our freedom and democracy. Not China. Not Russia. America. ...

Read it all [gift].