I Shouldn't Be Writing This

The Orbit of Disinformation — An Analog and Digital Collage by Stella Kalaw

I was getting ready to send you this week's story—a charming one about an Irish Yank—but I couldn't do it. My hands hovered over the keyboard as I tried to get on with it. Instead it seemed so important to share the crushing weight and bone-deep unease that I feel. As a Canadian watching the American election aftermath, I'm a nervous wreck. Shattered, as are so many of my friends and family in Canada and to the south.

Though the outcome deeply affects us Canadians, we have no voice in it. We're forced to watch from the sidelines as a narcissistic man, a convicted felon too old and unfit to govern, will make decisions that will ripple across borders and oceans, changing everything.

After enduring the first Trump presidency, we Canadians face this comeback with a particular dread. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Right now, we're in that suspended but frightening moment when you know the crash is coming, when you want to shut your eyes but can't look away.

What the actual hell? Tens of millions of our neighbours to the south chose darkness over light—three times now.

Kamala was everything you needed—qualified, prepared, fierce-hearted. But clearly her gender and race became a greater sin than all her opponent's serious flaws. White supremacy and misogyny devoured hope itself. That revelation cuts deep.

Why did this happen? I have no easy answers and I leave that to a mass of political pundits who will dissect it to death and assign blame. But I believe a flood of disinformation has something—maybe more than just something—to do with it. Russian political operatives have developed what they called "political technology"—creating false narratives through modern media to control public debate. The alternative facts came from outside the USA and from within including directly from Trump.

No country is perfect. We too face serious challenges. What troubled me most in this election was seeing how political technology manipulated vulnerable people's hardships and fears. These tactics fabricated stories about Haitians eating pets. They painted a strong economy as "failing" while burying discussions of the unpopular Project 2025. They misrepresented falling crime rates as a crime wave and framed the boader issue as an invasion of criminals. They buried top officials' warnings about Trump's unfitness and obscured General Kelly's assessment of his fascist tendencies and Hitler admiration.

You know all this, of course. Perhaps you've already drawn your curtains against the news. But I needed to say it, to set it down, to remember how I felt, because there was only one other time in my considerable age that I could say everything had changed. This is so big. Seismic.

Next Sunday, I'll send you the essay I had planned for this week and I’ll be grateful that you will read it. They'll keep coming—small offerings of beauty, laughter, astute observation, and the boundless compassion, goodness, and decency of our human connection. But today, just today, I needed to tell you about the train wreck and mourn what I see we all are going to lose.