RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2026. To start with this is the fifth anniversary of the wild and crazy attempt to overturn the 2020 US presidential election in Washington, DC — at and in which President Donald Trump was both present and an involved observer (or much more?).

I may not entirely agree with Robert Reich that January 6, 2021 was the “most shameful day in American history.” But Mr Reich is altogether on the money when he declares “We will never forget, and we will not let the nation or the world forget” what happened to Democracy in America five years ago today.

Meanwhile, the second President Donald Trump’s kidnaping of President Maduro in Venezuela on January 3, 2026 has prompted a reaction from retired US Army General Barry R McCaffrey, that summarizes a lot of what I feel about the 45th and 47th president of the USA myself.

On January 3, in the immediate wake of the US Armed Forces intervention that successfully “captured” (officialese) or “kidnaped” (activist) the (much criticized) Venezuelan president, General (ret) McCaffrey posted on Twitter/X : “Brilliant military operation to seize and arrest Maduro. Good outcome. Zero authorization by Congress. Trump says we will take the oil. Take charge of Venezuela. States President Petro of Colombia ‘better watch his ass.’ Like gangsters.”

On January 4, turning to another ingredient of the current Trump Distraction Syndrome, General McCaffrey posted : “Seize Greenland? A NATO ally. We’re already there in a NATO base. These Trump threats are the actions of a lawless US regime. Where is Congress? Art I of our Constitution.”

Finally, on January 5 General McCaffrey returned to the note on which his January 3 post had ended : “Trump repeated threats to seize Greenland are shameful. Deadly harmful. Comical. He is destroying our global alliances. We sound like a gangster nation.”

There is, I think, more than one side to President Trump that quite nicely fits this “gangster nation” brand. Or as others have observed, in the new age of the second Trump administration American foreign policy is explicitly embracing the ancient (and heretofore long discredited) slogan “might is right.” (As opposed to the higher minded “rule of law.”)

The Barry R McCaffrey who has lately been talking about the Trumpian gangster nation, some will urge, is living proof that not all senior officers of the US military are right-wing Republicans. The now retired Lieutenant General McCaffrey has been on “four combat tours” in the Vietnam and Gulf wars. He has “Three Purple Heart awards.” He also “served in President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet as the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.” And he is an (American left TV channel) “MS NOW nat security analyst” in his current incarnation.

Meanwhile, as an example of the kind of recent American weakness that President Trump’s new Donroe Doctrine adventures in the Western Hemisphere are meant to hide from our direct gaze, note the Twitter/X-posted chart showing that “Of the 10 countries with the largest stock markets by market cap, the US performed 8th best in 2025.”

(And as yet another feather in PM Mark Carney’s cap, the country whose stock markets did best in 2025, on this reckoning, is Canada. In fact over 2025 values on Canada’s stock markets rose by more than double the rise in the Trumpian Golden Age USA — 17.3% increase in USA vs 36.5% in Canada. So much for the hard-right conservative/Conservative “Canada’s broken” critique of the Carney Liberals.)

Another very final vaguely related note on recent Twitter/X postings comes from the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, on January 1, 2026. It offers congratulations to the newly sworn-in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. And it reads : “In the face of hateful smears, anti-Muslim slurs and disinformation, @ZohranKMamdani remained defiant and dignified. His response — meeting hate with hope and unity — inspired New Yorkers and many beyond. I wish him every success as he takes office.”

In Canada especially we are bound to note the current similarity between the mayors of London and New York. Long ago New York succeeded London as a financial capital of the anglophone economic universe and beyond. But the two cities remain two slices of fresh crusty bread for the same transatlantic sandwich. US foreign policy is bound to be caught up in the continuing ties between New York and London. And London is clearly not in the Western Hemisphere. Which is just one more example of the many many troubles with the new American foreign policy vision, proposed by whatever it is that lies at the bottom of the failing Trump II experiment.