Toronto, Ontario – Donald Trump loses a choice in a landslide – in Canada. After a decade under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Kanada was ready to turn away from his center-left-liberal party. It seemed inevitable that my home country would choose a new conservative government and maybe redefine the idea of what it means to be Canadians. An identity that mostly begins with the premise of being an American.
Had nothing to say about Canada. If he hadn’t bullied the country, downgraded and threatened with the annexation. Then the conservative party would have won a massive majority. Trump and the chainsaw would have swinging Elon Musk It is not without apparent reason for puberty taunts against Canadians, which they presented themselves as a defenseless goal, the relationship between the two countries might have redefined each other.
Instead, Trump’s rapid behavior led to almost general disgust. Incredible, but also inevitable, as every reasonable Canadian would tell you. After Trump’s attack, the Trump-like leader of the conservative party, who likes to talk garbage, was the most like Wile E. Coyote. The politician, who had long claimed that Canada was destroyed on the ground, was suddenly speechless when the ground broke out under his campaign.
No marketing genius could have found a way to combine the Canadians faster
Within a few days there was a change of 25 points in favor of the ruling liberal party. Which is now led by a sober plutocrats and bankers named Mark Carney. No marketing genius could have found a way to combine the Canadians faster than Trump’s threats and Customs. Insults of a supposed marketing gurus that makes America a toxic brand worldwide.
On a rainy, cold spring day you go through Toronto. Under an advertising table, on which “opportunities for Canadian weather: 100 percent” are announced, the most remarkable thing about the city is how unnotended it is. The hasting chaos of Trump’s America, which does not want to stop, faces the urban calm here. A pro-Palestinian protest march moves along the University Avenue towards the town hall. Without having to be afraid of being kidnapped by government agents.
The hip-hop exhibition in the Art Gallery of Ontario continues without fear that the delicate feelings of sensitive white men will be violated by different historical and political stories. A blonde bride poses with her groom on the round staircase in the main target. Without noticing how threatened she should feel when she sees the large poster on the wall with a series of oversized teeth and braces on which “Black Power” stands.
The flags and pins and canada goose fleece jackets are exhausted
The renaming of America is in full swing in a shopping center to Torontos Hauptstraße. Teenager buyers leave American shops on the left. The flags and pins and canada goose fleece jackets are abundant, while customers in Eataly specifically ask for products that are not manufactured in the United States.
There is a lot of hustle and bustle in my favorite pho shop in Chinatown. Until I get a bundle of American cash to pay for my lunch. And are confronted with silence and disapproving views. (“Dream big, smaller”, stands on the sign above the urinal.) The signs of an economic cooling in Canada are already obvious. But the dissatisfaction is refuted by the excited, ethnically diverse and integrative children who are evenly facing in order to buy in a new Chinese fast-fashion-pop-up shop.
Customers in bars all over the city specifically ask about non-American alcohol brands
In a hotel in the city center, on the top floor of a former Trump-burned high-rise, the bar, which was once called America, was renamed to avoid the association. The only remains of the tasteless version of the President’s luxury are the cheap black marble and the awkward interior. Customers in bars all over the city specifically ask about non-American alcohol brands, say bartenders and waiter. A sign of solidarity that holds the nation together. No American brands are offered in a nearby spirits store. When I ask the seller whether there were complaints, he seems surprised by the question.
“Nobody complained,” he says. “People start to appreciate Canadian whiskeys.”
A few overnight -time day drinkers on the sidewalk outside talk about politics. Eat everyone else I meet while they share a bottle.
“Trump spoke at least respectfully to Mark Carney,” says a drunk appreciatively. “Trump called Carney Prime Minister, that’s something.”
“Canada can definitely not one Trade war win with America “
Another agrees drunk. ‘C’est la vie“, He says.
“Canada can definitely not one Trade war Win with America, ”explains Vice President JD Vance on television, while visiting an American military base in Greenland. Another company that is threatened by the Trump government.
But here is the thing. There is no war in Canada. Canada is neither in the war with America, nor in the war with reality or empathy or the basic elements of human decency, which also define the Canadian identity. Dei – or Donald, Eric and Ivanka, as it was called on Canadian television – is of course part of the political debate in Canada. But the underlying feelings of the movement for diversity, justice and inclusion are still the character traits that are conveyed in Canadian kindergartens. Give your best. Say the truth. Respect others. Don’t be a tyrant, the rules are important. Together with the texts of O Canada.
On one level is what Canada is going through, a divorce, I think. What Vance does not seem to understand is that nobody wins in a divorce. Both parties are poorer. If not even more unhappy. The gang of trust, affection and history that the couple got together are irreparable. And here is another cruel reality of divorce. The abusing partner is also a misuse after the separation. The empty threats. The irrational demands. The self -pity, lying, cheating. The wild mood swings. All the unattractive properties stare out of the mirror in the morning after the end of the marriage.
An old man like Donald Trump now has the power to end life on earth
But the most elementary dispute between Canada and America seems to be the modern world. Conservative America has been running an angry dispute with history for years. The traditionalists at the Supreme Court selectively tell the past to serve their ideological interests. An old man like Donald Trump now has the power to end life on earth. Instead of shouting the television and changing the channel with its remote control. The world frightens of fear while his dissatisfaction with the present and his longing for the past turns the world upside down.
Everywhere in the city there are historical plaques that celebrate Canada’s inheritance. But nobody wants to travel seriously into the past to experience a fantastic golden age. Or live in a fantasy world in which all the suffering of the world can be conjured up by a magical red hat.
On April 2, Trump’s “Day of Liberation”, it is snowing in Toronto when the event is broadcast live from the White House on Canadian television. And the president turns reality into a perverse type of reality TV. The concern of the news speakers is obvious. But it slowly turns out that Canada is spared the worst of the new global trade tax regime. Customs, steel and aluminum remain. But the rest of the world now experiences what Canada has had to endure for months. One -sided abolition of global trade rules. And new, huge Trump-Zölle, which are known as the act of friendliness-truly transcendental gas lighting-while the crowd in the rose garden is struggling to catch a thrown maga hat.
An excessive, proudly incoherent discourse
“Trump is happy to be caressed,” says a Canadian commentator, after hearing, how Trump praised the Smoot-Hwley-Zölle, which contributed to the tightening of the global economic crisis and described the 1880s as a golden age. An excessive, proudly incoherent discourse that seems to reject the realities of the 21st century.
The next morning the sun finally comes out-apparently there are no Trump-Zölle-and the city moves forward again. The Canadian employees and the economy immediately feel the effects in the form of job losses and changed living conditions. However, all Canadian political parties agree that there is no back. The already existing relationship is over, as Prime Minister Carney says. The marriage is over.
There is already a clear loser: Donald Trump
In contrast to so many stricken American institutions-law firms, universities, soulless, crucial technology billionaires-Canada opposes the tyrant as much as possible. And says: “Bullshit”. No matter who wins the Canadian choice, there is already a clear loser: Donald Trump.
In this new era of American lawlessness, contracts such as those that Trump negotiated with Canada and Mexico are pushed aside with the same shameless lightness that the president once showed when the subcontractor was overcome. Trump has now prepared to distribute and collect customs benefits such as a mafia boss that practiced corruption and impenetrability with impunity. And of course enjoys immunity.
The president treats the world like a nave. In the certainty that he is smarter than everyone else. The Canadians, who took care of their own affairs until a few weeks ago, now look at their neighbors with a mixture of horror, disbelief and fear. And fear that this type of arrogance is always preceded by the case.