Clarkson: Under Trump, the rules of the game have completely changed

Another one in. a series of articles and commentary on the challenges posed by Trump:

…The second term of Donald Trump means that we in Canada have to be even more watchful, careful and clever in our reactions to his actions. We have to overcome our disbelief and suspend our feelings. It has really happened.

Recently visiting the University of Tübingen in Germany, I learned that in 1931 they fired their only Jewish professor – two years before Hitler came to power. A combination of disbelief and passivity make a dangerous cocktail in the face of unscrupulous domination. We must beware of what Timothy Snyder warns of in his book On Tyranny. It is called “anticipatory obedience” or “vorauseilender Gehorsam” in German. Hitler and the Nazis benefited from it. It is a resonant and depressing fact that most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given in times like these, in moments of historical apprehension.

So, what are we to do as Canadians in our professions and our personal lives? The most important factor is that we are all Canadians and we have to behave like Canadians. We all have to brush up on our history and realize that we live in one of the oldest continuous democracies. John Ralston Saul, who wrote the biography of Robert Baldwin and the reformers of 1848 in Upper Canada, has been saying this for a long time, but it is necessary to keep emphasizing it. Because it is true. We have had in our history no civil war, no rewriting of the Constitution. We have had a continuous democracy since 1848. We must treasure that. We must protect it.

What we have to do is to continue to believe in the project that is Canada, and which has despite so many difficulties and challenges remained the Canada that we know: bilingual, based on the Magna Carta, and parliamentary democracy. A Canada that has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a Canada that is bilingual in French and English. These are things that do not need to be changed; these are things that are valuable; these are things that make us Canadian.

We are going to be constantly challenged and threatened. We must continue doing things for others. We must continue to be a welcoming nation. We must continue our path of reconciliation with Indigenous people. We must continue these things because we know that’s the right thing to do. We must continue to do them because it makes us more human to do them. Canadians can only try to mitigate whatever evils there are in the world, even if they come from our closest neighbour with whom we share an unguarded border.

We must always remember the words of the great reformer Joseph Howe who, in 1835, posed the most important Canadian questions: “What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?”

Source: Under Trump, the rules of the game have completely changed