Probably most people did not come to this conclusion during the past week, but I believe we witnessed confirmation that the World Order has shifted. The balance of power is moving away from Western nations to China, Russia, India, and probably Iran, along with a few tag-alongs.
Just days ago, a summit in China, hosted by President Xi Jinping, included Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi. It was intended as a showstopper, to show the rest of the world the strength of their alliance. On the fringes was Kim Jong Un, President of North Korea, and some other smaller nations hanging on to the coattails of the superpowers.
The summit emphasized solidarity and promoted an alternative to U.S. world leadership.
To drive the point home, during the summit, China staged a military parade that made a similar military event in Washington, ordered by President Donald Trump on the 4th of July, look like amateur hour.
All of these leaders have territorial ambitions. Russia wants Ukraine and likely other European countries as well. China wants Taiwan, and India wants total control of Kashmir. Modi keeps one foot in the door with the United States, but with Trump’s imposition of a 50% tariff on goods from India, that relationship is on shaky ground.
Donald Trump may be the right person to address issues in the United States that concern many of its citizens. That is their business.
But Trump’s actions and threats on the world stage have weakened the United States internationally and diminished the strength and reputation of the Western Alliance. That is very much our business. Leaders from countries like China and Russia no longer respect or fear the United States.
Trump got played by Vladimir Putin in Alaska. He listened very nicely and then he went home and did exactly what he wanted to; no ceasefire in Ukraine, increased attacks on Ukraine and threats to Western countries who support Ukraine. Putin effectively thumbed his nose at Donald Trump. Hardly the tone hoped for in Alaska, where Donald Trump came out without a single win.
Donald Trump will try to convince himself and the world that he did win, that China and Russia look up to him because he is, in his own mind, incapable of losing. That is why he “won” the 2020 presidential election. Listen to how he prattles on.
“I was sort of like a hot guy. I was hot as a pistol. I think I was hotter then, than I am now and I became president. Okay – I don’t know. I said to somebody, Was I hotter before or hotter now? I don’t know. “
It’s all about Donald Trump. He is, by all appearances, a megalomaniac in my opinion. He totally believes in himself.
He is extensively renovating the White House at an estimated cost of $200 million to make it suitable for his residency, equal to that of a king. He believes he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, and at the same time, he is changing the Department of Defense into the Department of War.
He wants the Kennedy Center to bear his name where he intends to present himself with its prestigious award that recognizes lifetime achievement in the arts and entertainment fields. It will not surprise me if he wants his face on Mount Rushmore along with some other former presidents.
And now, as the whole Epstein scandal is getting out of control and threatening Trump, his camp is leaking that his real association with Jeffrey Epstein was as an undercover informer for the FBI. Sadly, some people will believe that.
The real problem arises when a megalomaniac gets pushed into a corner, when lies can no longer obscure facts, when blaming others stops working and when reality finally kicks in. There would be no surrender. There is only retribution, chaos and revisionism.
Donald Trump, as President of the United States, has surrounded himself with sycophants. There seem to be few, if any, checks and balances in his administration. He demands blind loyalty above all else.
Cabinet meetings are all about Donald Trump, with its members competing with each other to see who can heap the most praise and adulation on their Dear Leader. The man has an insatiable ego that soaks all of this up. Loyalty trumps (pun intended) reality time after time. It simply recharges his battery.
A criticism often levelled against Donald Trump is that he never served in the armed forces and dodged the draft on a number of occasions. Here is how Vice President J.D. Vance dealt with that in a recent televised interview with Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law.
“It would not have shocked me if I had learned that Donald Trump was in the Marine Corps. Of course, he didn’t serve in the Marines, but he has a Marine Corps style of Leadership.” Music to the ears of Donald Trump, but I wonder what current and former Marines will think about that.
Then there is the issue of Trump’s cohesiveness.
Recently, a reporter asked Trump who he blames for losing India to China. This was his response: “We put a very big and high tariff on India. Then we went to the Rose Garden, and the grass was soaking wet. Ok? But we had a News Conference. Everybody sunk in the grass. You probably sunk in too.”
It would be less alarming if this incoherence was an anomaly coming from Donald Trump. Sadly, it is not.
Put all of this together and ask yourself if this is the kind of individual any other Western country would look upon as the leader of the free world, a claim that the United States has made about itself for decades.
Simply put, since Donald Trump again became President of the United States, that country has lost respect and influence in many parts of the world, solely because of the actions and stated intentions of its president.
As a result, new alliances are being formed and strengthened. Donald Trump may believe that he is still “one of the boys” when it comes to international relationships, but that is not so.
Thanks to Donald Trump, World Order has changed, and the balance of power is shifting away from the free world. We need to take that very seriously.
End of rant.
Hugh Mackenzie
Hugh Mackenzie has held elected office as a trustee on the Muskoka Board of Education, a Huntsville councillor, a District councillor, and mayor of Huntsville. He has also served as chairman of the District of Muskoka and as chief of staff to former premier of Ontario, Frank Miller.
Hugh has also served on a number of provincial, federal and local boards, including chair of the Ontario Health Disciplines Board, vice-chair of the Ontario Family Health Network, vice-chair of the Ontario Election Finance Commission, and board member of Roy Thomson Hall, the National Theatre School of Canada, and the Anglican Church of Canada. Locally, he has served as president of the Huntsville Rotary Club, chair of Huntsville District Memorial Hospital, chair of the Huntsville Hospital Foundation, president of Huntsville Festival of the Arts, and board member of Community Living Huntsville.
In business, Hugh Mackenzie has a background in radio and newspaper publishing. He was also a founding partner and CEO of Enterprise Canada, a national public affairs and strategic communications firm established in 1986.
Currently, Hugh is president of C3 Digital Media Inc., the parent company of Doppler Online, and he enjoys writing commentary for Huntsville Doppler.
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Just a few late comments.
Greg, we have a collection of Calvin and Hobbs books, in good condition, if you are interested.
Alan, we also have a collection of Doonesbury books, in good condition, if you are interested.
Check the phone book.
Doonesbury got us through the Vietnam war and the Nixon Watergate years, with funny, biting, satire.
Mr. Mackenzie, you are spot on. I am sure qualified psychiatrists could add to the megalomanic diagnosis of DT’s behaviour. You have also called out the geopolitical shift that is so apparent with a weakened US (for example. internal economic and domestic policy that harms its very people); the world leaders can see for themselves the weak, delusional, cognitively impaired, physically more fragile President.
The cult MAGA will be the challenge for the US to move forward. (As Canadians, we Must value our public education system and support the teaching of Civics only by qualified teachers – if we wish to improve our voter turnout)
One lesson we could take from the events of the south is that populism can be used to emotionally abuse the non-critical thinking electorate – I still suggest that this is antecedent to civil war. I want to be wrong, about this, but fear I may not be.
This is a time for Canada for look out for itself, for one another, and to build the best alliances that we can. It is a time for our government parties to work together to get the best possible outcomes for Canadians, internally and internationally.
Thank you for reading.
Sheilah (Hatch) Forward says:
September 9, 2025 at 2:39 pm
You did not rant Hugh. I have been positing very similar thoughts on my FB Journal for years…tonight will be posting Day 1992.. We are not wrong. The US is in a mess and too many citizens just don’t seem to get it. The US is NOT the ‘exceptional’ democracy it claims to be – unless exceptional is now defined negatively. I really don’t think that even if the Democrats succeed in ousting the MAGA crowd that that will not be enough to regain my/our trust. Their two party system and legal system that moves at a snail’s pace, means that the uneducated masses could just as easily turn the whole thing over in the next election cycle. I am cynical and pessimistic. However, I have great respect for Carney and his economic smarts, so I do believe Canada will survive this turbulence stronger in the end.
Sigrid Purdon says:
September 9, 2025 at 12:55 pm
I thoroughly enjoy your “rants”. They are very informative and dead on!
It is quite scary actually to watch how one man is trying to change the world to suit himself
Thank you for telling it as it is.
Mr Markle, “Doonesbury” was OK but Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes was way funnier. You are correct that PET didn’t draw that cartoon, but here’s a little know Cliff Clavin fact: John Byrne wrote PET into the X-Men comics in the early 80’s. Hilariously and unbelievably! Byrne showed that PET ran a secret Canadian military project called Weapon X that ended up creating the superhero Wolverine. Lol, can you imagine a dope like Allan McEachen budgeting that? Alas the only thing that PET’s idiot son has managed to create is a frankenstein monster called Super Deficit
Yeah! Dylan: Sorry ’bout that Bill Spring. A momentary lapse of …… spelling. I too have seen Mr. Dylan in a number of different venues. He was always different and entertaining. But I was partial to those ‘singers’ who managed to strike notes a lot of glancing blows. Tom Petty. Dylan. Mark Knopfler. Ray Wylie Hubbard. Like them.
Got my first Dylan vinyl in about ’63. Just called ‘Bob Dylan’. He always stayed current. Sort of like G. B. Trudeau with his “Doonesbury” cartoon. And if you check back through that cartoon you will find there is a continuing commentary on ‘the donald’ starting some 30 years ago. At that time Trudeau said that trump was “a true, proven (expletive)”.
And for Greg “whatever his name is” (just find that catchy) G. B. Trudeau was not our prime minister. Whole different Trudeau.
I still like Dylan and always read Doonesbury. This is a bit of a segue from the Doppler ‘Rant’. but maybe nobody will notice.
Thank you Margaret Brown for not adding to the anti-American rant. Trump represents hus nation while we aewxindeed lead by corrupt fools who have left Canada a laughing stock in the world and at the mercy of criminals in our homes. Yes Margaret we need to point the finger in the direction of our failed leadership before blaming a better leader in the U.S.
Mr Markle
I think you meant to quote Dylan ( not Dillon),
I must have seen Bob, live, at least 7 or 8 times in the 60’s thru the 90’s starting in 1965 at Massey Hall where he played his first set solo, acoustically.and them came out for the 2nd set, electric, backed by Levon Helm and the Hawks, much to the dismay of all the folkies in the crowd.
I loved it. My high school buddy and I were definitely out of place, in.shirts and ties , as we thought there was a dress code at Massey Hall. Not on that night.
Yes, truly, we live in liminal times the likes of which we haven’t experienced since the Great War of 1914-18 – and yes, remember what those committed and sacrificing generations of our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents were promised: the Great War would be ‘the war to end all war’!
Then there were the Great War’s grossly unjust terms of peace: the Treaty of Versailles, 1919, that were imposed upon the new democratically-fragile German Weimar Republic that would almost guarantee a second Great War given the right conditions that did happened between 1939 and 1945.
We must be very carefully about blaming our political leaders for the chaotic reality that now exists since after all, we in democratic societies elect our leaders to public office. Just maybe, we as citizens have been distracted too often with our private consumer ‘toys,’ and have failed to take the vital time to do our required civic homework of being critically-informed, responsible, and engaged citizens?
Meanwhile in the present, fasten our seatbelts because we’re in for a seismic global geopolitical ride whether we like it or not. Will we ever learn from our past mistakes and be able to finally transform our increasingly lethal ‘swords into ploughshares’?
To listen to this petty potentate (trump) rant is frustrating. I don’t feel that he is that intelligent or wise or harbors any of the traits that made me respect my father or grandfather. Worldly he is not. Yet he seems to be able to bullsh#t and baffle a goodly portion of the American citizenship.
With regard to global warming and the US trade deficit he said something along the line of, he didn’t care because before either was a serious problem, he would be dead!
He went on some blither about women sinking into the rose garden so he paved it over!
He asserted that the American military will just “Fight. Fight. Fight! and Win! Win! Win!” The examples of Afghanistan and Vietnam seem to be ignored.
He claims to be the peacemaker but joins in the bombing of Iranian targets and orchestrates the killing of likely drug runners. We don’t know for sure they were drug runners or if anything was destroyed in Iran except some rock.
He directs paramilitary units against his own citizens.
And the powers seem to be uniting against him. India. Russia. China. And smaller nations are growing to hate him.
And damnit! I have no use for him either! Strong emotion. But I don’t feel that makes me an ally of India, Russia or China. I just choose to not want to be the ally of a fool. We are left to wonder what happens when a bully is backed into a corner. Because the US has few allies now. And even their allies are being financially attacked.
I think the Dillon song “Sundown on the Union” applies here. My opinion.
And to Margaret Brown: How did we possibly become the laughing stock you say. A few examples please. Because again, in my opinion we still live in a pretty good place. It’s the fool in charge to the south that gives me chills.
He’s just not funny. Nor trustworthy.
Good analysis as usual Hugh. Trump was first elected in 2016. Since then, Xi Jinping has been nice to his potential allies with his mutually beneficial belt and road initiatives in Asia and Africa, now extending to Europe. He was even being nice to keep Putin onside, even though he doesn’t trust him.
On the other hand, for arrogant self-serving reasons, Trump spent all that time being nasty to the allies the US already had. Trump did try being nice to Putin, but Xi won that tug of war.
Trump is the obvious loser, but that leaves Canada is a very precarious position, being so close to the USA. I’m so glad we have a very intelligent, internationally respected, and cool-headed leader right now. We need to support him. Hopefully, the many smart Americans will see the light, Trump will soon be gone, and world leaders will see that, in a world of 8 billion going on 10 billion people, given the two ultimate threats of looming energy shortages and climate change, all countries will be in a better position to survive by working together for mutual benefit. Sound naive? What’s the alterative?
Thanks for the opinion and it does make Canada look insignificant but Canada is strong and respected.
Of course Donald is all to blame! Maybe we should look at our own leadership. And to Richard Ott, Canada has become a way bigger laughing stock than the USA.
Excellent Hugh, as usual. The USA has been slipping badly for years. They have become a laughing stock of the free world. Canada is not far behind. Survival is based on politics, religion and greed. Is anybody listening? We need change, but not what the politicians are offering. Maybe the criminals have suggestions? Let us pray?