The worrying thing for me as a citizen of a European country (though one not now in the EU) is that we appear to be on a similar path though perhaps a little further back on it.

It is not normal for a hard right/far right party to get 72 million quid funding from crypto-billionaires within 3 days while that same party is under police investigation for breaking laws on electoral funding/donations.

That and the more... interesting folks over the pond seem determined to interfere with our politics as well.

The instability/uncertainty in the US is because of their historical (and current) weight on events spreading everywhere.

It's easy to poke fun at the US while downplaying our issues but in the long run, *unwise*.

I suggest reading the article you are commenting on, and you might find a ton of links to research in it. Reading is a great idea in general; I can recommend it.

I wonder if he bet on this on of those modern day betting sites.

Any better resources you'd recommend on the topic?

Never having heard of this metric, I went to look at the sponsors and inventors: Fund for Peace.

OSF, CIA, USAID, and US defence agencies of various flavours. Very reassuring to see these stalwarts of democracy funding such a noble metric.

Canada is very vulnerable to this kind of destabilization campaign because it is an even more decentralized polity than the United States. We are a confederation, our provinces have strong powers, and have long lasting regional political/economic (and language/cultural) tensions since our founding. What is good economically for Alberta is not necessarily good for Ontario and vice versa. A hostile party can definitely wedge in there (and are).

We're all fired up with (English) Canadian nationalism right now and Carney is riding high in the polls because of it but that isn't playing well in Quebec and doesn't play as strongly in Alberta. And when the inevitable economic crisis finally plays itself out in a severe recession, nationalism won't help. The knives will turn inward and the same people boosting Alberta "separatism" (lolz) right now will be turning the volume up to 10x to take advantage of it. They have deep pockets.

It's a continent wide problem and requires sane forces in civil society across the whole continent to work together.

By that logic, there are no red states, only red hinterlands.

There are no red or blue states. Only shades of purple.

That was tried, in the 1860s. What you’re suggesting didn’t go well.

This is also what I point out to my fellow Canadians who insist that Canada has political-economic "friends" in "blue states"; if you look at a map from the 2024 election even the "bluest" of states had walls of red and sometimes especially right next to the Canadian border. Western New York and Vermont both have counties right across the border that swung for Trump sometimes by margins as much at 15%.

There's no easy way out of this quagmire. A deep horrible somewhat tribal division has spread in North American society around a pile of issues and it's become pivoted around a supposed "left"-right axis but it's really about a whole pile of other issues and unresolveable grievances. Prosperity is declining in western countries, and distribution of wealth is becoming drastically unequal. And neither liberal or conservative ideological centres (the only two allowed in American politics) have any kind of solution.

The same infection is here in Canada as well, but less intense. As usual we're just 10 years behind whatever trend happens there.