Donald Trump’s Truth Social post mocks Canada as a weak, bullied nation forced to choose between U.S. and China, despite its 70–75% trade with Beijing, framing sovereignty as submission. His bullying tactics—tariffs, airplane threats—mirror separatist movements in Western Canada, which weaponize victimhood (e.g., Alberta’s "knife at the throat" rhetoric) to demand concessions, risking economic harm like Quebec’s reduced investment. Both sides avoid substantive dialogue, defaulting to low-substance attacks ("fascist totalitarians," "virtue signaling") while political parties stagnate post-election losses. Real unity demands respect over coercion, challenging radicalization cycles from separatists to online extremists like incels or anti-vaccine groups. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that is creating and interpreting the language of the disinformation age.
Before I get into the content today, a quick note that if anyone has any questions, comments, complaints, concerns about anything they hear on this podcast, you can send an email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
And I don't want to put too much into it, but thoughts are with Tumblr Ridge today and all week.
Yeah.
So, the content.
A week ago, Trump sent this message on Truth Social.
The long sprawling tirade about how the Chinese will own Canada and they'll take away the Stanley Cup and not let us play hockey anymore.
And also a bunch of stuff about the bridge and how he's not going to let anyone use it.
Mostly a tantrum tirade.
This was a taunt.
It was meant to enrage and put Canadians off kilter, the Canadian officials who are about to go to Washington to negotiate our trade relationship with the U.S.
And the timing of that is interesting, but also it hits the Canadians who want Carney to be wrong no matter what Carney does.
And this is a phenomenon we're seeing more of, where people choose a side based on the party affiliation rather than what's actually happening.
So let's talk about it.
This message mocks Canada.
It reduces us to a game and to a trinket that's awarded to the winner of that game, as though we're an ancient Mesopotamian tribe whose statue deity might get stolen by an aggressive invader and we'd be forced to treat with that stronger tribe that stole it in order to get right with ourselves and our statue god.
The idea isn't that we'll ever get to keep the God statue, but just which larger faction will eventually hold the god statue as a symbol of its ability to conquer.
I need to make one thing clear.
The Stanley Cup is in a vault in Toronto at the Hockey Hall of Fame.
There it will remain.
The trinket that's handed to the winner each playoff season is a replica known as the Presentation Cup.
It's a symbol that represents the real Stanley Cup and is used with the permission of the real Stanley Cup's trustees.
But even if the real Stanley Cup was taken, I wouldn't let the fact be used against the people of Canada.
We would just make a new one and carry on.
Nothing will make us stop playing hockey.
If Trump said the Chinese were going to prevent us from ever drinking beer again, this would be a much more effective taunt.
This is a bully's tactic.
Bullies are strong.
Whatever you think of them, know that.
That strength could be expressed with social force instead of physical force, but it's strength all the same.
Just because someone is strong doesn't mean they become a bully.
So what's really happening?
Bullies are the people who are not content with their own strength.
They want to co-opt the strength of other people, to influence the decisions of others, to add the strength of other people to their own strength.
What bullies really want is control.
And this is the worst human instinct to indulge.
Nearly all of human history can be interpreted by how people react to the bullies in their environment.
Do they willingly comply?
Or do they resist?
In their compliance, do they, in turn, become powerful?
And in that resistance, do they get crushed?
This calculation is made by most people in everyday situations on almost a subconscious level.
Most people are unaware of the way in which they comply with bullying.
But most people are aware of how they resist bullying.
And this is the prism through which we need to understand Donald Trump and his rhetoric here that channels the separatist movement in Western Canada.
To Donald Trump, the bully, Canada is the weaker nation, and therefore Canada must submit to the United States and ultimately to Donald Trump himself.
This is meant to be done through market manipulation.
Tariffs are always followed with threats that the tariffs could always get worse.
But also included are threats of having airplanes that are manufactured in Canada decertified from operating in the U.S.
This is the bully demonstrating the price of resistance.
To some of the people being bullied, the wisest course of action is to avoid being crushed.
Avoid even the possibility of being crushed.
How could that be avoided?
By either doing what the bully wants or just moving out of the bully's way.
As a person that has been studying bullies informally since childhood, I can say with confidence that a shocking number of people who proclaim to be stubborn and willful will simply comply with the bully to avoid being crushed.
To avoid even the hassle of needing to avoid being crushed.
And so it is that the Western Canadian separatists have begun to silently embrace the idea of having their land and their resources appear under a new flag.
The logic is so brutally simple that I doubt they've even become aware of it.
Being crushed is bad, and profits are good.
Therefore, when a single decision can be made to avoid the bad and gain the good, this falls into the of course column.
No need for further explanation.
Bypass all the messy explanatory details and move on.
If Canada won't build every pipeline and Trump makes a promise that he will, then just go with Trump, right?
Lean on every social issue that leans toward Trump.
Cheer when the tariffs threaten to devastate hardworking Canadians in Ontario, which is a really strange thing to see.
Why side with Trump and the tariffs over fellow Canadians?
Why cheer for tariffs?
Enter from stage left a renewed trade relationship with China.
And along with it, the start of what many hope will be a series of steps that diversify Canada's international network of trading partners to reduce the impact of tariffs from any single country.
This enrages Trump.
But perhaps more surprisingly, it enrages the Western Canadian separatists.
People who are ostensibly conservative and all in favor of larger markets and more trade potential and a larger and more stable GDP.
That seems weird.
But this situation tells us a lot when placed side by side with what we know about bullies.
Trump sees increased trade between Canada and China as Canada becoming subservient to China.
This logic only makes sense if increased trade also increases the level of subservience to that nation.
But if that were true, why would Trump discourage or hamper trade between Canada and the U.S. by introducing tariffs?
Wouldn't trade barriers reduce the amount of de facto control that the U.S. has over Canada?
I shouldn't.
I should stop trying to make Trump's decisions make sense.
To Trump, Canada can only lend its strength to one nation.
And to Trump, that nation must be the U.S.
But it's super weird when Trump says that Canada trading with the U.S. is bad for the U.S., but Canada trading with China is good for China.
But don't focus on that.
That part is weird and it doesn't make sense, but we must stay focused on anything except for that.
I'll say it now, clearly.
Trading with China does not make Canada subservient to China.
We relinquish no decisions to China.
We give up no sovereignty when we increase the amount we trade with China.
If China ever becomes close to being as important a trading partner to us as the U.S. is, where currently 70 to 75% of our exports are headed, then we would be more heavily influenced by them.
But influence is not the same as subservience.
And there are a lot of other countries to additionally trade with, to increase trade with.
We should absolutely reduce the amount we trade with the U.S.
But to Trump, Canada has only two choices.
Submit to the U.S. or submit to China.
This is a false choice.
It only makes sense if the nations that aren't superpowers are all waiting to get told what to do by those superpowers.
It only makes sense if every nation in existence is either a superpower already or is waiting to choose which superpower to add its strength to.
It makes sense if smaller nations only exist because of the willingness for larger nations to not invade them.
That we should be grateful for the benevolence of their restraint.
And the idea that China will have some political control in Canada definitely makes sense if you look at it through this perspective.
It makes sense if the world is now reduced to a game of risk and the smaller nations each need to find a larger nation to shelter behind.
It makes sense in a world that's made up entirely of lords and supplicants.
But I don't want to live in that world.
We have an interesting political status right now, as viewed through the dark mirror that stands at the U.S.-Canada border.
The Democratic Party lost to a racist fascist who had already lost once and didn't get anything useful done in his first term.
That alone should be embarrassing for them.
But where does the Democratic Party place the blame?
On the electorate.
This can be seen in the fact that they have done no post-mortem on the election.
They have acknowledged no mistakes.
They've made no attempts to change any party platform positions and have made no obvious moves to change any strategies.
Hakeem Jeffries, almost exactly a year ago today, said that the Democrats won't be taking wild swings at every pitch, but instead will wait for the right pitch and then swing.
And it looks like they're still waiting for that perfect pitch.
Democratic Party members vote for ICE funding bills allowing more reckless state aggression against U.S. citizens.
Big, beautiful bills threatening to end as much of the social safety net as has been allowed to exist in the U.S. thus far.
And the Save America from Allowing Married Women to Vote Act.
This is not a political party that's motivated to do anything for their constituents.
It's a party that wants to wait for fascism to get bad enough that the electorate moves closer to their party's position.
This isn't a political strategy.
It's a hostage situation.
The strategy is let the people experience fascism firsthand so that they understand why they should vote for us next time around.
Political platforms are meant to change with the political times.
Attempting to hammer the electorate into a shape that fits a platform that you really, really like isn't the point.
But then we look at the bizarro portal that is the U.S.-Canada border.
Canada had an election last year.
Pierre Polyev, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, started the year with a 20 percentage point lead over Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.
Into that stepped Mark Carney and Trump's bull in a China shop diplomacy techniques, and those poll numbers reversed very quickly.
Polyev even lost his own riding and had to ask another party member to step down so that he could win a by-election just to speak in parliament.
Since the election, many thought that Polyev might pivot, might change some of his plans and strategies to suit his new political climate, might even change his rhetoric to adjust for his new rival, Mark Carney.
These people were sorely disappointed, as Polyev has done many of the same things he's been doing for the last three years.
And in case anyone isn't aware, that's his own Canadian version of a Trump impression.
So a few weeks ago, the Conservative Party led a leadership, held a leadership review to assess whether or not they want Polyev to remain as party leader.
The same Pierre Polyev, who can't win an election, has double-digit negative polling numbers on preference for prime minister, can barely even mention Trump's name when Trump is posing the greatest threat to Canadian sovereignty, whose only political move is endlessly chirping the opposition like a fourth-line hockey player trying to help his team's morale when he can't help on the scoreboard, blew a 20% lead to lose the last election,
and has done nothing to change what he's doing.
So what did the Conservatives decide at the $1,000 a plate event?
87% gave him the nod.
It's interesting, for sure.
But I'd like to talk to the people who paid $1,000 a plate to vote against him.
That takes spite.
I can respect that.
This result is a Conservative Party that has tried nothing and is all out of ideas.
It's a Conservative Party waiting for the Liberals to screw up rather than making necessary changes to make a real effort to win.
But with both cases made, we see what's happening.
Canadians voted for Mark Carney and the Liberal Party to be the opposite of whatever Trump is doing.
Canadian Conservatives have changed nothing in the face of defeat the exact way the Democrats have changed nothing south of the border.
Don't Follow Their Example00:09:20
Canadian Conservatives and American Democrats are both waiting for the other side to screw up so they can step in.
If this is a bad strategy for the Democrats in the U.S., it's a disastrous strategy for the Conservatives in Canada.
As much as the social media bots would like to say that the liberals are fascist totalitarians, the public just isn't buying it.
The unwillingness of political parties to change their positions and strategies even after they lose elections is a sign of how deeply divided we have become.
Each side celebrates rarely their own victories, but constantly the other side's losses and gaffes.
These are the arguments of low substance.
That they aren't convincing anyone is less about how stupid the people on the other side are and more about the quality of these arguments.
Get better at what you do if you're going to argue for these things.
And if you think someone else is better at making the right arguments, boost them.
That's fine.
Not everyone is meant to know every argument.
But try to boost good arguments.
Less memes about how stupid everyone is who disagrees with you and more about the substance of the issues at hand.
There's been a lot more discussion lately about what Canada is.
What kind of people we are.
What does it mean to be Canadian?
No one gets to tell you what it means.
And you should probably be wary of anyone who tries to tell you explicitly what being Canadian means.
Canada is what we make it.
Our culture is how we treat each other every day.
Don't try to work out in words how you want Canada to be.
Just go into the world and treat people that way.
Relentlessly.
Don't wait for other people to do it so you can follow their example.
Show the other people how you want it done so that they can follow your example.
If, in your mind, Canada is a place where people are kind to other people, then show that by being kind to other people.
If it's a place where trans people feel safe and seen, then when you see a trans person, just treat them like a person, not a freak show or an anomaly.
If Canada is a place where immigrants should feel welcome, then when you see someone from another place, just be friendly to them.
Don't talk about doing it.
Don't brag about how you do it.
Don't promise anyone you'll do it.
Just do it.
If Canada is a place where we stand together against the predations of foreign countries, then do that.
Don't talk about doing it.
Just do it.
We don't need to be whatever the U.S. is.
We don't need to emulate them.
We don't need to engage in the same culture war and identity politics bullshit they engage in.
Nor do we need to necessarily do the opposite of what they're doing as a signal to them and the world that we're independent.
We need to get over our insecurity by first having the courage to call it what it is.
Our cities don't need to be as big as the cities in the U.S.
We don't need to have as many famous actors or gold medals at the Olympics.
We don't need to demonstrate anything to the world about how we're also here.
We don't need to worry about not shining as brightly as the all-night neon distraction right next to us.
We need to do what we want to do, confidently.
If you think that separation is good for some part of Canada, say that out loud.
And if you know someone who wants to separate and you don't want to, don't just dismiss them as an idiot.
Ask them why.
Find out the reason.
It's very unlikely that any separation will happen.
But making the divide wider between those who want to separate and those who don't will only make this a bigger problem.
Just ask Quebec.
Speaking of Quebec, some people in Alberta will say they want to separate, but actually do not.
What those particular people want is what is sometimes called the knife at the throat situation.
They tend to believe that Quebec already has this, and this drives them to want it as well.
The idea is that every time Quebec wants more stuff, they just shake the separatism chain and Ottawa enthusiastically complies with whatever Quebec wants.
That's the fantasy version of that idea.
In reality, Ottawa has never enthusiastically complied with Quebec's separatist demands.
Though anyone claiming that the knife to the throat idea hasn't benefited Quebec in some way would have a tough case to make, I think.
But I think that situation also needs to be examined with all relevant context included.
The Quebec economy has suffered due to a relative lack of investment, both foreign and domestic.
The equation is very simple.
If you're going to invest a lot of money into a new long-term venture in Quebec, you ask yourself, how stable is the political environment?
You know the laws and systems of Canada, but the question of Quebec separation looms larger in your calculations.
What would the laws be under an independent Quebec?
One imagines they wouldn't be exactly the same, otherwise there'd be no reason to separate.
Would those laws even allow your long-term investment to continue?
Would you lose your entire investment because of a wildcard option?
And the only choice you can make to potentially avoid that wildcard outcome is to invest that money elsewhere.
Now, this hasn't stopped all investment in Quebec, but it has reduced it.
And that's the biggest reason why Quebec is still typically counted among the have-not provinces that need a little extra from the equalization pot each year.
To overcome some part of this effect, Quebec often offers tax breaks to companies to invest there to create jobs.
But this doesn't help the provincial coffers very much for obvious reasons.
It is in this wider context that I think we should view the idea that anyone should want to purposefully engineer this knife to the throat separatist political dagger in Western politics.
I doubt it was anything they wanted in Quebec, but now that they have, in hindsight, seen the consequence of reduced business investment due to the presence of a strong separatist movement, they probably feel like they need that edge all the more.
And thus we see how Albertans come to sneer at Quebecers for this situation.
But how ungenerous and hypocritical are those sneers?
Albertans look at the situation as Quebec, the welfare province, always needing equalization payments when Alberta almost never does.
Albertans look down on Quebec for this and claim loudly how much better Alberta is than Quebec because Alberta doesn't need this extra money.
And Albertans say that Quebec shouldn't need this money either.
But this whole thing turns once you see that some portion of Alberta separatists want to manufacture this same scenario.
That old adage about it being good for the goose, so it's good for the gander comes to mind.
Say that to yourselves out loud, though.
Quebec is a welfare province for engaging in separatist rhetoric to get more money from Ottawa, but Alberta would be a shining example of the capitalist marketplace if Alberta did the same.
And you can miss me with the fantasy that it wouldn't turn out the same way in Alberta if the Alberta separatist movement ever reached anywhere close to 50% popularity.
Companies that make investments of more than $10 million at a time are unlikely to be fooled by this, so why should anyone else?
They'll make the same calculation in Alberta as they've been making in Quebec for the last half century.
What rules will they have to follow in an independent Alberta?
How stable would the government be to maintain those rules?
What would the arrangements with the neighboring countries be to get goods to market?
What Takes an Afternoon Can Be Ruined in Instantly00:02:29
As the unknowns add up, the likelihood of each new investment will decrease.
These are market forces that cannot be overcome by hand-waving and confident assurances.
The daydreams of the accumulation of oil wealth will meet the reality that the nations that rely too heavily on oil alone all have a handful of fabulously wealthy people while the rest of the population lives in poverty.
We need to talk a little bit more about the ideas and the rhetoric surrounding the Western separatist movement.
I don't want to gloss over any relevant part of this now that I've cracked it open.
One of the greatest science fiction novels of all time is Dune, and I love it.
But many people who read it misunderstand many of the things that were being portrayed in it.
And these meanings are only now being widely distributed.
One of those misunderstandings is about something that was said in the first of those novels.
It's something that's often repeated in other contexts to justify many ideas.
He who can destroy a thing controls a thing.
This is misunderstood mostly because people mistake the protagonist of the novel as the person whose journey we should cheer for.
But this isn't the language of honor.
This is the language of terror.
This is the notion that fills the minds of children as they tear down snowmen that others have carefully constructed, showing us, again, that what takes an entire afternoon to build can be ruined in an instant.
But no one ever cheered for the destroyers of snowmen.
No one ever congratulated them on the artistry or efficiency with which the snowmen were torn down, because there is no celebration to be had there.
He who can destroy a thing controls a thing is something you say when you want to extort someone, when you want to affect their decisions to your advantage.
Destruction as the basis for power is the basis strategy and justifies all manner of injustice because it inevitably gives power only to those who can do the most damage.
Radical Ideas and Power Struggle00:04:39
And so we have the Western separatist movement leaning toward knife at the throat politics, willing to chop off their noses just to spite their faces, reaching for the opportunity to say that if they don't get their way, they will burn the house down.
The idea that destroying a thing allows you to control it depends on the willingness of those who currently have it to give it up.
Are we willing to allow the direction of Canada to be moved by the politicians who have opportunistically harnessed this movement for their benefit?
And would we be doing so in exchange for temporary peace and unity?
And in the offing, would we watch Canada become a place that we no longer recognize?
And that wording I just used was carefully chosen.
It's what the separatists will say is what drives them in these divisive times.
That they are under a strain to coexist with people who have such radical ideas that subvert the image of our nation and change it into something they can't be a part of.
I mean, okay.
But the reality hits when we look at what these ideas are that are making Canada into something that separatists say they can no longer support.
In fact, Alberta separatist rhetoric looks very familiar to anyone who's paid close attention to the American online grievance culture that has been growing since Gamergate back in 2014.
How could anyone live in one of the objectively great countries and still believe that their existence here is the product of malignant forces that seek only to watch them suffer?
How can anyone square the idea that our world is being torn apart with the idea that we're among the select few people in history who get to live a life that's this good?
I know how.
It starts with a grievance narrative.
It starts with the idea that your life is terrible and that you deserve better and that this better that you deserve is being denied because someone else hates you.
It moves from there to the idea that those who are holding you back are mocking you openly by their acceptance of people from elsewhere.
That people who have different gender identities or sexual preferences are deviants who deserve no respect.
And any respect that's afforded them is a product of shallow and divisive politics described with poisonous phrases like virtue signaling and suicidal empathy.
Ideas meant to drain actual political projects from any feeling or sincerity.
And it will smuggle in the idea that respecting them even a little is the sin.
And after those ideas sink in, the conversation moves on to what should be done about it.
What would you like to see happen when your chosen candidate attains political power?
After all that you've been through with the insult and dangerous exposures you've been told are happening, you're probably on board for a little vengeance, right?
It might be petty, but maybe it's what you deserve.
This framework of radicalization is the same for the incel movement, the anti-trans movement, the anti-immigration movement, the anti-vaccine movement, and now the Alberta separatist movement.
To make it all make sense, there needs to be an enemy that planned for it to happen.
The enemy needs to hate them and make them want to suffer.
This casts the people who fight against the enemy as heroes who need to be glorified and ultimately not questioned when they step outside the bounds a little bit in the fight for freedom.
Demonstrating Measured Respect00:05:24
Does that sound familiar to anyone?
It's my sincere hope that Western Canada never slips into this knife to the throat antagonistic and extortionist diplomacy with Ottawa.
It would be followed by severely negative economic consequences, but it would also be fundamentally dishonest.
This is a personal anecdote.
This happened to me, we'll say some time ago.
I was having yearly salary negotiations with my boss.
In these sorts of conversations, everyone's pretty much sort of had them when they get a new job or when they have to negotiate for salary.
In these sorts of conversations involving a valuation of oneself in relation to others, there are always a lot of unspoken things and maybe even veiled threats or bluffs about what the other options are.
The boss attempts to communicate without explicitly saying, why should we give you more money?
If we gave more money to someone else, would it work out better?
And I try to counter with, again, without explicitly saying, why should I continue to work here at this wage?
What if another shop down the street would pay me more?
So on that particular occasion, in that conversation, I finally got tired of all the insinuations and the quiet bluffs.
I experienced a moment of rebellion against the highly structured social contract that causes us to think that explicitly saying a thing is obscene or at least impolite.
And I said, here's the thing.
I could go around and drop my resume off at a bunch of other companies and get job offers to drop on your desk to let you know that I'm worth more.
But I'm not going to do that.
Mostly because I think that's disrespectful.
So you can pretend that those offers don't or can't exist if you like, but I'm not going to disrespect you by actually doing it.
I think this employment relationship is worth more than that.
In the end, my boss agreed, and I got the raise.
That wouldn't have worked in every situation, but even if I hadn't gotten the raise, I would have slept better at night.
Because my worth is not only measured by the work I do or the size of my paycheck.
It's also measured by the respect I have for the people around me.
And my comfort is not only found in what gains I see in my bank account, but also in how I justify being friends with myself when I see how I treat the people around me.
And there's a little bit of that in this situation.
Alberta's value is not measured only by its GDP.
It's measured by the respect that Albertans show to other Canadians.
And the people in the other provinces need to also be brave enough to show that same respect to Albertans, even the ones that want to separate.
Only with mutual respect can we get past this.
For that matter, and by the same token, Quebec's value is also not measured only by its GDP.
It's measured by the respect that Quebecois show to the rest of Canada.
And the people outside Quebec need to have the stones to say that.
Even if sometimes Quebec does this knife to the throat thing, we're not going to do the same thing as well.
It's short-sighted, and it's less an indication of Quebec's greediness and more a measure of their respect for the rest of Canada.
So instead of trying to reach for my own knife to put to Canada's throat, I'm instead going to demonstrate what real respect for people is like.
So listen to the people that want to separate.
You don't need to listen uncritically.
You should definitely tell them when they're wrong.
And if you don't know why they're wrong, then you should find out.
And if you really can't deal with them, send them to me.
Link this podcast episode to them.
Just tell them to bother me with their dishonest arguments and ungenerous takes.
If I ever find one coherent enough, I might even put them on the podcast.
But mostly, tell them when you don't want to separate from Canada or that you just want to respect people from other countries or trans folks.
Show them that they aren't the majority and that respect is the greatest currency any of us have.