Dear America (and especially members of Congress and the Cabinet):
I'm just a private Canadian citizen with no role in government or official position, which means I can say things which for reasons of diplomatic propriety the leaders of nations can't. What I say has no impact other than to simply place an idea in your head, which you can assess on its own merits and either adopt as your own or discard as you see fit. But I hope you will consider it seriously.
We (the other countries of the world) have all sorts of relations with the United States, whether as adversaries, rivals, or allies or trading partners, and in all of these it's really important that the United States be able to say something and have it be believed. When you make a trade deal or a treaty, you need your trading partners to expect you to keep your end of the bargain or they won't bother. Even if you want to deceive an enemy, it's really helpful if they have some reason to believe you usually tell the truth.
And that's the problem. This guy you have as your President right now? We can't trust a word he says. I honestly don't know if he's lying or if he actually believes the absurd falsehoods he tells when he tells them, but it doesn't matter: he is just so fundamentally unreliable in everything he says that we cannot accept his assertions, we cannot trust his promises, and we cannot fear his threats.
I'm not going to comment on impeachment or the 2020 election. That's your problem, and not something we foreigners can or should get involved in. But your Constitution includes provision for what to do when the President is incapable of carrying out his duties, and it is clear to me that, at least when it comes to foreign relations, your President is incapable of carrying out his duties, because we cannot trust his word on anything.
It sounds silly for you to say that we can't work with this guy. A great many individuals, groups, and nations have found that they could work with him, and have benefited enormously by doing so. America has never been stronger, and business has never been better. Somebody can work with him. Maybe Canada is in the backwaters because of thinking like those who influence you. Not all of us agree.
ReplyDeleteSorry I didn't reply sooner. The browser I normally use has some kind of problem where I can't comment on my own blog.
DeleteMy argument isn't that nobody has been able to benefit from dealing with Trump. It's that for him to be able to do his job effectively, he needs people to be able to trust his word. I can't trust him, because he lies so very often, and when he's not telling a deliberate outright lie, he's speaking out of gross ignorance and I still have to go and check what he's claiming against some more reliable source.
If you want to refute that argument, it's not enough to show that some people and even nations have been able to gain advantage dealing with him. Of course they have, just as it's possible to gain temporary advantages dealing with criminal gangsters and the like. What you need to show in order to refute my argument is that Trump is reliable and honest. Is that really something you can say with a straight face?
The reputation of the past commenter precedes him. Zip. I am reminded of an old quip : "Worry about the estimation of those whose judgement you respect."
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