I Dared Defend Canada on X. The Response Was Chilling

“Careful what you wish for.” There's an app for that. You make social media posts hoping for some engagement — until the day you find yourself wishing you could unplug the machine.

Last Friday I made a post on Bluesky and X, concerning U.S. President Donald Trump's description of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor.” It occurred to me that, numb as we are to Trump's stream of blather, the importance of that remark was being overlooked. It was an overt declaration by the president of the United States that he does not recognize Canadian sovereignty. That's scary.

So, my post: “For a US president to refer to the Prime Minister of Canada as ‘Governor’ isn't just rude. It's a hostile act.”

The post got little attention on Bluesky. On X, for whatever reason, it went berserk. Over the weekend it racked up close to 3,000 reposts, over 29,000 “likes” and more than 5,000 replies. Those replies came almost entirely from Trump-loving trolls, piling scorn and abuse on my concerns. “Yeah but it's Canada so who gives a fuck?” said one.

Do the responses represent a genuine glimpse of U.S. opinion on Trump's bully-boy act?

Terri Givens of the University of British Columbia’s political science department cautions that we should not give too much weight to online interactions. “X in particular is mostly Trumpers these days,” she says, “and they're specifically trying to gin up angst and anger.”

At the very least, the responses certainly offer a window into a particular mindset. The thousands of MAGA replies were remarkably consistent, largely falling into a few categories. There was the “Get over it, it was a joke” category — lots of laugh emojis, endless GIFs of Billy Crystal handing me a tissue or depicting me as a crying infant, responses calling me poor baby, drama queen, soy boy, libtard, snowflake, twerp, butt-hurt, etc.

There was the “Trudeau deserves it because he's a jerk and anyway he insulted Trump, too” (lots of Justin-in-blackface pictures here).

Then there were the “Wuddya gonna do about it, pussy?” responses — frequently phrased exactly that way, or as a sneering taunt that if Canada didn't like it, we could try invading with our pathetic military. I was referred to as a cuck, bitch, coward, beta male, pansy, faggot, a “trans Communist” and a “Good Jew.” Somebody posted a “Fuck Canada” flag. One post read, “Come and do something about it. I'd love to see you little maple syrup gay boys try something.”

A subset of those responses announced that yes, the United States was indeed going to subjugate Canada. Typical was the reply from a certain “Daniel” that first sneered at my use of the word “hostile,” then said we would be the 51st state “very soon.” “Let's go to war,” said another post.

A few posted GIFs from the South Park movie, which depicted a campaign to demonize Canada. Whatever the purpose of those particular posts, they illustrated the breathtaking speed with which we have travelled from satire to reality, simply because Trump willed it.

Givens agrees that the glib responses seem to speak to some underlying truths about politics in the Trump era. “There's a large swath that sees Trump as an entertainer,” she says. “You know, ‘This is just a joke.’ But he's got all this power behind him, so people like me are taking this stuff seriously.”

A warped sample of average Americans

Givens points to U.S. Vice-President JD Vance’s tirade delivered Friday to European leaders in Munich. “There's just this utter disregard for international law, for sovereignty. I mean, for God's sake, Ukraine isn't even being invited to the talks about a peace treaty between it and Russia. So these people who are just making a joke out of it are really showing a huge lack of understanding of what's going on.”

Givens, originally from Spokane, Washington, believes we are paying the price for a U.S. public that does not understand the nature of constitutional government. “Our education system has been undermined,” she says. “We don't really teach civics anymore. And we've just gotten to this point where too many people see politics as entertainment.”

Some caution is needed in interpreting the online responses that flooded my account. It's impossible to know their true source. Some, particularly the anti-Trudeau diatribes, appear to come from Canadians.

And a recent Angus Reid poll suggests that treating Canada like a tray of shrimp at an all-you-can-eat buffet is not an approach shared by most Americans. Twice as many U.S. respondents oppose the idea of Canada as a 51st state than support it, and the ones who support a hostile takeover of the Great White North amount to a mere five per cent.

Those who do favour a takeover all seem to have X accounts. At the very least, the responses to my post frequently displayed a failure to differentiate between an exchange of schoolyard taunts and the genuine threat posed by American belligerence. Trudeau has said bad things about Trump, the argument goes, and therefore Trump is perfectly within his rights to deny the sovereignty of a neighbour and NATO ally.

It is striking that the people who listen to Trump and credit what he says are the people who hate and fear him. His supporters are the ones who are dismissive of his rhetoric.

I found myself nodding along with researchers who find online trolls tend to be a bundle of charming personality types, including “Machiavellianism, narcissism and sadism.” Many are compensating for “negative social potency” and, big surprise, they score really low on “agreeableness, conscientiousness and honesty–humility.”

Most trolls are best ignored. But some who run governments you just can’t.

Givens feels Americans do not fully appreciate the potential consequences of Trump's actions, and that boycotts and travel cancellations could start to bite. “I think people are riled up enough that this could last a long time,” she says. “Black people have used this tool for a long time, very successfully. I would say that Canada needs to look at the tactics that have worked previously, what African Americans did during the civil rights movement, with the boycotts.”

The effort is ongoing, says Givens, author of Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides. Mounting boycotts against Trump’s agenda aren’t confined to Canada, she notes. “It's becoming a North American phenomenon. And I think you're going to find a lot of Europeans are going to do the same thing now — cancelling U.S. vacations, boycotting U.S. goods, all of that.

“The funny thing is, this is what Trump wants to do to Canada, to make it so difficult that the economy just crashes. But the rest of the world, especially our allies, are saying: ‘Bullshit, buddy. We have economic power too, and we can destroy your economy.’”

‘Buckle up’

Hundreds of responses to my post seem to glory in America's new identity as an international goon.

Thirty-five years ago when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Republican president George H.W. Bush said, “This will not stand.” Now a Republican president is insisting it is international law that will not stand. And Trumpers are here for it. “Buckle up buttercup,” wrote someone ID’d as “Wombatism.” “It only gets more hostile from here.”

“Unfortunately, it is a journey, right?” Givens says. “It's been a process. We've been moving there for a long time.”

That move toward international lawlessness has been accompanied by the rise of white supremacist politics in the Republican party, and ongoing attempts to quash the teaching of Black history in America.

“You know, it's sad,” Givens says. “I was one of the first Americans to study the far right in Europe. I've looked at various aspects, anti-immigration stuff, anti-discrimination policy, the roots of racism. I did a video for PBS called ‘Can democracy survive racism?’ This was back in 2019.

“And now I'm like, ‘Damn, I didn't think the U.S. was going to be the first to fall.’”