Life is short…I am writing this as one of my highest-level appeals. Please, I implore you to pay attention.
On November 6th, when the U.S. election ended, I spoke to the people closest to me about what it meant for our world. Intellectually, I knew the dangers. I talked about them often. But deep down, I didn’t believe we would end up here. I was upset enough to stop writing about politics for months. I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.
But here we are. Donald Trump, and let’s stop sugarcoating this, is a dangerous man. I believe he is a psychopath. If he is capable of genuine love, perhaps some child or grandchild will tell me so. I cannot comprehend a human being with such a lack of compassion, such an absence of moral core, without some clinical explanation.
And now we have the National Guard moving into Washington, D.C. We don’t know exactly what’s next, another city, another country? On Friday he will be in Alaska, where the only thing separating Russia and North America is a narrow strip of the Bering Strait. Trump is set to meet with Vladimir Putin there. That’s not just a photo op. And it terrifies me. What exactly will Trump promise him? What would he give away? We know Putin doesn’t respect Trump, but he can use him. And that’s more dangerous.
The picture I’m using for this post comes from Alaska, but it’s not just any Alaska picture. It’s my late friend Marcus Payne, flying his beloved aircraft over his homeland’s ice fields. Marcus was a Renaissance man of unbelievable talent. He wasn’t just an airshow pilot and TV personality, he was a U.S. Air Force veteran, a lawyer, a Washington lobbyist, a missionary, and an environmentalist. And oh, the political conversations we had. We lost him tragically nine years doing what he loved, but I can tell you, we would have had a lot to talk about now. He believed in living with purpose, and he understood how fragile both our environment and our democracies are. That’s why this image matters, because the stakes we face are as sharp and real as the glacier walls beneath his wings.
For my fellow Albertans flirting with separatism, listen carefully: if you think Alberta could somehow be better off alone, you are wrong. You will not be strong enough, no matter how much oil and gas you have, to stand against the American machine. You will lose control over your resources. You will lose your say in how they are managed. And you will be at the mercy of leaders who would happily trade your future for their personal gain.
I’ve written post after post asking people to explain how Pierre Poilievre would operate in today’s geopolitical climate, the one Mark Carney is currently navigating. I’ve yet to see a single thoughtful, detailed answer. Publicly, I get slogans. Privately, I get messages that range from nonsensical to outright frightening. But not once has anyone been able to describe how Poilievre would handle Trump, Putin, or China while safeguarding Canada’s sovereignty.
Although I always write from the heart, with passion, urgency, and the hope that people will better inform themselves, this time is different. This one is affecting me more deeply. No one likes to think about being in the last part of their life. But I never imagined I’d be in this stage terrified for the world I’m leaving behind for my children, grandchildren, and everyone who comes after. My need to speak up is more urgent than it has ever been. I will not let anyone say I stayed silent. I will not have it said that I didn’t try to help people understand how critical our situation is.
I know it’s hard to know what we can do. People ask me all the time, “But what can I do?” Maybe my words here don’t feel as effective as they could be. After all, most of my readers already think like I do. But if you have friends in the U.S., or anywhere else in the world, share this with them. We need to go beyond “I hate Trump” or shallow political insults. We need to talk about what his leadership really means.
These are not just distraction tactics from Trump. It’s his lifetime pattern. Call it narcissism if you like, but it’s something far beyond the everyday kind.
So, who still stands by him? In my view, there are four groups:
1. The MAGA base, statistically more likely to be less informed or less educated. That’s not an insult, it’s reality. But it’s also no excuse. 2. Christian fundamentalists who are sometimes organized under banners like The Family, who push a narrow, rigid worldview into public policy. Their vision of morality is less about compassion and more about control. 3. Billionaires (and “billionaires-lite”) they care only about increasing already obscene fortunes, no matter the human cost. and 4. Republican lawmakers who have abandoned any vision of what is right, and sold their integrity to cling to power.
And to those lawmakers, I ask again: did you not think of your daughters when women’s rights were stripped away? Where are you as education and research to benefit your grandchildren is erased. And how can you ignore that the United States is beginning to look more like The Handmaid’s Tale than the “land of the free”? And to the daughters and sons of these lawmakers, the millennials, the Gen Xers, please speak up. Maybe hearing it from you will pierce the armour of power and greed. Someday those lawmakers will be on their deathbed, and will their final words be, “My God, I ignored my own child so I could hold onto my seat”? How pitiful.
We are standing at a point where silence is complicity. Our voices have to be loud, so loud they can’t be ignored, so loud they carry across borders and into the rooms where decisions are being made. Every single person’s voice matters, no matter how small you think your reach is. I, for one, will use mine in every way possible. If my role in this fight is to write these words, to push, prod, and occasionally shove people into paying attention then I will keep doing it. Not because I like shouting into the void, but because I refuse to be like one of those legislators lying on my deathbed thinking, I didn’t do enough.
Hope and defiance can live in the same breath. Hope says there is still time to change things. Defiance says we will fight like hell to make sure we do. So write, speak, march, vote, shout, actually whatever your voice looks like, use it. Because the worst thing we can do right now is nothing. And nothing is exactly what those in power are counting on.
Nancy's Notes 