As great as it would be to have a Canadian Pinochet suspending democracy and correcting the country, it’s never going to happen. Our military brass is just another branch of the same federal government dip-shittery that got us into this malaise in the first place.

Canada is so weak and dysfunctional that it wouldn’t require a Pinochet and military backing to pull off a coup d’état anyway. You could probably do it with the villainous cast of The Dark Knight Rises.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, The Dark Knight Rises was the final part of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. It featured a retired Batman and a rather cleaned up and softened Gotham City. One day Bane (a cross between Fidel Castro and a WWE wrestler) and a small army of mercenaries with a cult-like devotion to him, arrive in Gotham. They destroy the stock market, blow up all the bridges leading to the main part of Gotham and use a 10-megaton nuke to ransom the city.

The movie was a nice play on the then currently fashionable #OccupyWallStreet movement and featured set pieces such as blowing up a football field and all the politicians attending the game. The only people capable of doing anything about any of it was the trio of Batman, Catwoman and Robin… all in their more realistic Nolan-esque splendor.

Could Bane and his minions take over a Batman-less Canada? This is the sort of fodder that University students might ponder over one too many beers at the campus pub, but considering recent events…is it that unrealistic?

In 2004, Margaret Thatcher’s son, Sir Mark Thatcher, planned a coup d’état of Equatorial Guinea. 64 mercenaries from the 32 Buffalo Battalion in South Africa were set to fly into the capital city and overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and install the opposition leader Severo Moto as a puppet ruler. It failed due to the lack of secrecy, but imagine if those guys had kept their mouth shut and kicked off a coup d’état? 64 guys taking over an entire country. They obviously thought it was possible and so too did their James Bond villain-style financial backers.

Imagine if 64 guys like that came to Canada.

Imagine if half of them took over Parliament Hill and spent all day performing Ceausescu solutions. Imagine if the other half took care of Ottawa infrastructure, Bane-style. As our Keystone Kops raced around wondering what to do, how long would it take before the horror of the day passed and the new normal set in. I suspect Canadians, being as they are, would quickly begin to shrug and say, “Nothing we can do about it” and carry on with their lives as usual. If the new regime kept everything intact, but eliminated the GST, the people of Canada would probably start supporting the new rulers in favourable numbers.

While the old order held meetings and tried to dialogue, the new order could just start ruling and getting things done. A big infusion of spending into the military would buy some allegiance from the rule followers in the armed forces. If the paycheques to the RCMP officers kept clearing, the new bosses would soon be calling the shots. If top bureaucrats or former police chiefs or grandstanding Premiers became too vocal in their opposition, they’d just be disappeared in a Sea King helicopter ride. Before long Prime Minister Bane would be trying to get Canada a seat on the United Nations Security Council and we’d all be complaining that he needs to focus on domestic issues instead of chasing accolades from the international community.

Would we need 64 guys even? Perhaps a dozen would do. Imagine Hans Gruber and his team from Die Hard taking over Parliament Hill. Now that Kevin Vickers has retired it probably wouldn’t be too hard. It would be hard to “take over Canada” this way however, and the new powers would be confined to one location on Parliament Hill. If they Ceausescu solutioned everyone in the building, it would change how business is done, but every demand would have to be negotiated by the entrenched status quo elsewhere. Too much inertia and compromise and not enough reach. Too unrealistic to effect permanent and functional systemic change.

As frustrating as the state of things is in this country, it’s unlikely to be solved with any sort of strong man solutions. Our country is weak and disordered and wallowing in malaise, but as gratifying as it is to pin the blame on governments and the people within them, the blame fundamentally lies elsewhere. We are a democracy after all, albeit a highly compromised and dysfunctional one. As H.L. Mencken wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know that they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Or, as an eloquent comments section writer at the National Post wrote shortly before the last election:





The danger to Canada is not Justin Trudeau but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the job of Prime Minister. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of a Trudeau than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgement to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man as their Prime Minister in the first place. Canada’s problem is much deeper and much more serious than Mr. Trudeau who is a mere symptom of what ails Canada. Blaming the Prince of Fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their Prince. The country can survive a Trudeau, who after all is merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools who made him their leader and are contemplating doing so again on Monday.





Well, that Monday has come and gone, and we rewarded him with a second term. (By “we” I mean Canadians: those hordes of leftists you and I are chained to across the country) The moral of the story is that Canada isn’t worth fighting over and it’s not worth fighting for. We are a disparate people with no shared values or interests. Hopefully the natural trajectory will someday shatter Canada into a thousand pieces, but until then we aren’t going to be conquered by a new Pinochet, Bane, or Hans Gruber because the “we” that would be conquered is the problem in the first place. In other words, Canada’s just not worth conquering.

For hardcore conservatives like me, withdrawing as much as possible and focusing on protecting myself and my loved ones from the national brokenness is priority number one. This country doesn’t want my input for fixing the brokenness and I’m done banging my head against the wall trying to provide it. If you’re like me I suggest taking the Jordan Peterson approach of individualism and focus on self-improvement and self-reliance.

The Benedict Option is another master plan that offers much insight. Focus on family, friends, local neighbourhood, faith, gratitude, individual prosperity, personal values. Exploit what you can from the government, tolerate what you must and give back as little as possible. People have lived under governments they hate for thousands of years. Why should we be the exception?

Canada is indeed broken and small parallel powers could give the ruling class a run for their money, but in the end, Canada would still be Canada, whether it’s ruled by Justin or Bane.

A nation of palookas and progressives failing despite all odds.

Be better than that. Be better than Canadian. If we all focus on being better individually, then we won’t need a revolution to set things straight. Our own lives will be fine. And then maybe, someday, little by little… the cultural tides will begin to turn and our politics can follow from there.