Friday March 7, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC [Updated 1:11 pm]
Editorial and political analysis | by Mary P Brooke | COPYRIGHT Island Social Trends
In the economic political warfare between the United States and Canada, many of Canada’s federal and provincial leaders are talking about ‘causing hurt’ and ‘delivering pain’.
This is meant in a political and economic context but it is tone deaf as to the impact on many people in this country. There’s not a lot of ‘trauma-informed’ analysis going on in the speech writing of this nation’s leaders right now.
Canadians are getting behind the pro-sovereignty rhetoric and most Canadians are entirely repulsed by the back-and-forth about the ’51st state’ taunts from Trump. He is contributing a vile level of true pain into the Canadian population, but our political leaders must rise above it and keep people feeling strong and protected, not violated.
Words are powerful and in themselves can be the source of harm. Instead of ‘hurt’ there could be use of ‘disruption’. Instead of ‘we will inflict pain’ there could be use of ‘we will cause economic damage’. People are transferring the words ‘hurt’ and ‘pain’ into personal experience, whether they realize it or not.
As much as the irrational and intentional impact of US President’s Trump’s attacks on Canadian economy and sovereignty are wrenching at the very fabric and soul of Canada and Canadians, our political leaders must still be obligated to protect citizens on socio-emotional levels as well as economic.
Anyone who has been subject to intimate partner violence or coercive control will be suffering at hearing their political leaders intending to inflict pain and hurt. Of course these leaders mean it in an economic context, but the triggering of feelings in response to real pain or hurt in people’s lives does not know borders or boundaries.
There is now an undercurrent of agony bubbling up in many people in this country. Not everyone will have the wherewithal, skills, downtime or resources to identify the source of it, let alone resolve or dissolve it.
Some of the intense feelings will be understood intellectually as people follow the politics and work to understand the economic forces at play with tariffs and such. But much of the intense and disturbing feelings that are being dredged up from any range of difficult circumstances that people may have experienced are going to build up and require release.
Politicians are playing out their word-warfare but Canadians are like the children in a family watching their parents fight — it instills fear and leaves a complexity of issues to later be sorted out.
The roughing up that Trump gave Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last week was an outward display of the manhandling that many people have experienced in their lives either in physical or relationship encounters or even how the corporate economic system goes after people who default on payments. All of it is about intimidation, degradation and destruction.
A whole lot of trouble has been stirred by Trump in this tariff pot that he has created. Our country’s leaders must protect people not just economically but have a greater awareness of how their tough talk itself can be emotionally or psychologically traumatizing.
Political leaders owe Canadians better than this. Their casual jumping on the bandwagon to deliver their talk tough to Trump is pummeling everyday folks with invasive emotional pain.
It looks like the tariff warfare could go on for a while. Language used in this tariff warfare must be revised immediately by political leaders in this country.
Unresolved tensions that are being amplified among the people who are watching the titans fight their war will have to spill out somewhere, somehow and some point in time. Is anyone paying attention to this collective psycho-social trauma in the making?
Yes, for now it is rallying people to Canadian patriotism, but people need to get on with their lives. Let’s not create another generation of people who carry over their trauma to the next generation. We saw that damage from parents of the baby-boomers who passed on their traumas from living through WWII and the Great Depression.
Yes, all fault for this can be laid at the feet of President Trump. He has unleashed an incredible degree of disruption and chaos onto an entire population.
Meanwhile, perhaps Canadian politicians need some quick classes in being trauma-informed and should find some speech writers who choose and place their words more carefully. If politicians are speaking off the cuff, then all the more reason to be careful.
A few well-chosen and well-spoken words can heal a person, a community or a nation, sometimes in a sweeping instant or over time by way of the reverberation of their intent. They can also do the opposite, if not well chosen or spoken appropriately.
===== RELATED:
EDITORIAL: Words are not enough? (February 20, 2020)
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