Did Putin order it while winking?

Because Ford has a personality. And he used it to make a big show about (pretending) to counter Trump, which gave him a boost.

For the most part, not even Conservatives in Canada like Trump. It’s a mistake to think that Canadian Conservatives are just “Northern Republicans”. Some are. But for the most part, Conservatives here (especially Ontario provincial Conservatives) are still human beings.

Poppinfresh, on the other hand, made his entire schtick about basically copying Trump style tactics. He and his cronies are to federal conservatives what MAGA is to old-school republicans; a hard-right political fringe that is attempting to wrest control of the Conservative narrative by appealing to the same demographics as Trump, clamping down on what Con MPs are and are not allowed to say to the media, personal attacks and three word slogans instead of actual policy, etc…

And it almost worked. For a while it looked like he would succeed. And it’s why he was absolutely desperate to get an election before Trump took office; before the idea of a Trump presidency became the reality of a Trump presidency. Because even among Conservatives, Trump’s chaos craters the popularity of any politician that seeks to emulate him, which Doug Ford certainly did not do.

Thanks to Trump, the Liberals have been gifted the best possible campaign season. Poppinfresh has spent his entire time as leader doing only three things:

• Basing their entire campaign on Trudeau

• Coming up with stupid three word slogans.

• Outwardly and openly styling himself after Trump in order to court our own version of MAGA.

They’d be stupid not to take advantage of it earlier rather than later. It’s primed for all this shit to blow up in the Cons faces in an exceptionally hilarious fashion.

In Trump’s brain, soft power isn’t properly deferential to him personally. That’s what it amounts to.

It all comes down to his raging narcissism; soft power is done with tact and diplomacy in whispers. For Trump, that’s weakness. It’s not true power unless people/countries/organizations proclaim his power with effusive thank-yous and obsequious shows of capitulation.

It’s not enough to lead the free world; the rest of the world needs to be properly thankful for it in a way that he himself finds acceptable. (namely by making a big show of bending the knee)

an unfortunately not insignificant percent of the population in the central provinces who would probably side with the US

As someone from the prairies (Saskatchewan), I can assure you that while, yes, we do have our fair share of pretty hard-right leaning individuals, most of even THEM are anti-trump because of the sovereignty issue. Even the ones who agree with what he is doing and would like to see Poppinfresh in power to do similar up here, would never side them militarily in an annexation attempt for the same reason that American MAGA flies the US flag…sovereignty is their identity; CANADIAN sovereignty.

There is a TINY number (some dipshits in Alberta) who actually want Alberta to join the US. But they are fractionally insignificant.

it feels very weird to call them “egg producers”

Chicken pimps?

Dave’s not here, man.

Yeah, I’m not arguing that. My point is simply that it has to start somewhere.

History disagrees with you.

No despot in history has ever fallen without violence. Hell, your own, country was built on that fact.

At exactly what point did America go from “the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots” to “this is an ineffective means of resolving things.”?

Then you do the same to the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that. Until someone gets up there and decides he/she doesn’t want it happening to them too.

The point isn’t that there’s “going to be another”…that’s just defeatism. The point is to make them realise that they will NEVER be safe. That there are people willing to do anything to see them strung up by their ankles in a town square.

Courage is contagious.

Give me a gun and a strategy to get close enough and I would gladly sacrifice my life. It’s THAT fucking important at this point.

Nothing changes until people are willing to put their own lives at risk.

That wouldn’t surprise me. I live in awe of he fact that he’s not dodging bullets all day every day.

I was discussing the same thing with a friend just this morning. This isn’t anything new. It’s just where other administrations know the phrase soft power and were able to use it effectively, Trump is a blunt and stupid human who doesn’t know anything as complex as modern diplomacy.

In that way, I unironically think that Trump may be the best thing to happen. He’s taken the mask off. The world can’t ignore it anymore or pretend it isn’t happening so long as they still get their iphones every year. It’s a kick in the pants for all of us.

They already tried it. It’s called Threads. It exists. People use it. And other instances have the choice to simply not federate with them.

To me (as unpopular as this sounds) that’s the beautiful thing about FOSS and about Federation in particular. No one is stopping anyone from creating their own instance. Even Corporations.

It’s the ultimate expression of “Anyone can do what they want, say what they want, believe what they want…but no one else is in any way obligated to listen to them/federate with them”

I know of companies that host small mastodon instances for their staff to communicate back and forth. I know of similar setups with lemmy instances. Anyone can use the technology for anything they wish to.

People need to wake up and realise that there isn’t going to BE a “next election”. At least not a fair one. Trump will win it the same way Putin and Orlov “win”.

The sooner American’s wake the fuck up to this and deal with it in the inevitable way, the sooner the planet can be done with this nightmare.

Because you can’t cosplay the Robber Baron age without bringing back consumption…

Trump is all about pretenses.

There are the “reasons” he’s making those decisions, and then there are the “pretenses” he uses when the opportunity comes around to make them.

Swiss banks hold a lot of money from oligarchs and billionaires. Putin wants pressure put on them. But Trump has to find the “pretense” to do it so as to at least nominally not be seen as a russian asset. But what a coincidence, Lindt announces that they’re going to supply Canada directly from Europe to avoid his tariffs. And BOOM. Pretense established.

It’s a “block party”! </dadjoke>

I’ll show myself out.

Without presuming your level of knowledge about world history, I’ll say that Trump used Fentanyl the same way that Hitler used the Reichstag fire, as an excuse to give him the emergency power to do such things unilaterally.