The imminent death of democracy seems to be a common theme in these days of populist right wing politicians taking up the mantle and pushing illiberal ideas. The two poster boys for this are Donald Trump and his British doppleganger Boris Johnson. Trump continues to jeopardize his re-election chances on a daily basis and Boris seems to be on a short road to the ash heap of history in the midst of one of the most confusing political crises in modern history.

Today the UK Parliament  narrowly voted to table a bill that if passed will prevent Boris Johnson from executing a no deal Brexit on Oct 31st. Johnson has threatened that if that bill passes he will call a snap election for mid-October, just two weeks before Britain is scheduled to leave the EU with or without a deal. This writer has written before that the proper way for Britain to proceed out of this mess is to hold a second referendum to clarify just what Britons want to do about their membership in the EU. A snap election is about as good as it gets for settling that matter. The biggest problem is that with only two weeks to do anything, a newly mandated government will have to hit the ground running.

This is not perfect but democracies are not perfect and never will be. Boris Johnson has never led his party through a general election yet seems to believe that simply by virtue pf winning a majority of conservative party member votes he has the authority to take deeply profound actions without even the consent of Parliament. Parliament is duty bound to push back against such despotism.

There are signs of people yearning to have more say over their governance in Moscow and Hong Kong as well as Paris, London and America. Perhaps we in the west had to be at the brink of losing what we have before we realized what we have got. Let's hope it is not too late.

Before embarking Marine 1 to fly to Air Force 1 on his way to Dayton Ohio, Trump engaged in a press scrum on the south lawn of the White House. He was asked if his hate filled, anti-immigrant rhetoric had inspired the shooter in El Paso and Dayton. His answer was that what he says doesn't have any impact on what people do.

We can only hope that is true. As usual, the thoughtless, reality-challenged drivel that pours out of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has only demonstrated the depth of this man's ignorance.

Trump's rhetoric got him elected President of the United States in 2016.

Trump's rhetoric moves stock markets around the globe, usually downward.

Trump's rhetoric inspires those marginalized by their own paranoia and hatred, to believe they serve a just cause while engaging in violent and deadly acts against those the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES identifies as "invaders", "rapists", "murderers" and "drug dealers".

Vile and disgraceful of the office from which it is broadcast? Yes, Inconsequential? - not on your life.  

Last week CNN reported that the Trump administration is considering adding 100 civics questions to the test to become a US citizen. I'm all for prospective citizens knowing what they are getting into. There is one condition that I would ask for before supporting this initiative. Require US politicians to answer them all correctly. I bet the Orange Buffoon in the Whitehouse would fail miserably.

There is nothing so blind as all consuming ambition, more so when combined with boundless and unwarranted self-confidence. Boris Johnson's ascension to the Prime Minister's Office is the product of a vote of confidence from less than 100,000 Britons. On that thin basis he says he is determined to take Britain out of the EU on October 31st even without a deal with the EU. The Leave side won the 2016 referendum by a slim margin. It is unknown how many of them intended to leave even if no deal could be reached. The MPs of the party now led by BJ does not support a no-deal Brexit. There is no Parliamentary majority that does support a no-deal Brexit. The Northern Ireland / Irish border will become a frontier of chaos under a no-deal Brexit. The British economy will be pitched into a deep well of uncertainty. British citizens now working in the EU (if any are left) will be in limbo, likely abruptly fired. Likewise any EU citizens working in the UK.

The sudden, un-regulated, re-establishment of a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland has the potential to re-ignite the "Troubles". The violence which plagued Northern Ireland for decades until The Good Friday Accords of 1998 essentially erased the border between the two Irelands. It was possible to do this because both Ireland and the UK were members of the EU.

Boris Johnson has ridden the Brexit issue to the Prime Minister's Office without a thought to the chaos he will unleash if he proceeds with his stated intent. Lives will be lost. Lives will be disrupted. Money will be lost. All because Boris wanted to be Prime Minister and was willing to do anything to achieve it. This foolish little man would be ashamed of himself if he understood the concept. Let's hope his term as Prime Minister ends abruptly  and soon with a non-confidence vote. The election that will follow can then serve as a second referendum on Brexit itself, something the UK desperately needs.

July 14th 1789, 230 years ago, French revolutionaries stormed King Louis XVI's notorious Paris prison and freed his majesty's less favored guests from its fetid depths. The fall of the prison marked the beginning of the end for the King, whom the revolution would execute within four years.

Louis XVI is the French King whose assistance to the American Revolution was key to its successful overthrow of British rule over 13 colonies in America. Louis XVI had no interest in American ideals but he saw an opportunity to weaken his British rival and perhaps capture a few British colonies elsewhere in the world. His chief representative to the Revolutionary Army was the Marquis de Lafayette, whose name is scattered across the US in memory of the relationship established with George Washington. Lafayette was so inspired by George Washington and America's Revolutionary ideals that he returned to France in 1787 with a Brand New Plan. To be concise Louis XVI would have none of it and eventually Lafayette was a notable member and leader of the moderate faction of France's chaotic revolution. He celebrated the fall of the Bastille by sending one of its keys to his mentor, George Washington, citing the first US President as "The Father of Liberty". By 1792 more radical elements of the revolution ordered Lafayette's arrest and he spent the next 5 years in exile and prison. He returned to France and eventually became involved in France's July Revolution of 1830. At that time he was offered the Dictatorship of France. Like his mentor, George Washington, he declined the opportunity to seize absolute power.

The Key to the Bastille is still on display at Mount Vernon, George Washington's beloved home in Virginia. The Tour Guides like to point it out and mention how Lafayette sent it to Washington as a gift to "The Father of Liberty". The Key also serves another purpose, one the guides don't mention. It is a stark reminder to those considering getting involved in other's wars. The troops Louis sent to interfere in the British Empire's internal conflict learned a few things that eventually came home to cost the King his head.

The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. 

 

It seems only a matter of time before the Accidental President or his sycophants rename Independence Day. Cadet Bone Spurs' obscene infatuation with military hardware and Generals has produced the first July 4^th ever to feature tanks and fighter aircraft as part of the celebration of American Independence. Added in for good measure to ensure the proper amount of adulation of the President is a new ticket-admission-only VIP zone around the Lincoln Memorial where another new feature will be the President himself speaking to the assembled masses.

July 4^th, Independence Day is intended to be a celebration of the people asserting their inalienable rights in opposition to a Parliament that taxed but did not represent them, did not listen to their concerns and the King who allowed that indifference. In 2019 the people's celebration is hi-jacked by a would-be-King who is indifferent to all but his immediate, selfish needs with occasional pretense at caring about those who worship him like a god.

July 4^th in Washington is supposed to be special; the people peacefully assemble in celebration of the Declaration of Independence. American Ideals are honored in recognition that the true strength of America is not the size, power, or number of its tanks and aircraft, but the idea that people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that those rights are to be protected by a constitution, the rule of law, free speech, free press, free assembly, free petition of the government and free religion. It is those words, incorporated in the FIRST amendment, and the practice of those freedoms that make America great. It is sad that the Accidental President does not understand and cannot comprehend these self-evident truths.

Anything that progresses the cause of world peace should be unreservedly celebrated by everyone. Trump's 20 steps into North Korea at the side of Kim Jong Un is one of those acts that we all should be happy about.

Trump wants us to think this was all a spur of the moment event prompted by his realization that he was close enough to the DMZ to just drive over and shake Kim's hand. Maybe that is true, maybe it isn't. The unplanned nature of this turn in world history was seen in the scuffle that broke out between North Korean security personnel and members of the western press corps plus White House staffers accompanying Trump. No-one told them what to do about these people trying to do their jobs so they reverted to standard procedure and forcibly barred them from entry to a room.

Now the press is covering that story with almost the same energy as the one that Trump wants them to cover.

Trump loves to break norms and ignore standard procedures. He thinks that only whatever is in his echo chamber is important. He is wrong and it is costing him the adulation he so desperately craves. The reason there are staff and preparations and protocols for international meetings is for the purpose of both parties clearly conveying the message they want to send to each other and their own people. Trump's moment in the history books will now forever be accompanied by a note about North Korean security roughing up his Press Secretary. Who knows how difficult it is to just get together for a handshake? Given Trump's record with Press Secretaries, maybe that is what he wanted. 

 

July 1st, 2019 is the 152nd anniversary of the Confederation of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia into the Dominion of Canada. Canada's shaking off of British rule was not as violent as the act of revolution that created the United States of America, but it was much more dramatic than most people now think.

Conceived in the aftermath of the rebellions of 1837, the first union within British North America was the 1841 creation of the Province of Canada from Upper Canada (now known as Ontario ) and Lower Canada (now known as Quebec) (It was called Lower Canada due its position at the lower end of the northeastward flowing Saint Lawrence River).

By 1864 the culmination of several factors led to the first formal conference on the union of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Those factors included Britain's diminishing appetite for defending British North America;  the cancelation of the first North American free trade agreement (The Reciprocity Treaty) by the US in retaliation for British support for the Confederate States of America; mounting debts and political instability in the Province of Canada.

By 1867 the momentum for Confederation was almost unstoppable. Every province housed opponents but they were unsuccessful except in Prince Edward Island.  It took an act of the British Parliament to create Canada, and more than 100 years for Canada to become truly independent of Britain, but on July 1st 1867 the improbable union of Francophones, Anglophones, Tories (Conservatives), Whigs (Liberals), Federalists and Confederates was celebrated from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. In what became a running theme of Confederation, the act of union was also an act of separation as the Province of Canada was split into Ontario and Quebec.

The second act of Canadian Separatism occurred when the Nova Scotian Opponents to Confederation won 36 of 38 seats in the first Provincial election of Sept 1867. Britain would not allow Nova Scotia to secede and another Canadian tradition was established when the Nova Scotia Premier agreed to drop his attempts at repeal in exchange for more money from the new Federal Government.

152 years later, Canada has survived two world wars, multiple economic setbacks and separatist sentiments from all corners. It is a peaceful, prosperous nation and its citizens are amongst the luckiest in the world just by virtue of living there.

Happy Canada Day! 

On Thursday the President of the United States, the servant of the people of the United States as occupant of the highest elected office in the land scurried past some reporters as he boarded Air Force One on his way to the G20 Summit in Tokyo. One of those reporters, acting in the capacity of eyes and ears of the people of the United States dared to ask the people's elected leader what he would say to Vladimir Putin about Russia's meddling in US elections. You know, the elections through which the people choose who amongst them will lead the nation built on the principle of Government of the people, by the people for the people. Trump's response? "It is none of your business"

One might think that the Accidental President lies awake each night developing some new way to disgrace his office and inflict one more cut to American Democracy. Sickening is too weak a word.

Elizabeth Warren is quickly getting into second place behind front runner Joe Biden and past the erstwhile placer, Bernie Sanders. Whether you like her and her policies or not this is a great development for politics. Why? Because Elizabeth Warren is the only candidate talking about what she wants to achieve and how she wants to achieve it in specific terms that voters can consider before deciding to vote for her or not. While most candidates bombard us with a lot of vague objectives or demonize their opponents, Elizabeth Warren has not so quietly gone about explaining the details of her platform to people. Her practice is so rare because the political science campaign strategist types think it is boring and voters do not pay attention to details. I think the strategists have not considered that how the details are packaged makes a huge difference and that Elizabeth Warren's has figured out how to package them. Let's hope this works and catches on for future elections. An informed electorate is better for everyone except those politicians who depend upon ignorance, anger and fear to get them elected. The fewer of those we see running for office the better.