New York Gov Kathy Hochul Real Sorry About Threatening To Blow Up Canada
Who peed in her poutine?
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul clarified Friday that she does not want to wage war on Canada and obliterate the nation off the face of the earth. So, that’s a relief. She’d misspoken, as people often do, although there’s no evidence boilermakers were involved.
“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo,” Hochul said in a speech on Thursday, “I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day. That is a natural reaction.”
No, that is a war crime. Although I’m not a fan of the wings, I do like Buffalo and would prefer that no one attacked the city of 275,000, but wiping out Canada, which has a population of 38 million, is a vastly disproportionate response. You’d start with bombing military targets and then follow up with that old classic regime change. Honestly, Hochul probably shouldn’t share her genocidal fantasies in public. She sounds like Grand Moff Tarkin: “Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.”
Hochul showed off her hair trigger while speaking to the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York. She’d condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization, which it is, and said that Israel shouldn’t endure “that threat, that specter over them,” which is also reasonable.
“You have a right to defend yourself and to make sure that it never happens again,” she said. “And that is Israel’s right.”
Unfortunately, Hochul implied that Israel has the right to destroy not just Hamas but Gaza. That’s the obvious inference from her surprise “Bomb Canada” musical number. She did apologize later for her “poor choice of words” and “inappropriate analogy.” After all, poutine might be bad for your longterm health but it’s not a weapon of mass destruction.
“While I have been clear in my support of Israel’s right to self-defense,” she said. “I have also repeatedly said and continue to believe that Palestinian civilian casualties should be avoided and that more humanitarian aid must go to the people of Gaza.”
I imagine Hochul was attempting to empathize with Israel’s situation and made herself look ridiculous. Americans don’t have to worry much these days about terrorist attacks on US soil. Or do they?
Our threats are home grown
Hochul’s somewhat absurd Canada analogy demonstrated a fundamental lack of imagination or even self-awareness. Just last week, on Valentine’s Day, gunfire broke out at a parade held for the Kansas City Chiefs, who’d just won the Super Bowl. A woman was murdered and 22 people were injured, half of them children. The response was predictable: No alteration to our gun laws but maybe we should consider cancelling future parades. Guns have made us so free we might never gather in public again!
Two juveniles were charged with the shooting. It’s not clear how they acquired the weapons of death, but Missouri has some of the weakest gun laws in the nation and actively defies federal gun laws. In 2021, Missouri passed the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” which imposed significant fines on local and state police who enforced federal gun laws. The SAPA was ruled unconstitutional in 2023 but remains in effect pending appeal.
Missouri also greatly restricts local municipalities from setting their own gun regulations. Republicans deride the violence in diverse, Democratic-run cities but prevent them from responding in ways that make actual sense.
Republicans did agree after the shooting to scrap two proposed gun bills — one would’ve permitted firearms on public transit and in churches (where Jesus keeps his guns) and the other would’ve exempted gun and ammunition purchases from sales tax. Guns are apparently more vital than groceries.
Some people feared that the parade shooting was a politically motivated attack, a result of the epic MAGA meltdown over Taylor Swift’s relationship with Chiefs player Travis Kelce, but the police investigation found no connection to terrorism of violent extremism. I’m not sure what’s more depressing — the idea that a deranged person would fire on a crowd of people because they believed conspiracy theories about a pop star or that it was just the typical, horrific gun violence we’ve all come to accept in America.
There’s been a mass shooting in a US city almost every day since the Kansas City parade. As John Branch at the New York Times wrote, “No parcel of American public life feels completely safe. No shooting feels like a surprise, except to the people who live through it.”
Bombing nations is easy. Gun laws are hard.
Last year, after a gunman opened fire at a medical office in downtown Atlanta, Sen. Raphael Warnock delivered a moving speech on the Senate floor.
“I feel it in my bones because my own two children were on lockdown this afternoon. I have two small children and their schools are on lockdown responding to this tragedy. They’re there, I’m here, hoping and praying they’re safe,” Warnock said, adding with regret, “But the truth is none of us are safe.”
“We behave as if this is normal. It is not normal. It is not right for us to live in a nation where nobody’s safe no matter where they are. We’re not safe in our schools. We’re not safe in our workplaces. We’re not safe at the grocery store. We’re not safe at movie theaters. We’re not safe at spas. We’re not safe in our houses of worship. There is no sanctuary in the sanctuary.”
Hochul’s “inappropriate analogy” envisioned an external enemy — apparently an unhinged Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau so maybe I was wrong when I suggested she lacked imagination. The United States can respond to those threats with swift, decisive military action, and if we sometimes invade the wrong nation or irradiate innocent people, we can at least say we won or left with some morbid souvenirs. Unfortunately, the nation’s single greatest threat is our own fear and absolute certainty that violence solves everything.
The governor visited Israel last October after Hamas’ deadly attack on Israeli civilians, and in an interview afterward, she said, “We knew we needed to wait until it was secure, but I said, ‘I have to go there, because this is an attack on the people of Israel directly. And we know about being attacked by terrorist organizations here in New York City.’”
She was obviously referring to 9/11 and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. However, almost two years ago, a white supremacist gunned down 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo. Hochul signed legislation after this massacre that banned semi-automatic weapons and outlawed body armor. That’s a more measured response, even if it doesn’t guarantee the end of racist murders. For centuries, Black Americans have lived with the threat of racial violence from other Americans, and if genocide was our natural reaction, we’ve fortunately never given into it.
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The US going to war with Canada is a mistake...Canada has defeated the US in FOUR wars: the American War of Independence, the War of 1812, the Aroostook War, and the San Juan de Fuca Island War. However, the only casualty in the latter was a pig.
Canada also inflicted the 1965 and 2003 power blackouts on the Northeast United States.
I for one welcome our puck-driving overlords!