Predicting the News, Vol. 1

The death of Lynch, ceasefire in Palestine, tariffs on Canada, and more

I'm known to brag about my predictions, and I've given several over the years on this blog, in my off-site journalism for a certain magazine, and in general POSTING around the net, but I've decided to try something new for all the predictions I don't have enough time to write full pieces on—a grab bag of shit from the headlines and where I think these stories are headed. What's most fun is this will expose me to have to be accountable for how often I'm going to be fucking WRONG (I’m going to be returning to this post to throw up my prediction scores as the situations develop). I'm on a bus between provinces right now and typing this up from there—I’ll finish this piece and add sources and such once I get back home, but I'm posting this now to get right to the big and fresh news, with a take that will REALLY piss people off:

The Death of David Lynch

The death of internet darling David Lynch (news of which just dropped within the last hour) will make the internet unusably obnoxious for the next week at the very least. Lynch's fandom was extremely annoying and driven by shallow engagement with Epic Memes, and they will not let him pass quietly from this earth. Films like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive will rightfully remain classics, they’re phenomenal films, but the exaggerated enthusiasm for the man's work (sometimes by people I doubt have actually seen much of his work and not just the memes) only really brings about the need to point out how much the man built off of filmmakers and films that came before him—Bunuel, for instance, or Last Year in Marienbad. It's an insult that Godard, a far more innovative and much more influential/historically-important filmmaker, passed away two years ago and will have received nowhere near the outpouring of grief from self-dubbed "movie buffs." That and all this enthusiasm for Lynch likely gained a lot of followers for the deranged cult he belonged to, Transcendental Meditation. Still, Lynch WAS a real, genuine artist, rather than some MCU mercenary or A24 hack.

Who will Letterboxd memelords turn to now as their new king? Do you even have to ask? It will be Werner Herzog.

Ceasefire in Palestine

When I drafted this part a bit yesterday evening I was writing that the ceasefire wasn't going to last, but little did I know how much I was overestimating on that one—the ceasefire may well already be over. But the fact that it was on the table at all is a good sign for Hamas, especially considering this was effectively the same deal Israel refused months ago. Hamas is gaining leverage. Combined with Blinken's estimates that Hamas has recruited as many new troops as it's lost, I would say that the conflict is not going as well as Israel may have hoped.

I was going to predict that Israel was going to wait until Trump was in office to reneg, but there we go, I've already been wrong and I haven't even really started. Speaking of Trump—

Sanctions on Canada—I mean TARIFFS!!!

Will Trump actually implement tariffs on Canada? Hard to say. I could predict Trump’s election pretty easily (and you can read that piece here) but it’s a lot harder to predict Trump’s actions, especially as he seems to be raw dogging this admin with even less input from anyone outside his own twisted brain than last time. This means predicting what Trump will do is less about being able to assess economic, political, sociological, historical trends etc. and more with being able to assess the personal psychology of one person, mitigated by the cabal trying to sway his opinions and attention. In this case, Trump is famously fickle, its possible he even made the threats just because he doesn’t like Trudeau, and even if he does implement the tariffs once he's in office, he could very well go back on them in under a month once people get sufficiently mad at him (he is going to completely destabilize the American economy, the reliance of the American market on globalized trade and production will be impossible to ween off of, the infrastructure simply does not exist domestically to support this). But who knows, maybe American lebensraum begins now. Canada is already America's polite neocolony, but it has been inevitable that that neocolonial relationship would one day wind up getting more testy one day, and maybe even lead to annexation if the going gets particularly bad for America and it was getting irrational and desperate, and the going is getting bad.

Trump is set to go full Herbert Hoover Mode if he sticks to his tariff plan and could plunge America into disaster, or so one hopes (acceleration of America’s degradation is the only path to salvation at this juncture). With ALL that trade war at once, I don’t think it’ll work, I think his plan needs focus on one objective if he’s trying to pressure other countries—if he were to stick to just tariffs on Canada alone, America would suffer but Canada could suffer even worse, and I don't expect that we would last. On the bright side, if you encounter any anti-Castro Cuban-Canadians complaining about what Trump has done to Canada, you can be sure to correct them that actually that's just a lame excuse, Doug Ford has all that extra money in a secret swimming pool he swims in like Scrooge McDuck. What the sudden economic problems coinciding with sanctions ACTUALLY mean is the “failure of the *Canadian system.*”

Alberta is already seemingly negotiating its own annexation with Trump since Premier Smith is such an Uncle Gord, but Ontario will be hit especially hard, with estimates being that such tariffs could cost the province half a million jobs—frankly, I think they're being optimistic, I might even suggest that it could be worse if he sticks to it. As a former Ontarian myself I can't wait to bore every non-Ontarian I know with my horror stories of “Life in Ontario.” In Ontario? They make you heat up the cheese curds before you put them on the poutine. Ontario certainly doesn't need all this, because I think Toronto might become Canada's Detroit pretty soon.

Toronto’s collapse

I've been calling this one for ages and, you know what? It's happening this year. I'm calling it. The housing bubble is going to burst and Toronto, especially as it's only real industry now is finance, which is obviously deeply tied into said housing, is going to crater. It's not enough that the fucking TTC announces every five fucking minutes that you should call for help if you see someone being stabbed and DEAR GOD, STOP JUMPING IN FRONT OF THE TRAINS! IT'S A $5K FINE! Toronto will somehow find its way into being an even WORSE place to live.

Toronto, the ever-unfinished city. In 1929, the city had such extravagant plans for itself, almost all of which came crashing swiftly down. Now once again Toronto, Canada's own Shitty New York, will fail to achieve its own dreams. Toronto, having gutted its own once-unique culture and character for empty condo development scams, will land on its ass like Duddy Kravitz: owner of a whole lot of fucking empty nothing and with nothing to show for it, not even a soul.

The Liberal Party leadership race

I'm going to get back to this when I add to this piece tomorrow (sorry bbs), but the gist is going to be that the leadership race is effectively a contest between two principle interests over Canada, both of them American — the proudly-Nazi-descended Freeland, who leaked cables back when she was made Foreign Minister effectively identify her as an agent of US foreign policy and represents Canada as a pawn of the State Department, or the patently narcissistic Mark Carney, who represents Canada as an asset for American finance capital to strip to the bone like we’re Instant Pot. It's a very grim picture.

EDIT: I’ve decided I’m just gonna do a full piece on the leadership race soon so look out for that instead