I’ve been posting this in a couple places - but it’s not Vietnam, right? It’s Ireland and the Troubles. Only - on a scale that makes the Troubles look like a block party. And I say that aware that the Troubles was a decades long conflict that piled bodies sky-fucking-high and never truly healed. It wasn’t solved by a U2 song.
I don’t know a lot about America. I’ve only visited maybe a half dozen of your cities and maybe been on American soil maybe 10 times in my whole life. I’ll tell you what I do know, please feel free to correct me if I make a mistake:
I know you don’t have universal healthcare. I know you don’t have a specific carve out against hate speech or calls for genocide in your first amendment. I know you have no limit on money in politics. I know you have 2 year election cycles instead of laws that prevent campaigning for more than 12 weeks before an election. I know you have school shootings. I know you have laws restricting abortion. I know you don’t legally recognize the existence of Trans people, never mind their rights. I know we had legal gay marriage on the books 10 years before you did, and the way things are going we’ll have it another 10 years after you overturn Obergefell. I know your banking system sucks, putting profits before people, and couldn’t protect you from the 2008 crash as well as ours did because we have actual regulation. I know you don’t have the same environmental protections. I know you want people to assimilate and “become” American in a melting pot instead of honoring everyone’s right to embrace their history like our mosaic.
And I know you don’t allow your conquered territories like Puerto Rico and Guam to vote, so who gives a shit how liberal we are?
I like America, and Americans, fine. But you were right there, a short drive away if I wanted to live like you. I don’t. Why is it not a big deal that that choice might be taken from me? (edited this last line to not jump the gun. Not like fighting has started and the whole point of this was to show I wasn’t overreacting)
I’m Canadian, I don’t have the luxury of treating it like a lie. If we’re wrong, and he means it, I lose my home and my way of life. I have to treat it as a serious threat. I have to try and make sure my nation is ready for the worst outcome imaginable - a fight where we can’t win, we won’t surrender and where everything I’ve ever been taught tells me to die for my country.
Old age, bomb or bullet - one way or the other, I’m dying a Canadian.
And most of those war crimes were in an overseas war where we just trying to impress the European powers so they’d stop treating us like the kid brother. Can you imagine how many disgusting atrocities we’d commit protecting our own soil? Plus, we look and sound pretty indistinguishable from a lot of Americans. A Canada/America war would make the Troubles look like a fucking block party. The only winner is Russia. The only result, bodies piled high.
Maple MAGA didn’t go anywhere, but they got a very harsh slap in the face when most Canadians “woke up” to politics. They were doing that thing American Conservatives do where they pretend that everyone secretly agrees with them and they are the “silent majority”.
That’s easier to do when most Canadians don’t vote, don’t follow politics and are generally checked out, as it has been for years.
But then, basically overnight, Canadians across the country all engaged. Boycotts, firearms training, tracking the news on a daily basis. Funny what a little thing like threats to our sovereignty will do. And Maple MAGA didn’t suddenly change their tune. They’re still out there, loving Trump, consuming Russian propaganda and thinking Canada is a fascist regime because we have the gall to fund social programs. But they’re a lot less loud when they realize they’re the minority in every room. Essentially, they’re cowards and traitors and both those groups tend to keep their head down when a nation gets a surge of patriotism.