Blackcap Blog

Published at 10:38 on 31 August 2026

My last post on this subject was titled “So It’s a Trade War… for Now;” I included those last two words for a reason. Trump is an agent of chaos and one of the attributes of the chaos he creates is instability and rapid change.

There is right now a lot of obsessing in Canadian media of Canada being in it for the long haul. In one sense, that is probably correct; the old world doesn’t exist any more. But the rhetoric tends to be simplistic and assume that means the USA and Canada will never ink another trade deal, at least not anytime soon.

On that I disagree, and I happen to land with California governor and likely primary presidential candidate Gavin Newsom. It is indeed highly likely Trump will TACO and negotiations will restart. Heck, for all we know negotiations may currently be going on right now, via back channels and out of the limelight.

Not only would it be absolutely like Trump for this sort of course change to happen, trade relations are like a large ship: it is simply not possible to nimbly execute a major course change. The USA and Canada are, like it or not, basically stuck trading with each other for the foreseeable future.

Trump will, of course, paint it as anything but a TACO. He will strut around and boast how it is the greatest and best trade agreement ever, and it was so all as a result of his genius. All the sturm und drang was just his mastery of four-dimensional political chess that you, as a mere common human being, are unable to perceive.

Carney will, of course, bite his tongue go along with it, because he cannot stop Trump being Trump, and (all other things being equal) a trade deal with the USA beats no deal with the USA.

In the long run, however, don’t expect the deal to last super-long. It will last for a while, then the USA will reveal that it was signed in pencil all along. Then there will be another trade war until another deal is hashed out. Rinse, lather, repeat. Again, the old pre-Trump world doesn’t exist any more.

As this process goes on, Canada should focus on gradually (it will have to be gradual, see above) steering the ship of trade policy in particular and policy in general to a different course.

Critical on the above is Canada getting serious about national defence. History has shown that when a more powerful nation starts making persistent noise about annexing a less-powerful neighbour, it is something best taken very seriously. Things like this need to be actualized, and need to be merely a start. It needs to be demonstrated, via the creation of undeniable facts on the ground, that any invasion of Canada will likely be difficult, prolonged, unpleasant, and bloody.

As for military war, so for trade war. Going forward, USA is going to be more of a bully than ever, and the best way to deal with a bully is to show strength and resolve. (Whatever trade deal Carney cuts with Trump, it will almost certainly be significantly better than if he had just caved and made the concessions Trump wanted.)

We are at one of those times in history where the best way to ensure peace is to prepare for war (trade and otherwise).

Published at 09:31 on 25 August 2026

I think the best way to think of the guy is as the Rush Limbaugh of the left. Or perhaps the Joe Rogan of the left. Both things that many Democrats have wished for, for many years. And now that they have it, they are complaining.

Of course he says things that sometimes don’t play well in Peoria. He’s an entertainer, out to entertain his audience. He’s not a politician, out to win office. And yes, he’s an entertainer, not a serious political analyst. Just like Limbaugh and Rogan.

He spends a huge chunk of most days, on average about seven hours, streaming on Twitch. He doesn’t have a script; it’s just one long stream-of-consciousness rant. So of course sometimes some things come out of his mouth that he probably shouldn’t have said. The only surprise is that it doesn’t happen even more often.

So far as the quote that is causing all the recent brouhaha, here it is:

If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.

I don’t know how people don’t recognize how dangerous this predicament is, how dangerous this is for Jews.

You’re running around basically tying your entire identity to a country that inevitably will be seen as Jewish Isis, and you’re saying, as Jews, this is all we care about. You’re making antisemitism worse.

Not, overall, an explicit call for violence against Jews. Sure, if you parse it out and think about it, it does carry the at least the whiff of an assertion that if Jews stand by Israel, they deserve what is coming to them. But, critically, it stops short of explicitly saying that.

And yes, there is a bad history behind such insinuations. Hitler once said:

If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!

Still, if you leave a bundle of $100 bills on the dash of an unlocked car parked in a questionable neighbourhood, and come back some hours later to find it missing, saying that it was only to be expected that your money vanished is not the same thing as saying that you deserved it and the thief did nothing wrong.

This is, in other words, consistent with my thesis above that he is an entertainer who streams for a huge chunk of his waking hours and who sometimes (and inevitably) lets loose something that looks bad out of rhetorical context, and this case bad in historical context. Not so consistent with the one that he’s a left-wing extremist slavering for the blood of his adversaries, a latter-day Pol Pot or Mao Zedong.

Which is not to say that Abdul El-Sayed is wrong for distancing himself from Piker. The two are in entirely different businesses. Piker only has to sustain a loyal audience, and audiences need not represent the population as a whole. El-Sayed has to appeal to a swing state electorate, and, as Ronald Reagan (whatever you or I think of his politics, a highly successful politician) once observed: “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Publicly distancing himself, is, in other words, probably the optimal course of action for El-Sayed.

Published at 13:48 on 23 August 2026

Quebec nationalism has historically been identical to Quebec separatism, the quest for Quebec to become a fully separate and sovereign nation. This seems to be changing, most likely into some set of guarantees and protections for Quebec to exist within Canada as a distinct society.

On the latter point, as much as there has been controversy attached to that phrase, any honest assessment of the situation has to conclude that Quebec is already a distinct society, with its own unique majority language, legal traditions, religious proclivities, and history. It’s mostly arguing over how (and how much) to acknowledge this.

But I digress; back to the changing face of Quebec nationalism. The Parti Québécois has already announced that, if it wins the coming provincial elections, the new PQ government will not hold a sovereignty referendum, at least not so long as Donald Trump remains president of the USA.

It is not hard to understand why. As unpleasant as it is for Canada to have to confront Trump, it would be even worse for Quebec to have to do so alone. A united Canada is larger, more powerful, and more likely to prevail. A bigoted fascist government will have even less respect for Quebec than it does for English-speaking Canada (at least English-speaking Canada shares a common language and legal heritage).

It’s not just hypothetical, either. One of the reasons Carney walked away from the trade deal is that the Trump regime was insisting that Canada abandon its commitment to bilingualism and protections for the French language.

Published at 15:58 on 22 August 2026

So far as I can determine, these are the main rules of Democratic Party primary politics, according to that party’s ruling gerontocracy:

1. If a left candidate runs as an independent or in a third party, the left is at fault for splitting the electorate in the general.
2. If a left candidate runs within the Democratic Party via the primary process, the left is at fault for attempting a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party.
3. If a centrist candidate prevails in the primary but fails because of a lack of support from the left in the general, the left is at fault for failing to support the party’s candidate.
4. If a leftist candidate prevails in the primary but fails because of a lack of support from the centre in the general, the left is at fault for fielding a candidate with insufficient centrist appeal.

Published at 21:51 on 21 August 2026

This is Trump we are talking about negotiating with, so none of this is a surprise. And it also won’t be a surprise if, in a week or three, Trump goes into TACO mode, suddenly becomes a lot more reasonable, and a deal gets made after all.

Also, if Trump is being unreasonable (and I have no reason to doubt Carney’s assertion that he was), the best way to deal with it is the best way to deal with any bully: by showing strength. Whatever the short-run costs of that strategy will be, they will pale in comparison to the long-term costs of failing to show strength.

Published at 08:41 on 25 July 2026

Back in 2021, I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the excess COVID-19 death rate in the USA, compared to Canada. I came to the conclusion that it was around 60%, at the time around 380,000 Americans.

Given that most of that was caused by conspiracy-mongering aided and abetted by Trump fascists, it seems fair to give them the credit for the deaths. Similar logic is used to add numbers to Stalin’s and Mao’s death counts, after all. They are so high not because either dictator directly and deliberately ordered the execution of so many victims, but because of policy choices (primarily agricultural policy) that led to such deaths more indirectly (via famine). Almost nobody gripes about this accounting being unfair to Stalin or Mao.

Anyhow, now that the pandemic has settled down into a routine global endemic disease situation, similar to colds and flu, I figured a retrospective was in order.

The data are here and a quick look shows that although the raw numbers are higher, the basic ratio is almost exactly the same: roughly 60% of the deaths in the USA are excess deaths compared to Canada. That ends up raising Trump’s COVID body count to around 740,000.

Published at 09:03 on 17 July 2026

While nobody can predict the future with absolute certainty, I will just say that this, this, and this all dovetail perfectly with my earlier prediction that a) the Trump fascists will try to steal the coming election, and b) have far more success at doing so than many presently realize.

Published at 08:01 on 10 July 2026

Originally, Zionism (and related words like Zionist) pertained simply to support for some sort of Jewish state somewhere (not necessarily even in the Middle East). Support a Jewish state in Argentina or Alaska? You’re a Zionist. Support a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian one? You’re a Zionist. Support Israel being compelled to give back the lands it occupied post-1967, but there still being an Israel? Still a Zionist.

Things seem to be changing. From a recent poll of Jews in Milwaukee:

The survey, released last week by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, found that 43% of Jewish adults said they identified as Zionist, while 42% said they did not. A much higher share — 69% — said they feel somewhat or very “emotionally attached to Israel.” At the same time, 52% of respondents agreed that “Israel regularly violates the human rights of the Palestinian people.”

This is, I think, something to keep in mind when one hears explicitly anti-“Zionist” rhetoric in the Palestine solidarity movement and on the Left generally.

Published at 10:56 on 7 July 2026

Told You So

Just take a trip down memory lane to last October. Even my most recent, more positive assessment of the guy (who wasn’t my first choice but I don’t choose the candidate, Maine voters do) mentioned the possibility of there being “more skeletons in his closet.” It was not precisely a difficult call.

He Can’t Win

There’s been pretty credible accusations of sexual assault against him before that for some reason were overlooked by voters. The latest news, which pretty much unequivocally describes a rape, is apparently too much. There’s been a huge wave of former supporters denouncing him and asking him to drop out.

If he drops out, of course he can’t win. If he stays in (and he’s self-centred enough that he just might), he also can’t win. Collins will survive another term.

The Democrats Can’t Win That Seat

Suppose he drops out. Then what? The law says the party gets to choose his replacement. Which probably means they pick Mills. She’s who they wanted in the first place, and she got around 20% in the primary (finishing second after Platner) despite having suspended her campaign.

Suppose they don’t pick Mills. They will pick someone equally uninspiring. This is the Democratic Party establishment we are talking about, after all.

Finally, even if, by some miracle, the party elite manages to pick an actually good candidate, it probably won’t matter. This whole fiasco has irreparably damaged their brand in this race.

This Is Not the Establishment’s Fault

It’s the progressives’ fault. It was the Left that fell in love with Platner, piled the endorsements on him, and kept the endorsements even when the skeletons in his closet started coming to light. There were other candidates in the primary besides Platner and Mills. At least one of them was a progressive. Could have (and should have) backed someone else.

This whole situation is the converse of the recent NYC mayoral race. Then, it was the Establishment who damaged their own cause by backing flawed candidates like Cuomo and Adams. Just like there were better progressive candidates in the Maine primary, there were better establishment ones in the NYC primary.

It was wrong for the Establishment to blame the Left then, and it is wrong for the Left to blame the Establishment now.

It’s Not Fair, but It Doesn’t Matter

Yes, it’s not fair that the Establishment gets to bat last on this one by nominating Platner’s replacement, should he drop out. Well, boo hoo hoo. Life isn’t fair. Part of being an insurgent movement challenging the status quo is by definition the fact that you don’t get the status quo advantages. Your job is to win despite that. If you can’t, you are not up to your historic mission.

The solution is to choose better candidates, ones that don’t self-immolate like this one just did. Pick a Mamdani next time, not a Platner.

Published at 18:42 on 1 July 2026

But will the Dem establishment and the Dem centrists learn the lesson? I doubt it. They show all signs of being too stuck in their ways to be able to change. Hence my expectation that they end up in the dustbin of history.

Link to Bluesky post here.