When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following reports last month concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.

US President-elect Donald Trump recently referred to Canada as the “51st State” and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as its “governor.” While on one level, such ridiculous statements are part and parcel of Trump’s political persona, they reveal something deeper about the role that Canada occupies in the American economy and political imagination.

On December 20, 1989, US forces invaded Panama and overthrew the government of Manuel Noriega. Noriega had proven too independent for his one-time sponsors in Washington, who suddenly accused him of drug trafficking and endangering American citizens in the country. Canada was the only nation in the Western Hemisphere to openly support the invasion.

It has been almost 40 years since there was major debate in Canada about our relations with the United States. While the FTA was implemented after the 1988 election, a majority of voters supported a more active role by governments in shaping economic development. Today we are confronted with the very serious probability that the free trade era has come to an end.

For over a year now, the West has been tearing up the legal and institutional fabric on which the post-war international order and its increasingly threadbare claims to moral authority rest—in much the same way as Biden has overridden the US judicial system to grant his son a pardon and Trump promises to weaponize the same system to settle scores with his political enemies.

History is teaching us that a return to liberal democratic normality marinated in neoliberalism has passed its best-before date. To honour the sacrifices of the World War II generation, and the innocent victims of war, including the mothers of the Atacama, we need to educate ourselves about fascism—what it is, and how to defeat it.

The pandemic taught us the risk of relying on global supply chains. They are fragile and can be upset by political upheavals. Trump’s election upsets the apple cart. It’s time to recalibrate Canada’s place in the world. If we’ve lost one reliable friend, can we gain others? Will we take charge of our own economy so we can maintain democracy here?

We might ask whether, if Harris had been less adamant in her insistence that “I’m speaking!” and more willing to move on Israel, she might have persuaded enough of Biden’s 2020 voters—not only Muslim Americans, but progressives who campaigned for the Democrats in 2020 but were nauseated by Biden’s policies on Gaza—to support her. Instead, they flipped or stayed home.

After a year of bombardment, and with all eyes on the US presidential election, Gaza has become exactly what Naomi Klein and Jonathan Glazer feared—part of the soundtrack to everyday life, background noise we can all too easily tune out. But while life goes on as normal on our side of the walls, the genocide continues, barely within earshot.

The current election is notable not only for the issues being raised by Trump and Harris, but for the issues the candidates decline to address. Perhaps even more important, there’s been no discussion of the existential issues that will impact voters—and the country’s very stability—even more dramatically in the months immediately following the election.