16/02/2025
I am appalled by the Canadian diplomatic passivity re the Trump alliance proposal. It requires a generous amount of mock-understanding reaction to scare them into paralysis:
As Canadians we monitor the USA very closely and recognise that your primitive toxic two party system is on the verge of collapse. While we welcome in principle your impulse to modernise your societal institutions through an amalgamation with our confederation, there a would of course be several requirements before we could consider your application as potential 'state/provinces'. ( State is likely not the best word to use in this context as it carries much baggage from the horse and buggy era of your founding, and confounds some international concepts of statehood; either you are united as one state or you are not.)
We would also be very concerned with any tendency to retain any vestiges of your rhetoric of exceptionalism, in fact we take it as a given that your desire to join with us is a tacit admission that this is no longer the case. Your choice to seek to learn from our experience demonstrates a newfound political maturity; there should be many a mutual benefit in a life together sans tariffs. (We trust that you have already begun French language classes.)
Among the structural adjustments that will assist our mutual prosperity is the immediate adoption of proportional representation as a minor nod to the principles of democratic socialism. Your winner-takes-all binary promotes the abusive confrontations that sadly colour much of your political discourse; while the corruption inherent in the plethora of political appointments seems very damaging. Some might say that we are not that much better, but we at least function through a tradition of minority governments that invite to a spirit of compromise and adaption.
Also it should be noted that we currently operate with 13 administrative entities that equate with your 'states'. A handful of these, while they cover enormous geographical areas, do have very low populations relative to even your smaller states, but since each of these have independent infrastructures it may be best to retain them at least in a transition phase. To bring justice into our merger, an electoral college system where each of our provinces have its vote weighted at four times that of an individual US state would provide matrimonial balance. ( 4 x 13 = 50 + DC and Puerto Rico). The fun question would of course be: what should the new country be called? I suspect that Trumpland won't go down well here, but at least you can be quit that silly habit of claiming to be the sum total of two entire continents.
