The depth and breadth of the crisis Canada faces...

We are not only facing a global conflict between oligarchs/tyrants/despots and democracy.

We are not only facing a global conflict between globalization and internationalism, or between internationalism and nationalism.

We are not only facing a global conflict between environmental protectionists and environmental deniers and obstructionists.

We are not only facing a world-wide conflict between advocates for DEI and dogmatic absolutist opponents of all forms of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

We are not only facing a global conflict between healthy masculinity and toxic, to the point of cancerous, masculinity.

We are not only facing a global tension between macro-economics and micro-economics.

We are not only facing a global conflict between religions, primarily between Islam and Christianity and between Islam and Judaism.

We are also facing a political, economic, epistemological and philosophical and psychological and ethical conflict and profound confusion about how to imagine, design, devise and execute a transition from the ‘old world order’ to a ‘new world order.’

‘Who will have ‘power’ and how will that power be conceptualized, defined, deployed and restrained?’ is a question that underlies each and every single iteration of the conflicts going forward. Binary, zero-sum equations, while they may have applications in some specific situations, are difficult, if not impossible to transfer and transmit from personal, familial and small to medium business applications to the global theatre. In the ‘theatre’ as an archetype, the playwright deploys dialogue between the characters as the agents of his theme, to carry out a plot, to embody their respective characters and to impact the audience in any of several faces of catharsis.

If our planetary ‘theatre’ is to be imagined as one shared by each and every one extant, and also each and every one, for at least seven generations, as the indigenous cultures expects and imagines and take account for, and we are all, somehow in some way articulating a kind of script, seeking for similar and different scripts, the world stage could not be more divided into ‘camps’ or ‘battalions’ in which each of us ‘sees’ ourselves as embedded with the ‘good guys’ and in mortal and life-and-death conflict with the ‘bad guys’.

I grew up in a small town in which the protestant batallion quite literally hated and was contemptuous of the Roman Catholic battalion. Even the Northern Ireland evangelical clergy incarnated such hatred from the pulpit: ‘If you are Roman Catholic you are going to hell!” words uttered in such a bigoted and self-righteous and hubristic manner and tone that they continue to ‘ring’ in my memory six decades later.

A parallel “either-or” seems to not only cloud but actually obliterate most if not all potentially reasonable, debatable, relatable discussion of each and every issue. And, the male bullies have taken over the airwaves, while abandoning both intellect and integrity at least on the North American and European ‘sets’ of this theatre’s stage..

In the U.S. election in November 2024, the primary western bully eviscerated his female opponent with hateful, character assassinations unbecoming  even the guttural mind and tongue of the drug cartel leaders, or the mafia. Positioning rational, carefully considered platform positions, in a campaign style of uplifting, hopeful and inspiring psychology, as Kamala Harris did so eloquently, in the end bounced off the dismissive tongue and finger-tips of the orange megalomanic. And they also found no receptive soil in the hatred, vengeance, racism, misogyny, and thuggery of his cult. Indeed, his cult became empowered in their absolutism that the ’woke’ crowd have been and were continuing to destroy the nation.

Pouring all of their contempt, jealousy, bigotry, racism and anger into their self-righteous rebellion, the MAGA millions returned the orange monster to the Oval Office now surrounded and aided and abetted by an army of sycophantic bigots and thugs assigned various leadership and executive titles and role throughout the government. One man has effectively, at least for the time being, brought about a coup or overthrow of what had been the United States government for well over 200 years. He has also overthrown American friendships, alliances, treaties and commitments to the WHO, to NATO, to USAID, and to the millions of government workers serving in hundreds of departments and agencies.

That degree of devastation, however, is still not enough to satisfy his insatiable appetite for power. He seeks to invade, both economically, and if necessary militarily, Panama, Greenland, and, so far only economically, Canada. Lately there has been even talk of re-drawing the boundary between the U.S. and Canada.

At the same moment, Canada is fully engaged in a political debate, within the Liberal Party, for a new leader to replace Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and in the nation at large, over how to ‘cope’ with the ravings of this unleashed, green-broke monster of a U.S. president, along with most European nations, save and except those loyal to Putin, North Korea, Belarus….and perhaps???? The public debates of the candidates for the Liberal leadership have, very politely, rationally, calmly and credibly addressed various approaches to tariffs, sovereignty, economics, inter-provincial trade, and enhanced production capacity as well as enhanced alliances in both economic/trade matters as well as national security.

One candidate, Ms Freeland, has even gone so far as to publicly indicate an intention to invite the Secretary General of NATO to her proposed meetings on both enhanced trade and shared security arrangements with Europe. That recommendation is not only meritorious, it is singular in its taking the current situation so seriously as to invoke some anxiety among some.

From the perspective of this scribe, it is only a first step in addressing how existential to Canada, in the first instance, and to the rest of Europe and perhaps even Asia is and will continue to be this menace in the Oval Office. Catastrophizing, at this moment, is a word that needs to be erased from our public debate and perception of the situation. It is not to catastrophize to envisage a U.S. attempt to ‘take-over’ if not economically and politically, at least to continue to berate America’s closest neighbour and ally for over 200 years, (since the war of 1812) with insults to our leaders, insults to our policies (drugs pouring into the U.S. and excessive trade imbalances, as well as ‘cheating’ the U.S. by depending on national security protection).

The friendly tension between the two front-runners, Mr. Carney and Ms Freeland, over who can be, is and will be toughest in dealing with the occupant of the Oval Office, while it is the central question of the leadership vote, is hardly the principal question for the country. Liberals voting for a leader will most likely be pre-occupied with that question.

However, the context is far more complex, far more nuanced, and far more dangerous than a mere ‘personality’ or ‘character’ or resume-based assessment both of the need in a leader and for the nation to conceptualize its current reality and how to go forward. Trump reduces every issue to one of competing personalities, even Canada has been ‘unfair’ as if we were a cheater on the international stage….only a bully who does engage in and is permitted to engage in such infantile reductionisms, even uses words of such vacuity. The media, on both sides of the 49^th parallel, having never seen, contemplated or even imagined a political drama like this one to have to report on, is exaggeratedly complicit in both fawning over and headlining the trump vacuity, lies and deceptions, all of them generated as trumpet blasts to inflate his hollow ego and person….for the purpose of attaining and holding onto power. And Canadian politicians, both federal and provincial are falling over themselves either on their way to Washington or into the office of some ‘assistant to the assistant’ to the president to present a case for withdrawal of announced tariffs.

For the media, perhaps all of these ‘genuflectings’ invite support and perhaps even electoral support (last night Premier Ford of Ontario received a massive popular vote). However, taken as a scene in the larger drama, they are little more than entertaining ‘chorus’ of the potential Greek tragedy.

Hardly noticed in Canada, on the other hand, has been the quiet, serious, calm, self-possessed and confident voice of the leader of Mexico, a newly elected female who refuses to be ‘cowed’ by the orange inflated balloon. And, it is that model of counter-balancing, female leadership that Ms Freeland offers  to and for Canadians, who, perhaps for the first time since 1939, have to adopt a perspective that includes all of Europe, Ukraine especially, and our allies in the South Pacific, like Japan and South Korea.

The schmoozing of both Macron and Starmer in the Oval Office, cannot and will not be replicated by either Ms Caludia Sheinbaum, president of Mexico, a politician, scientist and academic, nor Ms Freeland, also a politician, journalist and academic. And it is not only their achievements that enables them to take a very different posture in dealing with their respective crises, while representing their nations; it is also their steel-spines that have supported and enabled them to make their way through a male-dominated political culture to their respective leadership posts.

Men, on the other hand, have operated in and with a very different masculine culture, one that has been deeply embedded in the psychic, political and social and intellectual culture for centuries. And that culture is one that the occupant of the Oval Office has and will continue to dominate through lies, deceptions, hugs, hand-shakes, smiles and bonhomie….the grease that he thinks (believes, or knows nothing else) enables him to ‘screw’ everyone he attempts to make a deal with. There will be no touching, charming, schmoozing, or de-stabilizing of Ms Freeland in the Oval Office, nor will there be with Ms Sheinbaum. And, instead of the ‘guest’ being dis-armed, it will be the host who will be dis-armed….and that needs to be the opening salvo of any healthy negotiations for Mexico and Canada, with this chauvinist pig.

Women, in general, have coped with such male bullshit for centuries….and both Ms Sheinbaum and Ms Freeland are unlikely exceptions to that coping. Furthermore, the aspirations, visions and inspirations of millions of young, middle-aged and even greying women can and will only be enhanced, for the benefit of everyone on the planet, with the accession to leadership, in Canada, of Ms Freeland.

We need a much broader, deeper, and more creative perception, attitude and discipline that is or will be embodied in re-treading male-leadership models at this time. Angela Merkel, former Chancellor of Germany, currently undergoing some public disrepute for her open-border policies, nevertheless, captained both the EU and Germany through her encounters with Putin, different from Shultz and Merz. It is not that women have exclusive access to creative imagination nor to steel spines; it is just in this case that Ms Freeland offers a unique combination of education, experience and gender that Canada and North America and the new world order can and will benefit from. She is much more than and different from a ‘ferocious mother’…..she is a highly educated, articulate, experienced and disciplined female, potentially facing a convicted sex abuser, liar, despot, tyrant and megalomaniac, aligned with at least one other clone in the Kremlin.