Matt Gurney: The challenge we face is where we'll draw our lines
Nothing in this country matters as much as what's happening to our south at the moment.
By: Matt Gurney
Though I make my living writing about the comings and goings of Canada, I am well aware that the biggest story in town is unfolding right now to the south. And as we all get back to work after a too-brief Canadian summer, all of us — The Line, but also our federal government and you, the readers — should take a moment to cast our eyes south, and wonder just how weird things might get down there. What would be our red line, or your red line, at which point the panic button would be pressed?
Think about it. Decide. And, then, write it down.
The state of affairs in the States is a grim thing to ponder. That’s been true for months. But is it just me, or is it getting weirder? If you ignored the news this past long weekend, and you should have, you would have missed a strange mix of high-level speculation about Donald Trump’s health apparently being in rapid decline, including a strange comment by Vice President JD Vance about being ready to take over. Trump has now put out a statement insisting he’s fine. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. The point is, who knows? Once upon a time I would have been a lot more confident that we’d get solid information. I’m not anymore, and that kind of uncertainty about the state of the U.S. is now routine. (And yes, the Biden folks get some of that blame.)
That was this weekend’s weirdness. It’ll be something else in a day or two. I really wish all of our attention could be focused on domestic affairs. Those are important, and deserve scrutiny. There is a lot going on up here, too. But the biggest story is going to continue to be the one centred on the White House in Washington, D.C. It just has to be.
This isn’t The Line’s preference, or mine. U.S. politics comes up a bit in our podcasts and sometimes in our dispatches, but as a rule, we’re content to let the Americans explain America to the world, and focus on our own country.
But how do you do that when our country’s economic future, politics, and military security are tightly wound up in what’s happening to the south? How does this country make any decisions about its economy and its trading policies and its defence policies — and I’m sure you’ll agree these are the things that Prime Minister Mark Carney will be most focused on in the coming months — when we are gripped with uncertainty over what direction the Americans will head?
And even uncertainty over the fate of the Republic itself. I’m not seeking to be dramatic. I have become jaded over the years by the casual dismissal of any politician much to the right of the ever-shifting centre as being a “fascist.” It’s a boy-who-cried-wolf problem that far too many on the North American centre-left have indulged in, either out of boredom or intellectual laziness.
But I admit that I am uneasy these days. Just last week, I found myself reading an article by Garrett Graff, an American historian and writer. In 2019, Graff released what I consider to be the best book about the September 11 attacks that I have read, and I have read more than I care to count. I interviewed him on the radio for the 20th anniversary of 9/11, found him thoughtful, and I’ve made a point of following his work since.
That’s why I took it seriously when Graff wrote last month that America has tipped into fascism, and laid out, at length, why he thinks that’s so.
I’m not sold on it. My own sense is that Donald Trump is so politically incoherent that it’s hard to assign to him any particular ideology or -ism. Fascist leaders have typically operated within a consistent worldview. An appalling one, if you ask little ole me, but consistent. They believed things, believed them passionately, and generally believed them pretty consistently. And then went out and killed or imprisoned a lot of people who believed other things.
That isn’t Donald Trump. He bounces from topic to topic, taking positions in line with whomever has spoken with him most recently, and always seems susceptible to being flattered or, frankly, bribed by a nice plane or something. That’s a real advantage, in a bizarre way — his own distractedness may blunt his worst impulses. Plus, as Anne Applebaum recently told Paul Wells, while she’s worried too, there are still some guardrails for American democracy — including elections being controlled by the states. That’s a line of defence I’m glad to have.
But. I have to admit Graff’s case was compelling — I wanted to reject it as hysteria or social-media bait, but I couldn’t. I’ve read enough history to know that not every version of a thing looks identical to some other nation’s experience with it — if America goes fascist, it’ll look and feel uniquely American, and won’t necessarily map neatly onto how it looked and felt in other places. And Graff also stressed that the public’s understanding of what fascism is has been too influenced by what it eventually becomes — when it’s just starting, there’s a point where the inevitable is baked in but where things still look and feel pretty normal. That’s where he thinks America is today.
And he could be right. I don’t know if America has indeed tipped into fascism. I suspect that’s something that will be easier to declare in hindsight than it is when one is living through it. But his argument was stronger and more compelling than I wish it were. As we discussed at length in our recent episode of The Line Podcast, Jen Gerson’s advice many months ago to decide what your own red lines are seems as depressingly apropos as ever.
Specifically, in our first regular dispatch after the re-election of Trump last November, Jen wrote this:
If Trump goes the direction of other strongmen before him, what we're going to see is a lot of people spending the next few years intellectually justifying increasingly unjustifiable policy decisions and statements because they're so locked into the Trump train psychologically that they're going to be unable to pull back and oppose him when necessary. We're going to watch a lot of smart people making excuses for decisions they would not tolerate today.
We would ask such people (fruitlessly, we expect) to consider stopping for a moment and taking a firm moral inventory. Ask yourselves what your red lines are. What are your deal breakers? What are the things that any leader would do that would warrant your opposition and resistance?
I like to think I have a pretty good feel for the audience here at The Line. And I know a great many of you will roll your eyes at any suggestion that Donald Trump is taking America into a particularly dark place. Many of you will be quick to counter with some bad thing you think Justin Trudeau or Joe Biden did, and will believe that that ends the conversation. And that’s fine. I am not going to spend any time trying to convince you. I’m simply going to invite all of you, especially the ones who find the notion preposterous, to do as Jen suggested.
Take a couple of minutes today and engage in a good-faith intellectual exercise. Do what Jen urged above. Read Graff’s essay. What would convince you that Graff is right? Really think about what would convince you. And then pop us an email at lineeditor@protonmail.com, or info@readtheline.ca, with the subject line “My Red Line.” Jen and I will collect them, put them into a file, and review them in 12 months. We’ll use no one’s full names, just first names or initials (your choice), and we’ll discuss them a year from now.
I am very open to the possibility that a year from now, Graff’s essay will be essentially forgotten, I’ll look a little bit silly for having written this, and the Democrats will be well on the way to a crushing, massive midterm victory. If that’s the case, I will have the good grace to admit as much, and all your suggested red lines will be considered and remarked on in good humour.
Of course, it’s also possible that things will be bad and even the skeptics among you will be convinced.
Who knows? Let’s find out, together.
But in the meantime, The Line does not intend to turn itself into a journal documenting the ebbing and flowing of American democracy. That’s not what we do. We’ve got our own country to worry about, and it is indeed a country with a great many problems that require serious contemplation.
But unfortunately for us and for Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre and everyone else in their orbits, there is no problem we have in this country that will not relate in some way back to what’s unfolding to the south. It’s not a great place to be, but it is where we are as we get back to work here, at The Line, and in Canada. And let’s start our efforts this September by writing down our thoughts about what’s happening to the south. Send us those emails. And let’s talk again in a year.
A brief programming note: It’s been six months since we launched our On The Line podcast. It has been a huge success, and we wanted to thank our audience here for helping make that so. While the podcast was just getting off the ground, we made a point of promoting it twice every Tuesday — we had a post announcing the audio release in the morning, and a second post in the evening, when the video went live. Now that the podcast has its feet under it, we’ll be consolidating On The Line’s releases into a single evening post. The audio will still release in the mornings, so follow us on your favourite podcasting app, but the main post will now be Tuesday evenings. Tuesday mornings will be again devoted to the publication of written articles like this one.
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My red line would be if Trump banned certain groups of American citizens from leaving the country or traveling within it, froze the bank accounts of peaceful protesters or demanded multi-year sentences for the same, or excluded a large and identifiable group of American citizens from employment, education, or unemployment Insurance.
While some problems may have been aggravated by the bozo down south, all of our problems are due to our own governments' inaction. 15,000 people dying from fentanyl overdoses per year. 25,000 dying while waiting for treatment per year. The economy was collapsing before the US election. Services are crap yet the deficit is going through the roof. Homelessness, housing, immigration.
The feds and provinces are just sitting, hoping our problems solve themselves or are actively making them worse.
But yes, it is important to blame outside forces for all of our problems because the Liberals will soon need to win another election.