Canada Is Already at War with the US--We Just Don't Know It Yet [View all]

In 1942, George Orwell implored the reader to dispatch with the propensity to see fairy-tale endings and come to grips with the reality that fascism as a force in the world seeks to entirely extinguish liberalism. “Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which Right invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe half instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run . . . But why should it?”

At the level of rhetoric, Trump and his administration will continue to belittle us by calling us the fifty-first state, mocking our sovereignty (claiming Canada “lives because of the United States”), making false claims about the extent to which communist China holds influence over the federal government, even claiming they are going to somehow put an end to hockey. These insults and threats are designed to normalize a condition of enmity between the US and Canada. They are designed to delegitimize the idea of Canada. They are an absurdist denial of our independent statehood—on repeat—until it begins to ring true.

In the eyes of the Trump administration, Canada is just another big blue state—another Minneapolis. This is because we are a liberal, democratic, multicultural mosaic, because we believe in minority rights and public health care and the right of a woman to choose. We believe in a free press and a fair vote. We believe in the rule of law and the principle of police independence. We believe in science and objective reality. And because of this—and because of our small population and enviable natural resources—we’ve become its target.

https://thewalrus.ca/canada-is-already-at-war-with-the-us-we-just-dont-know-it-yet/