He Shoots, He Scores

I’m not much a sports guy but, as a Canadian, it’s tough not to be delighted with the results of last night’s hockey game. It’s not so much about the win but about how the physical cuts through the conceptual. If you take words too seriously, you might have believed the gap between the two teams to be huge. That’s politics for you. But the physical reality—measurable and observable—is that things were close. Close enough to be dramatic. And, as far as storylines go, the Canadian team delivered exactly the way you’d want to script it. But now we’re back in the conceptual again. That’s how easy it is.
 

The physical world—the one thing we all share—leaves far less room for those kinds of shenanigans. There is time on the clock or there isn’t. The puck goes in or it doesn’t. Or, as Henry Rollins once wrote:
 

“The Iron never lies to you.

You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk. Get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal..
 

Friends may come and go.

But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.”
 

Propaganda on the other hand, thrives where these kinds of reality-checks are hard to come by. There are plenty of half-baked ideas floating around but when you hear them enough, they begin to feel real. That tactic that has been weaponized most effectively through a constant stretching of the Overton Window. All you have to do is keep repeating the same thing.
 

It’s like when someone tells you not to think of a pink elephant. The harder you try, the more you fail. And attacking the idea just makes it feel more real. That’s why if you hear enough people yell, "There are no pink elephants in Canada! Stop this nonsense!", you begin to wonder:
 

• Is there a serious pink elephant problem that no one’s talking about?
• Who’s suppressing information about this pink elephant problem and what don’t they want you to know!?

It’s exhausting. But that’s the point.

Nationalism isn’t the answer because nationalism is an autoimmune reaction, where the body cannot differentiate between itself and an invader. In an individual, it shows up as disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. In a nation, it shows up as attacks on its own citizens… their education, their access to information, and their upward mobility. And it’s easy. You just pick something—even as universal as public health—and attach a pink elephant to it.

National pride is another story… One that Canadians are a lot more cautious about (which is part of being Canadian). But, at its best, it’s based in shared values. It’s about what we’re for, not what we’re against. It’s fluid. It’s adaptive. It’s means moving past political divisions and building instead of attacking. It means grassroots Buy Canadian movements, infrastructure development, and healthcare innovation. And sometimes, , it means pucks in fucking nets.