Source item

WHO LOST CANADA? It was obvious that China/Canada would happen. Here's how it happened, and what may happen next. (1) First, in early 2025 it looked like Canadian conservative Pierre Poilievre was a straight shot to win Canada. Instead, all the MAGA posts about annexing Canada undercut Pierre, boosted left nationalism, and turned what looked like a sure thing into an epic defeat. The result was Mark Carney: (2) Carney is on the left but is far more intelligent than his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. He's also the former governor of the Bank of Canada, and understands that the G7 (including Canada) is in the midst of sovereign debt crisis. And the Canadian dollar is going the way of the US dollar, which is to say that it's going to zero. Canada needs access to hard goods and will trade natural resources to get that. Hence, China. Carney's Canada may become a sort of North American Russia, trading oil and lumber to China for cars and electronics. (3) Who lost Canada? The fundamental reason this happened is that MAGA ironically doesn't understand its own self-interest. Even the term "America First" is misconceived, because it groups a Blue American like Elizabeth Warren together with a Red American like JD Vance...when in reality the Red American and the Red Canadian (like Pierre Poilievre) have much more in common. All the "joke" posts on annexing Canada managed to needlessly put Red Americans at odds not just with Blue Americans and Blue Canadians, but also with Red Canadians. The Greenland thing will have exactly the same effect, as it'll end up pushing Western Europeans to China. That's actually why most ultranationalist movements fail: they're just so shortsightedly tribal that they're terrible at building coalitions. (4) Anyway, while Carney is the first to be this explicit about aligning with China, expect many other Western leftist leaders (like Newsom and Walz) to line up with China over time. The reason is that while Democrats really did fight Communists from ~2021-2024 over the question of who'd run the world's most powerful state, Democrats lost. All the chip sanctions and isolation tactics that somewhat worked on Russia, and frankly might have worked on almost any other country, just didn't work on China...because China had enough internal economic scale to essentially be their own autarkic civilization, and build whatever they needed. (5) So: the anti-China Biden Democrats have been replaced by the China-curious Newsom Democrats. And now the China-aligned Carney Canadians. With Carney making the first move, you should expect many more blue state Democrats to align with China, particularly those on the West Coast like Newsom. (6) It's simple coalitional math. Democrats are the ingroup, Republicans are the outgroup, and Communists are the fargroup. So, for Democrats: the enemy of their Republican enemy is their friend. And there is much for them to admire in the Chinese political system. After all, Democrats and Communists both built one-party states: (7) Newsom in particular is likely the next shoe to drop, because even in 2023 he was reaching out to Xi. He's also spoken in Xinhua (Chinese state media) about becoming China's "long-term, stable, and strong partner." Newsom posts images of himself shaking Xi's hand, while also posting images of Trump in handcuffs. It's clear which President he's more comfortable with: (8) The California wealth tax is also worth mentioning here. As M. Guimarin correctly pointed out, the net effect of the wealth tax is for blues to drive tech out of the state. That's not an unintended consequence: the purpose of the wealth tax was to either rob or deport the sole remaining political opposition to Democrats in California, namely technologists. (Side note: Democrats are historically much better at mass deportations than Republicans, as they take a whole-of-society approach to it, and persist with it over decades, and do it silently and nonviolently. That's how Republicans were pushed out of university faculties, media companies, and California itself. It was once a dark red state, and now it's deep blue.) (9) Anyway, with the technologists pushed out of California, Newsom's blues can welcome in the Chinese, who won't be subject to the same wealth taxes as they aren't US citizens. (10) There is also an obvious geostrategic aspect to this: Chinese Canada is a bridge across all the blue states, from the West Coast to the Northeast. So as blue states like Minnesota and California engage in more "soft secession", they can all link up with Canada, and get supplied by China. Decades ago, this map was made as a joke. Perhaps it becomes all too real. See also this post from 2023. Newsom has significant room to attempt left populism, by refusing to enforce tariffs on Chinese goods that land at Canadian ports. He's signaled willingness to do that, and that may be how this manifests. https://t.co/mrPsNS1tFs https://t.co/vtelEirVVU See also this popular post on "soft secession" by blue states. Tim Walz' recent invocation of the 10th Amendment is in this vein. Of course, this is an inversion from decades of Democrat rhetoric. But that doesn't matter. The ideologies of the past are breaking down, with blues now endorsing states' rights and federalism now that they've lost DC...and reds embracing federal power now that they have DC. It's all just tribalism now. The Disunited Tribes of North America. https://t.co/JDnb5PV48B Btw, the tariffs were also a key precipitating factor. See 2025 thread below. Canada is one of the first to realign economically away from the US in the West as a consequence of the tariffs. But there will be more. Don’t tread on me became don’t trade with me. Oh, in case it was too subtle, “Who Lost Canada” is a reference to “Who Lost China” from the 1950s. Back then, the question was about what the US did wrong to let China fall into communist hands. A big part of the issue was the influence of far left pro-Mao China hands like Edgar Snow and Owen Latimore. Several of the China hands, like James Gareth Endicott, Herbert Norman, and Isabel Crook were in fact Canadian. This century, however, history is running in reverse. Rather than left-wing Canadians helping Communists take over China, this time left-wing Canadians are helping Communist China take over Canada. https://t.co/jbxTPxtdm8