Non-MAGA Republicans, Democrats and most Canadians await the Nov. 5 presidential election with a deep sense of foreboding. Even Kamala Harris enthusiasts are nervous.

There is still much hope, all is not lost, but it does seem likely that the most dictatorial leader in the history of democratic nations could well be in a position, once again, to seize the reins of office for the most powerful nation on Planet Earth.

Donald J. Trump has a lengthy list of negative credentials which speak poorly of his basic human decency. The most serious of these include the following:
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• Last May, a jury found Trump guilty of thirty-four felony charges. Also, last May, a jury concluded that Trump had sexually assaulted and defamed writer E. Jean Caroll. The court also awarded her $5 million, and then she was later awarded a further $83 million in damages. Trump has myriad appeals of his criminal convictions and is appealing $500 million in civil judgments. Readers of this blog column might well ask if this represents equal justice under the law.
  
  
• Trump has repeatedly threatened to mobilize the U.S. National Guard and American troops against his political enemies. He spreads fear about what he calls “the enemy within.”
  
  
• The former president has yet to accept that he lost the 2020 election. Few can forget the terrible scenes from Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump mobilized his armed supporters to attack the Capitol building in Washington. VP Harris noted this week at her massive rally of supporters at the Ellipse (the very place where Trump had called out his mob) that Trump’s own staff told him repeatedly that the mob wanted to hang his own Vice President, Mike Pence. Trump is reliably reported to have said: “So what.”
  
  
• At the major Trump rally this week at Madison Square Garden in New York, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.” To this a spokesperson for the Trump campaign made an almost casual disavowal of the comment. We shall see below that this incident soon became a major negative for both the Trump and Harris campaigns.
  
  
• John Kelly, former Trump chief of staff and a retired Marine general has said that Trump “fits the general definition of fascist.” This reminds us of the horrendous threat that Trump has made in his anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric. He promises to conduct the largest ever deportation of immigrants from the USA., and perhaps the entire world.

Susan Holt’s Liberal victory in Monday’s election puts New Brunswick on the national map in a way not seen since Frank McKenna’s 58-0 sweep of the province in the 1987 election, 37 years ago. Holt will be the first female Premier in the history of the province, and the number of women, at 17, elected to the legislature is the largest ever.
 
Both the Holt and McKenna victories were spectacular in their own way, appealing to newness and freshness for an electorate weary of an unpopular incumbent Premier. Both ran high energy campaigns based on blanket touring of every corner of the province.
 
Ms. Holt’s campaign may have been even more spectacular from a homegrown policy point of view because she concentrated overwhelmingly on primary health care, promising to introduce 30+ collaborative care centres staffed with professionals from doctors, to nurse practitioners, nurses and mental health therapists, thereby reducing pressure on hospital emergency rooms.

The great Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn describes our world today so well in his lyric: “Lovers in a dangerous time…never a breath you can afford to waste.”

The world is, indeed, a dangerous place.

October 7 marked the first anniversary of the Hamas massacre of over 1000 Jews, many of them young people attending a music festival in Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamen Netanyahu, under fire for the security lapse which allowed Hamas fighters into Israel in the first place, then launched a virulent military campaign in Gaza which has resulted over the last year in the death of more than 41,000 Palestinians.

That war has spread from Israel and Gaza., to Lebanon, Yemen, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and Iran.

Meanwhile, the war between Russia and Ukraine, continues to rage on, following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbour.

Lastly, the progress of climate change continues largely unabated, with the warming of the Gulf of Mexico contributing to the massive hurricanes, Helene and Milton, battering Florida over the last two weeks.