The president of the United States has been telling us how much the country has done for the world and how little the world has done for the U.S. in return. Mistaking trade deficits for “debts,” the president claims his nation has been ripped off by virtually every one one of its allies. Canada is among the worst, in the Trumpian analysis of trade and geopolitically Canada “only exists because of the U.S.,” the president haughtily asserted, following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s keynote speech in Davos, Switzerland, last week. Since his earliest days as a brash New York City developer, Donald Trump has been known to say whatever he wants to get whatever he wants. And it’s almost always been about money, success and value measured only in dollars. “The Art of the Deal.” At any cost. During his presidencies, much of what he has said has been dismissed as “Trump being Trump,” an acknowledgement that Trump, as president, exaggerates, prevaricates, pontificates, fabricates and obliviates, just as he did when he was a private citizen bamboozling television audiences and his business associates. Politicians, as a group, are famous and widely disrespected for their casual relationship with the truth. It’s a bit of an inside joke. They know, that we know, that they often bend the facts to fit the narrative. Ironically, Trump’s most ardent supporters seem to believe he is the only politician who tells the truth, even when the facts suggest otherwise. Most of Trump’s claims about his own accomplishments in business and politics are contradicted by the facts. However, the president is correct when he says the United States has often bestowed great gifts upon the world, sacrificing lives and treasure in the interests of justice and peace. The U.S. has given much, particularly when it comes to the defence of its allies. Measured only in dollar signs, countries, including Canada, have shirked their responsibilities, counting on the Americans to pick up the slack; something that is finally changing. But to suggest that the United States has received nothing in return is not only wrong, it deeply disrespects and devalues the enormous loss of life sustained by its friends and allies, including Canada, who quickly honoured NATO’s Article 5, responding to the 9/11 attacks on America as if they were attacks on themselves. More than 160 Canadians died in the resulting war in Afghanistan, a genuine debt that defies a “price” and can never be repaid. Never mind the hospitality extended to tens of thousands of American citizens who were marooned and given safe haven after U.S. jets were ordered to land at friendly Canadian airports on that dreadful day. History is replete with bullies, liars and conmen, including more than a few politicians. The president is surely among the first rank. But what increasingly distinguishes him among modern democratically elected leaders of great nations is that he is also, so plainly, an insensitive ingrate, a cynic who, in the words of Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
