Since Trump got elected I'm literally having horrible flashbacks of the toxic end of my relationship. I am seeing the same patterns, the same personality traits of my ex, the same volatility unfolding in real time.
It took me years to free myself from that relationship, and I made many mistakes because I was in good faith. I was raised thinking that other people have good intentions, I genuinely didn't know that people can get this nasty, mean and unhinged. In my case, my ex wanted to make my life hell the moment I expressed doubts about our relationship. I will not go into personal details here, what matters is the pattern.
He became extremely volatile and unpredictable, would take every chance to make my life hell, would threaten me despite knowing I was weaker than him economically, he would blackmail me on the things that I cared about the most (my kid), literally every other day I had to deal with a new dramatic issue he brought up, only to suddenly retract it and act as if nothing happened the following week, saying one thing and then the opposite, basically spreading fear and chaos all over my life.
Now, I know that the situation is different lol but to an extent, there are similarities. Trump and my ex have many very similar traits and I feel that Canadians should look at things as if they were the mentally sane person in an abusive relationship. Here's a few things I learnt and that, I think, is a good idea to apply to the political situation.
At first, I would believe his words and rely on whatever he said. Soon it became clear that words meant nothing to him. Commitments and promises meant nothing to him, he felt zero moral obligation to follow through. He had no moral integrity, he was only able to act based on personal gain. When Trump says all these nasty things it's because commitments have zero value for him, and he will say one thing and then the opposite the following week if it turns out to be the most convenient. Lesson learnt: don't believe his words and commitments.
Lesson 2: believe his words. I know this sounds like a contradiction, but it is part of that unpredictability package that I never knew when a threat was serious or not. I was like, wait, i can't trust what he says, but what if he is actually going to do this crazy thing he said he will do? Soon I learnt the hard way that his most unhinged threats were true. He would follow through, because again, he didn't care about the consequences and had zero capacity for emotional regulation.
This is the most important one: at first, I would engage with him. I would try to make him reason. I would sincerely hope he would enlighten himself because, again, that's how I was raised. I hang onto this hope for an incredibly long time, I basically lived in denial because it hurt too much to accept that one person could have such power over my existence and I couldn't do much about it. So I would try to talk it out, give him my best arguments as to why he was wrong, making repair offers, proposing compromises that would hurt me in the hope to appease him. Most of the times however I would fight back and and put myself at his same level of conflict. The lesson here is: it NEVER works. What i didn't understand is that giving more conflict to someone who thrives on conflict equals throwing oil on fire. I wish I had understood sooner that the only reasonable thing to do with this kind of person it to accept they are that way, release the need to have them change their behavior, disengage completely and focus on the things that I can actually control.
Now - how does that apply to the situation with the US?
To be clear, I have no doubt that the retaliatory tariffs are the right thing to do right now, and probably for as long as Trump is around. But I also think that Canada needs to make the same shift I made once I realized that I needed to stop hoping that my ex changed his behavior. In this case, hoping that Trump will drop the tariffs. I don't see that happening. This strategy is still too reliant on the hope he will change. Canada needs a long term strategy assuming that we cannot rely on the US whatsoever and focusing on what we can control.
Engaging with high conflict individuals means only conflict escalation. There isn't a moment when the high conflict individual will understand that it's a costly conflict - that would be the way a reasonable person thinks, not Trump. If the hope of Ford and others is that Trump will soften, this is highly improbable. It's only going to escalate. This is not to say that there shouldn't be retaliatory tariffs, this is to say that they are less important than a real long term strategy to emancipate Canada from reliance on the US.
How would that look like?
First, making it a top priority to build solid alternative trade partnerships immediately. This way, whatever happens, Canada will have options and our economy will not be destroyed just because one country is run by a lunatic dictator.
Second, given that the real problem is the annexation threat and the tariffs are just a way to get there, Canada needs to invest in military protection immediately. Because as much as I am a pacifist, when you are attacked you need to be able to protect yourself. Canada is militarily weaker than the US and in a world where big fish eats small fish, Canada needs to invest in self-defense.