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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29115 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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A smarter US would be trying to get them to join the US.

They would contaminate us with their policies. Our politics would be to some degree merged with theirs.

Western Canada only has about 12 million people compared to the US's 330 million.

Correct. And 3 or so new blue states would each get a couple senators, a few congresspeople and a corresponding amount of electoral votes. Which could drive American politics in a new direction.

It's the idea that if Texas turns blue then the Republicans are finished. A few successive Democratic administrations with supporting congress will rewrite our laws and stack our courts full of judges who will support them. And the Republican path too electoral victory is to narrow to survive a blue Texas (or blue British Columbia plus Albert plus maybe some more).

Assimilation only happens on US terms. It would quickly overwhelm Canada and bring it in line with US politics.

Most of the distasteful shit (from my perspective anyway - anti-migrant Canadians must hate both parties since I came over in Harper's time...) is Liberal stuff they can get away with because there's no GOP and governmental splits. That changes in the US system.

People keep wrongly thinking the Republican party will be vanquished forever as a contender for president and having a majority of congress if only Texas would drift a bit bluer. The thinking goes that any year now they will be a permanent minority in terms of national elected officials.

If we let large portions of Canada into the US, then eventually they will get to vote for Congressional representatives and president. Then the Republican party will be vanquished forever. Or until they realign in such a way as to capture around half the national level power. Which I characterize as being contaminated by Canadian politics.

Western Canada is HEAVILY covservative, and the most immediate impact would be all the Blue canadians move to blue state for bureaucracy jobs and tons of Red Americans move north for Resource extraction jobs

Canada is so far to the left of the US that a Canadian conservative would still fit comfortably in the Democratic party.

I thought BC was majority social democrats NDP. They aren't about to vote Republican.

But googling a bit I seem to have been off base claiming Alberta would be blue. They might side with Republicans. News headlines are a bit comical about their "hard right turn", etc. Such scary language.

Yukon is surprisingly liberal. As an American I naively wouldn't have guessed.

But maybe I deeply misunderstand Canada. Which I really might. Please no one take my American clicking around on Google as serious understanding of Canadian politics.

No, you're right. At least, as of the 2020 election, Alberta would vote as liberal as New York & Rhode Island in polling done during the 2020 election.

https://www.thewrit.ca/p/how-canada-would-vote-in-a-us-election

Now, maybe that's shifted a lot, but I doubt it. The thing isn't how liberal the rest of the world is, but how right-wing US Republicans are, even compared to even other right-leaning parties in the rest of the developed world.

I thought BC was majority social democrats NDP.

BC is majority social/democrat/NDP in the same way, and for most of the same reasons, as Montana acts under normal conditions. Sure, it's a little different because Montana doesn't have any major cities to completely destroy the balance of power (BC is closer to Washington in this regard, which you can see clearly if you look at the various federal election results for this province), but the outlooks on life are pretty similar.

Yukon is surprisingly liberal. As an American I naively wouldn't have guessed.

The Yukon territory has 40,000 people within its borders; so do the Northwest Territories and Nunavut (contrast 750,000 residents of Alaska). These territories more or less don't exist without being actively sustained by the federal government (including support for the native population up there), and the Liberal party is generally better at this than the Conservatives.

Why?

Alberta is cold Texas. Who doesn't want more Texas in the US?

Obligatory reminder that Texas is not actually a bastion of freedom

For non-potheads, Texas is relatively free, and education savings accounts will happen- Greg Abbott is personally campaigning for primary challengers to republicans that voted against it, you’re looking at a much darker red in the Texas state legislature ‘25.

I'm sorry I promise I will read the full report and treat it with absolute seriousness, as soon as I get over laughing at #Cannabis And Salvia Freedom

If that section doesn't end with the writer becoming a gelatinous 5-dimensional cube falling through an endless universe of mirrors for ten billion years, I will concede that his Salvia Freedom has been Infringed.
Not mocking anyone here: libertarians are my favorite people because they're the only fun political group left.

It actually is quite free, that source just dings it for stuff like a high incarceration rate which is irrelevant.

If you download the full spreadsheet and reduce the weight of incarceration rate to zero in the calculations, Texas still ends up at a pitiful #46 on personal freedom.

Gambling: #39
Marriage: #44
Education: #35
Marijuana: #50
Asset forfeiture: #42
Travel: #50

The entire thing is full of really dumb metrics that are unrelated to any reasonable definition of freedom. I don't care what percentage of slot machines are in casinos or whether illegal immigrants can get drivers licenses or what percentage of marriages are gay.

The entire thing is full of really dumb metrics that are unrelated to any reasonable definition of freedom.

What is freedom? It depends whom you ask.

Squishy people will say: Freedom is when same sex married couple can defend their marijuana field with assault rifles.

Hardcore people will say: Freedom is when different age bracket married couple can defend their racially exclusive town with sawed off shotguns and machine guns.

Freedom is when I have more power than you.

what percentage of slot machines are in casinos

The actual metric is "Slot/video games legal outside casinos & tracks? (=1 if yes, =0.25 if in strictly limited locations with half of revenue going to charity, =0 if no)".

what percentage of marriages are gay

The actual metric is "Same-sex civil union, marriage, or extensive domestic partnership=1, limited domestic partnership=0.5, no same-sex unions=0, super-doma=-1". (And all the states score the same on that metric anyway due to the federal Supreme Court's decision.)

The entire thing is full of really dumb metrics that are unrelated to any reasonable definition of freedom.

If you disagree with the authors' weights, you can modify them yourself.

Would help the US in its great power competition with China.

I don't think trying to convince an ally's citizens to secede is generally considered a wise geopolitical move. Would you rather

  1. have Canada as a close ally
  2. make the Canadian government dislike us for decades (centuries?) but we get the honor of adding a few millions citizens - citizens who probably average half the US average income, which means they will probably be net-government recipients rather than payers.

Seems like an easy choice to me.

If Canada lost some territory to the US, it would become even more dependent on the US.

Western Canada is much wealthier than eastern Canada. The GDP per capita there is only slightly less than it is in the US.

I guess it depends how exactly @Recursive_Enlightenment envisions this. Are we getting all of Western Canada, all conservative provinces, or all rural Canada? Still, I think the end result of the geopolitical calculation remains essentially unchanged.

Like how Italy ""helped"" the Nazis in WW2. Bad allies are a liability. Unless the plan is for Americans to "drill, baby, drill" Canada for natural resources.

Does the US really need an additional few (compared to them) poor states added to it? Maybe linking up to Alaska by land would be nice but beyond that?

Alberta is the standout but Saskatchewan and Manitoba are no slouches either: as global warming progresses the US agricultural zones slowly creep northward. All of our Ukrainians have historically lived there, as well.

Alberta and Saskatchewan are richer than the US as result of their natural resources, but Manitoba is well below the Canadian average.

Alberta is a rich province thanks largely to oil. It is way above the Canadian average and would be in the top half of states.

Fair enough. That would definitely be a good add to the USA. Probably worth the rest of the baggage too if you can get Alberta.

At least Alberta is a massive subsidy to the rest of Canada, I think.

Would they still be poor if they were inside the US?

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