I would buy your micro-fiction my friend.
Basically what came to my mind, too:
He doesn’t want to invade Mexico because he doesn’t want Mexicans to become Americans. He’s perfectly happy with the mostly white population of Canada becoming Americans.
My hunch is fewer than 10% of the armed forces would disobey the order. And I would not be surprised if it was fewer than 1%. Before they gave the order to invade, they would have manufactured what they regard as sufficient causus belli to get the troops in line.
That said, I still think an armed invasion is still less likely than not. Ordinarily, I would put the odds of the US invading Canada at about the odds of a tornado hitting my house. I live in an area where a tornado hasn’t touched ground in years. Now, I would still describe it as the odds of being hit by a tornado but there are tornado warnings on the news.
Fox news, X-Twitter, Sinclair Broadcasting, talk radio, and plenty of right-wing blogs and podcasts are in the tank for Trump. We know that Bezos’s Washington Post and the LA Times won’t do objective independent journalism on these points. Zuckerberg from Facebook has already bent down and kissed Trump’s ring. Jeffery Yass is major Trump supporter and owns 15% of Tik Tok’s parent company. Trump is the head of his own social media company (which is, admittedly, a fly spec). The Wall Street Journal is generally pretty right leaning and isn’t going out on a limb to counter the right-wing narrative. Right-wing nutjobs of one stripe or another, through one means or another, effectively control the news that matters in America. Then, add in Russian propaganda which provides plenty of content for Youtube and social media. The left has: the NY Times (sorta - there’s a thread here about whether they are supporting Trump, though I don’t think they are), NPR (and most of their listeners want CarTalk reruns and Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me), Pro Publica (small audience), and a few other websites whose readership is generally minuscule. No, Trump doesn’t control all of the media but he effectively controls enough of it to convince enough Americans of nearly anything he chooses.
By the time they invade of course it won’t be 1%.
Now Marco Rubio said the 51st state crap, as well as a few outright slanders about Canada. Marco Rubio is the Secretary of State.
The road to fascism is paved with people who said “don’t overreact.”
CBC article where they outline the exact type of foreign interference concerns we outlined in this thread. Social media campaigning, operative recruiting of disillusioned/impoverished youth. Here’s a quote outlining the need to limit push-back by removing non-Trump aligned bureaucrats.
Elcock said U.S. agencies would have to worry about their own people talking.
“There is a long relationship between Canada and the United States and there will still be people around who would not necessarily approve. So I don’t think they could with any certainty carry out something like that — that wasn’t a very, very closely held operation,” he said.
But those calculations could change if the Trump administration continues to remove and replace personnel in the agencies down to the managerial and operational level.
“The more you get people who buy into the current U.S. president’s philosophy of life,” said Fadden, “the more he shifts professionals out of the intelligence community and puts his own people in, the more worrisome it becomes.”
The fascist’s playbook through and through. Worth a read.
I get that democratic governments would much rather not interfere in public discourse, but it may be time to accept that social media is not just a marketplace of ideas where the truth will shine through. It obviously is not. It’s poisonous, it’s wrecking people’s minds, and it can be used as a weapon. The government needs to be pouring a lot of money into stopping this shit and, if not outright limiting social media, actively fighting inside it.
It has been known
Fox news host Jesse Watters said “they almost want us to invade.” This isn’t accidental or random; he was told to use the word, folks.
It’s going to keep increasing. They’re moving the Overton Window, and why people are denying it baffles me.
Jesse Waters is probably the most despicable person on Fox now, though he has some stiff competition there. Absolute piece of shit.
So, another factor we haven’t discussed here in a bit is… all the other factors.
It’s a matter of perception and opinion, and when it comes to arguing Trump on da Dope (and not just in this thread), I think people tend greatly to overestimate his power, competence, support, etc. As if the dude can and will get anything done that pops up in his addled brain. If that’s what you think, I respectfully disagree as follows.
IMHO, Trump didn’t try to do all that much crazy shit during his first term. Now, however, he’s saying and trying to do all the crazy shit, the topic of this thread being just one example. And he’s failing. He’s tanking the markets to the point where Fox talking heads and other conservative pundits are criticizing him. GOP pols are feeling out negative comments about his economic shitshow.
In 1938, Hitler looked and acted like the kind of guy ready to acquire territory. He had Germany at full employment (or something that looked and felt like it to most Germans), and he had public opinion on his side. He was an evil, disciplined person who had the loyalty and assistance of other evil, disciplined persons (and some fools and incompetents as well). Note also that Hitler very, very carefully and respectfully handled the military once he became chancellor in 1933. He had the generals and the troops on his side as well.
Trump ain’t that. He’s got the evil part down, but he’s golfing and flogging trashcoins more than he’s doing actual presidentin’. He looks like a dying frog. His cabinet is full of idiots. In particular, his Sec of Defense is an inexperienced jackass, and his Sec of State is a beaten pooch. Leon Nazi Musk is creating chaos and interpersonal conflict and is more of a problem and a distraction to Trump than anything that helps him.
And the crashing and burning markets are taking Trump’s myth, popular appeal, and RWNJosphere cred down with him in real time. We’ve all heard the defense, pre-2024 election: “Oh, Trump has his problems, but my portfolio was doing so much better then.” No longer!
In short, this isn’t the kind of guy who can get an invasion planned, much less implemented. I don’t even think he’s going to be president much longer, but that is perhaps a topic for another thread.
I can’t disagree w your facts, but I’ll bicker with some opinions.
There is somebody fairly competent behind the scenes in trumpworld. Maybe it’s Heritage Foundation, maybe it’s a consultancy working for the Kochs. you’re right the cabinet is a joke. It’s the next layers down that we can’t really see that are running the show.
trump’s mission is to mostly be the distraction. Make the annoucement “gonna mess w Canada”, then leave it to the moles to do all the heavy lifting. Meanwhile he keeps the noise level up and the spotlight on him while hes waving his arms & gums frantically. There’s no bandwidth left within the news media (such as it now is) to go looking for the real story happening behind somebody’s closed doors.
The risk is to confuse the carnival show onstage with the smash and grab being perpetrated offstage. Gotta watch both.
I think you are basically correct that the next layers down are the ones to watch, but that argument cuts both ways. On the one hand, smart, crafty, and no doubt evil people could be leading various nefarious plots unseen. On the other hand, such people are the only ones who can lead, since those above them are undisciplined and incompetent, not to mention impeded by their Fool in Chief.
Any invasion of Canada needs to be led. A lot. And though it may be speculated that the US military is more pro-Trump than not, what can be said with minimal controversy (I think!) is that no one in the military, from the generals to the grunts, had been planning for or thinking about an invasion of Canada before 2025. Who knows, maybe there is a contingency plan from the early 19th century or something on paper somewhere when memories of the War of 1812 were still fresh, but modern planners have had much need to think about China, etc., and none about the Great White North.
Further, while there is nothing in brains or books to move such a thing forward, there is immense mental and cultural inertia against it. This is a point different from, and in addition to, the one about whether the troops would actually follow orders. First there have to be actual orders. Even if we assume the military wo/men told to plan the invasion are perfectly willing to say yes, it’s still going to be a hard thing to do, in terms of both available resources (starting with a blank page) and psychology (attacking a friend and ally).
Will there be leaders to step up and “git er done”? I don’t assume it’s impossible, but I would request a bit of reasoning from anyone here who thinks it will be easy.
Unless you have inside information on his health, there is no reason to think this. He’s the worst President in the history of the USA, but he has the total loyalty of everyone around him - we have heard not even a whisper of genuine dissent. Which is entirely logical, since this time around he appointed only the most pathetic lickspittles, fools, and drunks, whereas previous Presidents all had the revolutionary idea of appointing at least some competent people. Non-loyal bureaucrats and generals are fired and replaced with lapdogs. He has an absolutely lockstep party in Congress that offers less resistance to him than has ever been the case for any President in modern history, and he is NEVER resigning. He’s old and might die, that’s the one hope.
I suspect, though of course no one’s going to say it out loud, that a superpower armed forces has some degree of a plan for basically everything. It’s not going to be immediately detailed, but there will be a general concept plan in place for a lot of war operation scenarios in Canada. After all, under previous administrations, Canada was a staunch ally the USA had a legal and moral duty to defend from attack, so they’d have to at least consider intervention scenarios should Russia try to invade. They’d have theoretical “What if Canada actually becomes a Chinese client state” or “what if Quebec tries to secede and things go horrifically sideways” things planned out. The USA has a lot of staff officers, they can afford to construct what-ifs to be pulled out in case hundreds of nasty things happen around the world. Allocation of specific orders of battle beyond the obvious and arranging logistics would still be blank spaces, but the broad strokes are likely in place for almost anything. Someone has probably planned how to invade Jamaica. At the very least it’s something to set a few junior-ish staff officers on to give them some practice in that sort of things.
An invasion of Canada to conquer it or part of it will be a fairly predictable process; I’ve already spelled out the likely three-step approach. It would take a few months to move the troops into place and we’re not even at that point yet, because consent is in the early stages of being manufactured, and a hacking and social media assault may well come later. We will see it coming when troops start being positioned and they’re counting down to invasion day. At that point, though, where it’s obvious what’s happening, it’s too late, because it will be inevitable.
Well, yes, if you want it to succeed. I don’t expect Trump to have much in the way of competent military leadership when this happens.
But here’s the thing: Even a half-assed attempt at invasion will absolutely wreck our shit. The US just has too much in the way of bangy and boomy stuff for it to be otherwise.
At some point, Trump will demand an attack on Canada, and he won’t accept, “We can’t do that on one seconds’ notice” as an excuse. He’ll start firing officers until he finds one who will be willing to just tell whatever units are close to hand, “Drive/fly/sail north, and blow the shit out of something big!” Cities are huge targets, they’ll hit something. It won’t be a bunch of pin-point accurate strikes against key military and infrastructure targets, but it will look good on Fox News.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was not well planned or executed, but the government of Iraq was still eliminated and tens of thousands of its civilians slaughtered. The aftermath was a disaster for everyone and the insurgency took forever to get rid of.
The invasion of Canada will be similar. Ultimately it will be a horrific catastrophe for the USA. The resistance after the conventional battles end will be vicious and unrelenting. Shit, yesterday I was texting about this with my ex wife, a woman I have never once known to be violent in any way. Her texts included “They can try to pry Canada out of my cold dead hands” and “I’d rather the whole country burn to the ground than see it become part of the States” and she asked me how someone gets a gun.
But how will that help me or my family when our country is laid waste anyway? We’ll win in 20 years but our country will be damaged beyond imagining.
In fact the Pentagon is pretty well known for having a plan for every threat they can imagine, including those they consider impossible. If nothing else it’s good practice. I guarantee they have a plan to invade Canada, almost certainly multiple ones. They just need to dust it off and implement it.
Absolutely. They probably have a plan to invade Mali. That’s what war gaming is all about, being prepared. I mean, chances of Mali declaring war are roughly similar to Canada, despite Mali itself having a somewhat chaotic government and an ongoing insurgency. But plans, no doubt, are there.
I think Trump et al could order an invasion, but while Canada’s military would lose initially (not without a hard, hard fight), the resulting insurgency would drag the USA into Vietnam 2.0.
And there is a LOT of hard-to-hold territory once you go just a short distance from the border. Sure, the bulk of the population live close to the border. But partisan/guerilla tactics against supply lines further north would be a nightmare for an occupying force.
ETA: also, hard to “other” the Canadians. Racist epithets (towel-head, gook…) will not work.
Oh God. It would be very different from Vietnam, and much worse. That’s actually not a good comparison.
Vietnam was mostly a conventional war between clearly defined adversaries; the notion it was a guerrilla insurgency is really not accurate. Even the Viet Cong often tried to fight like a conventional army (albeit usually poorly.) It had a very conventionally fought air war. And of course it happened in Southeast Asia.
The post-invasion guerrilla war would be ENTIRELY irregular, would often devolve into outright terrorism… and would to a large extent, and possibly mostly, be actually fought in the United States.
Well … if you’re coming, and if you plan to stay for more than 30 days … remember to get fingerprinted.
NBC reporting that the US military is drawing up plans for using force against Panama to reclaim the canal.
It’s one step at a time. That Overton window just keeps moving.