The Dance of Power: Borders, Bargains, and the Eternal Return of Mediocrity

In the land of maple leaves and slumbering souls, where comfort breeds complacency and fear begets submission, a peculiar drama unfolds. The Trudeau government, that assemblage of modern-day shepherds, now contemplates the expenditure of vast treasuries - nay, a billion pieces of silver - to fortify their southern ramparts, all to appease the golden-haired demagogue who threatens their peaceful repose with talks of tariffs.

Behold how the weak prostrate themselves before the strong! They seek not to overcome, but to appease. In their trembling acquiescence, I see the death of valor and the triumph of the mercantile spirit.

The guardians of this northern realm, led by their Treasury Board President Anita Anand, speak in hushed tones of "hundreds of millions" - mere numbers to placate the masses, while their Minister of Public Safety, one Dominic LeBlanc, promises mechanical birds and metal sentinels to patrol their sacred line in the sand.

In this grand theater of the absurd, we witness the dance of the last men, those who blink and say, "We have invented happiness." They seek security above all else, these comfort-seekers, these border-drawers, these believers in the illusion of separation.

O how they scurry about like ants before the storm! They believe their drones and helicopters will save them from the tempest of history. But what is a border to the wind? What is a wall to the spirit that seeks to soar?

And lo, across the divide stands Trump, that curious amalgam of will and chaos, threatening to impose his "beautiful" tariffs - a word he cherishes as a child does its rattle. "It's going to make us rich," he proclaims, while the masses nod in somnolent agreement, neither questioning nor understanding the nature of true wealth.

Yet more fascinating still is the bureaucratic ballet surrounding the "Safe Third Country Agreement" - a pact between nations that determines the fate of those who dare to cross the invisible lines drawn by men in distant towers. The shepherds now seek to close what they call a "loophole" - that precious gap through which hope sometimes crawls on bleeding knees.

See how they fear the desperate and the hungry! These last men who have grown too comfortable in their heated homes cannot bear to look upon the face of human striving. They would rather build walls than build strength!

And what of this curious practice they call "flagpoling" - a dance of paperwork and temporary exits, where souls must literally leave their adopted land to remain within it? Such is the bureaucratic labyrinth we have created, where human dignity must bow before the altar of procedure.

The government, in its infinite wisdom, now proposes to create new "points of service" - more temples to the god of paperwork, more shrines where the masses may worship at the feet of permission slips and rubber stamps.

They multiply their offices and their officers, their forms and their formalities, believing that order springs from ink and authority from stamps. But what of the spirit that seeks to overcome itself? What of the will that would rather break than bend?

As the winter solstice approaches, these plans shall be unveiled like sacred texts, just before the golden-haired one ascends once more to his throne of power. And the masses shall receive them with gratitude, for they ask nothing more than to be led, to be secured, to be saved from the responsibility of their own becoming.

Yet in this great game of nations and numbers, of borders and bargains, we see nothing but the eternal return of mediocrity, the triumph of the herd instinct over the will to power, the victory of comfort over courage.

And so I say unto you: Let them build their walls and fly their drones! Let them count their coins and guard their lines! But know that greatness lies not in the thickness of one's walls, but in the strength to live without them.