Notes from the American Resistance: Hanging on by their fingernails

I realized today how prescient our Canadian leaders have been. 

Months ago, both Trudeau and Carney told us that Trump has turned the United States into an unworthy and untrustworthy ally. 

Now the rest of the world has realized how right they were. 

Trudeau in February: "You can't take our country and you can't take our game." 

Trudeau in March: “What Trump wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that'll make it easier to annex us." 

Carney in March: "Canada's old relationship with the United States is over. The US is no longer a reliable partner." 

Carney in May: "Canada won't be for sale. Ever."

Now, everyone sees what is happening.
And the whole world is backpedalling away from the United States as fast as they can.

The American constitution and rule of law: hanging on by their fingernails.

- Dan Gardner

Read on Substack

Bill Clinton said back in June that America's only hope was that the Courts would hold until the midterm elections. He wasn't sure that they could withstand the pressure to capitulate. 

So far, they seem to be holding -- the quote above is from Krugman's post on Friday about the tariff appeal decision. Krugman continued:

 ...One crucial thing to understand is that Trump is facing a completely self-inflicted disaster here. He probably could have gotten Republicans in Congress to vote for insane trade policy. But he was impatient, and wanted to start ruling as a dictator right away. 

 I see that Scott Bessent is saying that ruling that Trump’s illegal tariffs are, in fact, illegal will embarrass the United States. I’m not a lawyer, but last I heard you weren’t allowed to act illegally if obeying the law would be embarrassing. Anyway, let’s be clear: It won’t embarrass America. It will embarrass Trump and Bessent. 

If anything, it might reassure the rest of the world that some vestige of rule of law yet remains in this nation. 

Krugman also did another post on Friday that analyzed why America is finished as a world leader now.

Decline and Fall of the American Empire 

Alliances were what made us great 

... in just 7 months Trump has completely ripped up the foundations of the Pax Americana. Almost all his tariffs are clearly in violation of the GATT, yet Trump has vandalized the world trading system as casually as he has paved over the Rose Garden. We haven’t yet had a test of whether he would honor our obligations under NATO, but he’s said that his willingness to abide by the most central obligation, the guarantee of mutual defense, “depends on your definition.”
Trump’s foreign policy doctrine appears to be Oderint dum metuant — let them hate as long as they fear — supposedly the favorite motto of the Emperor Caligula. America, he seems to believe, is so powerful that it doesn’t need allies; he can bully the world into doing his bidding.
As Phillips O’Brien told me, history shows that such a belief is always wrong. And it’s especially wrong right now, when America is far less dominant than it once was. Whatever Trump may imagine, the world doesn’t fear us. For example, Trump may have imagined that his tariffs would bring India crawling to him, begging for relief; instead, India seems to be moving to closer ties with China.
In fact, not only does the world not fear us. Increasingly, it doesn’t need us. This is even true for nations that used to depend on U.S. military aid. You may remember Trump berating Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy, declaring “you don’t have the cards.” In reality, even in the Ukraine war Trump has far fewer cards than he imagines. At this point Europe is providing far more aid to Ukraine than we are...

Since the end of World War II, Americans have thought their country was exceptional, the shining city on the hill, the "cool kids" nation that everyone wanted to be like and where everyone wanted to live. 

It is both difficult and uncomfortable now for Americans to understand that they're just like every other nation which has had to fight against a fascist leader and an incipient dictatorship.

The View from Rural Missouri by Jess Piper

Orange is the New Nightmare
The Regime
....I taught the narratives of the enslaved, but I never thought about the reality that one must still fix supper after atrocities are committed against body and soul each day. That children are raised in unspeakable times and laundry is washed in the worst of times.
There was something I missed that I now understand with grave reality — people lived their lives under repressive systems. They still worked and cooked and ate and wrote and talked to neighbors. They still took walks and watched movies and read books.
...Life goes on while our neighbors are kidnapped from American streets. While non-citizens and citizens alike disappear into concentration camps or worse...
I made a salad last night while reading about state militias being called up to carry guns against American citizens. I cooked chicken while the news played with videos of armed soldiers walking around the Washington Monument.
I listened to Governor J.B. Pritzker warn Trump to stay away from Chicago while I swept the kitchen floor and cleaned the counters after we ate our salad.
I drank coffee this morning while reading that Trump has signed an Executive Order directing the DOJ to investigate and prosecute Americans who burn the flag.
I folded towels while listening to a podcast about the Trump regime’s policies targeting homeless people and people with disabilities.
I am living through authoritarianism for the first time like so many of you, and I got a lot of things wrong. I am trying to do better. I didn’t know normal sits right alongside the abnormal. I had no idea that the familiar would be clouded with the unfamiliar.
Orange is the new nightmare, but the regime is a night terror.
He is evil, and so are his bootlicking toadies, writing and carrying out orders that are not only unconstitutional, but do the bidding of the most craven among us. They are beyond the pale. Monsters on parade.
I am scared, but I am also resolute. This nightmare will end and those inflicting death and pain will pay for their misdeeds and wickedness and crimes against humanity. I know this because of that History minor I received so many years ago.
I know we can end this together. They can’t keep going at this pace when citizens rise up.
I am awake…you are too.
Shake your neighbors. Wake them from the nightmare.
Link arms and head to the streets.
No more sleepwalking.

In the end, Trump's profound stupidity may help:

- KGB Report

Read on Substack