By Cliff Potts, Occupy 2.5 – Democrats & Guns Series
AUSTIN, Republic of Texas — July 29, 2025
It was a hot Tuesday in Austin. The kind of day where your gunmetal melts into your belt buckle, and your progressive values sweat clean out of your pores by noon. The Democrats had gathered at the Whole Foods parking lot again, this time to film a TikTok series about “Responsible Gun Ownership for Leftist Suburbanites.” They were doing downward dog with AR-15s and sipping fair-trade cold brew through stainless steel straws. Texas progressives, God love ’em, were trying to save the Republic one eco-magazine-fed Glock at a time.
And then the news hit: Canada has officially had enough of our shit.
Not just Trump. Not just MAGA. The whole steaming, semi-automatic, semi-fascist casserole we call American politics. Trudeau didn’t even blink before building a digital wall, a trade firewall, and a metaphorical moat full of beavers with degrees in constitutional law.
And what did the Texas progressives say?
“Y’all, did we lose Canada? Was that on the table?”
Oh, honey. Canada was never at the table. They saw our little January 6 cosplay coup and said “hard pass, amigos.” Then they watched us hand Trump a second shot at the throne and started locking their doors like we were meth-heads knocking at 3AM with a Gadsden flag and a six-pack of bleach.
The “Poutine Line” Has Been Drawn
The Canadian Parliament passed the Digital Sovereignty Act to keep our dumbass conspiracy theories from infecting their national brain (Canada Parliament, 2023). That’s not a metaphor. They’re literally filtering American content like it’s porn in a Mormon youth center.
Trudeau called the U.S. a “democracy in distress” back in 2021 (Globe and Mail, 2021). But in Canadian political language, that’s basically the same as slapping our mama and flipping us the bird.
Meanwhile, in Texas, the Democrats are still trying to win elections by handing out tote bags that say “Armed, Alarmed, and Slightly Charitable.”
The Great Canadian Exodus (of Respect)
Let’s be honest: we didn’t just lose the moral high ground — we bulldozed it to build another Buc-ee’s and armed the cashiers with bump stocks. And the folks up north? They’re sipping their Tim Hortons, shaking their heads, and updating their maps to list “America” as formerly democratic territory.
Canada’s moved on. They’re not looking south anymore. They’re looking west to Japan, east to the EU, and north to literally anyone not having an identity crisis with firearms and fascism.
And here in Austin? The local Democratic Caucus just launched a “Hug Your Gun, Hate Your Fascist” campaign. We’re arming up with ironic rifles, pink camo berets, and progressive pride patches that say “This Machine Votes Blue.”
Spoiler: The machine jams at the polls, and the ammo’s backordered until 2027.
We Ain’t All Gone, Canada. Just Most of Us.
Some of us in Texas are still fighting. Just like some of y’all up in Montreal are still sober. But the overlap’s getting thin.
We know fascism when we smell it. Smells like gun oil, spray tan, and Bible verses taken way too literally. And while we watch the GOP deepthroat dictatorship in primetime, we get it, Canada. We’re embarrassed, too.
So if you hear boots on your border, don’t worry — it ain’t MAGA. It’s just us: the last of the Texas left, waving a Pride flag duct-taped to a Daisy BB gun, whispering, “Do you have room for one more?”
APA Citations:
Canada Parliament. (2023). Bill C-75: Digital Sovereignty Act. House of Commons of Canada. https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-75/first-reading
Globe and Mail Editorial Board. (2021, January 7). The attack on the U.S. Capitol is a warning for Canada. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-the-attack-on-the-us-capitol-is-a-warning-for-canada/
Dark Val 