SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, GRAND BEND, ON. AUGUST 10, 2025. It is now more than a year since my last contribution to this august space — “Democracy in America holds Donald Trump to account at last in New York, New York (if not in more rural red states),” May 31st, 2024.

As I contemplate the long hot summer here in early August 2025 (28C “feels 36”/82F “feels 98”), I am pondering an email from the counterweights editors, asking how I feel about the state of the Trump II presidency now.

My first thought as I relax on the southeastern shore of Lake Huron, in Southwestern Ontario in central Canada, is that I feel somewhat happily disconnected from Trump USA Part Deux.

I disagree with Canadian PM Mark Carney on various issues (the future of the British monarchy in Canada eg). And his style is somewhat too deeply rooted in the honourable Canadian political tradition of compromise and good manners for my personal taste.

Like many others, however, I continue to have confidence in PM Carney’s ability to navigate the utter unpredictable craziness of President Trump’s approach to Canada-US trade (and much else) as successfully as is humanly possible.

And I continue to feel that in some ways the 51st state apostle Trump II has done Canada a great favour, by forcing it to stand up for itself at last.

I continue to believe as well that Donald Trump II’s first six months have largely been a disaster for the USA domestically — as yet not fully appreciated by the American body politic but bound to become clearer as time rolls on.

My sense is also that the broad democratic majority in the USA today still believes in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America

It does not support the hard right-wing “conservative” and essentially anti-democratic agenda that President Donald Trump in his second incarnation does seem crazily determined to foist upon an increasingly skeptical sovereign American people.

The test of all this of course will come in the fall 2026 midterm elections for the House and one-third of the Senate.

And I agree fear of federal midterm losses has led Texas Republicans eg into super-gerrymandering to give an extra 5 Republican seats in the House. (While Governor Gavin Newsom in California contemplates parallel manipulation, to give Democrats a compensating extra 5 seats.)

In the end I believe, hope, and certainly pray that the crazy universe Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are currently pointing towards is not at all what the American people finally want.

The long, struggling but finally real-world history of Democracy in America is not something that can be conquered by a lot of cheap-looking gold decoration in the Trump II White House.

I do also remain troubled by, eg, comments like this from the anti-Trump neoconservative Bill Kristol : “200 days into Trump’s term, where are we? … In the race between Trump’s authoritarianism and efforts to resist it, authoritarianism is ahead. And while there are hopeful signs from the public, the chance of effective resistance is fatally undermined by the capitulation of elites.”

But I continue to hope that the hopeful signs from the public will finally count for much more than the trashy capitulation of a few too many transitory American elites!