That's kind of why Trump blusters so much and says all this outrageous shit in the first place. To distinguish himself from the democrats and create this illusion of choice. The democrats can then keep upholding the majority of his policies, not just the tariffs, but also ICE, the border wall, military aid to Israel, bombing Yemen, etc, but because they talk about those issues differently people think that they're more different than they really are.

The US is powerful enough that a lot of USians have been protected from the consequences of the policies they support. We are culturally in "if you give a mouse a cookie" territory and the right will keep pushing and pushing until someone finally stands up to them and puts them in their place and they learn that they're not some invincible Homelander. And the Democrats sure as hell are not going to be the ones to do that. It's sometimes hard to tell whether people like Newsom are just feckless cowards who can't stop giving concessions to the right, or if they just straight up agree with those policies. Either way, it doesn't matter.

There is exactly one way this ends, and it's blowback. Other countries need to make us feel the consequences of our actions, both for their own sakes, and for ours. If we are not disciplined and punished for our belligerence, the right will not see that as patience and courtesy, they will see it as a sign weakness, that you have no recourse when we bully you, and so they will continue doubling down until you are forced to do something about it, or submit completely. This is how they think. I don't like it any more than anyone else, but we need to get our faces slammed into the mud, to be humiliated and to suffer, so that we can learn what happens when we go down this path. And frankly, we are completely unqualified to be wielding so much power in the first place.

It's not fascism for our enemy to be our enemy. They've always been that way.

So I feel the label doesn't fit here.

To the articles example, they were tariffing softwood lumber before Trump. It's what led the American courts to say NAFTA meant Canada/Mexico can't tariff the US but they can tariff us.

I like Guard the Leaf, I do but the fact that he chose discord over something else was a lttle much for me, and that he is using substack rather than a Canadian platform is a little iffy as well.