Lately, I’ve been listening to The Martian. I’m kind of a sucker for synthy orchestral compositions and that soundtrack is just so hauntingly beautiful.

Living in Ontario Canada, I immediately think of things our premier Doug Ford has done or is trying to do. Right out of the gate, he tore down a wind farm near me that was 90% complete and had to pay millions in legal fees for breaking the contract on the taxpayer’s dime. More recently, he’s on a rampage to tear out bike lane infrastructure and build some giant tunnel under an already huge highway to expand its capacity.

This highlights the folly of trying to lock down the Canada-US land border. If you really wanted to cut down drugs and human trafficking, you’d focus on ports of entry to the continent. The border is just way too long. Only an idiot would try to police its full length. If you think it’s only the 4000 miles from Maine to Washington State, you’re forgetting that extra 1500 miles with Alaska.

As repulsive a notion as this is, I think if there’s a lesson to be learned from the likes of Putin, it’s that Trump can be bought. Even Tim Cook realized this in throwing a token million bucks his way just to get him off his back. Whatever his price is, it’s less than the cost of an international trade war.

I think it’s worth keeping the communication channel open? Trump 2.0 is definitely less mentally there than in his first term, and he may well forget some ultimatum he levelled only a couple of days ago.

This is not to say that Canada or any other country (or even US state or federal agency, for that matter) should pin their hopes on him coming to his senses in a brief moment of clarity. Absolutely keep up whatever efforts are already underway to resist, stymie, and work around what he dishes out.

The “Made in Canada” labels typically say “from domestic and imported ingredients”, though they rarely specify the country of origin for the imported parts. That’s a bit annoying, but I’ll buy it anyway. At the end of the day, I guess my motivation to support fellow Canadians outweighs that to boycott and wish ill on Americans. I’m just too tired of vindictive people to be one myself.