Discussions on human rights, with a particular focus on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Let’s be honest: for most workplaces diversity and inclusion is about checking a box. They value diversity in principle, just not enough to change anything.
I’ve worked in tech for eighteen years. One software company I worked at hired women based on hot they were. This was with HR’s blessing. They were 92% men but the business praised itself on diversity.
Most women and trans people I know have stories like that. DEI is almost always performative; something they can advertise.
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Labour in the UK and Democrats in the US have embraced the anti-trans panic manufactured by their opponents to get votes. It won’t work.
I referenced this in a previous post, but one of my observations after years of transphobic harassment is how they’re always parroting someone else. The words are never their own.
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After sixteen years of talking to everyday people who participate in organized bigotry – from tea party rallies to the convoy to anti-trans marches – I’ve learned one thing: they don’t believe what they’re saying.
They think they do but here’s the test:
And to the media and politicians that loves to platform them but a single test:
Let’s break it down.
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The gist of this article is that I believe that the United States is not only trying to annex Canada, but that it has partially succeeded.
Come the 2024 US election, it was already well-known that Donald Trump aspired to be a dictator. Americans voted the serial rapist and convicted fraudster in power anyways. For reasons that will fill future history books, the majority were okay with his failed coup, his pronouncement that he would just be a dictator on “day one“, his deference to despots Putin and Kim Jong Un, and his call to end free and fair elections.
What was less clear at the time was that he would seek to end Canada’s democracy too.
As soon as Trump took office, Republicans started implementing the dictatorship.
The Congress and Supreme Court relinquished all their power to Trump, ending the system of checks and balances.
Then the administration took over government agencies by replacing qualified public servants with the dictator’s most shameless sycophants.
With regulators and agencies now corrupt, the administration was able to shut down much of the free press. They defunded public broadcasters PBS and NPR. Billionaire media moguls carried out the agenda on the private side, gutting everything from 60 Minutes to The Washington Post. The corrupted agencies threatened their wealth.
The dismantling of the free press enabled the regime’s ethnic cleansing campaign. Immigrants got the worst of it as the dictatorship incited hate with shameless lies including that they were eating people’s pets. They opened a network of concentration camps and began to fill them, while the secret police killed observers. To prevent justice, they began a campaign to destroy the International Criminal Court including sanctioning a Canadian judge.
Also in the crosshairs were trans people. The regime’s and state Republicans’ relentless attacks against them resulted in 400,000 internally displaced refugees.
To oppress potential opposition, the dictatorship also deployed the military to occupy cities that were deemed to have voted for Republicans in insufficient numbers.
Finally, like all dictators, Trump has made it clear he won’t leave after his term is up. And why would he when he’s been able to wield the presidency to enrich himself to the tune of billions of dollars.
The first real signs of the regime’s desire to annex Canada came during a meeting between Justin Trudeau and the soon-to-be dictator at the latter’s Mar-A-Lago palace in December 2024. There Trump suggested Canada should be a US state.
A month later Trump said his administration would use “economic force” to take Canada while sharing maps of a conquered Canada.
Canadian officials, waiting for sanity to return, passed the threats off as a joke. What they didn’t realize then was that the regime had purged the voices of reason.
For the next year and a half, the regime and the US ambassador to Canada would continue to openly communicate its intent to conquer Canada.
Believing that a divided Canada would be easier to conquer, the regime held covert talks with Alberta separatists and offered $500M in material support. They also backed far-right fringe groups that had terrorized Canadians.
Carrying out the threat of using economic force, the regime ripped up the trade deal in CUSMA that Trump had signed and previously called the “fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed“. They slapped 50% tariffs on Canadian goods and vowed to crush Canadian industry. The regime was open about what would stop this economic onslaught: Canada becoming a US state.
The dictatorship attacked Canada’s sovereignty other ways too. Framed as negotiations to end the American tariffs, the regime demanded the removal of some laws in Canada that had been beneficial to Canadians. Prime Minister Carney obliged. Then they demanded Canada surrender its trade with other countries to the US. Here, Carney did not acquiesce.
America also found novel ways to take bits of Canada. The regime renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America. American companies were happy to assist just as they had been with helping end freedom of the press.
What’s stands out to me is that there is no meaningful opposition to this in the United States. Oh sure some Democrats feign indignation on television or on Twitter, but then that’s it. They don’t offer any actual resistance.
I don’t think they recognize that they’re in the early stages of a dictatorship. I think they assume it would feel different if they were. They don’t appreciate how dictatorships work their way from outsiders in. How the changes happen little by little.
I think this denialism is also a problem in Canada too. I hear this refrain of waiting it out until the next election and I think that is a gamble. There is a risk that this moment where these parties feel most powerless ends up being the time when they had the most. They’re assuming that the next election will be free and fair while Republicans openly engage in voter suppression.
The regime abetted by its political, media, and billionaire backers will only get more bold. They’ve already succeeded in taking a little bit of Canada for itself and they will not stop until they get it all.
The least we can do is acknowledge the reality of our predicament.
To be trans is to be regularly pinched before dozens of bystanders who ignore it all until you respond.
People have been conditioned to ignore this harm. Not just from the normalized transphobia in comedies and podcasts and and the news and social media feeds; but from years of doing the same to cis women and unhoused individuals.
Consequently, they don’t react to abuse. What’s water to fish in an ocean. What isn’t normalized are trans people pushing back. Having discounted the instigating moment, our response is perceived as the source of negativity.
In online spaces, automated moderation substitutes for these offended bystanders. Transphobic remarks meet “community guidelines” while trans people quoting them get banned without recourse.
