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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32223 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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For the trolling enthusiasts and Art-of-the-Deal readers out there: At what point am I allowed to take his rhetoric on Canada seriously? What baffles me is how the hell he could want it in the first place. It's got so many problems... But with that latest post from him, I kind of believe he actually does want it.

Personally, I'd rather see a Mexico takeover. It would be a lot more satisfying to make it a zero-to-hero country, maybe go in and strangle the cartels to death and ensure good elections with no corruption, and watch it bloom. Maybe it would get even better than Spain!

It seems to have worked to stop the counter tariff, actually. I wonder how long this dance will continue.

It's not a bad negotiation tactic to stake an initial position that you don't really want so you can give it up later. Trump's problem is that everyone knows he does this, so he has to go to even further extremes and repeatedly insist on them to draw the other side's estimate of what he really wants closer to his side.

The old chestnut is that we should take Trump seriously but not literally, and I think with Canada that's true. The global left for decades has talked about the American Empire and Trump has said, well, why not? That doesn't need to mean formal statehood but it does need to include personal deference to the emperor.

There are surprisingly reasonable arguments that the US should take steps to break up and annex parts of Canada (or at least intervene with their domestic policies of mass immigration that are undermining stability) to sustain continental hegemony:

https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/the-canadian-question

Ty for the link, interesting read.

He's a real estate guy, Canada is a lot of real estate. You could connect Alaska to lower 48 instead of the separation that currently exists.

I am Canadian. I'm neutral to mildly positive on an American take-over, only because our gdp per capita and median wages are abysmally low compared to the USA. Healthcare is...eh, I've tried to crunch the numbers on cost vs time, and end of the day I still think ours is slightly better for my situation. Took me 3 months to get a hernia surgery, and a relative in the states 3 days - but it was $3k for them. Mine was "free". But man, i am an outlier, people here hate america now, moreso than ever before

But man, i am an outlier, people here hate america now, moreso than ever before

I think it was mostly a LARP before, except for a few people deeply invested in a sort of left-wing anti-Americanism.

Now? It'll be interesting to see what happens after Trump is gone because Canada needs the US but the loathing may linger.

Again I think the rhetoric by Trump is peak trolling. He is pointing out Canada’s smallness (they would simply be a 51st state — on par with Wyoming) and picking at Canadian’s reflexive anti Americanness. And the Canadians are falling for it hook line and sinker. Now is the trolling good? I don’t know.

My opinion as an American: it would make more sense to break Canada up into 3 pieces. Let Quebec go free or be a territory of France if it wants. Let Vancouver and the surrounding area be an autonomous city state. The rest should become part of the US, because "the rest" (so the prairie provinces and the maritimes) really has a lot in common with the US, and it's just an unnecessary hassle having a border.

A Vancouver city state would just turn into a Chinese province in North America.

It's only 20% Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Metro_Vancouver#Ethnic_diversity

So basically, North Night City. At least they’d have the Island as a counterbalance, but still.

This is also close to my opinion as someone unfortunate enough to share a government of, but not an opinion with, Toronto boomers.

There are 4 major nations in Canada: Quebec, Toronto-Montreal, Maritimes (incl. Newfoundland), West.

Those are the zones of concern- the “states”, if you will. And if Toronto boomers break the country into pieces prosecuting this stupid little war of theirs, this is what you’ll likely be negotiating with. In fact, you already are, but most people aren’t aware of that yet.

The US is already an empire of 11 countries, much as Canada is already an empire/post-national state of 4 or 5 countries. If Canada loses the West to the US, it’ll be the end of Canada, and it might be the end of the US as you know it as well.

The best outcome for the both of us is that the West separates from Canada, adopts the USD directly, and becomes a new nation. Then we can threaten to peel off your northern states once the Ds get elected again. Eastern grievances are not Western grievances.

If Canada loses the West to the US, it’ll be the end of Canada, and it might be the end of the US as you know it as well.

Why would it be the end of either country? Let alone both.

Because we'd be a neutral alternative to both, allowing us to peel off free/red states should the US be rewarded with a real tyrant of a D sometime. Canada (as in, Toronto to Montreal) is a dead end for anyone not living in those areas and, much like how FCfromSSC talks about a national divorce for the US, the divide (and emnity) East vs. West is very strong here too.

interesting. can i ask, how long have you been canadian? fewer than 5 years? are you perhaps of a subcontinental persuasion?

This is kind of funny - does my writing style sound Indian? Or is it the fact that I don't have much national pride after the country spent the last decade trying to stamp it out?

I am very white, born and raised in 'Berta. Family history Acadia/Australia/Wales/USA mix

On the American side, I can see a case to be made for "stronger together" generally, but I feel like if Trump were serious about this, he's going the wrong way: winning hearts and minds would be the first step to doing so.

On the other hand, there are relatively few (peaceful) examples of nations unifying successfully. Notionally the EU seems to intend to do that, with discrete steps taken, but hasn't agreed to form, say, a single army together yet. The US Constitutional Convention maybe counts as an example, and IMO proves the point that we are stronger united as 50 states, but if you were trying to do it today, I can't imagine getting Texas, Florida, California, and New York to agree both to throw in their lot together and to let DC be in charge of them.

What I want most of all, is something like the EU - total trade union (so no customs at all), and free movement. If we ended up with that, I would build Donald a statue

Hey, thanks to Trump you might finally get a customs union within Canada.

Totally, if anything this might actually create political capital to build some pipelines, get rid of internal trade barriers, etc.

It's a real mind fuck to want Trump to lose but not to lose so soon that everyone goes back to business as usual.

I think that would have been possible as a goal six months ago. Less so, today. Although that would probably require more harmonization of national security and immigration concerns, I think compromises could have been worked out.

total trade union (so no customs at all)

*customs union

I think Trump would be happy with Finlandising Canada to some degree, like Greenland the saber rattling is always accompanied with national security allusions and they have been a bit too conciliatory to the Chinese for the comfort of a US that's so obviously pivoting to face east (well, west, but you get my point).

...what does Finlandising mean in this instance? During the actual Finlandisation, Finland was neutral, while Canada is right now in a military alliance with the US. A Finland that was in a military alliance with Soviet Union wouldn't be Finlandised, it would have been an outright part of the Soviet block.

Here I mean giving up the ability to have a foreign policy to a foreign power. But this works too, I think the US would be fine with a Canada that has a formal commitment to neutrality.

I think the US would be fine with a Canada that has a formal commitment to neutrality.

Do you really? I’m curious about your reasoning because that seems far from obvious to me. With the status quo, even with a fairly dysfunctional Canada, the US gets a lot of value out of NORAD and, to a lesser but still meaningful extent, Canadian participation in the Five Eyes. There’s certainly room for improvement (e.g. Canada needs to be far more wary of foreign influence/espionage in its government, and needs to change its immigration policy before it becomes a source of illegal immigrants and smugglers like Mexico is) but a truly neutral Canada would seem to be strictly worse for the US.

It's not the best outcome for the US, but I think it's acceptable. I don't think Americans care as much about Canadian contribution to their alliance as they do, say, the UK. Territorial security is a lot more important.

NORAD is somewhat valuable, but I think the US would trade it for a border that doesn't let fentanyl or infiltrators pass and a convincing guarantee that China will never be able to threaten the US from the North.

I'll gladly concede that annexation is a better outcome (and the optimal outcome probably Canada being a US puppet state) but neither seems very likely, Trump saber rattling aside.

Interesting -- I do see your point. I think the status quo of Canadian relations/border control would have to get a lot worse before I'd see neutrality as an upgrade, but that's not impossible. The fundamental problem is that it's hard for me to imagine a neutral Canada as more or even equally resilient to Chinese infiltration/influence than a status-quo Canada, such that "a convincing guarantee that China will never be able to threaten the US from the North" is basically impossible unless Canada is in a military alliance with the US (i.e., NORAD). I can't really imagine a scenario where a neutral Canada doesn't become a diplomatic and intelligence battleground between the US and China (as well as Russia and India, among others).

Annexing Canada outright would probably be desirable in an abstract sense but is entirely unrealistic; a much-more-subservient or "puppet" Canada would definitely be good for the US though. Especially given their sometimes very strange foreign policy choices (too deferential to China when the US is their open enemy, weirdly hostile to India when the US is trying to bring them into alignment -- as an aside I think the bad relationship with India is an ironic consequence of importing such an enormous number of poorly-assimilated Indian immigrants, they are importing grievances and political fractiousness along with them). If, as you said in your previous comment, Canada essentially gave up its foreign policy to US control then that would be a great outcome for the US, although of course that seems very unlikely.

I do wonder if Trump is aiming for that sort of outcome, albeit in his particular incompetent and clumsy manner. Perhaps he thinks he can bring the Canadian government to heel and force them into a subservient position internationally, or force them to take action on their immigration/border control fiasco... but trying to do this through an "all stick, no carrot" approach seems like a terrible idea. Not least because he's making the Canadian conservative party less popular through association, and if they get another liberal government (which is only even on the table because of the backlash against Trump spilling into a backlash against the Canadian right, prior to this diplomatic clusterfuck the conservatives were pretty much locked in to win, afaik) it will make pretty much every US goal harder to achieve.

ensure good elections with no corruption

Let's show we can do that north of the Rio Grande first.

American corruption is a lot different from Mexican corruption.

Amazing what you can achieve when your political assassins can afford scope rings and have more training than getting kicked off a high school shooting club.

I joke, but with lists like that it must take some balls to be a Mexican politician.

I agree Mexico is the much tastier target. In my personal assessment, Mexico is more culturally compatible with the US than Canada. The US could sort out the corruption and drugs, Mexico would get a massive infusion of cash. I’d gladly support a 10 trillion dollar buyout of Mexico, and it will come with a canal, so what’s not to love?

As to your question of Trumps seriousness for acquiring Canada… he appears to be quite serious. However, approximately no one else in the US body or government holds that position including other Republicans (as evidenced by that line in his speech getting notably no applause)… and as ever, I feel obliged to apologize for the shameful treatment of your country, assuming you are Canadian.

I agree Mexico is the much tastier target. In my personal assessment, Mexico is more culturally compatible with the US than Canada.

That's an... interesting proposition. To start, how do you expect the language integration to work out? Just have dual national languages? National languages on the state level? How do you feel about Spanish slowly (or not so slowly) creeping north, possibly displacing English in the southwestern states within a few decades?

Language is extremely important for the national consciousness. And unfortunately, both the old stock and the new citizens don't exactly have a great history/culture of bilingualism. The number of people being actually fully fluent in both languages is currently extremely low (when compared to existing countries with multiple national languages).

My prediction is you'd have independence movements solely based on language, and quickly.

The number of people being actually fully fluent in both languages is currently extremely low (when compared to existing countries with multiple national languages).

Is this true? Perhaps my perspective is skewed by living in San Diego, which is roughly one-third Latino and is deeply integrated with Mexican and Mexican-American culture. I personally know dozens of people who are fully fluent (in the sense of being able to competently converse about a wide range of topics) in both Spanish and English. When it comes to second-generation Latinos in most parts of the country, or at least in the Southwest, my perception is that bilingual fluency is actually very high. Sure, a given individual would probably struggle to write a novel or interpret a dense legal document full of technical jargon, but that’s true of a great many monolingual English speakers as well.

(And in fact in some cases, native Spanish-speaking Latinos may actually be more conversant with the formal grammatical structure of written English than they are with written Spanish, since they learned Spanish as a spoken language growing up, but didn’t receive any formal education in it since they attend English-speaking American public schools.)

Is this true? Perhaps my perspective is skewed by living in San Diego

Probably, it's the location I would expect to look the best in that respect.

I personally know dozens of people who are fully fluent (in the sense of being able to competently converse about a wide range of topics) in both Spanish and English. When it comes to second-generation Latinos in most parts of the country, or at least in the Southwest, my perception is that bilingual fluency is actually very high.

In my experience, many of those people actually can't e.g. do their standard white-collar job in their second language. If you want to have a country with dual national languages (as opposed to making Mexico an imperial possession as someone suggested below), you need a lot of people who can do that well, since a lot of national/federal institutions need to be run in both languages.

At least you would need those people, traditionally. A lot of that might shortly be superfluous, since language models work well across languages and federal institutions might be a thing of the past!

But just imagine being in the Army, and working alongside an integrated Mexican auxiliary battalion - or integrating US special forces into a Mexican-led theater. You'd really want at least everybody above O-2 being bilingual. Messing around with interpreters under fire is pretty much unacceptable.

The answer here is empire; Mexico wouldn't make sense integrated into the US, but would as a semi-autonomous imperial possession. For different reasons, so would Canada (probably multiple parts). The problem is I believe the US would be very bad at actual empire (as opposed to what is often called the American empire), so I don't support this.

The US could sort out the corruption and drugs,

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh citation very much needed.

It comes with a canal

Which canal is that?

It’s a nominal canal - see Mexico's Interoceanic Corridor project.

i would guess cozetcoalcos - salina cruz. it is 200km - so not that much for modern building. Suez is 193.

Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission for 1899–1901 pp. 69–70:

The Tehuantepec summit is in the neighborhood of 700 feet above tide water. It is, moreover, a broad summit which cannot be materially lowered by any excavation of practicable dimensions. It is doubtful whether a water supply can be found for a summit level. It would require 20 locks of an average lift of nearly 35 feet on each side of the summit. The cost of these locks alone, on the basis of the estimates considered in another chapter of this report, would be about $200,000,000, while the canal would probably at least double this estimate. Attractive as the Tehuantepec route is from its geographical location, it must be discarded as impracticable for a canal.

That's 400 M$ for the Tehuantepec route, versus 190 M$ for the Nicaragua route and 180 M$ for the Panama route (pages 261–262). (To convert to 2025 dollars, multiply by 37—so, 15 G$ vs. 7.0 G$ and 6.7 G$.)

Sure, but unlike the Suez, there's mountains/hills in Tehuantepec. Hundreds of feet of elevation difference, a canal would need many dozens of locks, maybe hundreds.

I can see a high capacity rail line, but digging a canal to rival the one in Panama is madness - especially as long as the one in Panama exists, and acts as economic competition.

Transshipment costs are so massive relative to extra ocean-miles these days that I can't imagine a short rail line ever making sense. Hell, the existing canal is fairly marginal iirc.

Reminds me, I wonder if anyone has a breakdown on how east/West Coast imports from china reach the middle of the country.

Edit: well I'll be damned, Maersk at least tried it for 5 months last year during the throughput restrictions. Rail link from Balboa to Manzanillo.
So it's not as crazy an idea as I thought. But still not currently viable even in the worse case situation for canal capacity.

I can see a high capacity rail line

You'd need pretty serious port infrastructure at either end for this -- there are ports there now so it's probably feasible, but I'll bet it would be expensive if you were going to handle significant volume.

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