A Message to Americans

Photo from The New York Times

I’m angry. Yesterday, Trump escalated his attack on Canada, signing orders to impose a 50 percent tariff on a wide range of Canadian goods such as wine, hockey sticks, cement, dairy products, plywood, paper and furniture. This is in addition to the punitive tariffs he’s already imposed on Canadian steel, aluminum, lumber, autos, and many other products – all in direct violation of the free trade agreement between the two countries. Trump is trying to crush us. 

The response of many Canadians, including myself, is to boycott American products. I don’t buy anything American-made. Yet, here I am still blithely blogging about The New Yorker, an American publication. Yes, The New Yorker is fiercely anti-Trump. If it wasn’t, I’d have boycotted it a long time ago. But now, in light of Trump’s latest aggression towards Canada, I find it unconscionable to be blogging about anything American. 

Americans, your country is a cess pool. Recently, Ian Frazier described it as a “hell pit.” He’s right. Until you rise up and take back your country from this tyrant who is ruling you and gaming you like a gangland mobster, I don’t want to have anything more to do with you. 

The new tariffs that Trump ordered yesterday go into effect in 30 days. If they do, I’m discontinuing this blog. To hell with The New Yorker! To hell with everything American! You are such a putrid country!

Postscript, August 22, 2026: I cancelled my New Yorker and New York Review subscriptions today. I no longer want to support American magazines. Call it an act of patriotism, if you want. I’m done with the U.S.

November 11, 2024 Issue

David Remnick, in this week’s issue, says something that needs saying: the elements of Trump’s authoritarianism are “all there.” He says,

No small part of Trump’s authoritarian campaign is his insistence on dominance. And, though his aides and supporters are dismissive of comparisons to previous embodiments of fascism, the elements are all there: the identification of “vermin” and “the enemy within”; the threat to deploy the military against dissenters; the erasure of truth, the “big lie.” The MAGA rally at Madison Square Garden last Sunday did not feature starched gray uniforms, swastikas, or disciplined salutes. Lee Greenwood is no Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. But the rhetoric was rife with scapegoating, racism, and lies.

I agree. I applaud Remnick for having the guts to say it. 

January 15, 2018 Issue

Bendik Kaltenborn is one of The New Yorker’s best illustrators. He has a dandy picture in this week’s issue, showing Trump swaddled in a bathrobe, lying on the Oval Office carpet, blissfully watching his favorite morning show, “Fox & Friends.” It’s an illustration for Andrew Marantz’s “Friends in High Places,” in which Marantz brilliantly describes “the thin fourth wall between Trump and his TV.” Kaltenborn captures Trump’s infatuation perfectly.