Well so much for the United Nations of the world marching to victory against fascism I guess. The whole point is that MAGA wanting to annex Canada means it's no longer purely an "internal struggle".
Will the U.S. help Canada with our Maple MAGA problem? After all, your country's Republicans helped cause it. The leader of the CPC (Pierre Poilievre) is chummy with MAGA Republicans and likes to spout crap that looks suspiciously like some of the things in Project 2025. The premier of my province adores your orange president and is remaking Alberta in the Republican image, and doesn't give a damn how many laws she breaks to do it. She just fires anyone who tries to hold her accountable and has a big enough majority to ram through legislation that says she doesn't have to comply with freedom of information requests.
Don't cite the United Nations here. We're under threat of annexation by a country that we have helped a great deal during the last 50 years, whether saving Americans from being detained in Iran, burned up in wildfires, having who knows what would have happened if we hadn't let the planes land on 9/11, and joined your wars in Afghanistan. Your Republican presidents couldn't even be bothered to say 'thank you.' (the Democrat ones did).
I'm not talking about history, I'm talking about now. If you're suggesting that I view Canada as an extension of the US, you're quite mistaken. As I see it, the fight against fascism is a global struggle. I figured that Canadians opposed to being annexed by MAGA would be the natural allies of anti-MAGA elements in the US, but with this apparent level of distrust, I guess not. It's unfortunate, because the enemies of fascism need to pull together now or be defeated one by one.
You can't avoid talking about history if you want to understand this current mess and what to do about it.
Of course it makes sense on the surface that non-MAGA Canadians would be natural allies of non-MAGA Americans, but MAGA isn't the only contentious issue between our countries. So yes, there is a lot of distrust.
On the FB and YT pages I follow, there are Americans who say they'd love it if their states could become part of Canada. I'm referring to Washington, Oregon, California, and some of the north-eastern states. To which I would say, "It's nice that you want to join us, but no." While we would gain a bunch of very smart, nice people who are rational, we'd also gain the ones there who are not smart, not nice, and not rational and would do their best to change Canada to be like what they'd had as Americans. No, thank you, we already have enough of those. A whole pack of them are currently running my province and putting the lives of my demographic at risk. I'm talking about a premier who, for one example, is so rabidly anti-vaxxer that she doesn't think ramping up the program for measles vaccinations is a good thing even though cases are on the rise and the very last place I'd ever want to step into now is a hospital because of what I could catch there. It's not something that only kids catch, and I didn't have it when I was a child.
To come back to the original question, which I think was a good one. I would suggest the following:
- no retrospective action whatsoever again members of the current US administration.
This might feel hard but I think prosecuting just keeps the cycle going, you have to stop it somewhere.
So you'd be willing to let people skate for these egregious human rights violations they're committing? You do know that people are being tortured in those ICE detention centres, right?
- more clarity on the power (and likely a reduction in the power) of the president.
No kidding... Good grief, my premier is so wrapped in her admiration for All Things Republican that she actually thought she had the power to "pardon" the Coutts 4 (domestic terrorists who were among the truckers who blocked the international border at Coutts, Alberta around the time of the Freedumb Convoy occupation of Ottawa a few years ago; these four were discovered to have weapons with them, at a "peaceful" protest) and a pastor who finally got legal consequences for continuing to hold services in defiance of public health laws during the pandemic.
Do they?
Nine in 10 Canadians would vote 'no' in a referendum on annexation, while six in 10 Americans also have no interest in the idea.
vancouversun.com
Canadians give a resounding ‘no’ to joining
Dragon’s Den businessman Kevin O’Leary recently said he thinks half of Canadians would be interested in joining the U.S.
“We’d love to know where Mr. O’Leary is finding his data,” said the institute. Nine out of 10 said they would vote no in a referendum on the idea.
There are pockets of mild support. Among men 35 to 54 years old, 22 per cent would vote yes, more than twice as many as their female counterparts in that age group. Almost all the support for the idea comes from Tory supporters, one in five of whom would join. Only three per cent of other parties’ partisans would do the same.
The Angus Reid Institute says the data suggests there’s a political motivation. The Conservatives haven’t formed government for a decade, and support for joining the U.S. leaps in a scenario where the Liberals win another majority.
O'Leary is Maple MAGA, and has some hare-brained notion of making a fortune in crypto-currency, building facilities in Alberta. My premier sees $$$$$$$$$$$ in it for her and her political buddies, so it's not enough that the environment in some regions has been destroyed for the sake of O&G, but now this?
I really wish people would stop using the term "Tory" to refer to the Conservative Party of Canada. That term applied to the Progressive Conservatives, a party that's been extinct federally for most of the past 25 years and in Alberta since 2017. Continuing to use it just fosters the illusion that the current party is the same as the old, and they are not remotely the same.
On the contrary, you have to do the very opposite. Not punishing those who tried to destroy democracy is the best way to cause a repeat. It's the sort of stance that allowed the southeners to pretend they didn't get their ass kicked in the civil war. There is one way to actually get people like that to relent, and that is by beating them so utterly and totally that they cannot pretend in any way that they didn't lose. Germany after WW2 treatment.
The real difference is between what you SHOULD do and what you actually CAN do. The latter is what will likely happen - if democracy survies that is - and you will see little change, because meaningful change would require majorities that just won't be available. So everyone will pretend that things are just fine, while the causes behind the whole mess will be ignored. Lies will still be the go-to move, and propaganda will still be rampant.
What should be done is Nuremberg-trials on steroids. And unlike with Germany, actually go after everyone who played a meaningful role in this attempted destruction of the nation. That means basically the entire current regime (you can't really call that a government) and it's "advisors". Everyone who willingly went along with its crimes or pretended that he "just followed orders". In short, everyone who swore an oath to defend the constitution yet did nothing to adhere by it. It also includes those who try to destroy democracy by trying to make people dumber. Like social media with its utter lack of interest to adhere to common sense, any of its leaders who stepped in line with Trump, or Murdoch and his scummy propaganda-network. The Koch's and Thiel's of this world. And, of course, it would include those who destabilized democracy and thus enabled the rise of Trump. The Newt Ginrichs and Mitch McConnell's, who undermined and destroyed core-pillars of democracy for their own political power.
Then you reorganize things.
- first of all, split the role of head of state and head of government. The president will become more of a figure-head, he will have no say in foreign affairs but will be in charge of the military, to prevent the current government from misusing the military to its own advantage. Also, the prime minister will also be unable to fire head of security agencies unless the president agrees. If the president vetoes the move, it requires a 2/3 majority in both chambers of congress to overrule him
- the department of justice would become an independent entity not controlled by the government, so that
- term-limits for every role, with different lengths, so that they overlap
- if a judge needs to be replaced, it will be based on a list prepared by a commission from the juditiary, congress will not be allowed to delay anything
- remove the filibuster, or at the very least return it to its actual role, no more imaginary 60 vote limit for the sake of it
- completely overall campaign-finances. Prevent companies from giving money, and limit what people can give to a miniscule amount
- whoever gets the power of pardon may not pardon himself, his family or anyone from his campaign-team or government. Nor may said person pardon someone he worked on under in a prior government
- have commissions who set neutral election maps, ban any political influene on the matter. No one should be allowed to gerrymander election-maps in any way
- remove the electoral college
- remove FPTP and replace it by a system based on proportional representation
- remove all currently existing political parties. New parties may be formed, but they may not be based on the old ones. Find a way to make sure the same people won't try to recreate the same parties again
- no one from the government would have any immunity on issues not directly involving political decisions. Any act that would come with a personal gain is automatically barred from being included in any sort of immunity
- automatic election-ban on anyone who tries to undermine democracy or enrich himself at the cost of the people
- make it illegal for any elected official or member of (any) government to own, buy or sell shares of companies. "Shares" here merely being the placeholder term for any financial activity regarding companies
- get rid of all the current big social media sites
- re-implement rules for news-reporting, so they have to stick to the truth. No more mixing of news and opinion-based shows on the same network either. Implement strict sizes on how big companies can get and how many sort of media-outlets someone can own or control
- ban companies owning other companies
- go hard on tax-evasion done by companies and rich people, make sure they can't pull accounting tricks to shuffle their money all over the place to hide it
- wipe out all unlawful "laws" pushed by the current government or state-governments with a similar mindset
- human dignity comes first, like it should. So no more dehumanizing whole groups of people under the disguise of "free speech", because that sort of hatred is what allowed the Nazis to rise, and it is what allowed Trump to be where he is now as well. The "total" free-spech (which has never been total, but that is another point) has never prevented evilness from rising, on the contrary, it has been pretty much the most useful weapon for the people behind the evil.
The list can go on endlessly. There is so much nonsense you need to overhaul or get rid off, it's impossible to list it all.
The real issue would be, that anyone who would do such thing, would risk looking like a power-hungry tyrant in some ways. Then again, Germany got completely reorganized, and that wasn't caused by tyrants overstepping their power (well, at least for one part of it wasn't). There really is no entity which could do what needs to be done while appearing like it was having the larger interest in mind though, so I guess we'll be out of luck
Interesting list. Head of state and head of government being separate works. King Charles III is our head of state and he causes no trouble. The Governor-General who represents him here... hmm. It'd be preferable to have one who was qualified and didn't shrug off vandalism of the Queen's statue (the monarch she represented at the time). Has she managed to learn any French yet? That's one of the qualifications of the job.
Getting rid of the big social media sites would certainly slow down some of the misinformation and hostility. It would also stop some of the good things. And while I'm fine with discussion forums, I realize that there are lots of people who have no idea how they work and think they're 'too complicated.'
I'm well aware of the usual fate of American political mvements, but "MAGA slowly peters out and no one does anything about it" is pretty obviously entirely outside the premise of this thread still.
(Beside any notion that MAGA may not, in fact, be a normal American political movement).
"May not be" is a monumental understatement.
I think too the brand attachment to Trump also means that it will fizzle out when his term is over. As a marketing guy, I don’t think “MAGA” survives under the tutelage of JD Vance or whoever is next in line.
That seems rather... optimistic. There are separatists in my province who still cite the Western Canada Concept party that ran candidates in the early 1980s.
And if you (general American 'you') don't get rid of Vance along with Trump, you're going to see how fast a formerly democratic country morphs into whatever they call their version of the Republic of Gilead.
A collapse of the personality cult is one distinct possibility that would set this apart from other movements, yes (and result in a far more significant "after MAGA" response.
It would depend to some extent if Trump were seen as a villain or a martyr.
