I learned to sing “O, Canada” when I was in sixth grade and it did not seem odd that the school music teacher included it in the repertoire for a class of 11-year-old Americans. At least in Seattle, Canada did not feel like a foreign land, it felt like a close neighbor whose national anthem was appropriate to memorize, along with “Roll On Columbia” and “This Land Is Your Land.”
That close kinship between two separate nations was nearly unique in the world. President Donald Trump has seriously breached it.
Of all the many, many promises Trump has failed to fulfill, the most glaring is his pledge to “Make America Great Again.” Yes, he created a political following for himself that adopted the shorthand for that promise – MAGA – but he achieved the very opposite of what he claimed he would do.
Trump has nearly destroyed American greatness. The USA under his deranged leadership has become a rogue state, feared by some, but respected by no one. And there is no certainty that the damage can be undone by a future president.
From the end of the Second World War until Trump’s rise to the presidency, the United States was the most admired, most influential and most powerful country on the planet, the undisputed leader of an international system designed largely by American diplomats that brought greater prosperity and longer periods of peace than at any time in human history.
Shockingly, Trump has been able to bring that system crashing down in just a few years. He has shown a strong affinity for authoritarians, such as Vladimir Putin in Russia, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Xi Jinping in China, while disparaging, bullying and insulting the leaders of America’s democratic allies.
Insanely, he has attacked America’s closest friend, Canada, both verbally and economically with reckless, half-serious jokes about making Canada the 51st state, and self-destructive tariffs that violate the very trade agreement he boasted about as the greatest deal ever when it was negotiated in his first term.
Even if Trump’s successor is everything he is not – skilled in diplomacy, mature in temperament and respected by world leaders – that new president will face deep doubts about America’s dependability.
People in other nations have seen how U.S. voters have twice chosen as their leader a man who does not believe in democracy, who fails to abide by treaties, who is an unfaithful ally, who acts on impulse and vindictiveness, and who is an agent of chaos, not stability. Why should they trust Americans not to make terrible electoral choices in the future?
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has led the way in seeking to establish a new international order that is not dependent on the United States. He has proposed an affiliate membership in the European Union for his country and has urged middle powers, like France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia, to stand together as a counterbalance to the aggressions and duplicity of the Trump regime.
The American president is no longer the leader of the free world because he has proven himself unworthy of that role. If anyone is that leader today, it is Canada’s Carney, and it may be a long time until another president of the United States can claim that title again.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View other syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
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