Get over yourself, Canada

An arrogant Canuck, showing his dignified self to the country.

So the U.S.A., our long-time special friend-with-benefits, has broken up with us. And most of you are not handling it well at all. Standing near the border and shouting “HOW COULD YOU? DON’T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH YOU NEEEEEEED US? WELL TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS GAME, BUDDY”. We tried to make the U.S. jealous by cozying up the the sick old man Europe, and the U.S. laughed. Next, we hinted that maybe we’d be new best friends with China.

You know China, right? The oppressive, authoritarian Communist country that is aggressively grabbing territory in the South China Sea? The country that runs illegal police station in other countries like OUR OWN? The country building up its military in preparation of invading and conquering Taiwan? The Country supplying Russia with money and troops (via its puppet state North Korea)? The country that is currently trying to destroy Canadian Canola farmers and pork producers with massive tariffs? That’s who our ‘eLBowS uP’ Prime Minister wants to deepen trade ties with.

Oh, did I mention that, in the event of China launching a war to take Taiwan, the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s defense? That means our actual ally that we share a massive land border with, would be at war with our new best friend China, which would make Canada a strategic threat to the U.S. How do you think that plays out for us? Have you even spent a moment considering the ramifications of repeatedly antagonizing the Americans?

I struggled to understand the emotional tantrum that my fellow Canadians started to throw once the U.S. tarriffs were announced. It sucks that our largest trading partner decided to apply sales tax to things not covered in our massive trade deal (USMCA), but since USMCA covers about 90% of the goods we sell to them, the additional tarriffs affected very few finished goods sold to the U.S. But we went ballistic with our outrage. Our government slapped on counter-tarriffs, which didn’t really affect the U.S. but did violate the USMCA agreement. Yeah, that’s right. The first thing we did was piss on the trade agreement that the U.S. continued to honour.

We had Premier Lardass go onto U.S. television boo-hooing about how much the mean Americans were hurting our feeewings.

Premier Lardass shows off his ice cream eating skills at a press conference. Never doubted you for a second, Fatty.

But all of you got a lot more upset by trade issues than was reasonable. You reacted like Donald Trump had slapped your mother on the 6 o’clock news. More than costing your country money, you were enraged that your Canadian identity was being attacked. Because it turns out, Canada defines itself by its relationship with the U.S. You all need the Americans to be your best friend, because you don’t know who you are without them. Sure, you’ll trot out some tired cliches about politeness, hockey and maple syrup. But all your core National traits are based on a contrast with the U.S.

And what’s worse, you define yourself this way to avoid fixing your own problems. 14 month wait time for surgery in Ontario? Well the U.S. has medical bankruptcies! Canadian courts keep letting violent sex offenders out of jail early? America puts everyone in jail forever!!! Massive increase in non-citizens allowed into Canada by Federal government, causing housing, healthcare and employment crisies? Trump’s being mean and deporting everyone!!

Your screeching about American politics gets louder and louder, to drown out the reality of the state of our country and its continued decline into disorder and poverty. You voted for the men, federally and provincially, who told you the comforting lie that everything was fine, America is wrong about everything, and nothing has to change. Our youth have an unemployment rate of 15%, but not one of you seems to give a shit about that. You’re more than happy to keep exploiting temporary foreign workers and international student labour to keep your coffees and hamburgers made for cheap.

And you, my fellow Canucks, are in complete denial about the reality of the U.S.-Canada relationship. We are not equals. At best, we are an irritating sidekick to a country whose population is TEN TIMES the size of ours. At worst, we are a security threat.

We do a terrible job at keeping track of the Asylum claimants that have flooded our nation over the last 10 years, most of whom are falsely claiming Asylum as they exploit our federal government’s poorly run Asylum program. It takes up to 60 months for our plodding federal government to determine the validity of an Asylum claim. During that time, we may or may not know where the claimant is residing within our country. Are they in a homeless shelter? A church refuge program? Did they sneak into the U.S to attempt to commit an act of terror? Our government would be the last one to know.

We do a poor job at preventing the industrial manufacture of narcotics (Fentanyl and the like). Criminal organizations like the Mexican cartels and Chinese triads (who have direct ties to the government of China) set up superlabs here is good ol’ Canada, to make and export deadly poison to the U.S. And our collective defense to this accusation was to exclaim “we only caught a tiny amount of Fentanyl at the border! Therefore its a tiny problem!” Is this because there’s no dope being made here, or is it because our law enforcement and government do a terrible job at finding and stopping large scale drug shipments? But good news! Your Federal Government appointed a Fentanyl Czar to get to the bottom of all this. Unfortunately, he has no power to do anything. A symbolic gesture that accomplishes nothing- a hallmark Progressive approach.

We cry about ‘Free Trade’ while demanding that our dairy cartel protectionism is left untouched. We inherently bargain from a position of bad faith, in defense of a Supply Management system that makes the Quebec Dairy industry rich and average Canadians poorer.

We whine about ‘soft power’ and demand we be listened to as a N.A.T.O. ally without doing our fair share. For decades we have coasted on the U.S. military’s coattails, refusing to meet our N.A.T.O funding commitments. And when we do increase our spending, we do it primarily by labelling non-military spending as ‘Defense spending’. That’s dishonest and shameful. The goal of a GDP spending target was to increase each NATO nation’s military capability, so that they can each help defend democracy from hostile actors like Russia. Instead, Canada and Europe have used deceitful accounting tricks to skirt their obligations, relying on America to do all the heavy lifting. Is that a respectful relationship?

So spare me your rending of garments and gnashing at teeth over the injustices inflicted on innocent Canada by the Bad Orange Man. We have been poor friends and allies for years, taking advantage of American openness while sneering condescendingly at them at every turn. Stop refusing to consider the possibility that their issues with us could have merit. Stop trying to spite them at every turn, for the sake of your bruised ego. The world is stumbling towards a full global conflict, if it isn’t already underway. We are out of time, and can no longer indulge our massive egos and even larger insecurities. To paraphrase what Trump said in response to Zelenskky’s attempt to publicly shame the U.S. as a deal-making tactic: We’re not in a good position. We don’t have the cards right now. 

At the very least, find your principles, grow a goddamned spine, and get your own house in order.

Hateful gossip

We, as Canadians, have the ongoing opportunity to watch massive sociological events take place in a country that is almost identical culturally to us. We have far more in common with them than any European nation, much less the rest of the world. And invariably, any major change they go through is usually mirrored here within 2 years. So watching them is a window into what might be coming for us.

You can see that the immigration argument that has been raging in the U.S. for 4+years, an argument that boiled over into a second Trump presidency, is coming to prominence in Canadian political discussion. Will the governing Liberals make the same mistake that Biden’s Democrats did, ignoring the voter’s concerns on a lack of immigration law enforcement, in dogged commitment to the Progressive ideological belief that “no human is illegal”? Will they continue to call anyone who worries about the strain non-citizens put on healthcare, housing, and the job market “racists and bigots”? I’m not optimistic that they can correct their behaviour.

But the most recent U.S. event points to an even darker possible future: the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. He wasn’t an elected official. He had no official power over anyone. He debated and argued with people of opposing beliefs, defending his principles. And someone murdered him for that.

This by itself is not an omen. There will always be evil human beings who commit murder, and their twisted rationale will never be defensible. But the ill omens come from 3 sources:

  1. From the TikTok trolls who publicly cheered and celebrated his murder. These young, happy trolls danced and smiled in rapturous joy because a man they hated was shot and killed. A functioning, polite society depends on standards of etiquette, and a foundational standard is not publicly cheering for murder. As an interesting sidenote, most of the people filming themselves celebrating were women. The fairer sex has its own fondness for blood and revenge.
  2. From various mainstream media commentators who have insinuated (or outright stated) that Kirk’s words brought his death upon himself. Pundits on CBC and MSNBC worked to shift blame away from the madman who committed the murder, to the victim and to the U.S. president. This reenforces the dangerous belief that some words are so dangerous that they justify actual violence in response.
  3. The accusations of the beliefs that Kirk advocated are built on intentional misinterpretations and guilt by association attacks. The majority of people are simply parroting what Kirk’s enemies have said.

I’m going to expand on point 3, with examples. First is a correction from the New York Times:

One of America’s most important news sources, the New York Times, spread the false accusation that Kirk made antisemitic statements. They did this on the day he was killed. Issuing the correction a day later does nothing to undo the damage of reenforcing the initial accusation.

And literary icon Stephen King spread a similar dishonesty:

I will give Stephen credit for realizing his horrendous mistake and issuing a correction, but once again, the damage was already done.

And there are too many examples within Canadian media to simply pick one. Almost all news outlets parrot the labels of “White Nationalist”, “bigot” or “fascist” without any concern for the evidence behind these labels, or the motivations of the people who described his so. And if they are misrepresenting Kirk with second hand accusations, who else are they misrepresenting to the Canadian public?

And the frustrating element of this is, with some basic journalism, you could make a more accurate representation of the beliefs that Kirk held that were contentious and hated by some. He did believe homosexuality was a sin, but did not support any hostile actions towards the gay community (in fact he welcomed a gay conservative into the movement during one of his campus debates). He was a fervent Christian who believed his religion was foundational to the U.S. and should play a bigger role in shaping policy, but strongly spoke against theocracy. He was bluntly critical of Islam in a way that would be found offensive to most muslims. He was firmly opposed to abortion, on the grounds that human life is sacred. He believed that absent fathers played a significant role in the crime and dysfunction of poor Black American communities. And for each of his beliefs, he was willing to sit in front of a crowd, explain why he held these positions, and calmly debate with anyone who came to the microphone to question him. You may disagree with his beliefs. You are free to hate his beliefs, and say so publicly. But no one, not me, not you, has the right to murder him for holding these beliefs.

I will end with a practical warning for anyone who wants to argue in favour of murder as a response to “hateful” words. You are proposing violence as an appropriate rebuttal to speech you dislike, and your enemies will be more than happy to accept these terms. As writers Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff said in this Atlantic article: “Free Speech, properly understood, is not violence. It is a cure for violence.”

You and me, baby, ain’t nothin’ but mammals

I’m going to put on my amateur sociologist/evolutionary psychologist hat and ramble at you, so I’d appreciate some preemptive forgiveness at my uninformed indulgence.

The survival of a species is driven by two distinct primal forces: creation and destruction. Humans, like most animals, have these forces allocated by sex. Male is destruction, female is creation. I know some of you flinch immediately at the mention of destruction, but a primal force is not inherently good nor evil. It simply is. And a thriving species needs both forces working in concert.

Creation encompasses not only the most important and literal manifestation (children) but also the creation of strong group cohesion for the in-group: the family, the tribe, the community. Using empathy to resolve conflict between members of the in-group and to prevent internal threats to community stability.

Destruction shapes the external world and bends it to the good of the in-group. And it defends the in-group from the out-groups that threaten the safety of the tribe, securing the resources that the tribe needs to live.

These forces are not exclusive to their respective sexes. Men have empathy for their in-group. Women use social violence to maintain order and to prevent the upheaval of direct competition within the tribe. It’s a dynamic relationship that works for the human animal. But each force must be bound by the other.

2 things have happen in modern society that have upset this balance.

First, destruction has been marked as unredeemable evil, and creation as absolutely good. In practical terms, men have been condemned as dangerous beasts who must be restrained and trained to never use violence. And with enough stern lecturing and scolding about feelings and empathy, they will be able to remove the ‘stain’ of violence from their souls. But scolding does not, and will never stop the ill intention actions of hostile members from the out-group. By shackling the strong men in your tribe, you submit yourself to the tyranny of weak men from outside the group. And destruction as a primal force is hard-coded into our DNA. The same biology that gives men the capacity for terrible physical deeds also fuels the most heroic of our actions: soldiers defending their children, firefighters rushing into a burning building, cops chasing down violent psychopaths. In a healthy society, the force of destruction is used as a tool to protect the weak and vulnerable of your tribe.

The second disruption is unbounded empathy. It’s been expanded so that effectively every human is part of the in-group, and empathy is allocated on an emotional basis of who you most feel bad for. But for empathy to be effective there must be a shared priority of the welfare of the entire group. The former out-groups that you have no classified as part of your tribe have no allegiance to you or your actual tribe. And by spending limited resources on the out-group, you expose your group to danger.

Here is an example of empathy gone horribly wrong. To summarize, a non-citizen was spared a criminal conviction, because a conviction would have prevented him from becoming a Canadian citizen. The crime that he was charged with? Trying to pay at 15-year-old girl to have sex with him. Our empathy-driven criminal justice system prioritized adding this man to the Canadian in-group instead of protecting Canadian children from sex predators. So the safety of our internal group has now been compromised (repeatedly. This is sadly not the only example of our failed rule of law). And since empathy has not only failed to stop the danger, but actively increased it, men will come to the decision that they must take action. THIS IS NOT A GOOD SITUATION FOR SOCIETY. I believe in the value of strong laws that are applied fairly, to prevent violence as a solution. But when the Rule of Law fails to protect the weak, men will take the law into their own hands. And there will be blood.