POSTED: MARCH 1, 2026
This week I went back to read The Emperors New Clothes, a story popularized by Hans Christian Andersen in the mid 1800’s from a Spanish folk tale from about five hundred years earlier. It is about an emperor, having been duped into thinking that a couple of con men weavers could make him some magnificent new garments but ones that would be invisible to fools.
Once these garments were “completed” and he was decked out in these new garments of course he was naked but everyone, not wanting to be seen to be fools or not wanting to offend the emperor were afraid to express it. One child however was not in the nuances of making the emperor happy and blurted out that the emperor had no clothes. The more common term today is Speaking Truth to Power. It has become a popular notion today given the fear world leaders seem to have to lost their tongues in calling out the biggest bully in the schoolyard.
So many of us were thrilled when Mark Carney gave his speech at Davos, saying what all leaders were sharing in private but were afraid to say in public. As Canadians we were thrilled …. and terrified. This emperor in question is a fellow who has threatened to take over Venezuela, Greenland, Cuba, and Canada and has checked off the first on his list.
He has seemingly his own private army and is prepared to fight the American people, and is using politics as a tool to build his own wealth and the U.S. Department of Justice as his own vigilante force against his enemies.
Can the Democratic wave of the mid term elections result in a way to stop him? All we can do is hope.
Oh, oh, I can feel a poem (almost a haiku) coming on….
The Emperor has no clothes
Mark Carney told us figuratively,
Stormy Daniels told us literally.
Django