COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2025. By the start of the second quarter of 2025 here on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in |”northern North America”, the crazy Trump tariffs had set in globally (including 10% on the Heard and Macdonald Islands near Australia, inhabited only by penguins).

Meanwhile the second incarnation of President Donald Trump south of the Canadian border had made clear that, altogether impossibly as well as ridiculously, Mr Trump ultimately wanted Canada to become the 51st state of the USA — all along the 5,525 miles (8,891 km) from the St. Croix and Saint John rivers, to four of the five North American Great Lakes, to the 49th parallel of latitude, more or less culminating with the Peace Arch between Surrey, BC and Blaine, WA.

And after much deliberation on these last days of another year, we counterweights editors have concluded that our half dozen favourite counterweights posts in the second quarter of 2025 are :

(1) Apr 14th, 2025. By Randall White. “What Donald Trump’s (almost) latest Canada talk finally means north of the old undefended border.” Wherein Dr White opined : “My biggest personal problem with Donald Trump is that in his US presidential attitude to Canada he is effectively telling me that I do not exist. Canadian as a national identity separate from that of the United States (ie American) does not exist in his MAGA philosophy.”

(2) Apr 30th, 2025. “Early examination of entrails of 2025 Canadian federal election : New Democrats reduced to mere 7 seats but that + 169 Liberals gives a 176-seat majority in parliament!” PM Mark Carney did at least win win a minority government for his updated (and non-Trudeau) Liberals. As it has happened since, the New Democrats are not supporting the Liberals quite like Jagmeet Singh, 2022-2024. But as 2025 ends the Carney government now has 171 seats (where 172 is a bare majority), thanks to two Conservative MPs’ crossing the floor.

(3) May 5th, 2025. By Greg Barns. “Australian election 2025 has some striking similarities with Canadian election five days before (compliments of current strange politics in USA).” It was a Maytime privilege to offer this piece from the Australian civil eights lawyer, political commentator, classical music critic, fellow Commonwealth republican, and shrewd observer of the contemporary English-speaking peoples, Greg Barns : “Newly minted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberals have something in common with the winner of Australia’s national election on Saturday, Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Party (ALP). Both brought their governments back from the brink of defeat partly because of the Trumpian tinge of the conservative opposition parties.”

(4) May 26th, 2025. “Two days after the real 24th of May 2025 : three quick notes on the United States, Canada, and Alberta (and Quebec).” Observations on three key current issues as an old British empire anniversary was celebrated yet again in Canada : (1) Marc Elias : “It is only by stripping Republicans of power that we are going to have a real check on Donald Trump” ; (2) Mark Carney’s Mackenzie King ; (3) Alberta as an anglo disciple of le Quebec libre.

(5) Jun 6th, 2025. By Randall White. “On the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby .. whatever else Donald Trump is not Jay Gatsby in 2025.” Dr. W again : “It would be a wonderful thing, I think, if Donald Trump (or any other president of the USA) actually were in any serious way similar to the ‘gorgeous’ character with an ‘extraordinary gift for hope,’ who Scott Fitzgerald … created in The Great Gatsby, first published 100 years ago, in the urbane America of the 1920s ‘Jazz Age,’ still held together largely by railroads … Alas in this as in so many other respects, President Trump in 2025 is a historic disappointment — and (much) worse …”

(6) Jun 16th, 2025. “Are we living through new June Days of 2025 in USA .. and will they finally bring the ‘suicide of a superpower’?” The first or June 14, 2025 No Kings protests in the USA looked a lot stronger than President Trump’s 79th birthday parade on the same day in Washington, DC. And June 2025 in the USA at large at least vaguely recalled the fabled French workers’ protests of June 22–26, 1848. (There would be another round of No Kings protests in the USA on October 18, 2025.)

From this “June Days” point on in the year now closing (some might say, in any case), what might be called the Trump II (attempted) revolution in US government began to lose whatever grip it first had (or seemed to have) on the hard realities of American democratic politics.

And this carried on over the third and fourth quarters of 2025 — as we will suitably acknowledge in our final two posts for the no doubt quite historic 2025 now about to end. Albeit in a world where “Merry Christmas” does seem a bit more in the air than in other years lately.

Which can only prompt we counterweights editors up in Canada to end here, for the moment, with Happy Holidays 2025!