RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2025. Robert Reich’s “Sunday thought” yesterday set the stage for my current further reflections on the USA next door, some 17 days before Christmas 2025.

(And I am using my father’s understanding of the universe as I mention this particular holiday in Toronto today. When asked by a local official what religion he was, during his later days on planet earth, he replied “Well I celebrate Christmas.” I’d note as well that he would almost certainly agree with George Orwell that the “whole point of Christmas is that it is a debauch — as it was probably long before the birth of Christ was arbitrarily fixed at that date.”)

In any case Professor (now retired) Reich’s thought for this past Sunday, December 7, 2025 — all the way from the American wonderland of Berkeley, California — was headlined “Really, truly, the end of Trump is near … MAGA is cracking up, but beware.”

Immediately following the “but beware” advice, I have particularly stumbled across the results of a recent Manhattan Institute poll of “Current GOP” (ie Republican Party) voters in the USA today. My first encounter with this poll came in a Dec 4, 2025 post on Twitter/X by a gentleman known as Heath Mayo.

I cite Mr. Mayo’s admirably concise three-sentence account of what it is about this poll that strikes him as worth some serious bewaring : “Over a third of GOP voters think the moon landing was faked and that the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or didn’t happen as historians describe … Over 40% think 9/11 was likely an inside job … And more than half still think the 2020 election was rigged.”

(Who is Heath Mayo, you may ask? His crisp social media identification suggests an almost conservative persona : “Christian | Husband | Father | M&A Lawyer | Founder @Principles_1st.” A legal firm website offers more professional detail : “Heath Mayo is a corporate partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. His practice involves a wide range of merger and acquisition-related matters, including cross-border transactions, spin-offs, divestitures, carve-out IPOs, private equity transactions and joint ventures, as well as governance advice and activism defense across a wide range of industries.” Finally his recent social media posts strike me as sensible enough, and possibly even the work of a closet Republican progressive.)

I quickly digested Mr. Mayo’s warning bell on too many of the “Grand Old Party” voters who put Donald J. Trump back into office as President of the United States of America for a second time. Then I stumbled across a more lengthy reaction to the Manhattan Institute poll from an eminent fellow Canadian.

Jason Kenney was a cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative Canadian federal governments of 2006–2015. Subsequently he was the United Conservative Premier of Alberta, 2019–2022. Along with more than a few Canadians who actually live in Alberta, I wish Jason Kenney were still Premier of the oil-and-gas-rich Wildrose province.

Mr. Kenney’s Twitter/X view of the Manhattan Institute poll of current Grand Old Party voters goes on for several paragraphs that are all well worth reading. My own short summary of the crucial beginning and ending would be :

“This is deeply disturbing. Evidence of mass psychosis … 37% of Republicans believe the Holocaust was “greatly exaggerated.” … 41% believe the US government helped to orchestrate 9/11. … 36% believe the moon landing was faked … A majority believe the 2020 US election was decided fraudulently. … It’s clear that these sentiments are also pretty common within the antivax / MAGA north / Alberta separatist / pro Putin cohort here, but thankfully it’s a much smaller share of the population than in the US.”

By “here” in this context Jason Kenney of course means Canada.

But the recent history of Twitter/X posting I see does underline that even in the true north strong and free we increasingly have to contend with what the labour economist Jim Stanford has a month or so ago called the “new McCarthyism … spreading into Canada.”

It is also, I think, a great shame that the over-enthusiastic young activists of the United Conservative Party in Alberta have seen fit to replace Jason Kenney with Danielle Smith.

At the same time, it is encouraging that the Canadian pipeline detente in the recent Memorandum of Understanding signed by Premier Smith and federal Prime Minister Carney does suggest that PM Mark Carney continues to act as if he knows what he is doing. And like millions of other Canadians, I continue to think that he probably does!