Keith McNenly
Special to Niagara Now/The Lake Report

Americans are beginning to experience the impacts of the extreme turn of direction being implemented by their new federal administration:

• America switching sides in Ukraine’s heroic defence against Russian invaders
• The president’s mob-like shakedown of Ukraine to acquire contracts for half a trillion dollars worth of its mineral assets in exchange for allowing its citizens to live another day
• Territorial aggressive threats against Greenland and Panama
• Coercive tariff wars first against Canada and Mexico, now extending to the rest of the world
• The constant insults to Canadians, threats to destroy our economy, seize our natural resources, and “annex” Canada as an American state

These previously unthinkable policy reversals, however, are just the tip of the iceberg.

The administration is subverting American civic governance by installing unqualified department heads to oppose and dismantle many of the institutions they are appointed to lead.

This novel approach mimics the playbook of corporate hostile takeovers in which the predator organization’s goal is to destroy an asset-rich company and sell off its assets for profit.

The loss of the victim company in the marketplace, the fate of its employees, their pensions and their communities are not relevant factors.

The American press daily exposes new and inventive examples of the administration’s weaponizing the law.

Competent career prosecutors are directed to use their positions in a subversive manner, forcing them either to perform illegal investigations and prosecutions or to resign.

Taxes levied on the middle class for services to citizens, social security for the elderly, healthcare and environmental protection are redistributed to the wealthy.

Most Americans don’t support the loss of democracy nor the betrayal of allies, but the speed and scale of the corporate/mob-styled dissolution of their institutions is beyond their imagining, and has many flummoxed.

Truth, reality and reason have been replaced by fear and fabrications. Republican supporters carefully curated fear and hatred of immigrants and LGBTQ people, and are pivoting now towards hatred of global trade, which is twisted as the world stealing from America.

The Constitution does not provide Americans succour from a legally elected but rogue president/king and powerful oligarch class.

Voters are being “sucker punched” after putting their trust in the Republican Party. The survival of American democracy is once again in the hands of “We the people.”

Americans and Canadians have been friends for centuries. At a core level that has not yet changed, even though Canadians will continue to ramp up our boycott of everything American, to protect our economy and our country that generations of Canadians have fought and died for.

We are all victims of the same presidential mugging, and are all suffering from his engineering of mistrust and division between us. We should not take the bait.

The president now pretends he wants Liberals to win, trying to influence Canadians to vote Conservative. He must think we are all stupid. No one is buying it.

As authoritarianism consolidates its hold in the U.S. and destabilizes global trade and military alliances, Canadians will now decide which federal party and leader is best suited to protect our own sovereign and economic interests.

A cool-headed, thoughtful team of professionals, focused on appropriate retaliatory tariffs, regional nation-building within Canada, and forging strategic alliances with other democracies, will best serve Canada.

It is in the hands of this generation of Canadians to use all the wisdom we can muster to mark our ballots with the singular purpose of keeping the true north strong and free.

Niagara-on-the-Lake resident Keith McNenly was the chief administrator of the Town of Mono for 41 years.