i don't use "digital services" and i don't consider netflix to be "culture". so these definitions are not rooted in reality from the start. further, i'm not interested in nationalism and reject defining culture in terms of national origin. that's fascist, and it's ultra conservative. i support a single "global culture" in a post-national, post-cultural society. the sovereign individual has no nationality, no culture, no religion - these are collectivist ideologies, these are feudal concepts, these are fascist rules. individualism cannot exist within nationalism. culture, religion and nationality all must be abolished to build a new socialist, secular society of the individual in a post-national technological future, where nobody pays to access propaganda in the form of video advertising (which is what netflix is).
the trudeau government, on the other hand, had this anachronistic idea that it could save "canadian culture" by enforcing digital content requirements created by just copying ideas from local broadcasting, as they were written in the 70s and 80s, and pasting them on to media companies that serve digital media, often from the other side of the world. it made no sense and exposed a deep ignorance of how these systems operate and who runs them. when challenged as to the importance of protecting "canadian culture", the trudeau government responded (formally or more often informally) that canada needed to be protected from america. but "canadian culture" wasn't in truth being threatened by out of control immigration. no no no. that's racist.
the americans rightfully have had some difficulties understanding this. it is incoherent. i can try, but i'll fail, because it's not consistent. i can try to point out the errors in logic. if "canadian culture" faces a threat, it's from too much immigration, not from the united states, which is culturally identical to us. yet, the government then hiked immigration, much of it from the third world, in an attempt to increase gdp by brute force rather than by innovation or technological growth. in the process, it demonstrated that it wasn't particularly interested in any kind of actual canadian identity, but was rather trying to protect third world cultural ideas from being assimilated by american cultural norms. well, that's what the policy says on it's face - come to canada and be a muslim extremist and we'll protect you from being americanized. i certainly don't support that, and very few canadians would, but it's essentially what the policy says. i would support americanization, in that context, not "multiculturalism". so, when pressed further on the point, canadians inevitably have no response but to say we don't want to be americans, and then be vague and unclear about what that means because the truth is that we do want to be americans, we just don't want to call ourselves americans. further, we certainly want to sell our own media in the united states, even as we place restrictions on americans operating media capitalism in canada, because the hypocrisy isn't intended to be consistent. we're not bothered by the contradiction. we don't care.
trudeau then told the americans he wanted to compete on digital media. oops.
trudeau was indeed a loser in a cultural sense, but that's not really my concern, here. i'm more interested in pointing out that he was a dumbass. i'm sure he's the source of trump's use of the term '51st state' and he didn't think it through, but thought it was 'ironic'. but he was also continuing a tradition of going to washington and engaging in friendly competition. this is our fault. we set this up.
donald trump doesn't engage in friendly competition. he competes to win. he seeks to bludgeon and destroy.
so, we asked for competition and we got it. then we didn't like it, because we're hypocrites. it turns out we don't want to compete after all. let's stick with that, it's more true.
there should be a total policy shift in ottawa on this. let's just throw the idea of canadian cultural identity in the trash heap. it's not real. to the extent that i may enjoy canadian bands, there's nothing inherently canadian about them (except increased state funding for the arts that got cut by harper and doesn't exist any more), and there is no dominant ethnic or national identity to generate a culture with. if the canadian state wants to incubate a concept of national identity, it should forget about netflix and focus more on immigration policy, like quebec is and has been doing and alberta and ontario are starting to do. maybe, one day in the future, canadians can have their own culture, after they've developed an immigration policy designed to inculcate it. today, we don't, and taxing american media companies doesn't create a national identity, it's just an excuse for a revenue stream, and it's pissing off the americans. drop this language. it's bullshit, and it's just creating needless conflict. the internet is post-cultural, post-national, post-ethnic. no piddling government tax will undo that, and no state should seek to undo that. the post-national character of the internet is an asset that should be what is incubated and grown.
i don't think the government needs this excuse of protecting culture to tax netflix. it should just tax netflix and drop the bullshit. and i support taxing netflix.
right now, the americans are trying to turn the tables by aggressively supporting their own media companies. well, we told them we wanted to compete. we aggressively taxed them and told them this was why. we walked into this. the reality is that we don't actually want to compete at all and should walk that back. don't listen to what trudeau said; he was an idiot. we don't have a national identity to protect. we want the internet to remain a post-cultural space that is free of national character, not a testosterone driven sports league for dumb countries to compete in. we want the policies to enforce the international character of the internet, not react against that or try to undo it by enforcing some backwards concept of digital nationalism.
canada and the united states should be able to work together with other english speaking echelon-connected countries to go back to building a post-national internet with international rules and norms, and stop wasting cellular energy and stop wasting brain cells on competing with each other.