Nancy's Notes

There’s an expression I’ve used for decades. I don’t know who first said it, but it has stayed with me longer than most political slogans or news cycles ever will. ‘If you blame others, you give up the power to change.’

When I first started using it, it had nothing to do with politics. It was about people I knew, family, friends, community members, who faced difficult circumstances. We’ve all known those situations where two children grow up in the same home with the same opportunities and the same challenges, and one rises despite adversity while the other drowns despite prosperity. Circumstance isn’t destiny. Choice is always part of the picture, small, incremental choices about how we react, how we cope, and how we move forward.

But somewhere along the way, this human truth got swallowed by something much larger. Blame has stopped being an individual habit and has instead become a societal norm. It’s now a default setting, a reflex, a cultural posture. It doesn’t just show up in personal relationships or family dynamics. It shows up everywhere now. In politics, in public discourse, in online communities, in the way we talk to strangers and the way we talk to ourselves. It has become the new standard, and an unhealthy one.

And nowhere is that more obvious than in the way politics is now practiced. Over the past decade, politics has increasingly become a performance of victimhood. Not genuine suffering, but strategic grievance. In the United States, Donald Trump has practically built an empire out of it. You hear his refrain daily. Joe Biden this, Crooked Joe that, on and on and on. It’s a relentless drumbeat of pointing fingers outward to avoid ever turning the mirror inward.

And here in Canada? We’re not immune. Pierre Poilievre has turned Justin Trudeau into his entire personality. Ten plus years of the same line: Trudeau broke it, Trudeau ruined it, Trudeau is the cause of every pothole, every grocery bill, every global shockwave, every structural issue that existed long before he was even an MP. There is never a solution, only a scapegoat. And if he ever stopped blaming, he’d have to start explaining, which is far more difficult.

But this isn’t just about them. The real danger is what this style of politics does to us. When leaders model blame, they normalize it. They give society permission to adopt the same posture. And suddenly we are a nation, and a generation, encouraged to externalize everything. Everything becomes someone else’s fault. Someone else’s failure. Someone else’s responsibility to fix.

It creates a kind of moral paralysis.

If everything is always someone else’s doing, then nothing is ever within our power to change. The story becomes fixed. Our agency disappears. And once agency disappears, cynicism fills the space it leaves behind.

This is not the country I grew up in. It’s not the country many of us tried to build. And it’s certainly not a healthy model for young people, because when the only thing they hear from politicians is blame, how on earth are they supposed to learn accountability? How are they supposed to believe they have influence over their own lives, let alone their communities?

If society keeps modelling the opposite, if our political culture keeps rewarding the loudest finger pointer instead of the most honest problem-solver, then we shouldn’t be surprised when the entire public starts behaving the same way.

Leadership is not about who can yell “not my fault” the loudest or who can dig up the oldest grievance. Real leadership is quieter than that. It’s steadier than that. It’s the person who wakes up and without pageantry puts one foot in front of the other and deals with the issues actually in front of them. No excuses. No endless rehashing of who messed up what ten years ago. Just the work.

That’s the kind of leadership I prefer: the kind that solves instead of performs. The kind that owns responsibility instead of outsourcing it. The kind that doesn’t need an enemy to justify its existence.

Because the alternative is exactly what we’re living through, a political landscape where deflection has replaced direction, grievance has replaced governance, and blame has become the cheapest currency in public life.

And honestly who is driving that trend? Donald Trump has built an entire political identity around never taking responsibility for anything, ever, even when the consequences are catastrophic. Pierre Poilievre has spent more than a decade scripting every sentence around Justin Trudeau as if reciting a grievance is the same thing as offering a plan. And Danielle Smith has turned deflection into an art form, blaming everyone from judges to civil servants to the federal government rather than simply governing the province she was elected to lead.

This is not strength. This is not vision. This is not leadership.

We deserve leaders who face the hard truths, not run from them. Leaders who build instead of burn. Leaders who don’t need a scapegoat to feel powerful — and who understand that their job is not performance art but public service.

And we deserve leaders who model that for our children. Because whatever behaviour we normalize at the top quickly becomes the behaviour young people believe is acceptable. They watch how we speak, how we react, how we handle conflict, how we take, or avoid, responsibility. If all they ever hear is blame, then blame becomes the cultural default.

We deserve a society that refuses that path. A society that understands that blame might feel satisfying in the moment, but it is a dead end. It does not move us forward. It does not solve a single problem. It keeps us exactly where we are, frozen in place, circling the same resentments, repeating the same grievances.

And it brings us back to the line I’ve carried through decades of my life, a line more relevant now than ever. “When we blame others, we give up the power to change!”

There are days when I worry we’re watching democracy get chipped away one unhinged Truth Social post at a time. Today was one of those days. Donald Trump, the man who dreams in capital letters and tantrums threatened Democratic lawmakers with arrest and execution because they did a video reminding military members to follow the law. That’s it. A group of veterans saying, “Your oath matters,” and Trump coming back with, “Hang them.” Not metaphorically. Literally.

And whenever something like this happens, the predictable chorus of extreme media voices kicks in. Left, right, and everything radicalized in between. People who treat politics like sport commentary, who defend the indefensible if it benefits their team and attack the reasonable if it threatens their scoreboard. I’m not talking about mainstream conservatives or progressives; I’m talking about the loudest, angriest, most hyperventilating commentators who seem to think democracy is a game show they’re trying to host. They spin and they excuse and they normalize. And they make it harder for ordinary people to see what’s right in front of them.

So let’s step out of the noise and into reality, Canadian reality.

Earlier this year, when Trump said he was going to “get Canada one way or another,” I spoke with people who’ve actually served. Friends, and people in my family. People who fought beside Americans in Afghanistan. And they all said the same thing at that time which was something I took some temporary comfort in: “The U.S. military leadership won’t follow an illegal order. Their oath is to the Constitution, not to the man. They wouldn’t invade Canada.

And I still want to believe that. But then came the Pentagon meeting a few months ago where Trump told senior commanders that if they didn’t fall in line, they could walk out the door. And if they did? They risked losing rank, pensions, and honours. Decades of service wiped away because they refused to bend to his personal will.

That’s not “leadership.” That’s coercion and the hallmark of someone who sees himself as a ruler rather than a president.

Today’s explosion over a simple reminder of legal duty only reinforces that. In my opinion nothing in that video was radical. Nothing was partisan. Nothing was even controversial. The message was something every soldier in North America learns on day one, your oath is to the Constitution, to lawful authority, not to the emotions of the person sitting in the big office.

This principle goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Principles, the foundation of post-WWII military law: “Just following orders” is not a defense for unlawful actions. Military personnel must follow lawful orders and challenge unlawful ones. And while yes, there are exact procedures depending on rank and context, the principle remains the same. It is the bedrock of a professional military.

Which is why there is absolutely nothing wrong with that video. It simply restates the oath Trump wants people to forget. And this is where my fear kicks in. Because not every enlisted person, especially the youngest ones has the background or confidence to distinguish between legality and politics. Many join because it’s their path to an education, a steady income, a future. That’s not a criticism, it’s the reality of recruitment demographics across the North America. Young people are trained to follow orders, not to decode the emotional storms of a man who treats the presidency like a spotlight he refuses to step out of.

Now imagine being a junior soldier hearing the Commander-in-Chief amplify posts calling lawmakers “traitors” and saying “hang them.” Imagine being a senior officer knowing your oath obligates you to refuse unlawful orders, while also knowing your entire career could be erased by the man issuing them. Imagine being a military family watching this unfold, knowing the oath your loved one swore is becoming a political drama. Imagine being an American soldier today.
It terrifies me. And here’s the Canadian part that should terrify you: Fifty percent of Canada’s Conservative base says they support Trump’s agenda and behaviour. Half. So if you’re in that 50%, I’m speaking directly to you: Is this what you endorse? A leader who demands personal loyalty from the armed forces?
A leader who suggests elected officials should die for reminding troops to follow the law? A leader whose outbursts require cleanup crews to appear on television insisting he “didn’t mean it”?

Because here’s the truth: It doesn’t matter if that soldier in the image below is Canadian or American, the oath is the same. In Canada and the United States, soldiers swear an oath to the law, not to the person who holds power.
The words differ slightly, but the meaning is identical: lawful authority first, democracy first, constitutional duty first. Not the ego of someone who thinks he’s above all three.

I’ve read pieces of my son’s papers from Royal Military College. Things like law of armed conflict, conflict theory, technology and warfare. And the lesson across all of it is simple and unwavering:

A professional military stands above political emotion. If Donald Trump, or anyone like him, expects soldiers to replace their oath with his ego, then democracy across this continent is in danger.

This isn’t about left vs. right. This isn’t about Democrats vs. Republicans. Liberals vs Conservatives. This is about the line between law and power, and who we expect our soldiers to follow. And that scares me. It scares me a lot.

UPDATE: I need to stand corrected. Rumour now has it that this will pass the Senate. And if that’s true, it doesn’t reassure me. It confirms every darker suspicion I had. Because for the Senate to suddenly fall in line, something behind the scenes has shifted, and not toward justice. If anything, it tells me the machinery working in the background is even more insidious, more self-protective, and more calculated than I thought. Whatever deal has been made, whatever pressure has been applied, whatever narrative Trump has pre-scripted it’s worse than the version I was bracing for.

There is nothing I can say today about the Epstein file that hasn’t already been chewed up and spit out by every podcaster, blogger, Substack warrior, news anchor, and the never ending parade of self appointed truth tellers on social media. This story has been dissected, divided, incinerated, resurrected, and re-packaged more times than any of us can count. And yet here we are again, walking right into another so called “moment of reckoning” as Congress gets ready to vote this afternoon. So yes, I’m putting my thoughts down before the two o’clock gong sounds, not because my voice will change anything, but because the hypocrisy rolling through Washington today deserves to be stamped, labeled, and called out with full accuracy.

Let’s begin with the most predictable part: Donald Trump did not suddenly wake up and decide that transparency is good for democracy. The man has never acted out of moral clarity in his life. If he’s supporting the release of anything related to Epstein, it’s because he already knows exactly what he can protect, what he can bury, and what he can spin. He doesn’t do anything unless he can tighten his grip in the process. So the idea that he is suddenly on the side of “letting the truth out” is laughable. If he is allowing this door to open even a crack, it’s because he has already controlled the narrative.

I am not accusing him of having sexual relations with underage girls. I have no proof of that, and I don’t pretend to. What I can say, because it’s indisputable, is that he was there. He knew who Epstein was. He knew what Epstein was widely rumored to be. Trump was not some naive bystander wandering into the wrong circles. At absolute best, he was passive. At worst, he was complicit through silence, proximity, and willful ignorance. And that alone is enough to demand scrutiny. But apparently demand and receive are very different things when you’re dealing with a man who has trained an entire political party to kneel before his whims.

Which brings us to today’s vote in the House. Suddenly, Republicans have permission to support releasing these documents. Not because they grew spines. Not because they found moral purpose. Not because the victims deserve justice. No. They are supporting this because Donald Trump has told them it is safe to do so. Their king, their god, their idol, their living embodiment of whatever twisted movement they’ve built; well he said yes. So they obey. And with his blessing, they can now pretend they’ve been warriors for truth all along.

But don’t be fooled. Because once this leaves the House, it enters the building where accountability goes to be stalled, smothered, and diluted beyond recognition: the United States Senate.
This is the chamber where Trump’s influence runs deepest. This is where loyalty to him isn’t just encouraged; it’s required. Many of these Senators owe their careers, their fundraising machine, and their political safety to him. And the minute anything threatens his interests, they lock step like soldiers guarding a fortress. There is no scenario where a full, unfiltered release of Epstein files passes through that chamber while Trump still commands the Republican Party. None. Please prove me wrong.

I already knew this would hit a wall, until I made the mistake of listening this morning to Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, a man who manages to combine sanctimony, dishonesty, and self-righteous slime in a single breath. According to him, he has been in “discussions” with his Senate counterpart, and the Senate has “concerns.” Let’s translate that into plain language: this is going nowhere. The Senate will delay it, stall it, bury it in committee, or strangle it with amendments. Whatever the method, the goal is the same: make it look like they tried, without ever allowing anything real to surface.

And in all of this political maneuvering and reputation saving, what gets lost, what always gets lost, is the truth that there were victims. Real people. Real children. Young lives that were manipulated, coerced, abused, and then ignored by the very systems supposedly built to protect them. They were failed by prosecutors, by police, by powerful men with more money than conscience, and by every person who looked the other way because confronting the truth would have cost them something. These young women have carried the weight of this for years. Some were silenced and some were pushed into the spotlight to relive nightmares the world dismissed as gossip or scandal. They deserve more than selective transparency. They deserve more than curated disclosures crafted to protect the rich and powerful. If there is going to be a reckoning, it should centre them, not the men scrambling to shield themselves from consequences.

And yes, I’m saying this from Canada. We may be north of the border, but we’re not blind to the fallout. For decades, America was the example, the country that claimed to stand for law, truth, fairness. But this? This contortion of justice and loyalty? This is not the America we once measured ourselves against. And if any echo of that ideal was still hanging on, this behaviour snaps the last piece off. We care because what happens there never stays there, and because victims, on any side of any border, deserve better.

So yes, the House vote will happen today, and yes, it will pass. But the pass itself is hollow if it’s designed to go no further. What matters is whether the truth escapes the Senate, where Trump’s grip is tightest and where the incentives to protect him are strongest. And let’s be honest: he would never green light anything he feared. He is not suddenly embracing openness. He is repositioning. He is gaming the system. He is controlling the floodgates, not opening them.

This is not justice nor courage nor accountability. This is control, strategic, deliberate, and calculated. If anyone wants to celebrate today as some watershed moment, ask yourself who benefits. Ask who is still in control. Ask who gains when the public believes something meaningful has happened even when nothing has. Because Donald Trump has never once allowed truth to obstruct his own survival. And he isn’t about to start now.