The message from the current administration is clear: the rest of the world, and half the US are considered adversaries. Do everything you can to reduce interactions and/or dependence on the US. The administration cannot be trusted.
This may sound a bit nuts but I honestly think Trump is doing this because immigration, foreign policy, and commander in chief are the three areas where he has nearly dictatorial powers, so he simply chose to turn those cranks because those were the ones available.
If you look at how he is turning the cranks it doesn't make sense, virtually no modern economic thought supports this kind of tariff and customs war with friendly Canada. It seems like a child playing at the wheel of a car with no idea how to drive but by God you will hear him honking that horn.
Current? Derby Line/Standstead has been fucked since Bush 43. The library access was cold comfort after all the other changes "because terrorism."
Yeah, it's discouraging that it too is now gone. But if someone wants to be mad at Trump, just be mad at Trump. They don't need to suddenly pretend to care about Derby Line to have a legitimate gripe about Trump.
That’s such a petty move by the U.S. government. I hadn’t heard about this library before, but it seems something so innocent and devoid of problems that I wonder why the government bothered to mess with it.
1. They are giant assholes.
2. They're idiots.
3. They're weaklings who have no idea what real strength looks like.
4. Their political base is about the same.
This is in VT, so people there already know what they are missing. In fact, it use to be in border communities with Canada (at least in NE), crossing the border was like walking across the street.
Trump wants to destroy that and it seems to be working. People in the US needs to raise up and end this MAGA trend fast.
Passports were much rarer before WW1, it is indeed a bit bizarre as the world allegedly embraced liberalism and moved away from imperialism that the real crack down treating humans as property of government that need hall passes and permission slips really went into gear.
This may be the byproduct of more robust social benefits, it requires brutal totalitarian control of immigration to smite the 90% of earth that would be better off in North America.
You still don't need ID to enter Mexico 9 of 10 times. The only crossing that even glanced my ID was Tijuana. Of course it's not like they have anything to lose, if you don't have money or work they're happy to let you perish in a ditch, and the cartels aren't going to let you compete in crime.
"The Haskells wanted Canadians and Americans to have equal access to the Library and Opera House and so they chose to build on the border. Construction began in 1901; the Opera House opened in 1904 and the Library in 1905."
They're doing so many things which could normally be described as "Cartoonishly Self Destructive" that it's hard to keep up with their actual objectives.
What's even less clear to me is why the apparatus of state seems so willing to go along with these whims of the executive.
I'd imagine every EU/UK company is re-thinking any US based conferences they have booked right now, because who knows if your field will suddenly fall under their whims.
Self-destruction of the US government is kinda the point for Curtis Yarvin and his followers to implement their vision, same for all the cyberlibertarians in Silicon Valley.
That's the only way so far I've managed to make sense of what the USA is doing to itself, the destruction is the point.
Yes, this explains a lot of the "logic" behind the behavior of this Trump administration. I also think that its not just an end goal but that they enjoy the means to this end.
"There is a class of men whose sole delight is in destroying" William Blake
I suspect all these things are happening because the Trump government's sheer number of actions makes it impossible to react to or report on everything. Creating chaos is the goal, not an accident, and preposterous actions like threatening to annex Canada (or closing access to a shared library) allow the Trump administration to undermine the system in less obvious ways while everybody is paying attention to the flashy stuff.
It's also important to remember that democracies are weird in the sense that people who could abuse power voluntarily do not do so. Democratic systems only work because people accept that they work (similar to fiat money). Once people start questioning them, they can fail very quickly (see the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank).
Presidential systems are particularly susceptible to this sudden collapse because they start out with a strong concentration of power in one person.
After all the recent firings and appointments, so many people in positions of power believe in unconstrained executive action that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Recent Supreme Court decisions related to presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office bolster this view.
You also have to add in the fact that the USA's system of 'checks and balances' via different branches of government constantly blocking eachother from doing anything, and the Electoral College system of assigning votes and enforcing a 2-party system also contribute hugely to anti-democratic sentiment.
Americans feel (somewhat rightly) that their democracy isn't responsive enough, and even if it was more responsive, they feel it doesn't represent them. Many of them seem to think the only way to fix this is to have a king.
_____
To connect this back to HackerNews relevant discussion, I feel there's a bit of an "innovators dilemma" at play with democracies. The democracies which developed the earliest have some design flaws baked very deeply into their mechanics that later democracies recognized as problems and were able to avoid. But in older democracies, there's too many entrenched interests against fixing these problems so they keep ancient design flaws even when everyone knows they're counterproductive (and in the present case, perhaps even fatal)
Very much this. There are some design flaws in the US system that are hard to fix - some of which is by design.
The other thing that’s sad to see is that slides into substandard leadership have plenty of precedent - strong, well-run countries have many times reverted thanks to incoming leaders being worse at the job. The US has just come off an exceptional run of competent and strong leaders driven by ideals, but eventually your hot streak is going to come to an end. To put it another way, this looks to be a reversion to the mean.
Someone once said to me that he had no interest in going to Europe because "the US has every kind of landscape that Europe does," as if there is no other reason to travel but to see natural scenery.
> People I speak to here in Ohio aren't even aware that the annexation of Canada by economic and potentially military means is now official US government policy
Is it? Honestly I thought it was just the presidential equivalent of shitposting, like the Gulf of USA. I see more likely a military intervention in Mexico, and I still think Trump doesn't have it in him to start a guerrilla war in the southern border.
Change doesn't happen until the majority is affected by not changing. It hasn't reached critical mass, and it seems demagogic leaders of the world have learned to slowly cook the frog so the critical mass point moves a bit further each week.
Mexico just changed from a superdemagogic leader to one less so. Their deceptively simple recipe is, like Alice in Wonderland, doing five unimportant stupid things before breakfast, so their next important stupid thing doesn't look as bad.
>>What's even less clear to me is why the apparatus of state seems so willing to go along with these whims of the executive.
Can you expand on this a bit more? Are you suggesting that government employees should quit in protest? For better or for worse, the American President is in charge of the executive branch and (most? all?) US government employees are part of that branch.
Clearly they aren't as that would have implied Biden could have simply dictated that the DEA reschedule marijuana, which seems to have been effectively halted by stalling until Trump got in office by stalling the hearings until one day after swearing in.
As a Canadian, I really can't express the amount of frustration and anger I feel towards the USA these days.
More than a century of incredibly close partnership and interdependence thrown away for nothing more than stoking American egos, looking for an easy target to bully.
The ugliest part of all of this is that if voters completely reject Trumpism in 2 or 4 years and go back to a sane path, they won't have done it because they were convinced of the gross immoral capriciousness of the Trump administration. The only reason American voters would reject Trumpism is if they decide he's bad for business, and caused serious economic harms.
People not in the USA also have the power to affect this.
The American electorate has decided that their wallets are the only thing they care about when voting, so we can hit them right there. I'll be doing everything I can to no longer purchase or support US products whenever possible.
I've also sold all the stocks I hold in US corporations.
The reason I'm so pessimistic is the thing I said higher up in the comment chain:
> The ugliest part of all of this is that if voters completely reject Trumpism in 2 or 4 years and go back to a sane path, they won't have done it because they were convinced of the gross immoral capriciousness of the Trump administration. The only reason American voters would reject Trumpism is if they decide he's bad for business, and caused serious economic harms.
If Trump did all this crap and it made the stock and job markets boom, he'd be home free. That alone is enough for me to lose all faith in the USA and hope for a future where I can isolate myself as well as possible from the USA's malign influences and capricious actions.
Most Americans aren't and never were on board with this stuff. Trump won the election by an incredibly slim margin, and that only happened because a lot of people didn't vote.
I don't agree. More than seventy million people voted for him. He has been a politican for over a decade. It is not even like he was put forward by people in a smoke filled room, he was chosen through primaries.
True, that many did vote for him, out of a total eligible voter population of 244,666,890. That's about 28%.
And even of that group, a large number voted for him thinking that he wasn't going to do what he's doing. He even claimed in his campaign that he wasn't going to do what he's doing. I think those people were foolish, of course. As you point out, his nature was pretty obvious, but they weren't on board with what he's doing nonetheless.
Regardless, I understand your skepticism and I wouldn't be shocked if you're correct. I just have a touch more optimism than that myself. Pessimism can lead all too easily to defeatism, and defeatism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In my opinion, if January 6 wasn't enough to convince the American electorate that he isn't fit for office, nothing he does could do it.
I also don't believe the argument that it's a minority of Americans. If people really thought he was a danger to democracy and thought that was a problem, they would have voted. So the way I see it, the overwhelming majority of Americans (i.e. more than 70%) didn't think he posed a legitimate danger to American democracy. That's a really really worrying demonstration of beliefs and priorities.
I support you in disagreeing with me though. I want you to keep fighting and I want you to do everything you can to resist this.
Americans can't afford to believe they may have voted for the last time. But simultaneously, the rest of us can't afford to plug our ears and hope this all goes away.
This is it really. The first time round it was ok, well mistakes can be made. The second time? No, something is fundamentally broken in the US. Electing someone else will not fix that. The rest of us need to recognise that and do whatever is necessary to protect ourselves.
What really upsets me personally, as a Canadian, is that this feels like being backstabbed by your best friend.
If it were China or Russia doing this, of course I’d be upset, but when it comes from the U.S., it feels like a much deeper betrayal. I’ve had countless interactions, friendships, and business ties with Americans. Heck, even my first girlfriend was American.
We’ve always shared a close bond through love, friendship, and mutual respect, so actions like this strike on a very personal level.
Some might say that is a naive perspective, and maybe it is. But I am not ready to throw away decades of relationship and shared history with our neighbors to the south.
> ```According to Boudreau, when Noem visited she stood on the American side and said "U.S.A. No. 1" and then, after crossing onto the Canadian side, said "the 51st state." Boudreau told CBC News she did this multiple times. ```
I mean, that's what i expect from a US cartoon character like Homer Simpson, not from a real, living person. Are the average republican like this, or are those comportment limited to republican representatives?
As someone who lives a few hours away on the Vermont side, this is a real heartbreaker though not surprising based on the last few weeks. The border literally goes through the children's wing of the library and is marked with some electrical tape on the floor. French books on one side, English books on the other. So it's hard for me to understand how the US has the authority to deny Canadians access to their own land. Not that the US government cares about legality these days.
Regular Americans are probably used to being liked around the world. Sure, we all make jokes, but in general "American", a mere few weeks ago, stood for something attractive. American music, American values, American companies - things most people around the world would like the sound of. Not everyone, sure, but a majority.
Very quickly and for no clear reason, America is saying FU to all these people. Americans will have a rude awakening when they realize they are now disliked rather than treated with a mild admiration. Just not sure what that's for.
With the Trump presidency cutting off a lot of foreign aid, it'll be interesting to see which country fills the void.
With the troubles at the border, it will be interesting to see how other countries respond. Are they willing to forego US tourist money?
At a personal level if I were a tourist from the US, would I be shunned by touts or denied access to nice places ("sorry mate, not allowed in the Tate. Cheers")?
> Very quickly and for no clear reason, America is saying FU to all these people
This is not something new, just more evident nowadays.
Things that USA has done for decades that have alienated other countries:
- Always has been at war, preferably asymmetrical, brutal wars for profit while claiming democracy and freedom.
- Many Americans are ethnocentric, ignoring much of the world outside their country. For example, its national baseball cup is still called the "World" Series? Or ask any American abroad which country they are from, and most will name their state.
- Not so ethnocentric Americans usually choose to do tourism abroad, and those are the ones most people in the world encounter. Obnoxious American tourists are a minority, but they're the most memorable, unfortunately forming the stereotype.
- Has appropriated the "America" name from the whole continent. United States of North America would be its proper name. Gulf of USA is small compared to that.
- Remember "Manifest Destiny"? It's still alive, just frequently changes names.
I could go on and on. I don't deny the blooming of USA after WW II was beautiful, bringing hope to a ravaged world, it seemed like everything it did was awesome. Unfortunately, it was superficial, and its flaws have become more evident as the luster vanishes. USA needs a whole makeover, right down from its constitution to their electoral system, and up to the international arena, to materialize the promise that it showed before.
I'd add that several of the wars and coups the U.S. took part in, especially during the Cold War, can be better understood in light of Soviet expansionism - after all, the USSR was effectively invading other nations. For example, when people say “the U.S. created the Taliban,” it was primarily about countering Soviet forces in yet another country they were encroaching upon.
The reason is crystal clear. A particularly stupid portion of Americans have gotten their lord and master, the undisputed "Emperor of Stupid" elected and it has emboldened them.
As a Brit I'd say we differentiate a bit between different Americans - Taylor Swift good Trump bad etc. I'm watching the current goings on in mild amazement.
73 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 81.3 ms ] threadIf you look at how he is turning the cranks it doesn't make sense, virtually no modern economic thought supports this kind of tariff and customs war with friendly Canada. It seems like a child playing at the wheel of a car with no idea how to drive but by God you will hear him honking that horn.
On the plus side, my investments have doubled. On the downside, I feel dirty.
Yeah, it's discouraging that it too is now gone. But if someone wants to be mad at Trump, just be mad at Trump. They don't need to suddenly pretend to care about Derby Line to have a legitimate gripe about Trump.
That's not an "or" list. It's "and".
Trump wants to destroy that and it seems to be working. People in the US needs to raise up and end this MAGA trend fast.
This may be the byproduct of more robust social benefits, it requires brutal totalitarian control of immigration to smite the 90% of earth that would be better off in North America.
In 1991 I drove from Buffalo to Detroit along the QEW in Canada. Only had a license.
In 1993 I walked from El Paso into Mexico, then walked back. All I had with me was my license. Didn't need to show any id to enter Mexico.
That's all after the decline of robust social benefits which the US had in the 1950s-1970s.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/27/nation/rising-border-...
line from the archived website:
"The Haskells wanted Canadians and Americans to have equal access to the Library and Opera House and so they chose to build on the border. Construction began in 1901; the Opera House opened in 1904 and the Library in 1905."
They're doing so many things which could normally be described as "Cartoonishly Self Destructive" that it's hard to keep up with their actual objectives.
What's even less clear to me is why the apparatus of state seems so willing to go along with these whims of the executive.
I'd imagine every EU/UK company is re-thinking any US based conferences they have booked right now, because who knows if your field will suddenly fall under their whims.
That's the only way so far I've managed to make sense of what the USA is doing to itself, the destruction is the point.
"There is a class of men whose sole delight is in destroying" William Blake
It's also important to remember that democracies are weird in the sense that people who could abuse power voluntarily do not do so. Democratic systems only work because people accept that they work (similar to fiat money). Once people start questioning them, they can fail very quickly (see the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank).
Presidential systems are particularly susceptible to this sudden collapse because they start out with a strong concentration of power in one person.
After all the recent firings and appointments, so many people in positions of power believe in unconstrained executive action that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Recent Supreme Court decisions related to presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office bolster this view.
Americans feel (somewhat rightly) that their democracy isn't responsive enough, and even if it was more responsive, they feel it doesn't represent them. Many of them seem to think the only way to fix this is to have a king.
_____
To connect this back to HackerNews relevant discussion, I feel there's a bit of an "innovators dilemma" at play with democracies. The democracies which developed the earliest have some design flaws baked very deeply into their mechanics that later democracies recognized as problems and were able to avoid. But in older democracies, there's too many entrenched interests against fixing these problems so they keep ancient design flaws even when everyone knows they're counterproductive (and in the present case, perhaps even fatal)
The other thing that’s sad to see is that slides into substandard leadership have plenty of precedent - strong, well-run countries have many times reverted thanks to incoming leaders being worse at the job. The US has just come off an exceptional run of competent and strong leaders driven by ideals, but eventually your hot streak is going to come to an end. To put it another way, this looks to be a reversion to the mean.
Is it? Honestly I thought it was just the presidential equivalent of shitposting, like the Gulf of USA. I see more likely a military intervention in Mexico, and I still think Trump doesn't have it in him to start a guerrilla war in the southern border.
More important question is 'What's going on with the US people?'
Are they "just following orders"?
Mexico just changed from a superdemagogic leader to one less so. Their deceptively simple recipe is, like Alice in Wonderland, doing five unimportant stupid things before breakfast, so their next important stupid thing doesn't look as bad.
Can you expand on this a bit more? Are you suggesting that government employees should quit in protest? For better or for worse, the American President is in charge of the executive branch and (most? all?) US government employees are part of that branch.
More than a century of incredibly close partnership and interdependence thrown away for nothing more than stoking American egos, looking for an easy target to bully.
The ugliest part of all of this is that if voters completely reject Trumpism in 2 or 4 years and go back to a sane path, they won't have done it because they were convinced of the gross immoral capriciousness of the Trump administration. The only reason American voters would reject Trumpism is if they decide he's bad for business, and caused serious economic harms.
At a bare minimum, call your congress people at least once a week. It does make a difference.
Here are some links that may give you some ideas:
https://thewhitepages.net/p/thirty-lonely-but-beautiful-acti...
https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com/
https://handsoff2025.com/?SQF_SOURCE=indivisible
The American electorate has decided that their wallets are the only thing they care about when voting, so we can hit them right there. I'll be doing everything I can to no longer purchase or support US products whenever possible.
I've also sold all the stocks I hold in US corporations.
> The ugliest part of all of this is that if voters completely reject Trumpism in 2 or 4 years and go back to a sane path, they won't have done it because they were convinced of the gross immoral capriciousness of the Trump administration. The only reason American voters would reject Trumpism is if they decide he's bad for business, and caused serious economic harms.
If Trump did all this crap and it made the stock and job markets boom, he'd be home free. That alone is enough for me to lose all faith in the USA and hope for a future where I can isolate myself as well as possible from the USA's malign influences and capricious actions.
To me it's the same as above. It is too late.
And even of that group, a large number voted for him thinking that he wasn't going to do what he's doing. He even claimed in his campaign that he wasn't going to do what he's doing. I think those people were foolish, of course. As you point out, his nature was pretty obvious, but they weren't on board with what he's doing nonetheless.
Regardless, I understand your skepticism and I wouldn't be shocked if you're correct. I just have a touch more optimism than that myself. Pessimism can lead all too easily to defeatism, and defeatism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I also don't believe the argument that it's a minority of Americans. If people really thought he was a danger to democracy and thought that was a problem, they would have voted. So the way I see it, the overwhelming majority of Americans (i.e. more than 70%) didn't think he posed a legitimate danger to American democracy. That's a really really worrying demonstration of beliefs and priorities.
I support you in disagreeing with me though. I want you to keep fighting and I want you to do everything you can to resist this.
Americans can't afford to believe they may have voted for the last time. But simultaneously, the rest of us can't afford to plug our ears and hope this all goes away.
If it were China or Russia doing this, of course I’d be upset, but when it comes from the U.S., it feels like a much deeper betrayal. I’ve had countless interactions, friendships, and business ties with Americans. Heck, even my first girlfriend was American.
We’ve always shared a close bond through love, friendship, and mutual respect, so actions like this strike on a very personal level.
Some might say that is a naive perspective, and maybe it is. But I am not ready to throw away decades of relationship and shared history with our neighbors to the south.
Despite the negativity, I remain hopeful.
P.S. Muffin is a character in the Aussie show "Bluey".
I mean, that's what i expect from a US cartoon character like Homer Simpson, not from a real, living person. Are the average republican like this, or are those comportment limited to republican representatives?
Very quickly and for no clear reason, America is saying FU to all these people. Americans will have a rude awakening when they realize they are now disliked rather than treated with a mild admiration. Just not sure what that's for.
Regular Americans are used to being seen as a source of money around the world.
Being disliked, but tolerated, has been the lot of Americans for decades
With the troubles at the border, it will be interesting to see how other countries respond. Are they willing to forego US tourist money?
At a personal level if I were a tourist from the US, would I be shunned by touts or denied access to nice places ("sorry mate, not allowed in the Tate. Cheers")?
This is not something new, just more evident nowadays.
Things that USA has done for decades that have alienated other countries:
- Always has been at war, preferably asymmetrical, brutal wars for profit while claiming democracy and freedom.
- Many Americans are ethnocentric, ignoring much of the world outside their country. For example, its national baseball cup is still called the "World" Series? Or ask any American abroad which country they are from, and most will name their state.
- Not so ethnocentric Americans usually choose to do tourism abroad, and those are the ones most people in the world encounter. Obnoxious American tourists are a minority, but they're the most memorable, unfortunately forming the stereotype.
- Has appropriated the "America" name from the whole continent. United States of North America would be its proper name. Gulf of USA is small compared to that.
- Remember "Manifest Destiny"? It's still alive, just frequently changes names.
I could go on and on. I don't deny the blooming of USA after WW II was beautiful, bringing hope to a ravaged world, it seemed like everything it did was awesome. Unfortunately, it was superficial, and its flaws have become more evident as the luster vanishes. USA needs a whole makeover, right down from its constitution to their electoral system, and up to the international arena, to materialize the promise that it showed before.
The reason is crystal clear. A particularly stupid portion of Americans have gotten their lord and master, the undisputed "Emperor of Stupid" elected and it has emboldened them.