The border. A scar across the land, bleeding the
endless flow of human want and need. Trump, that old wounded wolf, he
stands at the edge, teeth bared, issuing pronouncements like they
were thunderclaps in a dry season. He speaks of tariffs, a quarter of
every dollar changing hands, a heavy hand to force the compliance of
those south and north. The news people, they bark and howl, filling
the air with the scent of coming conflict. They speak of inevitable
tariffs, the gears of commerce grinding to a halt, and they leave out
the rest: the whispered demand buried in the roar.
They don’t print that part, of course. They need
the drama, the fear, the clashing of titans. It sells their print,
that's the truth of it. Trump, he knows this dance. He knows the
press is a beast easily provoked, easily led. He throws them a bone,
a headline ripe with the promise of economic war, and they fall on it
with savage hunger.
But the real fight ain't about money. It never is.
It's about control. Trump knows the dance. He’s played this tune
before. The tariff, it ain't the weapon, it's the threat. The blade
held to the throat to extract the confession. He’s using the fear
of it, the howl of the press, the very real possibility of disrupted
trade, to force their hand.
He wants action. He wants the flow stemmed, the
crossing points hardened, the border made less permeable. He wants
Canada and Mexico to do their part and fulfill their obligations, to
shoulder the burden. The tariff is the lever, the threat is the
fulcrum. And they, south and north, know it. They see the glint in
his eye, the unwavering resolve behind the bluster. They understand
the language of power, even when spoken through the amplified voice
of a media more interested in spectacle than substance.
They'll negotiate. That is the point. They'll
dance to his tune, at least for a while. They'll offer concessions,
make promises, shift resources. Because the alternative, the 25% bite
out of every transaction, that's a wound they can’t easily bear.
They understand the truth buried beneath the headlines. They know the
tariffs are not inevitable. They're a gambit, a calculated risk
played by a man who understands the brutal calculus of power on the
open plains of the political frontier. And the land, it waits, silent
witness to the human drama unfolding along its jagged edge. A drama
played out with dollars and desperation, threats and veiled promises,
where the outcome remains uncertain, hanging in the dry air like the
scent of coming rain.
The ink-stained wretches, calling themselves
journalists, huddle in their dens, a nervous energy thrumming beneath
their frantic scribbling. They claw at scraps of information,
twisting them, contorting them into shapes that fit the narrative,
the story they’ve already decided to tell. Rage is their fuel, a
dark fire that flickers in the hollows of their eyes. They’ve lost
the scent of truth, replaced it with the cloying sweetness of
manufactured outrage.
They’ve built their empires on this foundation
of false brick, erected a cathedral of condemnation, and called it
journalism. But the people, they ain't fools. They see the cracks in
the facade, the shoddy construction. They smell the faint, acrid
scent of lies clinging to the paper. The trust, once freely given,
has eroded, worn away by the relentless tide of manufactured scorn.
Trump, that old desert fox, he saw it coming. He
baited them, tossed them easy prey, knowing their hunger for a
villain was insatiable. He spoke in riddles as well as in blunt
pronouncements, and they pounced, interpreting, misinterpreting,
twisting his words until they resembled grotesque parodies of their
original intent.
And with every misstep, every factual fumble,
every breathless exaggeration, they drove another nail into their own
coffin. They’ve become a broken record, stuck in a groove of
perpetual outrage, their credibility shattered, scattered like shards
of glass across the barren landscape of public opinion.
He, Trump, he stands apart, watching them
self-destruct. He offers no corrections, no clarifications. He lets
them howl, lets them spin their twisted tales. Because in their
frantic attempts to bring him down, they elevate him. They make him
the counterpoint, the rebel voice cutting through the cacophony of
their manufactured outrage. He’s the antidote to their poison, the
one they can’t silence because they’ve made him too loud, too
important.
Their obsession with painting him as a monster has
blinded them to their own monstrous transformation. They’ve become
the very thing they claim to despise, manipulators of truth, peddlers
of fear. And the people, they see it now. They see the emperor has no
clothes, and it ain't Trump. It's them. The scribblers, the
storytellers, the so-called guardians of truth. Their rage-fuelled
narratives have become a hollow echo, a testament to their own
downfall. And in their demise, the desert wind whispers Trump's name.
He didn’t win in spite of them. He won because of them. They paved
the road, laid the stones, and lit the path to his ascent with the
fires of their own making. The irony, it’s a cold, hard thing, like
the blade of a knife in the fading light.
Trudeau, the son, stands in the pale light of the
north, a figure diminished, the swagger gone from his step. He moves
with a quiet compliance, a haunted look in his eyes, like a man who’s
seen the wolves circling. They say he’s unpopular amongst his own,
the shine rubbed off, the illusions shattered like glass on cold
stone. He's a hollow echo in his own land.
Before the new wolf even takes his seat, before
the ink on the pronouncements is dry, Trudeau has already bent the
knee.
Perhaps, in the quiet hours, away from the cameras
and the clamouring voices, a strange admiration blooms in the frozen
ground of his heart. The sheer force of will, the unwavering focus,
the ability to bend reality to one's desire – these are qualities
that command respect, even when cloaked in the garb of an antagonist.
Trump is who Trudeau secretly dreams of being.
Trudeau complies. Not just out of fear, but out of
a strange, unspoken acknowledgment of the other’s power. He dances
to the tune, however discordant it may be. He moves, a lonely figure
in the vast expanse of his dominion, doing the bidding of the man to
the south. And the land, the cold, unforgiving land, it watches. It
knows the truth that lies beneath the surface. A man lost in the
wilderness with little time left.
