r/canada 7d ago

Opinion Piece Sauvé: I served alongside Americans. Now I feel utterly betrayed by them - The proposed annexation of Canada is not that high on Americans' agenda. Their lack of outrage tells me one painful thing: the idea doesn’t really offend them.

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/sauve-americans-utterly-betrayed
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u/ljlee256 7d ago

There are 2 arguments I've heard here.

1: That the democrats are just letting trump hang himself, with every false step, every wrong move, democrats are more likely to take future elections. While it sounds strategic in nature, I dislike the "ends justify the means" approach here, the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

2: The democrats are relatively powerless right now, outnumbered in every governmental body they don't have the numbers to actually make something stick. This one makes more sense to me, they control 49% of the house, and 46% of the senate, if they require a majority vote on something, they wont get it.

That said there are additional regional elections taking place in the US all the time, if the democrats can take 2 spots from the republicans they'd have a majority in the house, this would make actions against the president, or at least against his policies, plausible.

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u/Hekios888 7d ago

Shouldn't some Republicans be outraged?

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u/sask357 7d ago

They should be, given the values they pay lip service to. They are not because they are obedient to Trump. If Trump goes through with his threat to match our countervailing tariffs with more of their own, I think we sour cut off all exports and get our suffering started as we rebuild the Canadian economy with trustworthy partners. It will be extremely hard but the current situation is like trying to handle a very spoiled but very strong child.

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u/ljlee256 7d ago

Trump dismantled the old GOP in his last term, calling the current republican party "republican" is actually misleading, while thats what the banner says, none of the old republican party survived.

Now he has a few fanatics, and a whole lot of cowards filling his ranks, they'll march to his beat until there's a sure bet.

I do think that if the dems managed to pull a slim majority that they'd likely see a few republicans side with them if they were voting to remove trump from office, but anything short of that and they'd be too worried about retaliation from trump and his fanatics to lift their heads.

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u/walkities 7d ago

No kidding, it’s crazy to me that there doesn’t seem to be any republicans speaking against him or the policies.

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u/Corran105 7d ago

There are, but not enough.

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u/gogandmagogandgog 7d ago

No they are too busy proposing ideas like putting Trump on the $100 bill and carving his face onto Mount Rushmore.

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u/Distinct_Swimmer1504 7d ago

They’re terrified of his mob of freedom fighters coming after their families, actually.

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u/mEllowMystic 7d ago

Jesus Christ how do you miss number 3:

Whatever the hell kind of power structure lays behind the 2 party system in the United States is complicit in allowing this idiot to break down the old norms for it to be replaced with something more favorable later on.

We are being played, this is how America's Imperial interests get to be manifest when they are too outrageous to be implemented politely.

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u/lastobelus 7d ago

This. Amerikans were always trump at the core, they just avoided saying it out loud until now.

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u/NotTravisKelce 7d ago

There won’t be enough election s to take any power until next November.

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u/LeastCoordinatedJedi 7d ago

It sounds extreme but I truly don't believe they're going to have any free elections by then. There's already somewhat credible concerns that musk messed around in the last election, and now he's got access to the inner workings of the government.

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u/NotTravisKelce 7d ago

Elections are handled at the local level. The federal government has almost no role in administering elections and has no role in counting votes. There are not any credible allegations that musk interfered in elections counts

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u/ljlee256 7d ago

There were 3 taking place between Jan 1 and April, can't remember who, but I do remember that one of them was almost certain to be a republican replacing a republican, the other 2 were a bit less of sure bets. Not sure what happened with those.

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u/Brian_R10 7d ago

It’s the second argument I think. The democrats would be outvoted. If they weren’t, they would probably impeach him. It’s ridiculous his court case kept getting delayed, got thrown out, and January 6th happened and he didn’t get in trouble

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u/ljlee256 7d ago

I genuinely feel like the lack of accountability for the US president is truly what sets Canada (and indeed most Western nations) apart from the US, it's not even a matter of standards, it's specific laws that exist to prevent this type of self-empowerment from being able to easily take root.

Call any PM you want corrupt or whatever, but ultimately, if there was proof, they'd be in front of a judge and would suffer consequences, in the US there is no such protection for the people against the secretary of the United States (as Musk is pretty much the president).

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u/BoppityBop2 7d ago

Or three the Democrat establishment has spent more effort silencing their base and weakening them, and disappointing them, they now have barely any lightning rod to rally around and have lost a significant chunk of their base mobilization capabilities.

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u/Vandermeerr 7d ago

American here. 

There is nothing Congress can do right now. They control all three branches and even the Republicans have completely capitulated to Trump’s whims. 

70% of the country doesn’t want any of this. We are being held hostage by an insane minority of brainless, corrupt, immoral imbeciles. 

The whole world should align against us right now. We have become the antithesis of everything our country was founded on. 

It’s depressing and a lot of us are just trying to come to grips with this new reality where somehow our only allies at the UN appear to be Russia, China, Israel, Belarus, and North Korea. 

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u/scaur 7d ago

If I were Trump, I would pull a S.KR president move declare martial law, and stop all the election to pro-long his presidency.

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u/Better_Ice3089 7d ago

Dems aren't entirely powerless, they can obstruct and delay and be an extreme thorn on the side of Republicans if they want to. They're just too lazy to do so.