Seeing Through The Contradictions, One Whiskey At A Time While We Play Monopoly

How deeply screwed up and divided are we actually in Canada?

I woke up this morning after sleeping in for an extra 3 hours with a text message from my Dad:

Remind me why we still reside in Canada?

Recovering from a mild cold after the weekend's snow storm and getting enough rest so I don’t sabotage tomorrows job interview, I rolled out of bed and texted him back:

I don’t think there’s any real reason lol

What I really wanted to say was: I blame you and my Mom. I never asked to be born and yet alone I never asked to be born in Canada and now I’m stuck here! Fix it!

I’m a grown adult. Replying to my Dad in such a way wouldn’t make anything better so I resisted and chose to not go the melodramatic route.

But let’s talk about being a grown adult living in Canada. How deeply screwed up and divided are we actually in Canada at the present moment? This past weekend was one of the most eye opening experiences I have ever had. If I could be quite frank, I am also slightly traumatized. This article is a more personal piece of writing, sort of like a public diary entry but I think it is totally relevant. I think a lot of folks here in Canada will relate to this one so here it goes.

I’ve been with my boyfriend for 10 years now. To put some things into context, he is from a small town, Campbellford, Ontario, and I am from Montreal, Quebec. Currently, we both reside in Toronto trying to make ends meet after turbulent experiences overcoming the pandemic, and failed music careers that followed. Check out this article to learn about how I got cancelled in the Canadian music scene. I am a proud veteran of the current culture wars. We both have dramatically different backgrounds. His parents chose to be Christians while raising my boyfriend in the small town of Campbellford, and to my understanding their faith has played a huge role in their life and decision making. This is something that always interested me as I come from a Catholic background, my grandparents are European and my Dad was born and raised in Montreal by his European parents, and my Mom is French Canadian. Even though I've been baptised, had my first communion and confirmation, religion hasn’t played a big role in our family and my upbringing. My parents are separated, my mom is married with my step father who has children of his own. We had this super blended family and I lived two lives essentially. I suppose one would say I had a modern and liberal approach to my upbringing and my boyfriend’s was more traditional and conservative.

Anyway, we spent the weekend at his parents house in the small town. A thing we do there is sit around in the living room in the evening time drinking multiple rounds of whiskey and we talk. These talks always lead to political discussions. I forget what was said prior that led to this topic, but we were discussing Project 25—which to my knowledge doesn’t have any merit and actually sounds like a conspiracy. This Project 25 sounds like an excuse for democrats/far left liberals to hate Trump and Conservatives. This Project 25 is a think tank focusing on reshaping public policy in areas like economics, national security, and social issues. This Project 25 advocates for limited government, free markets, and traditional values, often influencing Republican policy makers in the US. Its initiative is to essentially create a blueprint and rule guide for the next conservative administration, which regardless if this Project 25 has any merit or not, has publicly been rejected by the current president of the US—Trump:

“I have nothing to do with Project 25.”

There’s no reason to not believe Trump when he says “I have nothing to do with Project 25.” His entire career before and during politics has been about him being ruthless and honest. To me, it would make no sense for him to suddenly back out from saying the truth and hiding the fact that he has any involvement with this Project 25. My boyfriend's parents stated that Trump is an evil man, one of the most cruel humans on earth, and with his current mandates and executive orders that he signed, he is following this Project 25 agenda. I chuckled, and snarky said to his parents that Project 25 is a conspiracy. (In retrospect I was a little tipsy from the whiskey and should not have said it like that, I have no real evidence backing that Project 25 is a conspiracy and just wanted them to explain to me their reasoning for their belief.) They both lost their minds. But before we go into that, let's review what has been done by Trump so far: There are only 2 genders: Male and Female, DEI mandates are being removed, illegal migrants are being removed out of the country, the US will withdraw from the Paris Agreement involving climate issues, the US will promote AI and make America a hub and dominant space for AI innovation, the US will prohibit transgender individuals from serving in the military and keep men out of female sports, the US will implement tariffs with Canada and Mexico, the US will end forced usage of paper straws, the US will cut government waste and bureaucrats, the US will cut the government's involvement with education, and the US will leave WHO—the World Health Organization and much more.

When I made the mistake of stating that Project 25 is a bit of a conspiracy, my boyfriend's parents lost their minds. His mom with a bit of tears in her eyes screamed and said: “No! It is not a conspiracy, it is real!” And his father quite aggressively shouted at me saying: “No! Mel! This is where we draw the line. You cannot say that. This conversation ends here. Its just like the subject of rape! I have never been this way with you, but no, no, no!” (They said “no” a lot…) My boyfriend was obviously torn. He didn't want me fighting with his parents and participated in telling me “no we are not talking about this” as a middle man to end the chaos, and his father proceeded in thanking him for defending their views (which actually wasn’t what my boyfriend was doing.) The situation was so crazy. I couldn’t help it and I kept insisting and I kept going. So much adrenaline came out of me and I felt like I was onto something. I pressured and said, “you can’t shut down this conversation and just tell me ‘no.’ Instead of screaming at me because we are in disagreement, why don’t you educate me on why you guys think the way that you think?” (The yelling kept going in between but I powered through). I told them, “I didn’t grow up in faith and religion like you all, I grew up differently. I am a sponge. I absorb information and like to learn. You are both just shouting things at me and not actually explaining to me why you think the way that you think. What exactly is Project 25, why is it not a conspiracy, and why do you hate Trump so much?”

I am here to tell you that I never actually got an answer. Only because I love my boyfriend, I apologized for asking questions (which I actually shouldn’t have) and we moved on from the subject.

It was right then and there that I realized that Trump derangement syndrome is real and alive, and in Canada. Here we are, a family, sitting in a Canadian living room in the midst of a winter storm in the countryside arguing about Trump's policies, and he is not even our president. The problem is there was actually zero meaning to the entire argument. No lessons were learned, no new information was taught, it felt like I just witnessed cult behaviour—you know when people are just so angry at you that you don't think the same way that they do and deep down they know they can never convince you because there's no real rational thought behind any of their beliefs and they are just having a tantrum? Yeah, that's what happened. It's confusing to me though. In the last 10 years I’ve witnessed the parents of my boyfriend become brainwashed. It happens so slowly and it's unfortunate because it tears families apart. I’ve watched them dislike me and judge me because years ago I used to wear Halloween-esque fashion accessories (and still do at times) because I just love Halloween and as a little girl I loved going to Salem Massechesettes and wanted to be a witch (which is sort of hilarious if you think about it). Because of this, they thought I was a ‘Satanist’ or whatever, and I was ‘mocking their religion’, which is a more conservative stance if you think about it, yet they claim to be liberals. Also, for some reason, I don’t know where this came from, they believed my family participated in Nazi Germany which is quite extreme! (Maybe because my grandfather's name is Adolf, and maybe because my grandparents are Austrian and ethnic Germans?) I really don’t know, but everything about their thought process seems hypocritical to me and stupid. Nothing about judging an individual is progressive and liberal at all. It is not consistent and unthoughtful which is the opposite of progression. To compare discussing Project 25 to rape is so distorted beyond words. Some would call this distorted mental illness.

So, how deeply screwed up and divided are we actually in Canada at the present moment? I am sure what I just went through is something so many other Canadians go through in their private lives. The tide is shifting but a little slower in Canada. Many Canadians appear to still have this Stockholm syndrome. We are captives of our own abusive authoritarian government. Right now, our Canadian government wants family and friends to have these exact sorts of disagreements and fights. It is all irrational too! We are not allowed to question things and explore the other side. We are literally censored, which is something that is currently happening in Canada with Bill C-11, where we are regulated on social and media platforms and algorithms are manipulated, Canadian content is monitored and the government literally controls mainstream media. How does this not raise any red flags? I think it is all so silly and obvious and I don’t understand why liberals accept authoritarianism.

I think the liberals/democrats did a bad job at relating to people's current needs too. They created another war in recent years, they enforced such harmful programs that hurt children and young adults with the gender changes, check out this article I wrote about leaving the kids alone (and here in Canada we have assisted suicide!), we have censorship laws in Canada and the government controls the media which controls the narrative. Liberals are pretending to be progressive when really their ideas are simply trapping people into a dystopian future. This is why most true-at-heart liberals like myself feel that the party left them and they no longer associate with the liberal party and are now leaning towards conservative policies for survival purposes.

This is a topic I tried discussing with my boyfriend's parents too but they failed to understand which baffles me. We were at some point also discussing the differences between conservatives and liberals and a big one they mentioned was that conservatives support the free market and capitalism and this somehow is a bad thing. Here is where more hypocrisy comes in unfortunately with today’s liberals way of thinking. Many liberals criticize capitalism but then support policies that fuel globalism. Let’s break it down: globalism allows big powerful corporations to dominate industries (think of the game Monopoly), whipping out small businesses and local economies. Globalism encourages these industries/corporations to outsource jobs and labour to “cheaper” countries leaving the working class people in a constant struggle. This is the game of Monopoly. A small handful of big corporations and companies control literally everything, and the government actually profits from this. The government of Canada is basically an investor in a lot of major corporations in Canada. (CBC/Radio-Canada, Air Canada, VIA Rail, etc.) The top 6 banks control 90% of all of the home mortgages, 5 grocery stores control all of the groceries within Canada and the food and wholesale market, and internet and cell phones are not even controlled by Canadian companies, it's controlled in the US. We rely heavily on infrastructure and technology from global companies based in the US, and Canadians let it all happen. In basic English like explaining this to a 6th grader, in Canada we sell our gas and energy only to buy it back. (I am not an expert on these topics so please don’t come at me with shade, but as a Canadian citizen and taxpayer after doing my own research, this is the summary I came up with and it's known to all be true.) We are not allowed to cry about the tariffs that may actually end up coming our way. We created our own problems.

Globalism isn’t the opposite of capitalism, its basically capitalism on fucking steroids! The liberal government supports globalism, but lies to the public that they are helping us and that they are virtuous. I see through these contradictions, Trump sees through these contradictions, and the American people see through these contradictions, and that is why the liberals are having their tantrums. We have all had enough, whether you're a conservative, liberal, libertarian, NDP, center left, center right—it doesn’t matter. People are starting to wake up and come together and agree to vote based on policy rather than party.

Perhaps the people that are still stuck listening to the propaganda and follow the party that is the most progressive and virtuous provides them a sense of meaning to their boring and meaningless life. (This is the definition of a cult by the way). Is this the only way for people to find a sense of community and identity and have some sort of control over their lives? By making the other always the bad guy with no real explanation and abiding by an authoritarian government for no real reason?

I require an explanation.