Frontlines: Canada resists U.S. pressure as trade talks fall apart

There is a lot – okay, so yes, there is no shortage of stuff going on, but I guess – Are these unprecedented times in that regard of so many files active at the same time on the geopolitical front that are actually kind of in the mainstream news? Historically, when we've chatted, there's always stuff that you bring up that I'm like, I didn't even know that was going on.

But right now, it feels like even in the mainstream, there are multiple files.

Are these kind of unprecedented times?

No, I don't think these are unprecedented times.

That is not to say it is a particularly calm time.

I think we're in a period of change.

You have two conflicts between the United States and Iran and Israel and also between Russia and Ukraine that are having serious ramifications, not just regionally, but on global markets.

There are signs of political populism rising in places where you wouldn't want signs of political populism or historically it has meant important things.

But these are not unprecedented.

They have historical antecedents.

And honestly, I don't even think like, yes, the world is not stable or calm, but it's also not unhinged.

It's somewhere it's somewhere in that spectrum.

What I think is different, first of all, social media.

So we're all getting bombarded with these things at all times.

It never turns off.

So you have this constant sense of something is always going on.

And the more you click on it, the more the companies that circulate these things make money.

And that's how the system works.

And then number two, it gives us unfettered access to our policymakers in a way that we never had before.

The thought exercise I try to run with myself times is like go back to when Ulysses S.

Grant or Grover Cleveland or somebody like that was president of the United States.

What if you gave that person an iPhone and Twitter or X or whatever, and they were just beaming out whatever thoughts that they had at any particular point in time? It's kind of like with sports, right? He used to have sports journalists whose entire job was getting into the locker room to get these nuggets of what were the players thinking.

Now the players are just tweeting whatever they think at whatever singular moment.

And that has reached the White House.

So now we have a tweeter in chief who it's Labor Day.