Week 3: Trade Off
Why the annexation of Canada wouldn't be so easy, why Alberta won't join the rest of Canada in fighting back, and the case against the sexual revolution gets stronger
With Donald Trump set to return to the White House and threatening both a tariff war and annexation of Canada, I feel I have a short window of opportunity to convince people that Canada is actually fascinating.
So this week I wrote a piece in The Interpreter on some of the practical obstacles to Canada becoming the “51st State”. As a single state Canada would be the largest population and the second large economy. The other 50 states would consider this a huge threat to their own power within the republic – making ten new states more likely. Yet as “a nation of cats” it would not be so easy for the U.S to bring Canada’s provinces to heel. Both defending and advancing provincial power is the dominant feature of Canadian politics. And even the most hardcore “states’ rights” advocates in the U.S would struggle to compete with the intensity of this sentiment in Canada.
In similar commentary from Americans about the idea of Canada joining the U.S there has been the rather amusing observation that “this wouldn’t be good for the Republicans”. That is, Canadians would be far more likely to support the Democratic Party.
Yet why would people think that Canada would automatically fall in line with the U.S’s two party system? Canadians won’t even submit themselves to their own party system. Behind their polite demeanours lies an insatiable thirst for murdering political parties – and birthing new ones. As well as a belief that federal and provincial politics are entirely separate and do not need the same parties for each level of government. As I wrote:
The next hurdle would be the idiosyncratic spirits of Canadian voters being unlikely to submit themselves to America’s binary party system. Canadians live in a permanent revolt against Duverger’s Law – that single member districts using first-past-the-post voting will lead to a two party system. By contrast, Americans – both structurally and mentally – live in permanent submission to it.
Indeed, the threat of multi-party democracy may just be the thing to ward the Americans off.
In response to Trump’s threats, this week prime minister Justin Trudeau attempted to do some cat herding and convene a meeting with all the provincial and territory premiers1 in order to devise a plan to retaliate should Trump go ahead with his tariffs. This would include placing their own tariffs on businesses and industries in states governed by the Republican Party – in order to create party pressure on Trump – as well as potentially shutting down power exports. Hydro-Québec powers much of New England, for example.
All the provinces managed to sign on to the plan bar one – Alberta. Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, didn’t attend the meeting in person – using video link instead – and refuse to endorse the deal. Alberta exports 3.5 million barrels of oil a day to the U.S, and is reluctant to use this as a bargaining tool (even though it’s the biggest weapon Canada has).
While Smith may claim she’s simply looking out for her province’s interests (as opposed to Canada’s), I think there’s something else going on. Smith is actually thinking about her job.
Smith leads the United Conservative Party of Alberta (UCP), a party formed in 2017 and is probably – with new competition from the emergent BC Conservatives – the party that most embodies this highly agitated reactionary resentment that has overrun (formerly) conservative politics.2
This is the deep distrust of expertise and institutions, a craving for conspiracy, and a disdain for personal restraint. Donald Trump has come to personify this worldview. Smith, I believe, recognises that this is an all-encompassing psychology that is far more powerful than Canada’s national interest. She fears anything that looks like opposition to Trump may lead to her downfall (her predecessor as UCP leader and Alberta premier didn’t survive a full term).
Smith even made a recent trip to Mar-a-Lago under the guise of trying to exclude the Alberta’s oil from Trump’s tariffs. Yet the trip looked more like just an opportunity to get a fangirl selfie with Trump instead.
It’s worth considering how odd this phenomenon is. Despite this type of politics’ love of using the term “globalist” against people they don’t like, this is a global movement. It’s why we often see Trump flags in Australia too. Trump is able to generate an extraordinary hold on people. His “charismatic authority” is so intense that it can persuade even foreigners to undermine their national interest in service to him.3
The Theme Is (Always) Power
Power is, of course, an intense drug. Whether wielded at state-level or on an individual level.
Following on from the podcast series from Tortoise Media last year on author Neil Gaiman, this week there was a piece in New York Magazine that illustrated further cases of his appalling abuse of women. Due to this I’ve been thinking again about Louise Perry’s book The Case Against The Sexual Revolution – which I wrote a review essay of in October 2022.
We’ve created a culture where violence against women is fine as long as it’s disguised as sex. In fact, sex is used as a subterfuge by men to demonstrate their hatred of women. And we’ve developed a legal culture that has submitted itself to this –especially when it comes to choking – with more lenient sentences for men who kill women during sex.
This review essay is where I started thinking about Thomas Hobbes as a sociologist, not just a political philosopher. Something I followed up with in Domestic Violence: A Hobbesian Dilemma, and will continue to work on this this year.
In my review essay I took a particular focus on Perry’s chapter Violence Is Not Love, and the problem of consent (Gaiman has stated “I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone”). As I wrote:
Perry sees this violence as a new expression of “a culture that celebrates female submission and male domination” – something feminism should find abhorrent. What the sexual revolution has created is men’s “freedom to hurt, degrade and humiliate” women, while avoiding punishment. Perry believes that liberal feminism has unfortunately contributed to this culture by advocating that the only thing that matters in sexual relations is consent. This has developed within a broader culture that often sees “self-actualisation” as each individual’s only genuine purpose, not the pursuit of social goods. Through this lens sexual violence is merely a “kink” that shouldn’t be “shamed.”
But women’s consent doesn’t alter men’s intent. “Rough sex” may – inexplicably –be pleasurable to some women, but women’s pleasure isn’t men’s objective, and consenting to men’s hatred of women won’t confine this behaviour to the bedroom. As Perry puts it “faith in consent relies on a fundamentally false premise: that who we are in the bedroom is different from who we are outside of it.” “Rough sex” gives men licence for this hatred to express itself through other forms of abuse. Men’s desire to hurt women through sex clearly says something about that man beyond sexual satisfaction.
Hobbes recognised that it is the lusts of men that is the primary force for chaos in the world. This is a chaos we are seeing returning through figures like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk at a macro level, or Neil Gaiman and the sexual culture he embodies on the personal level.
It’s no coincidence that there was a movement by women away from sex after the re-election of Trump. Women instinctively understand the connection between authoritarian politics and authoritarian personal traits. The problem is both our culture and politics keeps rewarding these traits.
In Canada territory leaders are also called premiers, unlike in Australia where they are called chief ministers
The People’s Party has no seats either federally or provincially, so I’m excluding them. Even though technically they are far Trumpier.
MAGA is, of course, an anti-American movement. Not a pro-American one. But we’ll save that for another day.