site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8195 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Self-Immolation as Civic Nation-Building

To demonize another person, we first have to self-canonize.

  • SHERMAN ALEXIE

Envy and hatred try to pierce our neighbor with a sword, when the blade cannot reach him unless it first passes through our own body.

  • THOMAS MERTON

In recent news of culture-war-as-trade-war, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney inflicted retaliatory 50% tariffs on many goods traversing the Canada-US border. This will obviously have the effect of scalding his own nation, but both Carney and his countrymen appear to gleefully accept this masochistic act in the hope that the US might also get singed a little bit (75% of Canadians supported a withdrawal from negotiations - negotiations which solely existed in the first place to try and lessen the cost on Canada’s economy). Indeed, the issue appears to be so universally mandated up north that Carney’s nemesis, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, has primarily attacked Carney for… not being antagonistic enough towards the US, particularly in regard to said tariffs. Obviously Poilievre is falling into a classic bear trap tendency of conservatives: fearing the social isolation of a strongly differentiated viewpoint and therefore gradually moulding himself into “Liberals but sensible”. We saw how this played out for the Republican Party from 2008-2016; I wonder if Canada is capable of producing a brash enough figure to fill the crucial life ring role played by Trump, which we now recognize as having been the only solution for the prolonged political life of conservatives in the US.

There is another angle here which is even more fascinating. It is often observed that citizens who despise their own country while at home will become surprisingly patriotic and defensive of their nation when traveling abroad and facing criticisms from foreigners. But there is a stronger, deeper version of this phenomenon: that of a nation which either failed to establish territory in the modern world or which ceased to exist as wars were lost and maps were redrawn. The zealous identity of these “invisible nations” can be seen everywhere from Eastern Europe to Kurdistan to American Indian reservations to the Pacific islands. No flag is raised with more patriotism than those flags which have been erased from the map.

With Canada facing a crisis of existence in its ethnic makeup and self-belief, with its only guiding light being burning resentment toward its big brother, what can save the nation? What can transform a postmodern, puritanical nowhere place into a beloved homeland to be fought for, to be boasted about, to be made great again?

In their recent actions and polling numbers, it appears Canadians already know the answer to these questions. So, in their own mind, they might as well go down swinging.

In recent news of culture-war-as-trade-war, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney inflicted retaliatory 50% tariffs on many goods traversing the Canada-US border. This will obviously have the effect of scalding his own nation, but both Carney and his countrymen appear to gleefully accept this masochistic act in the hope that the US might also get singed a little bit

You make it sound as if this is silly and irrational. It all boils down to which flavor of decision theory one favors.

Causal decision theory says that you should pick whatever decision leads to the best outcome in your particular timeline. However, it has the failure mode that it is really easy to rob CDT adherents at gunpoint.

For example, consider Ukraine getting invaded by Russia. Purely from a citizen QALY perspective, a causal decision theorist would probably have advocated for an early surrender -- Putin was unlikely to murder a lot of Ukrainians, and life under a puppet regime installed by him would probably be bearable for most.

If rationality is systematized winning, and CDT makes it profitable and riskless for another player to fuck you over, then blindly following CDT is not rational. By being willing to suffer to inflict costs on Russia, Ukraine has turned Putin's war from a short "special military operation" into a long war of attrition which is net negative to the aggressor.

Same for Trump's trade wars (and kinetic war). The goal of Canada should be to make the trade war net negative for the US. If they were to bend over and not retaliate, what would likely happen is that Trump would decide to push the defect button again.

I genuinely don't understand the right-winger position here. What's so funny?
I asked before, and the answers were something to the effect that Canadian citizens, in their personal capacity, are much too smug online and look down on Americans as uncivilized boors, which is unbearable since Canada is a small dog and America is a Big Lion, so the Lion's gotta do what it does. This is simply childish. But fine, I can acknowledge childishness. What I don't get is why you go out of your way to misconstrue the Canadian perception here. Do you really have no theory of mind for other people believing that their nation ought to be treated with dignity by foreigners at least on the official level? Is this an extreme case of Hottentot morality?

And no, their internal issues (like ethnic relations or immigration policies) are not a carte blanche for you, outsiders to treat their state with contempt and expect them to join in on the fun. Try to think about this by analogy: do you feel that any nation is entitled to offer you unequal treaties and expect them be signed, just because you have fat people in Walmart/fentanyl problem/school shootings/BLM/wokes or whatever you believe is problematic and shameful? This is a pretty asinine approach, right? OK, now consider that people in other countries have a similar philosophy. This is called patriotism.

Speaking of their perception, this is how Trump's terms look up there. This is rubbing it in, I can half-believe it was written to be indignantly rejected because he just hates Canada for some reason, maybe precisely because he's a boor and feels status anxiety. But seeing his supporters' takes, I'm not sure it wasn't done with sincere cluelessness.

Then again, the median position now seems to be even simpler: "we can afford to rape them so why the hell not". The stuff about "not a real country" is, of course, veeeery Russia-Ukraine too. But people mostly don't believe their nations ought to have a "real locus", a telos, or anything like this, they just want sovereignty, respect, and the ability to make deals in their self-interest.

Nations can choose whether they are real or not. Unreasonable external hostility is one way to forge a nation. Ukraine is more real now than it was in 2021, which was more real than in 2013, which was more real than in 2003 or 1989 – even in the Russian eyes. Maybe Canada will earn its reality too, reality it traded away a generation ago by signing what became NAFTA, assuming it's worth nothing since no unreasonable hostility is forthcoming. John Turner foresaw this exact outcome that @Shakes celebrates today. Canadians remember Turner-Mulroney debates for a genteel dunk on a relatively minor domestic mishap by Turner. Maybe they'll remember his lines in this one too.

TURNER: I think the Canadian people have a right to know why, when your primary objective was to get unfettered and secured access into the American market, we didn’t get it. Why you didn’t put clauses in to protect our social programs in this negotiation . . . Why did that not happen? Why also did we get a situation where we surrendered our entire energy policy to the United States, something they’ve been trying to achieve since 1956? Why did we abandon our farmers? Why did we open our capital markets so that a Canadian bank can be bought up and we don’t have reciprocity in the American market at all? Why did you remove any ability to control the Canadian ownership of our business? These are questions that Canadians deserve to have an answer to and we have not had an opportunity in six hours to deal with them in the way that would make you come out of your shell. … I happen to believe you have sold us out. I happen to believe that, once you— Once any region— Once any country yields its economic levers— Once a country yields its energy— Once a country yields its agriculture— Once a country yields itself to a subsidy war with the United States— On terms of definition then, the political ability of this country to remain as an independent nation, that is lost forever and that is the issue of this election, sir.

… TURNER: I admire your father for what he did. My grandfather moved into British Columbia. My mother was a miner’s daughter there. We are just as Canadian as you are, Mr. Mulroney, but I will tell you this. You mentioned 120 years of history. We built a country east and west and north. We built it on an infrastructure that deliberately resisted the continental pressure of the United States. For 120 years we’ve done it. With one signature of a pen, you’ve reversed that, thrown us into the north-south influence of the United States and will reduce us, I am sure, to a colony of the United States because when the economic levers go, the political independence is sure to follow.

MULRONEY: Mr. Turner, the document is cancellable on six months notice. Be serious. Be serious.

TURNER: Cancellable? You are talking about our relationship with the United States—

MULRONEY: A commercial document that is cancellable on six months notice.

TURNER: Commercial document? That document relates to treaty. It relates to every facet of our lives. It’s far more important to us than it is to the United States.

Just to be clear I don’t celebrate Canada’s dependence on the US as if this is a soccer match and I cheer my side to win. I think of Canada as a problem to be managed albeit minor. I think the Canadian’s own self-delusions make this a harder problem. Some will say that it’s Trump and the Americans straining this relationship but it’s my experience that the Canadians are far more delusional about reality and unwilling to be reasonable.

China does not get to build up a proxy state under our neighbor's roof, and our neighbor does not get to host them without sanctions and consequences from us.

And no, their internal issues (like ethnic relations or immigration policies) are not a carte blanche for you, outsiders to treat their state with contempt and expect them to join in on the fun.

The Monroe Doctrine says all foreign powers must stay out of the hemisphere. China and India are trying to sink their claws into Canada, and so is Europe. No, they are not allowed. Canada can have self-determination, or they can rely on the US, but they cannot become a vassal of a foreign power and claim sovereignty while doing it.

Sovereign is he who makes the exception, and Canada is not in the position to be making them, never mind asking for them.

The Monroe Doctrine says all foreign powers must stay out of the hemisphere. China and India are trying to sink their claws into Canada, and so is Europe. No, they are not allowed.

I was told that Russia operating under the exact same logic was being Literally Hitler.

China does not get to build up a proxy state under our neighbor's roof

Don't lie at least to yourself. China is a pretext for territorial aggression against Canada. They were plenty compliant with your aggression for years. It's just never enough if you believe you can take the whole thing.

Manifest Destiny is sorely delayed.

Fifty Four Forty in 1840s. Fumbling away Baja after the Mexican American War. The project to connect Alaska in the Northwest, now 150 years in the making. Letting Cuba go independent instead of annexing it like we should have. All of these should be corrected.

China is the reason to take action today, because they are at the gates and there is no more time to delay, but the desire has been there all along.

this is how Trump's terms look up there

The source at the bottom - https://globalnews.ca/news/12026323/canada-trade-tariff-demands/us/ - redirects me to a weirdly-photoshopped image of a guy in his underwear. Removing the "us/" gets me to a normal 404 page. Neither URL is in archive.org. Searching for phrases from the purported headline of the source just gets me URLs of a hundred other people speculating about what looks like an AI hallucination. I can't entirely argue with "how Trump's terms look up there", because the tweet does have 10,000 likes, but I am kind of curious about what Trump's terms look like up there to people working from actual sources. Got any of those (actual sources, or reactions to actual sources, or ideally both)?

CBC is probably a pretty good place to start.

The oddest thing to me is the repeated insistence that Canada will be the 51st state, when Canada would clearly be states 51-61.

It's a humiliation ritual. Canada as a single state would not disrupt elections for Republicans too much.

Though you know. I would like to see our dear based conservative Mottizens make the case that Canadians are inherently a slave race without telos, and thus get no votes at all. And cite X frying my brain as an explanation for my lack of comprehension. I want more Sephiroth posting like this shit.

Might even be fair.

Alberta is the 51st state and the rest becomes the Great Convexity in the spirit of Infinite Jest.

It seems incredibly bizarre to me that we should allow any Canadians, except for the good people of Alberta, to vote. I prefer "Canadian Territory".

And the French-Canadian Exclusion Zone.

To be fair, even though Canada has 20 times the land area of California, it also has basically the same population (40 million) and significantly smaller GDP (2.5 vs. 4.2 T$/a). So making it all a single state isn't the most unreasonable idea in the world, though it is pretty unreasonable.

And if we use North Dakota as the referent, twenty states wouldn't be enough!

I do think the funniest outcome to Trumpisme is the incorporation of Venezuela into the Union, resulting in an end to illegal immigration, as we'll simply have 25 million broke venezuelan citizens who will suck up so many low-end labor jobs and drive prices down so far that there will be no gap in the market for the illegal migrant to fill.

I mean the US have a working model for offshore possessions they'd rather not grant freedom of movement to. Far more likely to be a Puerto Rico, Guam or an American Samoa situation. Though even the US Military doesn't really have the slots required to process as many Venezuelans who'd immediately be hammering down the recruiter's door.

Puerto Rican citizens have the right to migrate to America. Basically all of them did; it’s not one of the big Latin American countries and they’re one of the most represented ethnicities among Latinos in America. Guam and American Samoa are less notable, largely because there’s just so fewer of them. US territories have very large percentages of population living in the continental USA.

They began flooding into East Harlem right after V-J Day. I think there was some drought or crop blight in Puerto Rico that pushed them, plus affordable flights that made it easy.

Are you under the impression that Puerto Rican citizens are prevented from migrating to America?

The US has a working model for offshore possessions they'd rather not grant freedom of movement to. Far more likely to be a Puerto Rico, Guam, or American Samoa situation.

What? Puerto Ricans and Guamanians are citizens, and American Samoans are non-citizen nationals, all with freedom of movement within the US. Apparently, back when the Philippines were under US control, even Filipinos were non-citizen nationals with freedom of movement.

if we use North Dakota as the referent

IMO, the best yardstick is the product of land area and population. According to a spreadsheet that I compiled a while ago, the USA's current states range from −3.0σ (Rhode Island) to +2.2σ (Texas) on this scale, while Venezuela is at +2.5σ (versus the current states, before annexation) and Canada is at +4.0σ.

Do you really have no theory of mind for other people believing that their nation ought to be treated with dignity by foreigners at least on the official level? Is this an extreme case of Hottentot morality?

But part of the problem here is you think Canada is "foreign" to Americans. Yes, it's a different country, but it's in no way foreign. American is pretty culturally diverse, much more than most cloistered Americans (or Euros) seem to realize, but most of Canada Canada is actually almost exactly like the Midwest in every way. Boston and New York city are much more foreign to most Americans than Canada, yet the modern Canadians attitude doesn't really reflect this.

This is not a defense of Trump by the way. By my measure he's totally incompetent and has done irreparable damage to the US and even more so the Republican party. Still, the attitude of the modern Canadian doesn't particularly beget cooperation.

But people mostly don't believe their nations ought to have a "real locus", a telos, or anything like this, they just want sovereignty, respect, and the ability to make deals in their self-interest.

I don't even get that in my own country; that's actually why I hope "we" lose.

Because Shakes is right- if we made the reforms necessary to actually stand up against the US, "we" would cease to be Canada any more. Carney's done the absolute bare minimum to get infrastructure projects that have been stalled for years and that's just because Alberta threatened to cut him out entirely.

Ottawa would prefer Edmonton remain underdeveloped because an intentionally underdeveloped province is easier to control, and can throw much less weight around on the Imperial stage (ironically, Canada is itself a post-national state- in other words, an empire- the imperial seat is in the area stretching between Toronto and Montreal, and every other province, including the rest of Quebec, is nothing but a vassal state).

And to be fair to the Imperials, this strategy might actually put out the fire of independence; if it does, perhaps they didn't deserve it after all.

Indeed, the issue appears to be so universally mandated up north that Carney’s nemesis, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, has primarily attacked Carney for… not being antagonistic enough towards the US, particularly in regard to said tariffs. Obviously Poilievre is falling into a classic bear trap tendency of conservatives: fearing the social isolation of a strongly differentiated viewpoint and therefore gradually moulding himself into “Liberals but sensible”

No, PP is responding to incentives.

Trump's response to the chance of having a potential ally as Canada's PM was to go out of the way to be so needlessly insulting and toxic that the Tories lost the election. The Canadian people are not offering a road to political power if you appear servile to a bully who keeps going around threatening to annex the country.

It's almost trolling to write an entire piece about the lack of Canadian nationalism and to opine on how conservative leaders in Canada should act and ignore the very thing that triggers nationalistic fear that makes it impossible.

It's almost trolling to write an entire piece about the lack of Canadian nationalism and to opine on how conservative leaders in Canada should act and ignore the very thing that triggers nationalistic fear that makes it impossible.

It sounds like the idea is that the function of the conservative leaders of other countries is advocating vassaldom to the US.

can be seen everywhere from Eastern Europe

Which flags are those supposed to be?

What I instantly thought about were the cold-war-era Baltic States, where the insistence that they are real nations that are just temporarily occupied of course eventually paid off handsomely.

Poilievre, has primarily attacked Carney for… not being antagonistic enough towards the US, particularly in regard to said tariffs. Obviously Poilievre is falling into a classic bear trap tendency of conservatives: fearing the social isolation of a strongly differentiated viewpoint and therefore gradually moulding himself into “Liberals but sensible”.

Alternative thesis: Poilievre lost a slam dunk election because he was seen as the bootlicker candidate at a time when the US under Trump was trying to bully and humiliate Canada, and is now trying to correct for that perception. He has - almost certainly correctly - identified that he needs to be seen as willing to stand up for Canada harder than Carney is if he wants to have any patriotic credentials whatsoever.

With Canada facing a crisis of existence in its ethnic makeup and self-belief, with its only guiding light being burning resentment toward its big brother, what can save the nation? What can transform a postmodern, puritanical nowhere place into a beloved homeland to be fought for, to be boasted about, to be made great again?

Alternative thesis: Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?

There's a very real problem right-wingers have modeling the beliefs of others, where if they don't subscribe to very specific elements of right-wing mythology and engage in performative flag-fondling then they must hate their country. It is not mystifying why Canadian resentment of the United States has abruptly skyrocketed, and the fact that it has does not reveal some prior hollowness in Canadian national identity.

There's a very real problem right-wingers have modeling the beliefs of others, where if they don't subscribe to very specific elements of right-wing mythology and engage in performative flag-fondling then they must hate their country. It is not mystifying why Canadian resentment of the United States has abruptly skyrocketed, and the fact that it has does not reveal some prior hollowness in Canadian national identity.

I wouldn't even say this extends to right-wingers in general, which despite me not counting myself among them I think on the whole tend to a decent job of modeling others beliefs, better than their left-wing counterparts. This is a specific feature of the MAGA camp, which has ensconced itself in its own bubble of self-contradictory beliefs.

You don't need to look any further than this comment thread to see variations of Canada isn't a real country, they're ungrateful vassals, they wouldn't exist without us and frankly shouldn't - and why do they hate us when we're so nice to them?

It's more like, why are we caring about fraternity with someone who defines themselves as "not us" and maple leafs? Since they dropped the union jack they don't have much left but anti-US sentiment and Quebec.

What would Canada have to do regarding fentanyl for you to be in favor of taking the trade situation back to 2024?

I feel like 5% of Americans and 95% of Canadians know that there is a current trade war between the two countries. And this bodes very poorly for Canada.

In pretty much every conflict, the winner is the one who fights it with the fewer hardships incurred. In the Civil War, there were gentlemen attending Harvard whose life was barely touched by the war. And meanwhile, essentially the entire student body of the University of Mississippi enlisted and almost all of them were killed or injured.

On the extreme end, the US can destroy the entire Air Force and Navy of Iran, drive their entire economy into ruins, and only spend like 0.2% of GDP to do so with like two dozen casualties.

Which I guess is to make the trite point that Goliath always wins, as long as he doesn't even have to try very hard. The Don Draper meme "I don't even think about you at all", encapsulates the situation perfectly.

the entire Air Force and Navy of Iran

I know the US military says this but is it actually true? Is the war currently in a state you'd expect if the Iranian navy and air force are destroyed?

Why doesn't the US head back into its Gulf bases? Or sail into the straits of Hormuz with the fleet and have the 210 civilian ships waiting there head on through off to make more money rather than sit around anxiously?

If the Iranian economy is in ruins then why has the Trump administration switched tactics back to sanctioning/threatening Iran's trading partners. Why a financial D-Day and not a real one?

I fully believe that Iran's warships and fixed-wing warplanes have been destroyed or otherwise rendered inoperable. So what.

I don't remember hearing about Iran having warships worth mentioning before the war. Sinking a few minelayers may deprive Iran of a strategic option they don't currently want (mining the Straits so they are off limits to everyone) but doesn't achieve any US political goals - although it isn't clear if it even does that given that you could probably mine the Straits with rowboats if you wanted to.

The Russia-Ukraine war demonstrates that second world armies facing second world air defences don't fly fixed-wing warplanes in anger, so destroying them doesn't hurt Iran much. Even mid-price reusable drones like the Turkish Byraktar are steering clear of enemy air defences (Ukraine is mostly using them over water) with the proper air war fought using cheap disposable drones and missiles. Iran's behaviour in the current war is consistent with this picture. The Fog of War means I can't be sure whether or not the 5th Fleet base in Bahrain is rekt, but if it is the damage was done by cheap drones.

Sinking a few minelayers may deprive Iran of a strategic option they don't currently want (mining the Straits so they are off limits to everyone)

That's not how mining works. The idea is to mine the straits so only a narrow corridor, easily targeted by your land-based weapons, is available. Iran would definitely like to be able to do that, and at various times has suggested they had done so (and as far as I know, the mine status of the old agreed-upon corridors is unknown). Iran can't mine the Oman corridor with rowboats or, apparently, anything else they have at the moment. Despite the name, the strait is over 20 miles wide at the narrowest point.

I don't remember hearing about Iran having warships worth mentioning before the war.

The 2017 ONI report is a bit out of date, but still reasonably useful. The regular Navy, IRIN (NEDAJA) is responsible for everything outside the Gulf and shares responsibility over the Strait. This is where you find the traditional vessels, this is where you find the power projection capability, this is where you find the deep water capability, and this has by its nature been pretty much completely destroyed.

There's also the IRGCN, or NEDSA. As the name implies, this is the IRGC's version of the regular Navy, and it's a bunch of whatever-the-hell. Small boats, fast boats, a few other things. Primarily used to harass/board ships and lay mines. No idea how they're doing these days, but if they'd been given a bit more time to observe and react to the Russo-Ukrainian War, I'm sure they'd have added an absolute ton of MAGUROs and similar. Seems very in line with their philosophy of small & fast swarms.

Thanks - I would say that the only thing that could pass for a capital ship is the three Russian-made Kilo-class attack submarines.

Recently I think they also had a large deck drone carrier? But yeah, other than that, I think they topped out at frigate. And not even a Kriegsmarine frigate.

(75% of Canadians supported a withdrawal from negotiations - negotiations which solely existed in the first place to try and lessen the cost on Canada’s economy)

Do you actually believe the Trump admin's sole goal with these negotiations are to lessen the costs on Canada's economy? The Trump admin created those costs! The US are so, so obviously not acting in good faith in this dispute, and it's plainly obvious to most Canadians. The last minute addition of obviously improper demands is not what you do in a normal good faith negotiation. If Canada gave in to Trump's demands, he'd just make new ones, all they way up to fully annexing the entire country.

Canada is, in the nicest sense, not a real country. It is literally an economic union of varied colonies and provinces to resist conquest by or incorporation into the United States. Canada has attempted many times to forge an identity greater than the sum of its parts -- Westward Expansion, colonialism, railroads and national corporations, media, allegiance to Britain and the Crown, the flag... But Canada remains officially multicultural, which is to say Canada has no locus. Canada is not a real country.

At best Canada has achieved a kind of balance. Canada is a large compromise between Ontario and Quebec, which have mostly made peace with each other. But that compromise alienates the East from the West, which has its own issues completely unrelated to the French laws and Ottawa. And the West itself is split by the mountains between the Prairies and the Coast, which also hate each other at least a little. Somehow when you put it all together it vaguely hangs together.

So what Canada has succeeded at, in a sense, is that it's better than the alternatives. It's totally dependent on America and can't exist on its own at all. (A very simple military operation north of Minnesota would divide Canada into at least two pieces, since even Canada's energy networks already pass into America to connect East and West.) However... -- it's more expensive to destroy Canada than America is willing to pay. It's generally been much cheaper to let a few ten millions put up some trade barriers and regulations than it would be worth figuring out the headache. Besides, nobody in America wants to think very long about what to do with Quebec.

That's all changing now that America is realigning everything everything about China and its security posture for the 21st Century. Charitably, it looks like America wants Canada to lock down its ability to serve as a dumping ground for foreign goods that can use Canada to sell more cheaply in America. And Canada would prefer to maintain its strategic ambiguity.

And, well, it seems like Carney and the liberals (remember Trudeau before Carney) want to use Canadian opposition to America and Trump to boost their political position. Realistically that's all this is, Canada is so dependent on the United States they can't really, genuinely, actually make a break. The people don't really understand what they're asking for, it's a little delusional, so probably it can be assuaged in an irrational manner too.

The likeliest outcome after everything is that, eventually, maybe this year, maybe in five years, maybe in 15 years across many agreements over may governments -- Canada and America continue along more-or-less as they have before, America gets Canada to get with the program, Canada gets America to wear a condom and take it out to dinner first. America will continue to subsidize Canada's existence, possibly even at greater cost than before, but Canada will, essentially, continue to exist as a basket-case to manage several problems that the Americans will never want to have to deal with.

With Canada facing a crisis of existence in its ethnic makeup and self-belief, with its only guiding light being burning resentment toward its big brother, what can save the nation? What can transform a postmodern, puritanical nowhere place into a beloved homeland to be fought for, to be boasted about, to be made great again?

Realistically, nothing.

Canada last had a meaningfully independent foreign policy and manufacturing base in the 60s under Diefenbaker. For a lot of reasons Diefenbaker lost and the liberals came in and integrated Canada deeply with the United States. The term "Branch plant economy" was coined to describe what happened. Canada became an appendage of the United States. It no longer had a foreign power like the United Kingdom to serve as patron and buffer. The Canadians wanted this. And at this point there is no other foreign power that can step in: The United States will not allow Canada to become a client state of China. A fantasy about a great Canadian-EU alliance is even more impotent. (Actually, something like this could be kept as a face-saving fiction for everyone to come away feeling like a winner, given that Europe and Canada will both remain firmly within the American orbit.)

What would it take for Canada to achieve meaningful independence? They can't appeal to a foreign power. It would require Canada achieving meaningful industrial sovereignty by building an independent economic and commercial base. What would that look like? It would require a massive push of deregulation and new economic policy that would, frankly, destroy the consensus around which Canada is built. The Quebecois won't go for it, the West and East would have to meet and agree to put aside their differences, and at every step it would simply be easier for any one party to simply integrate with America and be done with it.

Otherwise, without that, Canada is simply a media fiction. And those can always be changed. After all, Canada's government has consistently found it much easier to negotiate sovereignty to the Indian Tribes to give judges and the federal government ultimate supervisory power over the actual democratic will of the people.

Obviously Poilievre is falling into a classic bear trap tendency of conservatives: fearing the social isolation of a strongly differentiated viewpoint and therefore gradually moulding himself into “Liberals but sensible”.

The Liberal Party is probably the natural governing party of Canada for the foreseeable future. People will say that it could have gone another way if Trump hadn't had been Trump, and that Trump should have been more sensible and Canada could have been run by the conservatives and everything would be better. But, realistically, the Liberals always had the power to engineer an escalation with America, even if Trump had never said "51st State" at all. In fact, Mark Carney engineering today's episode for political purposes is probably the most likely explanation.

Perhaps Trump should not engage in tariff brinkmanship with countries that aren't real if it ends up costing real dollars and real congress seats in midterm elections.

I’m just not interested in hearing dispassionate electoral analysis from someone who is not dispassionate at all

Probably true. Do you expect that to happen? In my experience the median American view of Canada is something like "that place with all the beavers?"

Americans see Canada as ‘not actually foreign but a different country, it’s cold up there, hockey, maple syrup, some of them speak French, socialized healthcare you need to wait on’. Not totally accurate, but more nuanced than ‘has beavers’.

My favourite story of this type is that USA Today published temperatures for US cities in Fahrenheit and for Canadian cities in Celsius without saying what they were doing, and nobody noticed for several years because Americans find it completely reasonable for Toronto to be as cold as freezing brine in the winter.

In Montana the radio station I used for my alarm did the same thing. It always made for a worse morning the closer the numbers got together.

Is that what was going on, I fully expected Canada to be populated entirely by the Andorians just chomping at the bit to call you a pink skin while relaxing on a lounger to the chilly summer sub-zero temps and biting cold sun rays.

I'm slightly expecting a deescalation and some type of trade agreement soon, like within 2 weeks, but I'm not willing to invest or gamble on it.

Whatever trade concessions Trump may win from Canada, or national security concerns, he probably could have waited 70 days until midterms finished to make this an issue while the Iranian secondary sanctions are just starting.

There is also a risk that both Canadian tariffs and the Iranian conflict annoy voters all the way into November, which is just unwise timing when senate control for the next 2 years has coinflip odds on kalshi right now. The house is probably already lost, so not much to gain or lose there.

Any predictions on the trade war outcomes? I'm always kind of unpleasantly surprised when I see random stuff around that's made in Canada, but by the numbers the amount of canadian stuff on us store shelves is small. Meanwhile American exports to Canada seem like a small fraction of the overall economy.

I guess as long as Canada keeps selling oil, the overall effect of the trade war may just be a nothingburger. Might push up the price of goods marginally but not in any huge way.

Only thing I can see is increased polarization in Canada between the people who voted for this and the people who have to pay for it. (The manufacturing sector went hard CPC last election; so did every sector that will be impacted by these tariffs. Fancy that.)

They weren't the same people, and far as I can tell still aren't. Obviously Carney and his Maple MAGA Boomer cohort don't care- they're too busy manufacturing a crisis through incompetent statesmanship to try and quell movements about kicking them out of power for ever- so it's realistically going to be up to the workers in lower Ontario to solve this.

At least they'll have a lot of time on their hands once their plants close down, especially if what the sister comment mentions comes to pass and the supply chain is destroyed. Which is kind of the risk here- if Canadian manufacturing is destroyed, then they have no reason not to just import vehicles from China [and was a huge problem when Canada hinted at doing this last time], which means a Canada pulled closer to the Chinese orbit, which is something the US can't accept.

So it does make sense for Canada to adopt the Palestine strategy of holding themselves hostage, and a bonus for the LPC since it won't cost them electorally (the areas affected have no alternative and the areas not have been so turbocharged by jingoism they'll be voting the same way at the end of the decade at least).

Which itself might make further policy interventions against Canada more likely from the D side. If the objective is to lay a massive annexation-shaped landmine under the foot of the next administration, perhaps Trump is doing a better job of that than expected.

TACO is the way to bet.

Apart from raw materials, most of the Canadian goods surplus with the US comes through the highly integrated auto industry-based economy of Greater Greater Detroit, most of which ends up in vehicles badged Ford or GM (even if final assembly was in a Canadian plant). If this trade war lasts for more than a few weeks then two iconic American companies are going to be screaming in pain, and UAW workers who voted for Trump are going to be laid off. Even if the tariffs are working to shift demand to cars made with a US/Mexican supply chain and not a US/Canadian one, the politics of "one union job noisily lost at a US-owned plant in purple Michigan, two nonunion jobs quietly added at a Japanese-owned plant in red South Carolina" is a disaster for the administration.

It isn't clear that Canada think they can give in even if they wanted to. What Carney has said is pretty close to "Trump's America is not agreement-capable, so we will make no concessions." Trump's public antics and the online activity of his core supporters have been entirely consistent with the MAGA view on Canada being that it should be a vassal-state and that the punishment beatings will continue as long as Canada perversely insists on pretending to be sovereign (see also @Shakes and @Ex_Nihilo above).

I also think the intra-MAGA politics of this mean that we can expect to see the "Blame Canada"/TACO pattern continue for the rest of Trump's term. Increasingly I am leaning towards a model of MAGA psychology where the beatings are the point. One of the things the right-wing base thought they would get when they renominated Trump in the 2024 primaries was a President who would use the powers of the Presidency to inflict visible pain on the hated Blues. Right-wing Americans who pay some attention to foreign news but don't actually understand foreign countries (this isn't intended as an insult - very few people anywhere actually understand foreign countries) see Soviet Canuckistan and the EUSSR as Blues-over-the-water, so punishment beatings of Canada (which cause fewer legal and constitutional issues than punishment beatings of domestic political opponents) scratch the same itch. But I'm pretty certain that MAGA would support a 50% tariff on Massachusetts if there was a legal way of doing it.

the MAGA view on Canada being that it should be a vassal-state and that the punishment beatings will continue as long as Canada perversely insists on pretending to be sovereign (see also @Shakes and @Ex_Nihilo above).

I really find it troubling that two separate posters have taken my views about Canada and written entirely different sentences. “I hate waffles”. Nowhere have I said anything like “I want to punish Canada”.

Short term: Nothingburger.

Long term: War, or to quote Victoria Nuland, "Fuck the EU." Let us not forget that it was turning down a trade agreement with the EU that set off Yanukovych's downfall in Ukraine.

It's not a perfectly clean comparison (Canada is a lot more united, and the US less so, compared to Ukraine and Russia respectively circa 2013.) but I don't see any future US administration being overly tolerant if Canada seriously orients itself to the EU (because military alliances follow economic ones) or China, and "fighting for sovereignty" can be used to excuse any number of bad outcomes of antagonism with the US for Canadian politicians.

To be clear, I do not advocate this. I doubt anyone in Russia or Ukraine expected to be in a shooting war back in '04 either, though.

Canada cannot substantially reorient its trade relations away from the U.S., for obvious geographic reasons. Whatever changes occur will be minor or even cosmetic. But it is striking that a U.S. regime that seems determined to insulte, belittle and antagonize its allies is surprised that those allies seek to recalibrate.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats