At the risk of seeming to mix the sublime and the ridiculous, a kid’s tee shirt and a 18th century philosopher sum up the latest fiasco — or maybe farce is a better word — of this week in the World of Trump.… Read the rest
Type “stupid” into Roget’s Thesaurus and more than 50 nouns and adjectives pop up. In varying degrees, all of them are applicable to the remorseless list of tragedies that plague the world. The tragedy of that is how acceptable willful and blind stupidity have become.… Read the rest
Polite appearances to the contrary, Canada’s relationship with the U.S. has always had an element that can be summed up in a paraphrase of the opening line of a sonnet by the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do you p*** us off. Let us count the ways..” … Read the rest
As a guide for how to deal with the insults, about-turns and wrecking ball style that pass for American foreign policy without resorting to profanity, I suggest channeling Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, with a small tweak: “Appropriate or inappropriate, that is the question.”… Read the rest
Whatever you think of Donald Trump, he’s boldly gone where none of his predecessors went before. Barely into the second month of his term, he’s made his title and name into an oxymoron that matches my all-time favourite, friendly fire.… Read the rest
Canadian and American hockey fans booing each other’s national anthems is a clear and uncharacteristic indicator of how low President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has driven America’s image and standing in the arena of world opinion.… Read the rest
Since the beginning of the Cold War, the U.S. president has been self-styled and widely, if at times grudgingly, accepted as “the leader of the free world”. Less than a month into his second term, Donald Trump has superseded “leader” with “lout”.… Read the rest
The outrage over President Donald Trump’s “plan” to ethnically cleanse Gaza in all but name and turn it into a resort strip mall, is almost quaint. Did anyone expect rationality or humanity from someone demonstrably unable to differentiate between price, profit and value, and who surrounds himself with soulless moguls of his ilk?… Read the rest
America’s idea of itself as a great and enviable nation was encapsulated by the now defunct print edition of the Reader’s Digest and its signature feature, “Laughter, the Best Medicine”. For those in trepidation of what MAGA portends, the best antidote is a sense of irony and the absurd.… Read the rest
A few weeks before the Gaza peace deal was agreed, the father of a hostage held by Hamas flew to Qatar to meet the negotiators. It’s stretching a point and then some to infer he nudged the talks over the final line, but what he did is a salient lesson for the next stages of the deal.… Read the rest