Google wants me to know that “fraught” means causing or affected by anxiety or stress.

It offers an example: “There was a fraught silence.”

Fraught’s value on the word exchange has gone through the roof, nipping at the heels of “rupture,” a cornerstone in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s ­now-legendary remarks delivered recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The two words, in fact, have an oblique but strong connection.

Since Carney gave his gutsy speech, which earned a standing ovation in the hall and global applause, Trump, shamed and diminished by Carney’s instant fame and approval, has become even more dangerous and ­pathological, and more of a menace to Canada.

Canada is now at the front of Trump’s file box, and sooner or later, he will exploit any viable opportunity to damage our country.

This is a man who has completely destabilized ­American society and democratic principles, and who has nothing less than conquest in his mind.

Never forget: The man is indomitable and makes his own rules.

Conditions, in other words, have become more fraught.

It’s hard, under these conditions, not to draw lines of connection and causality between international, national and local urgencies.

A few of its........

© Times Colonist