The White House posted to social media an image of a bald eagle attacking a Canada goose on a frozen Lake Ontario, taken by Burlington, Ont. photographer Mervyn Sequeira. It turned out the photo was one in a series that showed the goose suffered but survived, and the eagle flew away, defeated and hungry.
It’s not entirely a surprise that the White House propaganda arm would be misrepresenting what happened. It is distressing that the accurate term now for White House communications is propaganda. President Donald Trump, after all, chose the same name for his social media platform, “Truth,” as the Soviet communist party did for its daily newspaper, “Pravda.” In its day, Pravda was more egregious but less embarrassing.
In general, I have little affection for our official national animal, the beaver, and active dislike for the Canada goose. An airborne wedge is majestic, but a gaggle at ground is a defecating menace. It seems to me a lack of imagination on the part of Prime Minister Mark Carney that he has not (yet?) unleashed the geese to befoul the lawns at Mar-a-Lago. The Canada goose would be at home there; it is only fitting that an excess of excrement be deposited in a place from which so much of it is sent abroad.
Failing that, at least Carney could rename Branta canadensis the Trump Goose. The president might even consider it a compliment. Trading Trump Goose for Lake America would be a big, beautiful deal if the flocks stayed permanently in Florida.
As national symbols go, I prefer the moose, to which I expect a bald eagle would give a wide berth. It is an insult to the glorious bald eagle to identify it with the Trump administration, but the Russian bear has had to suffer association with the Kremlin in times past, and now again.
As Pravda Trump will not tell you, most North American bald eagles are now Canadian, the Americans having neglected to properly manage their own. Should a convocation of same fly south, it is not clear whether the Canadian ones would face a tariff at the border, or deportation upon roosting.
That bald eagles are more likely Canadian than American tells us something about this declining American moment. Consider the following items from the past fortnight.
The Trump administration declared economically lethal sanctions against Iran. This is supposedly an augmentation of the “crippling” and “maximum” sanctions American administrations have been applying for decades. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that Iranian banks in the UAE had to close immediately. They remained fully open for business.
No one country can entirely sanction another without allies, and America has fewer of those than a year ago. Trump’s economic strangulation of Iran will depend principally upon the UAE and China, and to a lesser degree upon India, Russia and Turkey.
The eagle and goose on Lake Ontario is good image for the entire Iranian fiasco. The American-Israeli operation swooped in with fearsome air power. But on the ground, the goose — peacock in the Iranian context — kept control of the (frozen) waters.
Everyone is now talking about asymmetric warfare; the weaker power may not prevail but can frustrate and inflict real damage on the stronger power with drones, radar-evading missiles and the like. It’s foolish to wrestle with a Russian bear, but the bear may indeed be helpless against the drone that flies up behind it.
The eagle has talons, but the goose has bowels. Which bird causes more damage to more people?
Canadians felt proud when our government refused to capitulate to the Trump administration, which desires capitulation and conquest more than it does mutual co-operation with allies or even the common good of the American people. It was not only a Canadian moment though; in capitals around the world satisfaction was taken that somewhere, someone was standing up to Trump.
Allies are doing so. Israel recently told Trump that he could dump his Gaza plan in the sea, and Saudi Arabia — being told that it must join the Abraham Accords — took a pass and signed the Mecca accords with Turkey and Pakistan instead.
Enemies are doing so. Iran uses Russian intelligence to attack American bases, and China decides the world price of oil, and how much sanctions relief it will grant Iran.
The Trump administration complains bitterly that only China and Canada refused to capitulate entirely to Trump’s 2025 tariffs, levying retaliatory tariffs instead. But China won that round of the trade war, forcing the U.S.A. to back down. If China did it last year, and Canada is doing it now, there will be others who will do it in future.
At home, and most worrisome for America’s dominant global position, Bessent failed in his attempt to reduce the bond yields the Treasury must pay to borrow. The $40-trillion American debt — and $2-trillion annual deficit — will thus prove more expensive to finance. With a bipartisan refusal to cut spending or raise taxes (aside from erratic tariffs), the likely path ahead is to inflate away the debt, making America poorer and eroding the benefits of being the world’s reserve currency.
The eagle and the goose on the lake is not an equal fight. But the eagle is not as strong as it once was, and the goose can live to fight another day. That is the emerging truth of world affairs, whether Pravda wishes to acknowledge it or not.
National Post
