TORONTO – I confess to not being a fan of President Donald Trump. Nor do I bear him any animus. His approach to the daily challenges that Life may throw our way appear different from the ones my parents laid out for me and my siblings. And, from a professional perspective, it is “my job” to critique so that our readers may have a balanced view of a politico whose weight on the scales of “good or bad” has a bigger impact than the insignificant expression of “right or wrong” expressed by ordinary citizens otherwise consumed by the need to mind their own business.
I am being circumspect. Yesterday, a proposed $13 billion investment by one of North America’s Big Three auto makers, initially scheduled for Brampton (Ontario, Canada), was cancelled in favour of relocation to Illinois, USA. Trump has been making his preferences known and felt.
His [America first] economic/tariff policies have set Canadian provincial premiers one against the others, as they seek to show “their way is the best way” to protect “Canada’s interests” (their own).
Single-handily, he has usurped the ability of “nation states” to determine budgets by demanding that a minimum of 2% of their GDP be allocated on Military/Defense expenditures – especially among NATO members. When some objected, more or less strenuously, he bumped that requirement to 5% annually. Canada, which, at the last budget had allocated 1.24% ($26 billion), has acknowledged an obligation/commitment to go to $40 billion by fiscal 2025-2026, and to $100 billion by 2030. Work for peace by preparing for war.
The USA, which already spends as much as the next eleven military powers combined – annually – on the military/industrial complex will adhere to the same standard, thus ensuring the maintenance of its dominance and feeding the perception that the USA is the world’s premier economic power and its de facto policeman.
By comparison, everyone else is either a “local lord” (irritant or ally) or a “client state”. Both depend on Trump’s (the USA’s whim); their braggadocio notwithstanding, sooner or later… No one is immune. Not Putin, not Zelensky, not Netanyahu or the “national interests” they claim to virtuously promote as their actions and decisions continue to envelop all that they do in a cloak of death and destruction.
Irrespective of the moral equivalencies anyone applies to those conditions applied in the dialectic of good versus evil in the hot spots associated with the above, without Trump’s intervention, Peace (and whatever comes with it) would be a pipe dream.
So, to whom did some faceless, nameless committee accord the formerly vaunted Nobel Peace Prize? What criteria did they apply? Is there some chemical /mathematical/scientific formula no one else has ever discovered or applied for unexpected outcomes? Was it public?
For my money, it should have been what basketballers call “a slam dunk” in Trump’s favour. I was not part of that committee, already being a member of that “illustrious no names”. I would have happily swallowed my pride to acknowledge Trump’s achievements in eliminating or mitigating the death and destruction whose images pepper our communications systems daily.
Congratulations to the committee of morons who did not follow my example. Hopefully, they will not be sitting as an Advisory Committee at the Pearly Gates when they call out my name.
In the pics above, the destruction in Gaza and Donald Trump seemingly saying “Stop!” (photo from Twitter X – @UNRWA and @WhiteHouse)
