And how do you classify to responding to hostility with submission?

Besides, Canada isn't even being hostile. A divorce is very different from abuse or harassment.

It is divorce in anticipation of a bout of domestic violence.

You don't reason. You remove the victim from the hands of the aggressor.

It will cost a lot of money, and the Canadians will suffer greatly. But the alternative is to join America, which Canadians have stated don't want to.

I am in the start up community in Canada. I can tell you that after the first threat from Trump every federal program to help tech start ups immediately pivoted to Asia and the EU. Before he started yapping, we were connected to Canadian representatives in the US, meeting about markets and opportunities. Now all programs are directed at forming partnerships elsewhere.

Simply eliminating a lot of those domestic trade barriers would create more economic wealth than what Canada would lose by ending trade with the U.S. completely.

Of course in practice it won’t be that easy and the finances don’t usually materialize that easily, but the point is Canada has options for growth that are fully under its control.

It's certainly not guaranteed, but taking an aggressive defensive stance is the ONLY possible way to stop having your lunch money stolen.

I rest my case.

He never trashed the US, he simply stated the facts and how middle powers should respond. Not by isolating but by working together. He directly addresses how everyone is dependant on the great powers. When the great powers stop honouring the systems and structures that are in place then the 'old way' is gone. Which it is. Relying on US commitments to NORAD, NATO, Trade Agreements etc is useless.

As far as leverage goes, we will see. But we are not divorcing we are simply responding to the US giving up its global power. The negotiating table in Washington is not reliable. It's not theatre, its risk management.

Don't feel sorry for us we will prosper.

The US has no interest in engaging in good faith negotiations.

> For my Canadian friends, I’m sorry you’re going through this.

I am, too.

But what is Canada supposed to do? The US has become a real threat to them. The only thing the US is offering is "submit to our every whim or we'll beat you". The only rational thing to do in that situation is to distance yourself as much as possible, no matter how much that may hurt. The worst thing you can do is to roll over and take it.

But didn't you get the order of events precisely wrong?

Isn't it America who threatened Canada (become a state of the US)? Isn't America who threatened Canada with extreme tariffs? Etc.

Don't fool yourself. The US of late has been making it perfectly clear that it's a threat to Canada regardless of what Canada does.

I think if America started at 0dark30 they would be done by lunch and home for supper.

Can you expand on this?

The establishment Democrats are not exactly "aggressively progressive" by any reasonable standard. They shunned Bernie Sanders, who still isn't highly radical.

So which specific ideas made you think "I'll vote for the rapist gameshow host?"

12 weeks of paid family leave? More solar power? Only government run prisons? Buying into Medicare at 55? Free in state tuition for families earning less than 125k?

That's what Gemini lists as her most progressive positions.

This is well beyond some basic excuse of 'bb-but look at the other choice', this is 'fuck them lets kick some shit out and fuck ya all' mentality when you run around in amok with chainsaw level of idiocy.

Keeping things as polite as possible of course, but not more.

> Hillary Clinton while pushing aggressively progressive ideas

This is a lie. Simple as that.

Looks like you can be both. And a puppet at the same time.

So we need some mandatory check(up)s on extraordinary charismatic leading people who have the power to wreak havoc when they are making stupid desicions.

We (as a species) are not really getting better at that, aren't we?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_of_Nancy_Kerrigan