MARCH 7, 2025 – The past 24 hours brought a whirlwind of encounters that gave me much to ponder.
First was an email from our good Czech friend Pavel—the same inimitable Dr. Šebesta whose letter from 44 years ago was the subject of my 2/24/2025 post. Embedded in his email was a link to Prime Minister Trudeau’s recent speech—to Americans, as well as to his own people. In refreshingly civil, truthful, articulate, rational terms he gutted Trump’s stated pretext for threatened tariffs and laid out the case for why Trump’s contemplated trade war against Canada, of all countries, is just plain bad business—for America. Standing behind Trudeau was Mélanie Joly, Canada’s well-spoken foreign minister, who is likewise highly capable of assembling whole paragraphs of “civil, truthful, articulate, rational” speech.
By the conclusion of Trudeau’s address, which sounded like an enlightened university president dressing down a group of low-performing frat brats threatening to shatter doors and windows all over campus because said fools “liked the sound of broken glass,” I experienced a brilliant flash of potential: Canadian annexation of MINNESOTA!
Since January 20 my wife—and lots of fellow Democrats—have been reciting the mantra, “Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country.” Left unanswered, of course, is the one-word question, “How?” Now I know, at least for us who reside in Minnesota: Go to Ottawa and lobby parliament and Trudeau’s cabinet to annex Minnesota; next, go to St. Paul and persuade the state legislature and Governor Walz to accept annexation to Canada. It all makes perfect sense. Minnesota would fit right in under Manitoba and Ontario. We have lots of water and winter, and we love both—along with ice hockey. Just as Canadians are considered “nice,” we are known for being “Minnesota nice.” Plus, we’re excellent at imitating the (English-speaking) Canadian accent, and in oneness with the Québéçois, many of our local street and place names are français, thanks to the French explorers, fur-traders, and missionaries who penetrated this region in the 17th century.
We wouldn’t be shooting for the moon—or the north pole—at least not out of the chute of the toboggan run. We wouldn’t make things complicated by including fellow true blue states Washington, Oregon, California, New York and New England. Initially, our pitch would be simple and straight forward: only Minnesota—10,000 beautiful lakes and the source of the Mighty Miss but all within a single state that runs its own mini-ice age every November to April and Winter Carnival in January and February. Annexation would be as easy as landing a walleye out of a hole in lake ice when the air temperature is MINUS 20°F; as quick as a slapshot on an open net at the final buzzer; as fun as slipping a canoe into the waters of the BWCA while a loon tremolo ricochets off the steep rocky shore of a nearby island.
Just then my phone rang, deflating my fantasy of becoming a resident of Canada without having to move from Minnesota. The caller was our friend João from Lisbon—Portugal, not Maine. He was on his way to his/his wife’s place in Al Gharb. Better informed about American politics than nearly anyone we know—besides his wife, a journalist—João rendered a deep-probing critique of the failures of American capitalism, as well as of the Democratic Party. I asked him if he’d read Howard Zinn’s aggressively left-leaning, A People’s History of the United States. He has not, which surprised me, for his analysis was entirely in synch with Zinn’s. Inevitably, we talked about Russia too. João is staunchly opposed to Putin’s imperialistic designs and in this respect, aligns himself firmly with our friends in Ukraine, Finland and Poland, especially now that all have been caught in middle of Trump’s unilateral re-alignment of American foreign policy.
Most interesting was João’s report of China’s recently announced investment in Portugal: a battery-manufacturing facility that will create 1,800 jobs (in a country of 10.58 million people; 5.1 million employed (source: Statista)) which is anticipated to add between 2% and 4% of Portugal’s annual GDP. In addition, the Chinese plan to fund the construction of housing plus additional infrastructure. João cited the latest Chinese infrastructure investments in Argentina and Brazil (railroads (in a heretofore “rail-free” country) to transport soybeans and other crops from farms to ports for export to China), and Chinese-sponsored continent-wide conferences in Africa; all this while the U.S. moves in the opposite direction—disengagement from the world.
When João asked where I thought matters were headed, I punted. I told him I was trying to “take a time out,” limiting myself to 1. Reading tons of history; and 2. Following developments in technology, especially AI.
The latter is a tall order, though coincidentally, today’s mail delivery included the latest issue of Bench and Bar. Monthly publication of the Minnesota Bar Association featured on its cover a ring-buoy and the caption, “HELP! A tech-reticent lawyer’s guide to getting started with AI.” Hmm, I thought. “Tech-reticent” could easily be interpreted as “Luddite,” applicable to bar members of my vintage.
Intuitively, though, I know that before one can speculate intelligently about the future, one must attempt (at least) to understand mega-trends in technology, leading with AI. I’d rather be reading history, as I’ve long been conditioned to do to understand how things got to be the way they are and how they might be manipulated for a more promising future. The exponential acceleration of technology, however, has become a perpetual a game-changer—for better and worse. I need to jump on the turbo-charged “techcycle” before it runs me over.
My fourth encounter, as it were, was by way of the book, Borderland by Anna Reid (a Kyiv-based correspondent for The Economist in the 1990s; author of Shaman’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia and Leningrad: Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44). It’s a history of Ukraine, which in the language of that land means “on the edge” or . . . “borderland.” I’d never much thought of this, though in a general sense I was aware of it: Until the bust-up of the Soviet Union, followed by the Belovezha Accords (December 1991), Ukraine per se was never treated by its neighbors as a sovereign nation. Caught in the crosshairs because it lies on geography’s crossroad, the country has been pulverized by history and its most recent legacy—Tsar Putin’s brutish imperial ambitions. Notwithstanding my observation above about tech as a growing and perhaps leading determinant of our destination, the stamp of history will pave our route. I feel compelled to examine the historical record as deeply and broadly as possible.
Against any measure, however, the highlight of my day was skiing up and down the backside of “St. Moritz” under Apollo’s high-riding chariot. This diversion was not something more to ponder but something to savor.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
