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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25108 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

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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.

I'm curious what Americans think about the threat to rename "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America".

This just adds to the Canadian perception that Trump is a buffoon - it's not like we think that we "owned" the lake because it shares a name with our province, that's just the name.

It's just meant as an petty insult, and signals that the Trump isn't interested in good faith negotiation towards a mutually beneficial deal.

IMO it's classic Trumpian style over substance bullshit that makes me loathe the man.

Setting aside the fact that starting a trade war with Canada was a stupid idea that nobody asked for (see also: Greenland, "51st state", etc.), renaming a body of water accomplishes nothing.

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 don't think you need to invoke non-causal decision theories here.

CDT works perfectly fine in iterated games - refusing to accept bad terms now is a costly signal that should encourage the US to make a better (but still mutually beneficial) offer in future.

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.

Speaking of their perception, this is how Trump's terms look up there.

This is a pile of steaming garbage ai slop (made by ChatGPT specifically, it's so blindingly obvious) tweeted by a foreigner who also has no connection to Canada or the USA.

Needless to say I shouldn't have to waste any effort debunking this because it's just a heap of garbage.

Edit: If you want even more confirmation, the URL at the bottom of the image is fake. Fabricated. Made up. Lies. Deception. Falsehood.

The "attack on the French language" thing is particularly transparently dishonest from Carney. Trump's devastating alpha strike on Quebecois identity is... not requiring US streaming services to promote French-Canadian content.

Didn't the US identify bilingual-labelling laws as a non-tariff barrier that they wanted removed?

The NYT article on the topic did not mention this. It calls out the laws promoting Canadian online content, and says, "A person with direct knowledge of the talks said that the American side was flexible on this point, and did not make any asks regarding the French language explicitly. A Canadian counterpart said that, even if that were the case, the topic was still being debated until the last minute before the talks broke down on Friday."

So, maybe? Maybe not? I would think that if NYT had solid confirmation that the US went after bilingual labeling laws, they would have included it. Of course, that article is also a snapshot in time concerning the information they had at that moment.

I think one of the problems here is that the US side isn't talking about the talks that broke down, and doesn't see why they might need to. In particular, nobody is pushing back on the claim by Carney that there was a last-minute bait-and-switch from the US side, with various media outlets (admittedly probably all relying on the same anonymous source) saying that this was because Commerce Secretary Lutnick took over the reins from USTR Greer.

Based on Trump's MO going back to his real estate days, I think we can assume that there was a bait-and-switch from the US side - it is less clear whether or not it was a planned dick move as part of "tough" negotiating tactics or whether it was unintentional chaos as a result of divisions within the administration. But all we have to go by in terms of what the bait-and-switch was about is Carney's talking points (which I assume are selective and biased, because politics) and various pro-Canadian poasters amplifying them. Trump could say (or could get his people to say) that of course the US doesn't have a problem with Quebec preserving its language and culture and try to play divide-and-rule with Quebec the way is (ineptly) trying to do with Alberta, but he didn't.

This round of talks began with a unilateral escalation by the US (the various proclamations of 20th July) and the only intelligible demand the US has made on substance is that Canada reverse the retaliatory measure they put in place after the previous unilateral escalation from the US side, including steel and aluminium tariffs which the US said were not negotiable and other tariffs which were announced as a threat to force Canada to address a non-existent fentanyl problem and then TACOed.

So the US does not have a public negotiating position here. And if the bait-and-switch theory is correct, they haven't communicated a stable non-public negotiating position to the Canadians either.* It might be the case that normalcy could be restored if the Canadians agreed to end the retaliatory measures and accept the steel and aluminium tariffs, but we don't know and Carney has now said that he doesn't either. As far as I can see based on Trump and his supporters' social media posts, the actual MAGA theory of the case is that the correct process is that Trump commands and Carney obeys, and that the real problem is Canadian insistence on LARPing as a sovereign state.

* The actual US negotiating position in this case needs to be non-public because the Trump administration is abusing emergency powers to impose the tariffs. Everyone on both sides of the border knows that the legally colourable US-law justifications for the tariffs in the official White House proclamations have little or nothing to do with the real reasons they are being imposed, but can't say so.

Trump could say (or could get his people to say) that of course the US doesn't have a problem with Quebec preserving its language and culture and try to play divide-and-rule with Quebec the way is (ineptly) trying to do with Alberta, but he didn't.

He has essentially said this on Truth Social

Ordinarily, it would be easy to believe that the American government just doesn't care that much about bilingualism beyond seeing it as annoyance that is nonetheless a red line for Canada. It's the sort of thing a Canadian PM looking to win in Quebec would emphasize.

But people in Canada believe it (or, at least, prefer to trust Carney) because it's easy to fit into a narrative of divide and conquer in light of Trump's annexation comments and his escalation of tariffs and unreliability.

He has essentially said this on Truth Social.

Full text of post

I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French! In fact, I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing. This lie was made up by a weak and ineffective Prime Minister in an attempt to gain political support, which he has totally lost, from the people of Quebec. I love French Canadians! President DONALD J. TRUMP

The image being made with ChatGPT has no relation to the veracity of the claims in it. Indeed it's a point in its favor: LLMs are smarter than Trump, and Trump posts a lot of AI slop (such as his map-painting exercises) and outright falsehoods (eg about Canadian unemployment or oil stats) anyway. If it were just a compilation of his own claims, it'd be worse.

  • -11

The whole “Trump is an idiot” argument is tired at this point. Someone cannot achieve what he has achieved being an idiot. He might be wrong. He certainly isn’t a rationalist or careful when it comes to what he says. But thinking someone who has accomplished about 1000x whatever your life has accomplished is an idiot is laughable.

Just because a lot of people haven’t achieved what Trump has (… is there some reason why I should want to?) doesn’t mean ordinary people haven’t achieved things Trump is clearly incompetent at. If money was all I cared about, I’d do gay pornography and let every man have a go at my asshole or enter into organized crime. Because I’m actually a Bible believing Catholic though, my spiritual wealth I’d wager is far greater than his will be in the afterlife.

I haven’t checked but I imagine porn actually doesn’t pay that well

According to Ron White, gay people get 5x the amount of money. Take that for whatever it’s worth.

is there some reason why I should want to?

Respectfully, I call cope. What is it Trump has achieved that normal people wouldn’t want? Becoming President? Large family? Extreme wealth? Fame? You may not want these things but they are among the most common fantasies in the world.

Because I’m actually a Bible believing Catholic though, my spiritual wealth I’d wager is far greater than his will be in the afterlife.

This is a moral judgment masquerading as a value neutral. You think you’re better than Trump because you think he’s going to hell.

Would it be nice to have a billion dollars? Yes. Would I be living all that differently than how I currently am? Not really. All money does for my desire is fuel more of the same. I would think anyone with common sense would get the impression that people who aren’t putting in work to obtain riches would constitute good evidence that their drive to obtain it obviously isn’t that great (i.e. money isn’t what’s primarily driving them). The proposition isn’t that more money isn’t nice, it’s that money isn’t everything; and it’s very difficult for those who have it to understand how anyone could ever be satisfied without it, when they’ve invested all their psychological resources into thinking that’s what makes them happy. Case in point in my own life, my mother came from a rich family and I was spoiled rotten when I was a kid. It still didn’t make me happy.

As I’ve said before. Most people don’t envy fame and fortune. They envy the lives they imagine these people lead. It’s not actually like that. As a matter of fact from my ontology of the world, yes; I am more accomplished than Trump is as a practitioner of the faith. It’s 100% my moral judgment; and the fact that it’s prejudicial doesn’t mean it isn’t also accurate. A person may not buy my theology and that’s fine with me. From my vantage point they’ll get what’s coming to them in the end all the same. It doesn’t make a difference to me. I want to get to Heaven for what I want out life, not so I can enjoy the thought of Trump going to Hell. In that’s sense I’m every bit as selfish about my own interests as Trump is with his. I don’t care one bit if he believes what I do or not. If the fruits of this world outweigh the ones awaiting him on Judgment Day are more important to him, great; then we can both be winners.

Someone cannot achieve what he has achieved being an idiot

Why? Biden could become a President (indeed, beat Trump at a debate!) while in early stages of dementia, so it wouldn't be far-fetched for Trump to achieve more than Biden while being an idiot. And what has he even achieved, except winning the vote, installing his loyalists (often profoundly inept, like Kash Patel or RFK Jr. or Linda McMahon or… then again, your may refuse to acknowledge their ineptitude too) and doing random intense costly actions he can afford because the US is rich and powerful? And as regards winning the vote, the task seems easy enough: just be an unprecedentedly faithful representative of the immense mass of stupid and malicious people underserved by previous candidates, just shitpost more, be a bigger and louder primate. It's not like American democracy demands any kind of moral or intellectual achievement of their leaders. It's vibes, spite, boredom, hubris, petty sadism…

I understand how acknowledging such mechanics behind your political culture might be hard.

thinking someone who has accomplished about 1000x whatever your life has accomplished is an idiot is laughable

Yeah yeah, money talks bullshit walks, reality is that which pays. This is not a philosophy for human beings.

Why? Biden could become a President (indeed, beat Trump at a debate!) while in early stages of dementia

Pandemic era Biden didn't come across as demented. He came across of someone who was still compus mentis when fully awake, but who was too physically frail for the demands of executive leadership (or indeed running an in-person campaign, which he fortunately didn't need to do in 2020 because of the pandemic). This is consistent with what staffers have said about the administration, which is that Biden was lucid for 4-6 hours a day and able to use those hours to prevent a power vacuum appearing that could be filled by someone else.

  1. Biden won via the democratic establishment carrying him to victory. Trump engaged in a hostile takeover. They are not the same.

  2. Biden had no staying power; Trump clearly did.

  3. Re money talks — yeah it’s exactly a philosophy for human beings. Person A accomplished a lot. Person B hasn’t. Person B tries to tear down A to make themselves seem more important. Well, the proof is in the eating of the pudding.

No, pragmatism is a philosophy for economic agents with status anxiety. You're status-anxious to the point you don't even accept any notion of "intelligence" or "correctness" per se, only of success, which supersedes every other dimension. In your logic Idi Amin or Hou Jing must have been highly intelligent, because they achieved victory against far greater odds than Trump. To say nothing of people who had succeeded within largely or entirely non-cognitive fields, or just via being scum in public – Mike Tyson, Tupac Shakur, Kenneth Copeland, and other illustrious Americans. That is "intelligence" of the pudding-eating people, too. Money is intelligence, charisma is intelligence, sexual prowess is intelligence, nepotism is intelligence. Everything is intelligence except intelligence.

The reality is that the peaks of elected political power in the United States are not terribly contested, cognitively speaking. It's not a corporate world with knife fights between execs, and especially not the heavily competitive world of linear employees. Perhaps high-ranking escorts have more g-loaded competition because they need to appeal to paying customers and not the average American voter. As of mid-2020s, it's a human capital wasteland to which you need not a SAT pass but an invite from some pimp donor. The high and mighty "establishment" that crumbled before Trump is made of sexually deviant dysgenic freaks, confused old people with imaginary friends, self-professed hereditary shabbos goys (and those are Grand Elders of the Party, like Schumer and Pelosi)… Does this not strike you as comical? It is not Trump's intellectual achievement that his last challenger from the Establishment was an unlikeable woman with dirty laundry, nominated at the last moment by a spiteful senile old husk, who ran on an unintelligible gibberish platform about "brat" or whatever because nobody had a clue of what to do with her (and even so, she got plenty of votes, just because people voted for the party and against Trump – the bar is on the ground). Crowing about "staying power" contrasted to Biden is hilarious when I see Biden's defense like «Biden was lucid for 4-6 hours a day and able to use those hours to prevent a power vacuum appearing». Did it take a lot of intelligence to just smile and dunk on these squalid creatures before an audience that is starved for ownership and desperately yearns to finally be loyal to some strongman? This is below the level of hereditary monarchies, and close to the level of late USSR.

You don't have any object-level defense for Trump's idiocy. Take, for instance, his insistent bullshitting about "windmills" in China, which is of course the #1 consumer of wind turbines by a light year, not just the biggest producer. There is a cogent argument against subsidies for renewables in the US in particular, but instead Trump consistently spreads very stupid and checkable lies about this issue. Just why? One "charitable" explanation I see is that he simply hates them for a petty personal reason, which is not just "not a rationalist" but outright childish silliness. Another is that he correctly believes his supporters to be natural slaves that need simple slogans and will make excuses for any extent of his dishonesty. The same logic is true of his opponents who now lie about datacenter water use. Trump, of course, lies so much about so many random things that these strategic explanations fail. It's not a grand strategy, it's simply what he does by nature, and what the competition he is in allows. His strategic actions are discussed well enough and I don't expect us to have much common ground here.

Generally, smart people try to lie plausibly and avoid spelling out outright falsehoods, because in the circles where smart people compete, that produces an exploitable weakness if not legal liability. But this is not the world of American big politics. You don't need to be smart to get into the NBA Hall of Fame, nor to be a POTUS, nor to be top 0.1% on OnlyFans. There are other… merits.

Let’s reduce your long post to its merits: intelligence is weakly correlated with success. Thus, success is not an accurate marker of intelligence.

Allegedly smart people who write long posts on the internet love to separate intelligence from success presumably because they have no success but their self worth is tied up in being smart. Putting down “dumb” people who’ve accomplished a great deal is par for the course. But of course most people want success. So why isn’t our poster on the internet successful? They will tell you X, Y, Z (maybe they aren’t anxious about their status). Instead, I think it is a defense mechanism to shield the reality (ie they couldn’t figure out a way to succeed and thus really aren’t all that smart) from their image (ie they are really smart and it’s all of the dumb status strivers who make life difficult for the smart ones).

More comments

Biden could become a President (indeed, beat Trump at a debate!) while in early stages of dementia

He was also never that smart or studious when his brain was at full power either.

Yeah yeah, money talks bullshit walks, reality is that which pays. This is not a philosophy for human beings.

Respectfully disagreed. I am surrounded IRL by people who reject exactly those simple messages, and whose lives are downward spirals of empty talk, self-delusion, and the rejection of all measurable metrics in favor of declaring as profoundly ethical their bad habits, self-destructive behavior and perpetual failures at even their own stated goals, and who excuse their lies, their parasitic existences and their proselytizing to this complex of self-defeat with words very similar to yours - that human beings needn't accomplish or even do anything to be valuable, and that all those who in fact do things and accomplish things are surely immoral and deserve contempt.

There are probably unhealthy extremes either way, but maxims like

money talks bullshit walks, reality is that which pays

actually form a very healthy philosophy for humans under most circumstances.

and the rejection of all measurable metrics

There are measurable metrics of intelligence, such as IQ and SAT. There are measurable metrics of academic and scientific accomplishment, such as GPA and h-index. There are measurable metrics of managerial performance, such as the KPIs used by the Chinese Communist Party to promote officials, or quarterly returns of a corporation. There are measurable metrics for all kinds of things, but Trump's measurable success is that he could get enough Americans to vote for him twice. The assertion that this metric is a proxy of intelligence is ill-supported. What you try to argue is just slavish worship of power, not some "healthy philosophy".

I'm not saying anything about Trump at all. I'm strictly discussing the maxims you described as unfit for humans, and how I consider them superior to the one actually espoused by many humans.

Would it be more charitable to grant that he has "animal cunning"?

I do jest, but so far you seem to not know what intellectual virtue, exactly, has led Trump to success, only assuming that there must be something.

In particular one can point out that Dase didn't say Trump has always been a moron, only that his 80+ old self is more stupid than LLMs. Most of Trump's self-achieved success has been before that. A rock with the correct words on it can be elected president in a system where power is sufficiently diffused.

Less charitably, there are many factors that can cause one person to be in a better position to achieve things, compounding to a 1000x advantage (measured how?), and intelligence is just one. It doesn't seem laughable that a 100 IQ boor with generational wealth and business connections in USA had achieved 1000x more than a hypothetical provincial well-read 120 IQ Russian twice his younger.

It does seem laughable that a 100 IQ boor with generational wealth could basically be the most important person in the world for over a decade. There are tons of idiots born into money and connections. None have leveraged it like Trump. That suggests he isn’t a 100 IQ boob.

And the broader point is that when one person has had that level of success, his detractors better have similar level of success before they call him stupid. It’s like the idiots calling Musk dumb.

It does seem laughable that a 100 IQ boor with generational wealth could basically be the most important person in the world for over a decade.

Most important in the world is credit to US, not to any particular president. Most important in the country? Many kings had accomplished that without any effort simply by being heirs to a stable hereditary monarchy.

You seem to ascribe some additional moral protection to intelligence that you don't afford other virtues. So when someone is successful, it must have been intelligence? No, there are plenty of other factors, including, yes, sheer dumb being the right-shaped person at the right place in the right time.

I'll continue to call a king naked when he is naked instead of cringing from it in some performative show of humility, "well he's king, so he must have some good reason behind this, or he wouldn't be king!". Your way is just not being able to point out things about anyone famous for any reason because no one here is that famous.

You must realize there is a marked difference between being born the heir to the throne and accomplishing what Trump accomplished?

And of course there are other virtues, etc. I’m just saying you don’t get the top of the top by being an idiot.

More comments

Yet the image is still chock full of falsehoods. I wonder why you never addressed that point?

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.

They are not "at the gates", they are in the South China Sea, annexing Canada or Cuba or Venezuela will do absolutely nothing to stop their expansion there if they will it, and it doesn't even look like Trump wants to stop it.

But speaking of, here's how Sun Yat-Sen, the father of both Chinese Republics, saw the desirable future from 1917:

Under the principle of Pan-Asianism, Japan and China can together develop the natural resources in the West of the Pacific, while under the Monroe Doctrine the United States can unify authority in the East of that ocean. Each should confine herself to her own field; then there will be no conflict whatsoever. By a concerted effort of these three Powers disarmament might some day be affected, and, going one step further, permanent peace of the world secured. This would not be to the benefit of China alone. Should China follow this as the guiding principle of her diplomacy, she would completely eliminate any possible cause of national extinction.

Would you accept these terms? Or is there still some interest in meddling on the Asian side of the Pacific, with Canada somehow a stepping stone to this goal?

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.

That would irreversibly destroy the American Republic. 22 Canadian Senator and that many votes in the electoral college would ruin us. I'd rather the dissolution of the US compared to being chained to that anchor.

In fact I'd go the other way and make them a territory. They can have non-voting Congressional representatives and nothing more. Cold Puerto Rico.

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.

I didn't see your comment before I wrote mine. Yes I just commented saying I'd prefer them to be a territory. Like Puerto Rico. I think the US would be ruined if Canadians get dozens of electoral college votes.

It would be a second California for Federal elections. I mean that in the worst sense possible.

Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Marianas islands. The residents of these places are not slave races. They are not lower than me in terms of dignity. They don't get senators. Their Congressional representatives can't vote. They don't vote for president. That's fine. That's about right for Canada.

George III, welcome back! We missed you.

They are not lower than me in terms of dignity. They don't get senators. Their Congressional representatives can't vote. They don't vote for president. That's fine.

The first statement is contradicted by the subsequent ones. Not only do the people of PR, Guam, etc... not get an equal say in their country's government (as is the case between the residents of various states); they don't get any say. They are beneath you in dignity because they are your subjects. Subjects on fairly generous terms, I will grant you, but those terms are dictated to them by Congress and are subject to change without their consent.

Why, in hypothetical US-Canadian union, shouldn't Canadians get terms at least as good a deal as California, if not Wyoming?

In a hypothetical US-Canadian union, Canada has shown itself to be incapable of independent self governance and needs to be kept away from influencing American federal politics. Some moderate amount of local control would be tolerated but absolutely no say in Federal matters. Otherwise they would drag us down to their level.
What insanity could cause Americans to chain themselves to that anchor? Canada is a sad lesson in the possible governmental failure modes America could suffer from. The wounds were self-inflicted through poor governance. I'm a father; I can't force that bleak Canadian future onto my kids. They can't be allowed to harm American politics like this.

The truly baffling thing here is Canadians thinking they are somehow privileged and above Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans have been US citizens for over a century. Canadians have been (understandably) oppositional to Americans since 1812. I get it, but they are truly last in line for getting electoral votes. I'd grant the Philippines statehood and Senators before Canada.

What insanity could cause Americans to chain themselves to that anchor?

Apparently the desire of the current president for territorial acquisitions, but a slightly more charitable answer is that it would facilitate military and economic cooperation.

The wounds were self-inflicted through poor governance.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to illustrate. Much of this document is blotted out for some reason, about half of the remaining space is dedicated to talking about climate change, and the remainder is some pretty generic faff about future law enforcement problems.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this post just seems like chauvinistic posturing without substance. What specific aspects of poor governance would you identify in Canada or Canadian provinces relative to the US or particular states? The US already has whole regions of badly government territory e.g. the South, and so far disenfranchising the South remains a relatively fringe opinion.

That document was an internal RCMP risk estimation for the near future. It was obtained using the Canadian equivalent of the freedom of information act. They heavily censored it before releasing it resulting in those blanked out sections. They left in one relevant part:

In the words of Emanuel Macron, we are about to see "the end of abundance." Economic forecasts for the next five years and beyond are bleak. It is always unclear exactly how economies will perform, but this period of recession will likely have a negative impact on the social and political world as well.

POPULAR RESENTMENT The coming period of recession will also accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations. For example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live. The fallout from this decline in living standards will be exacerbated by the fact that the difference between the extremes of wealth is greater now in developed countries than it has been at any time in several generations.

EROSION OF TRUST

This is a direct result of Canadian federal policy. For every three Canadians, import one immigrant. But don't build a new housing unit for every three existing units, so the number of units per resident decreases over time and the costs increase.

The young are screwed in Canada. To the point it is a law enforcement cause for concern regarding social stability.

I don't want my country made similar to their's by them swinging every presidential election in their direction. I get their natural resources are valuable. Their economy already is an extension of ours with something like 80% of their trade being with us and 90% of their population being within 100 miles of the border. There's much to be attracted to for a closer economic relationship. I'm not objecting to their lumber and car parts. But the rot in their politics would be a fatal disease.

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The truly baffling thing here is Canadians thinking they are somehow privileged and above Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans have been US citizens for over a century. Canadians have been (understandably) oppositional to Americans since 1812.

This makes it sound as if the response to the 51st state about seat allocation and not just terror and anger at the idea itself.

Any Canadian who wants to become an American and can hack it takes a short drive down. The ones who stay were fine with deep economic and cultural links without being Americans. Well, mostly.

and not just terror and anger at the idea itself.

Someone has to step me through the terror and anger at the idea itself. Canada is actively suicidal and self-hating, I honestly don't see what a postnational country is supposed to fear about losing independence.

The European reaction to the Greenland affair is similarly deranged.

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Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Marianas islands. The residents of these places are not slave races. They are not lower than me in terms of dignity. They don't get senators. Their Congressional representatives can't vote. They don't vote for president. That's fine. That's about right for Canada.

No thanks, and no thanks.

Very well. May Canada and the US never join. That's a nightmare scenario. Quibbling over the number of Senators would be the least of our problems in that existential crisis.

I'm a firm believer in the CanadAnschluss, and think it should be offered in a brotherly manner. Canada should be ten states. There is no purpose to the border.

That is a pretty fair offer I think, but it doesn't have that oomph of real Domination. Also it would legit give Canadians massive political power.

Vancouver and Island, West[1], Ontario[2], St. Lawrence[3], Quebec, Maritimes [4], Newfoundland/Labrador [5], North [6].

Those are all the states you need.

[1] Might need a couple of subdivisions due to geography, but the GVRD and Island are distinct nations compared to everywhere east of that. Removing the crooked law that banned all greenfield development in the rest of BC would be a massive boon to that area.
[2] I mean the part of Ontario on the East of the Canadian Shield, but excluding the parts less than 100km from the St. Lawrence- basically, excluding the region below.
[3] This region is the most culturally belligerent and needs a containment area so that it can't run roughshod over the rest of its area like it does now. It includes Montreal, for if they did not exist, Quebec would have separated 30 years ago.
[4] They'll say they have distinct cultures. If they had any cultural or economic output maybe I'd agree, and they have the same fundamental problem- the destruction of the Grand Banks and shitty geographic location- in common.
[5] Technically still Maritime, but I don't think NB/NS/PEI should have to suffer Newfie English being an official language. Different weather and with much less connection to the rest of the country.
[6] Dividing line at 54'40".

I don't understand why I should be humiliated when an entity with whom I depend on strategically offers me the right to vote on what it does, and I also want my all of my EHC that ran away to the US under NAFTA to have a reason to come back.

Rough illustration

Pretty much, yeah. Canada is mostly huddled around the border because, with the exception of Alberta (and why they're the natural seat of any Western Canadian government), that's where the good land is, and it's also as close as it can possibly be to its largest trading partner.

It does depress me to be talking about this. Maybe if I had grown up in a different time I'd have my elbows raised just as high, and we're ultimately talking about the possible/eventual erasure of peoples and cultures that still ultimately may have value.

But the culture in power, for ever- that in a different time once could and did respect the value of mine- has already clearly been erased, by the Americans, long ago (we venerate the American flag[1] so much we paint it on crosswalks and prosecute its desecration, and the ruling power holds the Blue view that they're bringing civilization to the wasteland from their urban exclaves). So I'm now in the unfortunate position of being dominated by the excesses of American culture even more than I ever think I would be if they were actually in charge, because were we under American law, I'd have far more robust cultural and legal protections against that.

Instead I suffer unilateral domination by that culture that I know I have no hope of checking... unless I am under American law, with an American vote, and American freedom of movement/employment.

[1] That rainbow one with all the chevrons is an American flag; it is intended by a certain subculture to replace the Stars and Stripes. All this stuff is what Blue Americans want for themselves, but they're not restrained by law and process here.

I don't think it should be humiliating to join the metropole. That doesn't mean that it can't be made to be humiliating. Having sex with a woman isn't humiliating, but her demands can make it so.

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".

What's this "we" shit, paleface?

It's not in Republicans' interests for Canadians to vote. It's very much in the interests of Democrats.

And the French-Canadian Exclusion Zone.

iirc we're supposed to catapult toxic waste into it until they help us make shortform video more addicting

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?

Fair. I thought they were closer to the American Samoa model since I'm more familiar with it.

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.

Given your statement on 6 states above, your idea of losing is pretty comfortable.

It's just so very hard to get worked up about this when your region has been intentionally completely locked out of political power by the design of the country in the first place (and even if we do win the election- or at least don't get BTFO- the House won't respect those results anyway!), and so very hard to see the nation as a coherent place worth preserving as a consequence. Yes, the unique culture of my area might be erased in the process, but it was going to be erased by Ottawa anyway; what difference does it make if Washington does that instead?

They both show the same constant, callous, uncompromising indifference as far as I'm concerned.

I don't sympathize, and won't volunteer to die, for people who have continually demonstrated their hatred of me- that is the price of my sympathy. No American ever called me a nigger. (Or, well, okay, maybe that's not really true. But they are 100% a contributing factor to why my 'fellow' Canadians do that though.)

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.

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

What? There have been lots of fixed-wing warplanes operating on both sides in the Russia-Ukraine War on both air-to-ground and air-to-air missions.

My general point is that in terms of deep meaning, the Iranian air force and navy haven't been destroyed. There are Iranian forces in the sky and sea that are contesting the US. Whatever organization they're part of, in tangible terms they're still fighting.

And there are fixed-wing aircraft left in hardened airfields too. Some were escorting a Pakistani delegation arriving in Tehran in April. Their military strategy is probably to wait in bases, try and shoot down incoming missiles/drones in the Iranian interior, furthest from US air cover or launch occasional attacks of opportunity like the low-level bombing run against US bases in Kuwait on day one. Not smart to contest the US head on in the air, fighter for fighter.

I think we basically agree here.

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.

The "minelayers" in @Mantergeistmann's ONI report look like the sort of thing that is affordable to the average middle-class American (though not the average middle-class Europoor). Very unlikely to be worth more than the munition that sunk them.

Fortunately, while it seems wasteful to blow up a ship with munitions more expensive than it, it is not impractical to do so. And so what I said stands: Iran can't mine the Oman corridor.

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

Oh fine, how about this:

Between Canadian tariffs, conflicts with NATO members, and the expense of the Iranian conflict, Trump is accelerating the fall of the white race and Christian leadership of the world to the ultimate benefit of China, India, and majority nonwhite and/or nonchristian states in general.

He did not start these trends or start these conflicts, but I personally believe there was an implicit understanding that Trump would reverse these trends or at least stem the tide. What I see is greater intra-white conflict and increased deficits, to the detriment of Christian moral legitimacy and US-style conservatism from taint of close association with Trump.

What was promised, but not delivered.

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’.

I'm not certain most Americans consistently remember that Quebec exists, but otherwise granted.

Americans remember that there’s some association with French and canada. Not sure they know the term ‘Quebec’.

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”.

I was under the impression that "punish Canada" was from Trump's "Twitter" account (and a bunch of Canadian social media surrounding the issue).

But even as a Canadian I legitimately don't think Canada is in the right here. EU influence here is a problem, British influence is a problem (the LPC got into a bit of trouble with this; they were using British English, not Canadian English), and Chinese influence is a problem.

The solution floated at the beginning was "we want these things; in return, we will just straight up grant everyone citizenship". I see that trade deal (whether that one infographic is real or not) as continuing that posture, and to a point also demonstrating what Red would like to visit on Blue going forward by proxy. But I also believe in no taxation without representation, and if I have to pay taxes caused by the US, it's only fair that I get to vote on them and be protected in protesting against them under US law.

I honestly don't even want full annexation to go into effect here simply because the US is full-retard on things the Canadian identity actually had answers for, and while redistricting would ideally need to be part of the process we arguably had the better way. Blue political thought has already proven stupid enough to erase the legacy of the Underground Railway ending here and accuse the descendants of the people who made it of muhrasism just like they do the rural South, and universal healthcare started in a relative backwater province before the US populace really started to get interested in it. "Laboratories of democracy" is kind of their thing.

But I don't think the average trade war belligerent understands that, so just like when you ask a MAGA supporter what Trump has actually done for the country, I get the exact same response when I ask the Elbows Up-ers. And for the same reason- where Blue American culture has demanded the destruction of what used to be a nuanced look at the rest of the country, and the Elbows Up demographic adapted it perfectly- I think they're going to lose the(ir) nation as a consequence.

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.

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