Brown-John: Return of the American bull in a china shop

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By: Lloyd Brown-John

My late mother had a penchant for addressing boors and clumsy oafs as “behaving like bulls in a china shop.” A person lacking social skills, manners or a person simply impolite, uneducable, unenterprising could fetch down her wrath.

On Monday, Donald Trump will be inaugurated again as POTUS (President of the United States). This event will be historic because the new president has a criminal record, is a known misogynist, and has a capacity to express random thoughts without any moral or ethical understanding of prospective consequences.

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Trump’s niece Mary Trump, in her 2020 book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” described as characteristic Donald Trump’s persistent expression of unsubstantiated “facts” and his total disregard for the consequences of his mindless mutterings.

I am reminded of mathematician, satirist and musician Tom Lehrer’s 1965 anti-Nazi collaborator song about Wernher von Braun. Somewhat like Trump’s rambling comments, Lehrer includes in his song about von Braun’s involvement in American missile development: “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun.

For many Americans, Trump is most assuredly a national embarrassment. But for the Trumpies, as one updated MAGA hat proclaims: “Jesus is My Savior, Trump is My President.”

Neither Trump nor his puppet master — Elon Musk, who injected an estimated US$270 million or more into Trump’s re-election campaign — seem to be able to constrain their tongues.

So far, the disastrous duo have upset and insulted the people of Panama, Greenland and Denmark, Britain’s prime minister and, of course, Canada and Canadians. And all this before they are formally in exercise of the enormous power of the U.S. presidency.

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Alberta’s Trump boot-licking premier may be the only responsible Canadian politician ready to sell her soul and oil regardless of consequences for Canadians to America’s energy-gulping economy.

To his credit, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has made it clear that threats of tariffs by Trump may have serious consequences for Americans. The latter depend heavily upon hydro generated in Ontario to keep the drivel of FOX TV news on the air for many Americans.

I have no idea how automobiles are made as I’ve never been inside any auto assembly plant. However, auto components move back and forth across the border several times in the manufacturing process. Trump has indicated he wants to start a tariff war, so how would multiple tariffs on component parts affect the price to American consumers of automobiles?

Trump’s threat of a tariff war can have little positive consequence either for Americans or Canadians. Tariffs are tax walls designed to protect inefficient industries. The costs of all tariffs will always emerge as higher prices for consumers. Once again, the ramblings of an uninformed mind that seems incapable of understanding that threats have consequences.

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According to Trump, America is subsidizing Canada for hundreds of billions of dollars annually. He is actually talking about a modest U.S. trade deficit with Canada because there is not a single subsidy coming to Canada from the U.S.

He has also noted that Canada is protected by U.S. military might. The often forgotten North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) agreement was an American idea. The idea being to ensure that potential Russian nuclear missiles were destroyed over Canada rather than the U.S.

Like Wernher von Braun, “who cares where the missiles come down” as long as it was Canada?

Monday will witness the inauguration of probably the most dangerous person to ever occupy America’s White House.

As California burns, Trumps’ fundamental immaturity has surfaced when he refers to California Gov. Gavin Newsom pejoratively and spreads his usual misinformation about natural disasters. A real president would be extending hands of assistance instead of invective.

Canadians, and especially those of us close to America’s border, need to exercise caution and cold calculation in dealing with an unpredictable American president.

The next four years could be very bumpy.

Lloyd Brown-John is a University of Windsor professor emeritus of political science and director of Canterbury ElderCollege. He can be reached at [email protected].

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