Quotulatiousness

October 27, 2025

Trump versus Carney (and Ford, his court jester)

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Another week, another set of bleak headlines about the trade relationship (or lack thereof) between Canada and the United States. For some, this is the story of how Trump Derangement Syndrome has consumed all levels of Canadian leadership, while for others it’s proof that you can’t deal with Trump as a rational adult and instead need to consider him an overgrown toddler with a nuclear arsenal at his disposal. Or perhaps it’s a little from column A and a bit from column B:

At the risk of overstating my own influence, it’s like the President of the United States read my piece saying he was acting like a toddler and decided, “oh yeah? I’ll show what ‘acting like a toddler’ means!” and did this, presumably once Bluey was over:

    U.S. President Donald Trump says he is raising tariffs on Canadian goods by 10 per cent, after accusing Canada of airing what he called a “fraudulent” advertisement that misrepresented former president Ronald Reagan’s stance on tariffs.

    In a post published on Truth Social at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Trump wrote, “I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”

    Trump’s post cited his frustration over an advertisement produced by the Ontario government that used clips of Reagan warning about the dangers of protectionism and praising free trade.

    “Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs,” he wrote.

    Earlier this week, Trump had cut off trade negotiations with Ottawa, explaining it was due to the “hostile” nature of the ad campaign.

    “Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump further said in the Truth social post.

The good news is, at least Trump is coming right out and admitting that his “national security” tariffs are really about nothing more than his fragile ego, just in time for the Supreme Court to hear arguments about this very issue.

The bad news is, I think it’s exceptionally naive to think SCOTUS is going to save us from this madness.

Not because I think they’ll rule that what he’s doing is legal. That might be a bridge too far for even Justices Thomas and Alito.

But because this proposition rests on the assumption that Trump considers himself bound by Supreme Court rulings and that anyone else is going to exercise their power to ensure these rulings are followed.

Or, if you think Canadian leaders are deep in a TDS binge:

How The New Republic saw Donald Trump during the 2024 election campaign.

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a widespread and serious issue. When one is afflicted by it, their capacity to sense-make becomes compromised. Emotions are a difficult thing for humans to control, and TDS-sufferers seem for the most part unaware of how much their negative, emotional feelings concerning Trump have hijacked their reason.

TDS types reveal themselves in so many ways. One specifically, which often goes unnoticed, is a general uncharitableness when it comes to interpreting the words and actions of Trump, or a general unwillingness to look beyond words – either Trump’s words or anyone else’s which have been inserted into Trump discourse. A prime example of this is the anti-tariff ad campaign involving a 1987 speech by former president Ronald Reagan which the Ford government paid $75 million to have broadcast to American audiences – key Republican areas – for the purpose of undermining President Trump’s economic policy.

Firstly, the uncharitable analysis does not allow that Trump has any right, or any good argument, or reason to be upset about Canada’s trade practices, such as supply management. The uncharitable analysis sees Canada as an innocent victim and Trump as a bully who is trying to destroy us and/or take us over.

[…]

Returning to reason and reality. Trump has justification for being upset with Canada over both our trade practices and in the under-handed and unfriendly tactics of Doug Ford and other Canadian leaders. The ad was an insult to Trump. His reaction or over-reaction to the ad, does not change the fact that what Ford did was antagonistic and not in the best interests of productive trade negotiations. The charitable analysis understands this, and does not lose sight of it, no matter how outlandish the things Trump does may be.

On the other side of the uncharitable Trump analysis concerning Ford’s Reagan ad blunder, is circulating the idea that Reagan was anti-tariff. Why is this idea believed? Because of Reagan’s rhetoric. You can find hundreds of clips of Reagan speaking about the dangers of high tariffs, or advocating for free trade. But the uncharitable analysis refuses to go beyond words. They ignore words that don’t support their argument, and act as if the words that do support their argument were the only ones spoken. Further, they act like words are the be all and end all, by not bothering to investigate the actions of those who speak the words, they pretend that word-speakers always do and intend exactly what they say. Reagan’s oratory contained lots of anti-tariff rhetoric, but his actions included lots of pro-tariff policy in an effort to deal with unfair trading partners.

None of this is difficult once you mea culpa from TDS. If you remain under the spell of TDS, you will not be rational or reasonable, and I for one, will not take you seriously. You will look increasingly foolish as time goes on and Trump’s policies turn out not to be the disasters you hysterical twits dreamed they would be. And the group of people like me, who shake their heads and roll their eyes at you, will grow and grow, under the weight of inevitable mass mea culpa. But you will remain shrouded from truth as you descend further into darkness and gloom and hate. It doesn’t have to be this way … just mea culpa FFS!

“The Church of England has lost 80 per cent of Anglicans on the planet”

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In The Conservative Woman, Daniel Jupp considers the recent schism in the Church of England, which has left the original church shorn of the vast majority of Anglican worshippers across the globe:

“Canterbury Cathedral aerial image” by John D Fielding is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

Today, though, the English Church is broken. The Anglican Communion, which encompassed all the places across the world touched by English exploration, discovery, trade and power, where English Christian missionaries often led the way, has witnessed a devastating schism. At the start of this month Dame Sarah Mullally was appointed the first female Archbishop of Canterbury. As is tradition, the appointment was approved by the Prime Minister and the King, but the nomination came from the Church.

Whether Anglican Christians worldwide approved doesn’t seem to have been considered. Based on multiple past fissures between the part of the Church active in the United Kingdom and the (much larger) Anglican communities globally which had each time been papered over, it may be that the hierarchy in England assumed that the same would happen again.

If so, they were wrong.

The Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (also known as Gafcon) represent the Anglican faith in Africa. Their response was to declare publicly that they would no longer send delegates to Church meetings in the United Kingdom, no longer consider the Archbishop of Canterbury as first among equals or a seat of authority to which they deferred, and no longer consider themselves in the same communion as the Bishops and clergy of the Church of England within England. Perhaps even more tellingly, they asserted that they were the true Anglican communion, more loyal to the instructions of the Bible and Anglican interpretation of those than priests in England. There’s a subtle but powerful distinction there – they were saying not that they had broken away from an Anglican vision of Biblical instruction and Christian identity but that the Church in England had done so.

African Anglicans now assert that they are the true Anglicans, and that the organisation within the UK is not. And in terms of the number of people who follow their message, they are right to assert this.

In losing the African churches and the global, more conservative branch of Anglicanism, the Church of England has lost 80 per cent of Anglicans on the planet.

Imagine a company that lost 80 per cent of its customers. Or a political party that lost 80 per cent of its voters. Or a nation state that lost 80 per cent of its territory. These would in each case be recognised as unmitigated disasters.

Now imagine this following a previous disaster, which was the end of Justin Welby’s period as Archbishop over a scandal based on not being firm enough and honest enough about paedophile cases in the clergy. One would think the Church might be looking for a non-controversial appointment intended to restore moral trust immediately and defuse criticism.

They did not do this. Knowing the much more conservative and traditionalist stance held by the majority of Anglicans, they chose not to listen to those people, and did something it knew to be passionately opposed by them.

There is an intense irony here that gets to the heart of the self-inflicted problems of the Church of England today. Sarah Mullally has been very clear on the kind of Church she believes in – she’s a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and activism, she has strongly backed asylum and migration, she is a self-declared feminist, and she is both politically and it seems religiously progressive. As Bishop of London, she boasted about representing a diverse and multicultural city, and put her experience in handling diversity as one of the key qualifications and evidence of positive experience she could bring to being the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This was an intensely reality-averse selling-point. London’s slightly lower trend on the relentless decline of Christian faith and attendance compared with the UK as a whole is based not on Mullally’s competence and persuasion. It is based on traditionalist, conservative-minded members of the African Anglican communion in London being more likely to go into a church.

And these people hate woke attitudes and politics.

Update, 28 October: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

When announcing something is a substitute for doing something

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The headline seems to be the most accurate way to describe the habits of the federal Liberals from the start of Justin Trudeau’s first government to Mark Carney’s most recent national media appearance. Peter Menzies describes the bought-and-paid-for national media’s coverage of the big non-event:

It has never been easier, thanks to the internet, for journalists to check if they are being played for fools. But due either to sloth, neglect, habit or servility — pick one — way too many lack the motivation to use a search engine.

Instead, they frequently accept the role of featherheads manipulated by politicians staging one of the oldest scams in the Machiavellian playbook, the recycled “news” announcement. I say “featherheads” (patsies was another option) because, for instance, Prime Minister Mark Carney can book news network time for a full half hour speech that is nothing more than a rehash of everything he’s been saying for the past 10 months and still lead newscasts and make the front pages.

Here, I must pause to credit the Toronto Star. It, like other news organizations, received an embargoed copy of Wednesday’s speech in advance. It read it, saw that it contained no news and did not put a report on its front page. Others such as National Post and the Globe and Mail tried desperately to find a fresh angle within the speech but put it on their front pages anyway. CBC threw everything it had into it and CTV also led with it and tried its best to make it sound like news had happened.

Now, I am a reasonable and fair-minded person, so I would not be reacting were it just this incident that captured my attention. The PM is speaking, everyone gets excited, you review and lock in your story lineup and, ya, I get it. Been there, done that. But this was part of a troubling pattern that has emerged.

For instance, the government’s “plan” to hire 1,000 more Canadian Border Services guards was first announced in the Liberal election platform last spring. It was then, according to Blacklock’s Reporter, re-announced “April 10, April 28, June 3 and August 12”.

That Blacklock’s report was published Oct. 14 and focused on Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree’s insistence he was “not responsible” for the promised hiring that hadn’t happened yet. Two days later, Carney announced that the previously announced and re-announced plan would be announced again in the Nov. 4 budget. And the day after that — Oct. 17 — Anandasangaree announced his ministry would be doing what he said a few days previously wasn’t his responsibility and hiring 1,000 new border guards — over the next five years. A similar pattern of announcement and reannouncements took place regarding the government’s plan to hire 1,000 more RCMP officers, also not immediately but eventually. Then, last week, Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced a financial crimes agency would be up and running by next June. This, too, was reported as a new initiative even though the government first committed to that agency in 2021.

While not all news organizations rise to the bait, this widely carried Canadian Press story is an example of how easily the public can be misinformed by reporting that lacks proper context. Re-announcements are presented as “news” despite there being no news other than “politicians repeat what they said before to keep their names in the news”. Media that go along with this pattern of manipulation allow themselves to be accused of defining news as anything the government wishes to present as news, something about which — now that media are subsidized by politicians — they should be more cautious.

The nation needs journalists to tell the whole story or, as Robert Maynard, founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, put it:

    The first thing about journalism is about accuracy and fairness, but that’s not enough. It has to be about context, it has to be about depth.

Britain and the Claudian Invasion – The Conquered and the Proud 17

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 28 May 2025

Today we look at Roman relations with island of Britannia between Caesar and the invasion sent by Claudius in AD 43. We discuss the motives for that invasion, the campaigns fought to take control of the south east, before considering the rebellion of Boudica and the expansion in the north under the Flavians.

QotD: Feminine traits

Filed under: Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

“Human creatures,” says [“the Franco-Englishman, W.L.”] George, borrowing from Weininger, “are never entirely male or entirely female; there are no men, there are no women, but only sexual majorities”. Find me an obviously intelligent man, a man free from sentimentality and illusion, a man hard to deceive, a man of the first class, and I’ll show you a man with a wide streak of woman in him.

H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women, 1918.

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