O Canada

 

Back when slavery was still legal in the United States, runaway slaves used to flee to Canada. Then in the 1920s, when alcohol was outlawed in the United States, people smuggled booze in from Canada or went there to drink. During the Vietnam war, some American men who wanted to avoid the draft sought amnesty in Canada. In 1985, Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid's Tale, a novel depicting a dystopian future in which an oppressive theocracy took over in America, and Americans defected to Canada. During the Bush II and Trump years, we often heard liberals saying they planned to run away to Canada, fearing that a Handmaid's Tale-style police state was soon to follow. In recent decades, since America has grown increasingly inhospitable towards the world's tired, poor, and huddled masses, Canada has stepped up to welcome them. If the United States is the Mother of Exiles, Canada is the exiles' cool aunt who they stay with when Mom is mad. I've heard that when savvy American backpackers are traveling abroad, they stick a Canadian flag patch on their backpacks, because so many people around the world hate Americans but feel warmly toward Canadians. Canada appeared to be the last bastion of liberty, the last place people could bug out to when even the Land of the Free was no longer free enough.

But things have changed.

 

 

Gun control in Canada has gotten increasingly restrictive, starting with handgun registration in 1934 and proceeding through to their banning AR-15s and many other types of guns in 2020. Jordan Peterson was an unknown Psychology professor from Toronto who became internationally famous in 2016 when he had the audacity to say that his government shouldn't mandate that people say certain words. And now, in response to protests from truckers and other "essential" workers who have survived COVID-19 while being required to work for the past two years (while their taxes supported everyone else staying home), the Canadian government is seizing the bank accounts of anyone connected to the protests. They're using laws intended for fighting terrorism to suppress political dissent. Police are reportedly going door to door among businesses in downtown Ottawa, the nation's capital, checking business licenses, driver's licenses, etc., and kicking people out--even people who aren't protesting--if the police don't feel that those people have a legitimate need to be there. The level of coercion that Canada is using to silence its people, to punish them for having spoken up in the first place, and to force them back to work is on a scale we typically associate with the likes of Vladimir Putin, not Justin Trudeau.

I once heard a story about a man who had come to the United States from Cuba, or perhaps from the Soviet Union. After he related how bad things had been in his home country, he said that Americans were in an even worse situation, because unlike the people in his country, Americans don't have anywhere to run to if tyranny rears its head here. But we did--Canada. I'm reminded of this story now, looking at how oppressive the Canadian government has become. It's true--we don't have any freer place to run away to anymore. The American people are backed into a corner. If our government tries to suppress us, our only options will be to comply or fight. Let's hope it never does anything so foolish.

Drop It Like It's Hot

 

I've noticed something that may be of interest to linguists or pop culture geeks. You know how there are some words that mean both one thing and its opposite? Like the word "sanction"--it can mean both to officially endorse, encourage, sponsor, etc., and to prohibit, discourage, or penalize. It can mean either officially allowing or officially disallowing. I don't know what these words are called, but if I were naming them, I might call them "autoantonyms."

Anyway, I've discovered a new one that's the result of evolving slang. I don't mean like how "bad" still retains its original definition in formal speech but means "good" in AAVE. This one has crept into usage among journalists. My wife suggested that perhaps it was just lingo peculiar to that field, but I'm seeing more widespread usage of it than just that.

The word is "dropped." It still retains its original definition of allowing something to physically fall (or causing it to fall). That hasn't changed. But in addition to that, we used to use "dropped" in a figurative way meaning "to abandon or discontinue," as in "The deadline for dropping classes without penalty is next Tuesday," or, "My boyfriend hit me, so I dropped him like a bad habit." (...which is kind of a weird expression itself, given that bad habits are not usually dropped suddenly or permanently.)

But the new figurative use means nearly the opposite. It means "to introduce, to present." I've heard pundits say, "The New York Times just dropped a headline..." which to me, means they retracted it, deleted it, refused to print it, or otherwise decided not to use it. But that's not the meaning the speaker intended. They meant, "The New York Times just published a headline," the idea being that "dropped" conveys a suddenness and powerful impact. This leads me to believe it may have come from "mic drop" or from a common origin with that expression.

Another example is one I just encountered in a magazine article. The author was telling a story about an online interaction with her friend. The friend sent her a link to a Substack, but she related this as "She dropped a link..."

I suppose in that sense, it might also come from video games. In many multiplayer games, you can't actually hand an item from your character to another player's character. To make such a transfer, you have to "drop" the item from your inventory, letting it fall on the ground, where it can then be picked up by someone else. So perhaps the author meant "dropped" in the sense of "She had this thing, but intentionally let it fall to the ground for me to find, like Hansel and Gretel dropping bread crumbs."