Really. His platitudes and cliches are inspiring.
He is truly quite useless and repeats rubbish.
Shame on Trudeau and Canadians for electing him.
Still, don't expect Trudeau to directly confront Trump when he arrives in Washington.
"The prime minister will always state his values," said a Canadian government official, quoted anonymously in an article by the Canadian Press news agency. "But he’s not interested in stirring up domestic politics."
He is truly quite useless and repeats rubbish.
Shame on Trudeau and Canadians for electing him.
By Ishaan Tharoor March 4, 2016
Ahead of his first official trip to
Washington, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has suggested his
counterparts south of the border would do well to know more about the rest of
the world.
In an interview with CBS's "60
Minutes", to be aired Sunday, Trudeau was asked about what
Canadians perhaps disliked about Americans. He answered in stereotypical
Canadian fashion, suggesting "it might be nice" if Americans
"paid a little more attention to the world."
That polite response carries a bit
of an edge in the current climate, with the United States in the grips of
an election cycle that has been marked by its particularly ghoulish debates
and ugly political rhetoric.
"Having a little more of an
awareness of what’s going on in the rest of the world, I think is, is what many
Canadians would hope for Americans," Trudeau said, in a
transcript released to the Associated Press on Thursday.
In myriad polls and surveys, Americans are
often found to be among the most "ignorant" populations in the
developed world. Contrary to trends elsewhere, the rate of foreign language
study by college students in the United States is declining, not increasing.
[I don't believe the polls and I believe if you focus in on the data, it would show something very different]
About a third of Americans hold
passports, according to the Chronicle of Higher
Education, which also points out that passport holders
number about 50 percent in Australia, more than 60 percent in Canada and
some 80 percent in Britain.
Sure, there has always
been a pronounced isolationist streak to Americans, a nation that in many
senses is a continent unto itself. But in an age when the United States is the
world's only superpower and to varying degrees entangled in myriad conflicts
abroad, it does behoove Americans to know more about the world their
country so profoundly impacts.
In the interview, Trudeau sets his
sights more modestly. Just start with Canada -- you know, that place a lot of
Americans are starting to see as safe haven.
“I think we sometimes like to think
that, you know, Americans will pay attention to us from time to time, too,”
Trudeau told CBS.
Trudeau and his Liberal party came to power after
elections in October, ousting the once-entrenched conservative government of
former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Since then, the photogenic,
well-coiffed new prime minister has championed something of a progressive
renaissance: Trudeau's cabinet is the most diverse in the country's
history; he has reasserted Canada's role at the forefront of
climate change policy; his government has brought in more some 25,000 Syrian refugees in
the space of just a few months. Throughout his own election campaign and in the
months after its triumph, Trudeau remained a vocal defender
of the principles of multiculturalism and feminism.
For these and other reasons,
WorldViews suggested earlier this week that Trudeau represented the anti-Donald Trump. The
Canadian prime minister seems everything the Republican front-runner is not.
And when it comes to this supposed
American obliviousness about the rest of the world, Trudeau has a point. As
WorldViews has cataloged over the past few months, the
Republican debates have been a showcase for crude, simplistic
discussions about foreign policy and global
challenges, heavy on sound and fury, light on substance.
Unfortunately, the conversation
reflects wider attitudes. A poll of Trump supporters found
that more than two-thirds claimed to actively "dislike" American
Muslims, let alone Muslims overseas. A lack of understanding of the strictures
of the U.S. refugee vetting process led many in the United States to
see Syria's destitute refugees as terror threats rather than
people desperately fleeing a hideous, brutal war.
In a town hall in December, Trudeau
stated his disapproval at the way Trump's nativist rhetoric was affecting
American politics, though he didn't mention the former reality star by name.
"I don’t think it comes as a
surprise to anyone that I stand firmly against the politics of division, the
politics of fear, the politics of intolerance or hateful rhetoric,"
Trudeau said. "If we
allow politicians to succeed by scaring people, we don’t actually end
up any safer. Fear doesn’t make us safer. It makes us weaker."
Still, don't expect Trudeau to directly confront Trump when he arrives in Washington.
"The prime minister will always state his values," said a Canadian government official, quoted anonymously in an article by the Canadian Press news agency. "But he’s not interested in stirring up domestic politics."
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