When you build your fiefdom riding on someone else’s coattails, you are playing a dangerous game.

Diplomacy with someone with wife beater logic doesn’t work, Ms. Smith. He sees diplomacy as weakness and submission and he will always want more.

There are some Albertans who think they will achieve independence. They will have their province carved up, lose their resources, only to be gobbled up by the US as a unincorporated and organized territory with no voting rights.

When you have a bigger nation, such as the US whine and bitch about a victim status, you can neither trust them nor have an ounce of respect for them. It is a ruse to completely overtake a more resource-rich nation and then complain it’s not enough.

Alberta is now in a no-win situation: it isn’t respected by the US, only exploited as its premier shows weakness and submission to an abuser. Smith’s plans did not take reality into consideration. Doug Ford had also made the same mistake about Trump, but unlike Smith, he could radically pivot and gain global respect. Acting like a coward has permanently damaged Smith’s brand. You can’t someone like her seriously.

You don’t negotiate with a self-entitled narcissistic nepo-baby: you hit hard and below the belt until he learns that a victim autocrat narrative sounds stupid and will be no protection for them.

Smith has now made herself damaged goods. Someone threatens to destroy your home and you choose “diplomacy”?

Yeah, that’s not going to work.

And neither is any hare-brained fantasy of greater power you’re wasting generating the scenarios in your head.