The Conversation – Canada – Page 8

January 13, 2026

Slanguage: The trouble with idioms is that they can leave even fluent English speakers behind

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Frank Boers, Professor of Applied Linguistics, Western University

Being a linguist — and someone who has tried to learn several languages (including English) in addition to my mother tongue (Flemish Dutch) — I have an annoying habit: instead of paying attention to what people are saying, I often get distracted by how they are saying it. The other day, this happened again in a meeting with colleagues.

I started writing down some of the expressions my colleagues were using to communicate their ideas that may be puzzling for users of English as a second or additional language.

In a span of about five minutes, I heard “it’s a no-brainer,” “to second something,” “being on the same page,” “to bring people up to speed,” “how you see fit,” “to table something” and “to have it out with someone.”

These are all expressions whose meanings do not follow straightforwardly from their lexical makeup — they’re called idioms by lexicologists.

Idioms are part of daily communication. But this anecdote also suggests that we take it for granted that such expressions are readily understood by members of the same community. However, when it comes to people who are new to said community, nothing could be further from the truth.

Learning a language is hard, but even native speakers get confused by pronunciation, connotations, definitions and etymology. The lexicon is constantly evolving, especially in the social media era, where new memes, catchphrases, slang, jargon and idioms are introduced at a rapid clip.
Slanguage, The Conversation Canada’s new series, dives into how language shapes the way we see the world and what it reveals about culture, power and belonging. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of linguistics.

Idioms and the limits of language proficiency

Research conducted at the University of Birmingham several years ago revealed that international students for whom English is an additional language often misunderstand lecture content because they misinterpret their lecturers’ metaphorical phrases, including figurative idioms.

More recent research confirms that English idioms can remain elusive to second-language learners even if the expressions are intentionally embedded in transparent contexts.

One of my own recent studies, conducted with international students at Western University in Canada, also found that students incorrectly interpreted idioms and struggled to recall the actual meanings later on after being corrected.

This shows just how persistently confusing these expressions can be.

It’s worth mentioning that we’re talking about students who obtained high enough scores on standardized English proficiency tests to be admitted to English-medium universities. Knowledge of idioms appears to lag behind other facets of language.

When literal meanings get in the way

The challenge posed by idioms is not unique to English. All languages have large stocks of idioms, many of which second-language learners will find puzzling if the expressions do not have obvious counterparts in their mother tongue.

There are various obstacles to comprehending idioms, and recognizing these obstacles can help us empathize with those who are new to a community. For one thing, an idiom will inevitably be hard to understand if it includes a word that the learner does not know at all.

However, even if all the constituent words of an expression look familiar, the first meaning that comes to a learner’s mind can be misleading. For example, as a younger learner of English, I was convinced that the expression “to jump the gun” referred to an act of bravery because, to me, the phrase evoked an image of someone being held at gunpoint and who makes a sudden move to disarm an adversary.

I only realized that this idiom means “to act too soon” when I was told that the gun in this phrase does not allude to a firearm but to the pistol used to signal the start of a race.

I also used to think that to “follow suit” meant taking orders from someone in a position of authority because I thought “suit” alluded to business attire. Its actual meaning — “to do the same thing as someone else” — became clear only when I learned the other meaning of suit in card games such as bridge.

The idea that idioms prompt a literal interpretation may seem counter-intuitive to readers who have not learned a second language because we normally bypass such literal interpretations when we hear idioms in our first language. However, research suggests that second-language learners do tend to use literal meanings as they try to make sense of idioms.

Unfortunately, when language learners use a literal reading of an idiom to guess its figurative meaning, they are very often misled by ambiguous words. For example, they will almost inevitably misunderstand “limb” in the idiom “to go out on a limb” — meaning “to take a serious risk” — as a body part rather than a branch of a tree.

Recognizing the origin of an idiomatic expression can also be difficult because the domains of life from which certain idioms stem are not necessarily shared across cultures. For example, learners may struggle to understand English idioms derived from horse racing (“to win hands down”), golf (“par for the course”), rowing (“pull your weight”) and baseball (“cover your bases”), if these sports are uncommon in the communities in which they grew up.

A language’s stock of idioms provides a window into a community’s culture and history.

Same language, same idioms? Not exactly

Idiom repertoires vary across communities — whether defined regionally, demographically or otherwise — even when those communities share the same general language.

For example, if an Aussie were to criticize an anglophone Canadian for making a fuss by saying “you’re carrying on like a pork chop,” they may be lost in translation, even if there isn’t much of one. At least, linguistically that is.

Although people may have learned a handful of idioms in an English-language course taken in their home country, those particular idioms may not be the ones they will encounter later as international students or immigrants.

The moral is simple: be aware that expressions you consider perfectly transparent because you grew up with them may be puzzling to others. We need to have more empathy for people who are not yet familiar with the many hundreds of potentially confusing phrases that we use so spontaneously.

Frank Boers receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Slanguage: The trouble with idioms is that they can leave even fluent English speakers behind – https://theconversation.com/slanguage-the-trouble-with-idioms-is-that-they-can-leave-even-fluent-english-speakers-behind-271681

January 13, 2026

The Colombian border is one of the biggest obstacles to building a new Venezuela

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Sally Sharif, Lecturer in Political Science, University of British Columbia

Since American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, plunging the country into uncertainty, there have been hopes for a transition to democracy, the stabilization of its economy, a reduction in drug trafficking and conditions that might allow millions of Venezuelans abroad to return home.

But one factor will impede efforts at stabilizing the country: Venezuela’s hard-to-control border with Colombia, a shadow security zone that serves as a sanctuary and trafficking corridor for armed and dangerous organizations.

There are two main armed groups along the border:

Leftist guerrillas in Colombia who have used Venezuelan territory to regroup, move supplies and evade counterinsurgency attacks.
Leftist pro-government militias in Venezuela that have squashed dissent and exerted violence against civilians every time protests have erupted against Hugo Chávez and, later, Maduro.

Over time, these groups have often collaborated, turning a porous frontier into a shared operating space that any new Venezuelan government will have to dismantle.

The question, then, is whether any government — democratic or otherwise — can consolidate power in the presence of entities on both sides of an ungoverned international border with the most to lose from a change in the status quo.

Venezuela: Shielding Colombian leftist rebels

I have been studying armed groups in Colombia for a decade. My research explains why about one-third of disarmed fighters of the guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have picked up arms again since a historic peace agreement in 2016.

The breakup in the organizational structure of FARC is one of these reasons. The other reason is Venezuela’s support.

When a handful of disarmed FARC commanders released a video in August 2019 announcing their return to taking up arms, they were able to do so because Maduro’s government had an ideological and strategic stake in keeping them afloat: a shared leftist, anti-imperialist world view that treated Colombia’s Marxist guerrillas as political allies.

In fact, when I interview disarmed FARC combatants in Colombian provinces on the border for my research, they consistently describe Venezuela as a place where they could recuperate, treat injured fighters and regroup after Colombian military pressure, which was equipped and funded in part by the U.S. government.

In the border province of Norte de Santander, the FARC and another leftist guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), collaborate to ship coca paste from the expansive coca fields of northeastern Colombia through alluvial paths and dirt roads to Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. From there, speed boats take the cocaine to the U.S.

In one interview, I asked a former FARC commander to draw the trafficking route on a map. To my surprise, it zig-zagged across the international border between Colombia and Venezuela.

Any attempt to change the status quo in Venezuela will therefore be met with fierce resistance by Colombian armed groups who have for decades benefited from a porous border and a helping hand across it.

Armed militias mobilized by Chavez

Colombia has done its share of influencing Venezuela’s politics, in particular during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe from 2002 to 2010, when
Colombia was closely tied to the U.S. and was perceived by former president Chávez as a threat to his revolution.

After the failed April 2002 coup attempt against Chávez — when some members of the military and opposition briefly removed him from office before he returned within two days — the president responded by backing armed pro-government militias, known as colectivos, so they could help defend his rule.

For years, Maduro consistently armed and provided impunity to militias that run street-level checkpoints and show up fast across the country when the regime feels threatened.

In the days after Maduro’s recent capture, those groups were visibly deployed across the capital of Caracas, patrolling on motorbikes with rifles, stopping cars and demanding access to people’s phones — signalling that Chávez’s ideology still has muscle on the street, even if its top leader is now in an American jail cell.

Militias are one of the most destructive forces for a society. Once mobilized, they allow governments to avoid accountability for violence and repression. They are also difficult to get rid of. My research also shows that almost half of armed groups return to fighting after going through disarmament.

With armed violence in Colombia surging again and leftist armed groups entrenched along the frontier, any crackdown on Venezuelan colectivos risks pushing them across the border into Colombia, where allied guerrillas can shelter them until the pressure eases.

Sore spots for state-building

International borders are sore spots for countries attempting to consolidate power and transition to peace. The civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been raging for decades because of neighbouring Rwanda’s support for the rebels.

The World Bank ran into this reality in the Great Lakes region of Africa: it helped launch the Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Program because efforts to demobilize fighters in one country didn’t work when armed groups and combatants were moving and operating across borders.

Similarly, the Colombia-Venezuela border has long fuelled cycles of violence in Colombia. It will now be the main sticking point in any Venezuelan efforts to reduce drug trafficking, consolidate power and transition to democracy and the rule of law.

Sally Sharif does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Colombian border is one of the biggest obstacles to building a new Venezuela – https://theconversation.com/the-colombian-border-is-one-of-the-biggest-obstacles-to-building-a-new-venezuela-272975

January 13, 2026

Slanguage: How ‘6-7’ makes sense even though it means nothing

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Nicole Rosen, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Language Interactions, University of Manitoba

The expression “6-7” spread like wildfire last year, making its way outside the realm of usual adolescent slang and into the collective discourse, popping up at public sports events, in Halloween costumes and even in teachers’ lesson plans.

A couple of things are clear about the 6-7 phenomenon: kids love saying it and adults love hating it. But what does it actually mean? The answer — “It doesn’t mean anything” — appears to be the main complaint. But meaning nothing is kind of the whole point.

While it may not signify anything in the conventional sense of meaning, 6-7 expresses solidarity and belonging.

Users of the expression show that they’re part of the in-group as opposed to those who “just don’t get it.” They’re deploying something sociolinguists call “social meaning.”

Social meaning can be thought of as value-added information about the speaker and their attitude, their stance and how they want to portray themselves in the world. It’s an integral part to how we understand language, and the fact that this is being spread by young adolescents is no accident.

Not all meaning is about dictionary definitions

When people think about meaning, it’s normally semantic meaning. Six, for example, is a numerical concept that we understand to mean one more than five and one less than seven. It’s another way of saying half a dozen. It’s the age that most children enter Grade 1. Maybe it’s suppertime.

6-7, on the other hand, is void of any semantic meaning. It doesn’t even refer to quantity. Consider the difference between, “I’d like 6-7 crackers” versus simply yelling “6-7” and doing the viral hand gesture. The 6-7 in the first sentence means an amount of crackers, the 6-7 in the latter does not actually refer to an amount at all. But that doesn’t make it meaningless.

While 6-7 has no semantic meaning, it has a very definite social meaning. Social meaning involves how hearers interpret language not only on the basis of the meaning of the words, but on the basis of what kind of person is speaking and how they align themselves socially.

And the truth is that we rely on social meaning like this all the time, even if we don’t notice it.

Social meaning speaks volumes

Consider a person’s clothing and hairstyle, for example.

Wearing a Winnipeg Jets jersey and a mullet hairstyle signals to people in Canada things about you without you even opening your mouth: you’re a hockey enthusiast, invested in a team, and probably play or watch the game regularly. Then, to add to these visual cues, you can use a phrase such as “Fire that biscuit top shelf!” that lets people know not only that you want your player to “shoot the puck up high in the corner of the net,” (semantic meaning) but also that you’re positioning yourself as a hockey person who is knowledgeable on the matter (social meaning).

True synonyms are rare in languages. Even when there are two words that mean the same thing, they usually have different connotations, are used in different contexts or have different social meanings. Calling a “puck” a “biscuit” might be referring to the same object, but it certainly does not have the same overall meaning in discourse.

Usually, words have at least semantic meaning and sometimes also social meaning. 6-7 is interesting precisely because it has no semantic meaning, only social meaning, which is much more uncommon.

Slang, social development and growing up

The fact that an expression with only social meaning has been adopted primarily by adolescents is to be expected. Adolescence is a period of intense social development.

This age group is leaving childhood behind, and the teenage years have consistently been found to be a time of deep linguistic change when social meaning becomes paramount as they strive to stake their own place in the world. Adolescents are demarcating themselves both from younger children and from their parents.

This era results in what is often called the adolescent peak of 15 to 17, when the use of new slang and innovative items is most pronounced. That said, 6-7 is generally used by a younger group, more in the 11 to 14 age range — and even younger now, as it moves rapidly through the population.

It’s possible that we’re seeing the effects of children being online at a younger age, and that this intense social development is happening earlier.

In the end, the fact that 6-7 doesn’t mean anything is perfectly fine. It’s not simply “brain rot,” but rather the developmentally appropriate creation of a saying with social meaning for adolescents at a time when social dynamics are the most important aspect of their lives.

And if you really hate it, don’t worry, you don’t have to use it, and yes, it will pass. By now it’s so widespread that only the uncool (adults and younger kids) are using it anyway. It has already lost its cachet.

A new perplexing, yet socially meaningful, phrase or expression will soon take its place. In fact, it appears that 41 may be the new 6-7.

Nicole Rosen has received funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chair program.

– ref. Slanguage: How ‘6-7’ makes sense even though it means nothing – https://theconversation.com/slanguage-how-6-7-makes-sense-even-though-it-means-nothing-270006

January 12, 2026

Slanguage: The trouble with idioms — how they can leave even fluent English speakers behind

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Frank Boers, Professor of Applied Linguistics, Western University

I started writing down some of the expressions my colleagues were using to communicate their ideas that may be puzzling for users of English as a second or additional language.

These are all expressions whose meanings do not follow straightforwardly from their lexical makeup — they’re called idioms by lexicologists.

Idioms and the limits of language proficiency

More recent research confirms that English idioms can remain elusive to second-language learners even if the expressions are intentionally embedded in transparent contexts.

This shows just how persistently confusing these expressions can be.

When literal meanings get in the way

I only realized that this idiom means “to act too soon” when I was told that the gun in this phrase does not allude to a firearm but to the pistol used to signal the start of a race.

A language’s stock of idioms provides a window into a community’s culture and history.

Same language, same idioms? Not exactly

Idiom repertoires vary across communities — whether defined regionally, demographically or otherwise — even when those communities share the same general language.

Frank Boers receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Slanguage: The trouble with idioms — how they can leave even fluent English speakers behind – https://theconversation.com/slanguage-the-trouble-with-idioms-how-they-can-leave-even-fluent-english-speakers-behind-271681

January 12, 2026

A Man on the Inside: Netflix comedy offers a timely defence of higher education

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Barbara K Seeber, Professor, English Language & Literature, Brock University

Season 2 of Netflix’s A Man on the Inside finds Charles Nieuwendyk, private investigator and retired engineering professor (played by Ted Danson), undercover at Wheeler College.

The mission: recover the college president’s laptop. This might not seem juicy, but said laptop contains sensitive information about a $400 million donation by a tech multibillionaire, Brad Vinick.

As someone who has lived and studied academic life, I find the series created by Michael Schur (also behind The Good Place starring Ted Danson, among other hit series) is both funny and uncomfortable because it hits close to home.

Budgets trimmed to the bone

The P.I. is thrilled by his university case, calling it something “I can really sink my teeth into.”

Wheeler College, founded in 1883, has seen better days. It is struggling financially and its leadership is unpopular. The board of trustees hired a president who trims department budgets to the bone, cuts student aid and embraces corporate sponsorship — as well as the bonus he receives with every major donation.

These measures are not enough. Enter Vinick.

‘A Man on the Inside’ Season 2 trailer.

Vinick’s secret plan — “Project Aurora” — is to fire half the professors, exclude faculty from decision-making and close what he considers “non-essential departments,” leaving “three tracks of study — biotechnology, economics and computer science to prepare young adults for life in the modern world.”

President Jack Beringer knows Vinick’s intentions but does not want anyone to know he knows. Faculty uprisings would not help his bid for a higher-paying university job in Dallas, where he ate the best steak ever.

Language of efficiency, innovation

Any campus stroll reveals that Wheeler’s “Pepsi T-Mobile Covered Garage brought to you by Sephora” (Episode 4) is only a slight exaggeration.

Vinick’s language of efficiency and innovation dominates in real life. Universities are run increasingly on a corporate model, as numerous studies have demonstrated, including my collaboration with Maggie Berg in our book The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy.

Budgets and programs are being slashed, and in the guise of economic necessity, principles of higher education are undermined.

Professors also satirized

While Beringer and Vinick are the villains of the piece, there are, of course, some digs at the professors. (I admit we are an easy target).

The musicologist, for example, will abandon any conversation mid-sentence when inspiration hits.

In Episode 4, we see the chair of the English department is a snob about books you can buy at airports.

However, the show resists indulging in nutty, overpaid professor stereotypes because it recognizes, in the words of Dr. Benjamin Cole, head of the English department, “these are not the best of times.” The show focuses on staff and faculty efforts in an era of budget cuts and attacks on what the billionaire investor calls “pointless subjects” like art history and philosophy.

Holly Bodgemark, the provost, is so overworked she swallows nicotine gum (“It works faster if it goes right to the stomach”) and mixes her own “Peptocoffee.”

The musicologist may be flaky, but she buys used instruments out of her own pocket for students who can’t afford them. Money is tight for students. Student Claire Chung works a dozen jobs to pay tuition and housing. “When do you sleep?” Nieuwendyk asks. “In class,” she replies.

Defending higher education

To defend higher education, the show calls in the big guns: Ozymandias, a sonnet by 19th- century Romantic writer Percy Bysshe Shelley. It’s mentioned in one of Cole’s lectures, where he recites some of its lines and comments on its continued relevance: “Money, fame, power do not last. But ideas … can endure.”

Two men in discussion on a bench. — Literature professor Dr. Cole tells his students: ‘ideas … can endure.’
(Netflix)

Published in 1818, Ozymandias speaks of a “traveller from an antique land.” The traveller comes across the remains of a sculpture with an inscription that reads:

“‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!’”

The rest of the sculpture is a “colossal Wreck,” and the king’s boast has dwindled into unintentional irony.

Given that the show is American, the literary allusion might be a veiled reference to the No Kings protests.

Making sense of the present

The series seems to side with philosophers like Martha Nussbaum, who argues that a liberal arts education can help us make sense of the present and read it critically.

Vinick is a modern Ozymandias. He wants to be immortal, literally (he undergoes longevity treatments) and figuratively (he commissions oil portraits of himself). As the professor of fine arts notes in the first episode of Season 2: “Newsflash: the billionaire is a narcissist.”

Not to give away the mystery, but a crisis is averted. Wheeler is safe … for now. It might go under, but, as the provost says, “better to end on our own terms.”

And those terms are: education is not a business; it cannot be reduced to the delivery of quantifiable outcomes. The book What Are Universities For?, by Stefan Collini, professor emeritus of intellectual history and English literature, makes this case in a particularly compelling (and at times laugh-out-loud) way.

Higher education is a public good because it teaches critical thinking and civil debate and prepares engaged citizens.

Community

Good satire like A Man on the Inside points out the problems as well as possible remedies. Vinick mocks the notion of community, but the show values it above all because, without it, resistance is impossible. Wheeler College’s faculty and staff celebrate each other and band together across disciplinary divides.

In the words of the provost in the last episode of the season, they are committed to protecting “community and knowledge for the sake of knowledge.”

Schur’s comedy offers a timely defence of higher education and is notable for bridging the gap between academics and the general public.

Barbara K Seeber received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Institutional Grant at Brock University.

– ref. A Man on the Inside: Netflix comedy offers a timely defence of higher education – https://theconversation.com/a-man-on-the-inside-netflix-comedy-offers-a-timely-defence-of-higher-education-270934

January 12, 2026

Why America hasn’t become great again

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Robert Chernomas, Professor Of Economics, University of Manitoba

United States President Donald Trump and his MAGA base are often portrayed as a break from past political norms. While that is certainly true, it overlooks the long and predictable path that led to his rise.

The slogan “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) became the movement’s rallying cry, tapping into a nostalgic vision of a past era of economic prosperity and social dominance and appealing to voters who feel left behind by demographic and economic change.

Trump is the predictable result of the deteriorating economic conditions in the U.S. since the 1980s and the political machinations that brought those economic conditions about. In our recent book Why America Didn’t Become Great Again, we explore how the U.S. has set itself on a path toward self-destruction.

The rise of corporate power

Book cover of Why America Didn't Become Great Again by Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson. — ‘Why America Didn’t Become Great Again’ by Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson.
(Taylor & Francis)

In the 1970s, higher taxes and regulation, a growing “rights-conscious revolution” around the environment, gender and race, demand for rising wages and increasing foreign competition threatened corporate power. In response, American business embarked on what billionaire Warren Buffett described as “class warfare.”

To transfer wealth and power from the many to the few, institutions had to be organized, government policies reoriented and economists, journalists and politicians recruited, funded and promoted.

Corporate lobbying skyrocketed. In 1971, only 175 firms had registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,; by 1982, 2,445 did. The number of corporate political action committees (PACs) rose from fewer than 300 in 1976 to more than 1,200 by the mid-1980s.

Business lobbying organizations advocated for policies like corporate tax cuts, deregulation, free trade, anti-worker legislation and more permissive rules on corporate political donations. Between 1998 and 2022, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent US$1.8 billion on lobbying activities, making it the single largest spender in the nation.

The role of wealthy individuals

Individual business owners also chipped in. Figures like Charles and David Koch funded organizations that aligned with their desire to create a U.S. free from government regulation, taxation, redistribution or public services. During the 2016 election cycle, Koch-backed PACs spent just under US$900 million.

Many of these organizations, like the Tea Party, also helped put into the mainstream an evangelical creationism that distrusted science and expert opinion, supported a patriarchal animosity to women’s rights, opposed policies to further racial equality and expressed xenophobic opinions.

The flood of corporate money shifted the political centre, making Democrats more conservative. No progressive economic policy has been passed in the United States since the 1970, with the tepid exception of the Affordable Care Act, which is friendly to the health insurance industry.

The strategy proved remarkably successful. According to political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, when wealthy Americans strongly support a policy, it’s about twice as likely to be adopted. But strong support from the middle class has “essentially no effect.”

How does this happen in a working democracy?

Business leaders cannot win elections on their own — they need allies. One particularly large group was easy to convince. Since the 1960s, no Democratic presidential candidate has won the majority of white voters.

Between the 1960-64 and 1968-72 election cycle, support for Democratic candidates among less-educated white voters fell from 55 to 35 per cent. With the exception of the 1992 and 1996 elections when their votes were more evenly split, this gap has held to the present day.

Although their share of the population is declining, less-educated white voters still made up just under 50 per cent of the electorate nationally in 2018. College-educated white voters have tended to split their votes more evenly or provide a small edge to Republicans.

If Democrats have branded themselves as the party of inclusion — of different races, genders, ethnicities and sexualities — the Republican Party has defended what they euphemistically term “traditional values.”

In a Faustian bargain to advance a pro-business agenda, the Republican Party successfully appealed to less-educated white voters, whose historical economic and social advantages have been diminishing. They earn less and die younger than they used to and their advantages over other groups in society are diminishing.

The Republican Party seized on this group’s discontent and actively channelled it against African Americans and immigrants. As early as the 1960s, the Republican’s Southern strategy promoted racism, successfully shifting white voters to their party and shifting the political spectrum to the right. That strategy continued through Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, the Tea Party and Trump.

Importantly, this shift in voting preferences occurred well before the advent of the so-called “Rust Belt.” According to Pew Research, manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979.

Faced with declining standards of living, less-educated white voters could have chosen solidarity with all other workers and forced concessions from the elite of the business community to make the lives of all working-class people better. Instead, they voted to maintain the relative advantage of being white.

Rising inequality

The redistribution of income and wealth was detrimental to most Americans. Between 1973 and 2000, the average income of the bottom 90 per cent of U.S. taxpayers fell by seven per cent. Incomes of the top one per cent rose by 148 per cent, the top 0.1 per cent by 343 per cent, and the top 0.01 per cent rose by 599 per cent.

If the income distribution had remained unchanged from the mid-1970s, by 2018, the median income would be 58 per cent higher ($21,000 more a year). The decline in profits was halted, but at the expense of working families. Stagnant wages, massive debt and ever longer working hours became their fate.

Income stagnation is not the only quality of life indicator that suffered. In 1980, life expectancy in the U.S. was about average for an affluent nation. By the 2020s, it dropped to the lowest among wealthy countries, even behind China or Chile, largely due to the stagnation of life expectancy for working-class people.

The paradox of “red state” support

Less-educated white voters have historically supported politicians (mainly Republicans) who support cutting taxes for the rich and cutting social programs that they significantly benefit from.

In 2023, the Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas vowed to get the “bureaucratic tyrants” of the federal government “out of your wallets.” Yet the numbers tell a different story.

In 2019, the federal government collected only half as much in taxes as it spent in the state, amounting to about US$5,500 per person in Arkansas. Similar patterns hold in many other regions.

Republican Kentucky is the largest destination of federal transfers, receiving US$14,000 per resident, approximately 30 per cent of its entire gross domestic product.

The electoral preferences of red states don’t result in good outcomes. States won by Trump in the 2016 presidential election had lower average scores (similar to Russia) on the American Human Development Index — which measures income, education and health — than states won by Democrats, which are similar to the Netherlands.

The modern Republican agenda

For decades, the alliance between less-educated white voters and business worked very well for business. Trump’s MAGA still delivers longstanding pro-business policies, from deregulation to antagonism to workers’ rights and massive tax cuts for the rich.

Today, however, the Republican Party now also promotes policies that business has long fostered, if not supported, including a distrust of facts and science, the ethnic cleansing of the labour force, racism, a vengeance for justice and a hodgepodge of crony, incompetent economic priorities and policies.

This combination has created a more unstable and unpredictable political, economic and social environment, leaving a significant majority of CEOs yearning for the stable Republican Party of a bygone era.

Robert Chernomas is a Professor of Economics at the University of Manitoba and a member of Elbows Up: A Practical Program for Canadian Sovereignty. I am not affiliated with a political party or industry association but I am politically active.

Ian Hudson receives funding from SSHRC.
Ian Hudson is a Research Associate for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

– ref. Why America hasn’t become great again – https://theconversation.com/why-america-hasnt-become-great-again-272778

January 12, 2026

Why Donald Trump is telling such obvious lies on the ICE Minneapolis killing

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jennifer Saul, Chair in Social and Political Philosophy of Language, University of Waterloo

By now, many of us have probably seen the video of a Minneapolis woman whose last words were a calm “It’s fine, dude; I’m not mad at you,” before she was shot three times in the head as she turned her car to drive away from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.

U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that Renee Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

Vice-President JD Vance declared “the reason this woman is dead is because she tried to ram somebody with her car… You have a woman who aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator. Nobody debates that.”

These statements, and others that doubled down on them, were made even as videos showing they were clearly false were in wide circulation.

It’s puzzling. Why lie in a situation like this? Who can you hope to deceive, when evidence falsifying your statements is freely available?

Seeing is not believing?

Our work on authoritarian public discourse stresses that there are multiple answers to this question, partly because there are many different audiences of mass communication. We need to come to grips with the multiple functions of obvious falsehoods like these to understand why they are made so often and so prominently, and how they serve authoritarian leaders.

First, something that seems obvious to you can be credible to others. How? Because in an era of algorithmic news feeds, we are not all getting the same news. Those with a newsfeed of nothing but MAGA influencers are in a different epistemic bubble from other people.

And they may well be in an echo chamber, in which opposing voices are so discredited that when an alternative narrative reaches them, it’s immediately dismissed.

Millions of people may not have seen the videos of the incident at all, or may have seen versions with instructions on how to interpret the visuals: she’s not turning around, she’s backing up in preparation to ram into the shooter; she’s not calmly indicating that she isn’t a threat, she’s refusing to comply with orders.

Videos of police using force often have this dual nature: they can document and prove wrongdoing; but they can also be used to train citizens to see threats where there are none.

Footage of the last moments of Renee Good’s life. (The Canadian Press)

Authoritarian tactics

Some people will find the lies too obvious to be plausible attempts at deception. Yet bald-faced lies are important in strongman politics.

Authoritarians can display their power by asserting obvious falsehoods, showing that they cannot be held to account. They also play to their base by showing contempt for a shared enemy, while demanding displays of loyalty and compliance from underlings.

Officials are forced to engage in the humiliating ritual of repeating what we call compliance lies. Think here of White House press secretary Sean Spicer at the start of Trump’s first term, forced to defend absurd lies about Trump’s and Obama’s inauguration crowds.

At the time, this may have seemed merely buffoonish. What’s happened since illustrates how dangerous this can be as the subject of the lies has changed to matters concerning life and death.

Other people may simply become confused by obvious lies. The competing interpretations of the Minneapolis video are diametrically opposed. Once news sites and social media feeds are sufficiently populated by these opposing views, it can feel like an overwhelming task to discern what’s really true.

And exposing a lie still doesn’t end its influence. It is easier to create an opinion with a lie than to undo that opinion when the lie is debunked, something known to psychologists as the continued influence effect.

Filling social media feeds with falsehoods to create confusion is a crucial part of the strategy that Steve Bannon, a Republican strategist and former Trump adviser, called “flooding the zone with shit.” This can leave people unsure of who to trust, what to believe, or even what the issue really is.

‘Both sides’ reporting

Relatively savvy and good-faith entities can be used as instruments of this strategy. In the name of neutrality and balance, centrist news media can fall back on a “both sides” model that frames stories mainly in terms of what each side is saying.

When one side commits to obvious lies, this approach obligingly repeats those lies while outsourcing the fact-checking to the opposing side, as if it were merely a partisan dispute.

These duelling narratives can then become the story. The strategy to lie shifts focus away from the shooting itself, in this incident, and onto the alleged controversy.

In other words, obvious lies aren’t necessarily failed lies. They can confuse, distract, excite and intimidate a range of audiences. They can also be believed, no matter how obviously false they seem.

To treat them as mere indications of shamelessness or incompetence on the part of the liar is to overlook the serious harm they can do and the appeal they have in authoritarian politics.

Jennifer Saul is a member of Democrats Abroad.

Tim Kenyon has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Why Donald Trump is telling such obvious lies on the ICE Minneapolis killing – https://theconversation.com/why-donald-trump-is-telling-such-obvious-lies-on-the-ice-minneapolis-killing-273200

January 12, 2026

Lessons from Palestine: Understanding the resistance of educators and students in times of crisis

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Emmanuelle Khoury, Associate professor, School of Social Work, Université de Montréal

Many educators and students living through war and displacement carry difficult emotions into classrooms, but they can also transform them into acts of care and resistance. To understand this, we need to understand their emotional states at a granular level.

Since January 2024, we have been collaborating on a project with the dean and professors at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Ibn Sina College in Nablus, Palestine, with support from Université de Montréal International.

Our aim is to learn how professors and students talk about their emotions in a region marked by occupation, violence, forced displacement and chronic uncertainty.

From January 2024 to September 2025, we met every two months with five professors and the dean of nursing and midwifery at Ibn Sina College.

Palestinian university professors told us they need to be present and emotionally available for their students while grappling with the impacts of Israel’s military occupation and what many experts have labelled a genocide in Gaza, and they’re looking for tools to help them do that.

Our exchange with Palestinian educators and students led to the development of an intervention tool, CARE (Connection, Action, Resistance, Empowerment), co-designed to address two central emotional states: resistance fatigue and qahr.

What is qahr?

Resistance fatigue speaks to a pervasive loss of control over our days, choices and even our inner world. This emotional exhaustion is not only personal, but it is also shaped by political structures of exclusion and dispossession, which includes forced displacement, navigating checkpoints and restricted movement.

However, we witnessed another emotion salient in Arabic-speaking countries that we believe underpins resistance fatigue: qahr.

Qahr is a concept that is necessary to grasp in order to truly understand what Palestinians and others living through colonial violence in southwest Asia and north Africa are feeling.

In Arabic, the word qahr evokes an emotion that blends powerlessness, grief and an acute sense of injustice and being overwhelmed by forces larger than ourselves. More than anger and deeper than grief, qahr speaks to the suffocating weight of injustice, the pain of being silenced, muzzled, diminished, trivialized and made invisible.

Qahr is a complex emotion that also holds the potential for transformation — for naming, sharing and reimagining how to live and care for each other. It is a specific emotion shaped by oppression, perpetuated violence and historical trauma that non-Arabic languages often fail to capture.

What we have learned is that qahr is more than a feeling. It is also an action born of the Palestinian determination not to disappear. It is carried through stories, graffiti, songs and through everyday acts of resistance that push against military occupation and attempts at erasure.

Qahr might feel like rage and grief mixed into one, but it often looks like actions that serve as counter-narratives. These actions are deep forms of care, for ourselves, our communities and one’s history and ancestry. They are also political tools that reclaim space, time and dignity.

Hope and care

Our previous work with teachers in Lebanon has shown that educators and students alike carry the emotional trauma into the classroom from collective crises such as economic collapse, war and displacement. The Lebanese teachers we spoke to discussed losses, suffering, injustice, death, violence, unstable living conditions, but also feelings of hope and resistance.

Likewise, during the early days of the genocide in Gaza, many teachers expressed their profound sense of oppression and how they managed to transform it into hope and even moments of joy.

Their commitment to developing educational initiatives for their students stands as powerful evidence of this resistance. As Asma, a teacher from Gaza, explained: “People in the Gaza Strip have become experts in creating alternative life plans.”

In this way, spaces of suffering also become sites of hope and care. Our research on exploring emotion work, on valuing the role of emotions and on dialogue allowed us to turn toward specific emotions experienced by many of our project partners.

The CARE intervention

Inspired by our research findings about fathering amid political violence in occupied Palestine, we were interested in analyzing our discussions with colleagues at Ibn Sina College in terms of emotions and resilience.

Through our understanding of qahr, we created CARE (Connection, Action, Resistance, Empowerment), a culturally adapted intervention, with professors and students at Ibn Sina College. During a series of online dialogues, we reflected on the lived experience of teaching under occupation, talking about loss, and staying committed to teaching and training.

CARE builds on this insight, offering an adaptation of acceptance and commitment therapy with situated and culturally grounded strategies for educators and students to collectively hold space for their emotions and their actions.

What began as a project to support the psychosocial needs of health-care professionals in crisis turned into the co-creation of a training module on trauma and mental health. Our discussions revealed a common thread in our Ibn Sina colleagues’ objectives: a desire to share their own complex emotions to better support others, in particular their students.

As our collaborations evolve, we continue to explore how emotional concepts can inform pedagogical, political and relational practices. Qahr offers a lens through which to understand not only suffering and hope, but also the actions of resistance and reparation under conditions of war and displacement.

This is how our colleagues in Palestine began to share their complex, often opposing, feelings that arise in these circumstances, including resistance fatigue and qahr.

Together we identified key goals for the meetings, with a focus on developing psychosocial and mental health interventions and training sessions that recognize and validate these emotions. CARE emphasizes practical strategies for educators and students to individually and collectively hold space for strong emotions.

CARE was integrated into a guidebook and was first delivered to a cohort of nursing instructors and academics, who tested it with students and in professional circles in the fall of 2025. This initiative underscores the transformative strength of collaboration, and the importance of diving deep into learning about context and culturally specific emotion concepts for responsive care.

Qahr is a legitimate feeling. CARE offers a stepping stone to accompany teachers and professors in this experience, helping them to channel it in their own way, according to their resources and context. In this process, it is essential to mention that we also have much to learn from those who feel qahr. Their experiences invite us to question our own understandings and reflections of loss, anger and injustice.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Lessons from Palestine: Understanding the resistance of educators and students in times of crisis – https://theconversation.com/lessons-from-palestine-understanding-the-resistance-of-educators-and-students-in-times-of-crisis-269578

January 12, 2026

What Mark Carney’s China trip could mean for the future of Canadian-Chinese relations

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ye Xue, Research Fellow, China Institute, University of Alberta

It has been more than three years since China’s Xi Jinping told Canada’s Justin Trudeau to “create the conditions first” before the two countries could work together constructively during their awkward private exchange at the 2022 G20 summit.

Despite occasional diplomatic engagement since then, the conditions for genuine co-operation between Canada and China failed to materialize, and the relationship remained overshadowed by the Meng Wanzhou affair, the ordeal of the “Two Michaels” and disputes over foreign interference.

Threats by United States President Donald Trump to make Canada a 51st state, combined with his disruptive trade policies, have forced Ottawa to re-examine the risks of excessive economic dependence on its closest ally and articulate an ambition to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports over the next decade.

As Prime Minister Mark Carney recently put it: “Never have all your eggs in one basket. We have too many eggs in the American basket.” At the same time, China has signalled a willingness to stabilize strained relations following Carney’s election win last year.

Canada-China tariffs

Foreign Minister Anita Anand’s visit to Beijing, together with Carney and Xi’s informal meeting on the margins of the APEC summit last October, suggests that the groundwork now exists for a serious stabilization of Canada–China relations.

Carney’s visit to China this week builds on this emerging momentum.

While the visit could be positive, Canadian expectations should be realistic, since the trip marks a stabilizing process rather than a symbol of stabilized relationship.

Trade will be at the top of Carney’s agenda, particularly the Canadian push for China to lift anti-dumping duties on Canadian canola oil. Yet few should expect an immediate breakthrough. Economic sanctions are rarely undone in a single high-level meeting; more often, such visits lay the groundwork for the harder, more technical negotiations that follow.

Australia’s experience offers a reality check. China did not lift restrictions on Australian coal and review anti-dumping duties on barley during high-level visits; those steps came months later, following sustained diplomatic engagement after Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s trip to Beijing in late 2022.

Nor did Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s state visit in November 2023 trigger the immediate removal of remaining tariffs on exports such as wine, red meat and live lobsters. Progress came gradually — through patience, process and persistent diplomacy.

The canola dispute is different. China’s tariffs were a direct response to Ottawa’s duties on Chinese electric vehicles. In a relationship governed by reciprocity, China is unlikely to move first without a signal from Canada.

Rather than expecting immediate, tangible outcomes, this state visit is best understood as an ice-breaking moment to encourage governments at different levels and across sectors to resume or establish dialogue. Over time, such channels can normalize working relationships and foster bilateral co-operation.

More diplomacy, no security concessions

The high-profile shift in Ottawa’s China policy places the Carney government under closer domestic scrutiny. Canadians will want to know whether this approach can advance economic interests while safeguarding national security while remaining consistent with Canada’s identity as a liberal democracy.

China, for its part, will expect Ottawa to demonstrate a sustained commitment to stabilization. All of this will unfold under the continued pressure of the American China strategy, which will continue to shape the boundaries of Canada’s policy choices.

Maintaining a balance among competing national interests has become increasingly difficult for middle powers like Canada. Yet Australia’s China policy over the past three years, characterized by “pragmatic engagement without strategic concession,” suggests such a balance is possible.

But it will require Canada to invest more heavily in effective diplomacy, rather than relying on inflammatory or performative rhetoric for domestic political gain.

It means favouring neutral, precise language over emotive labelling when responding to Chinese actions. It also demands strong leadership from Carney: centralizing message discipline, enforcing cabinet coherence on China policy and reducing the risk that domestic political point-scoring spills into the diplomatic realm.

Ottawa should also use re-established communication channels as the primary venue for managing disagreements. These mechanisms can support incremental, negotiated solutions to specific disputes, rather than an over-reliance on public pressure and symbolic gestures.

‘Stabilization with continuity’

A shift in diplomatic approach does not imply a retreat from Canada’s core strategic commitments. The Carney government can and should reaffirm that stabilizing its relationship with China is compatible with maintaining robust national security and democratic values.

This requires embedding China policy within Canada’s broader Indo-Pacific strategy rather than treating it as a bilateral exception. It also involves deepening security co-operation with regional partners to help foster an environment where states are not forced to choose between either the United States or China.

At home, Canada should continue to strengthen institutional safeguards against foreign interference, pairing them with transparent public communication that demonstrates the government’s confidence in institutions and avoids doubling down on any public anxiety about China.

Ultimately, Canada’s China policy after Carney’s visit should be one of stabilization with continuity, making clear that engagement is being pursued from a position of institutional strength, not strategic accommodation.

Ye Xue does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What Mark Carney’s China trip could mean for the future of Canadian-Chinese relations – https://theconversation.com/what-mark-carneys-china-trip-could-mean-for-the-future-of-canadian-chinese-relations-273202

January 11, 2026

Cyclone Senyar: Why hazards continue to turn into disasters in Indonesia

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lisa Hiwasaki, Assistant Professor, Management of International Cooperation and Humanitarian Action, Université Laval

Weeks after Cyclone Senyar made landfall in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, the province of Aceh continues to struggle. The cyclone passed through the Strait of Malacca in late November, bringing heavy rains and causing widespread flooding in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. More than 500 people were killed and 250,000 people displaced in Aceh alone.

The cyclone’s unusually high death toll and catastrophic impacts have been attributed to a range of factors, including warming ocean temperatures due to climate change, deforestation and other environmental changes, Aceh’s unique geographical and topographical setting and how rarely cyclones occur near the equator.

What’s missing from the discussion is the root cause of why Aceh was ill-prepared for the hazard. Like many other regions in the Global South, Aceh’s vulnerability can be traced back to colonialism, which created an inequitable distribution of power, wealth and resources. Post-colonial development continues to reinforce it.

The impact of Cyclone Senyar has drawn parallels to the 2004 Aceh tsunami that devastated the province and surrounding areas. Since then, disaster preparedness in Aceh has come a long way. Yet the aftermath of Senyar suggests that disaster preparedness efforts have not tackled Aceh’s underlying vulnerabilities.

Indonesia’s national meteorological agency gave multiple warnings of the hazard well in advance. But neither the national agency responsible for disaster management, the National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure, nor the Aceh Provincial Disaster Management Agency were able to translate warnings into effective action or effectively lead emergency response efforts. Such institutional failures are among the challenges that contribute to vulnerability in Aceh.

In our ongoing research among coastal communities in Aceh, we explore how their livelihoods have been impacted by external shocks, as well as the diverse ways they have adapted to navigate these stresses.

The colonial roots of Aceh’s vulnerability

Starting in the late 16th century, the Dutch colonial government established infrastructure and policies to facilitate resource extraction in Indonesia. The focus of European colonizers was on the eastern part of the archipelago to control the spice trade in the Maluku region. However, it was in Aceh that the Dutch spent the most resources to conquer.

The Dutch East India company opened the port of Kuala Langsa in 1907, in the same area where Cyclone Senyar made landfall. That was followed by large-scale investment in rubber and palm oil plantations. Colonialists supported top-down governance and implemented policies that gave lasting economic and political advantages to those who aligned themselves with the Dutch.

An example is the Ethische politiek (Ethical Policy); among other things, it provided educational opportunities to local elites with the aim of helping the Dutch lead the colony. Local elites were also given land that had previously been communal, to expand agriculture and exploit natural resources, creating divisions within the Acehnese.

Colonial rule also had a lasting impact on the natural environment: highly biodiverse forests were converted to monocrop plantations, ports were expanded to accommodate larger ships and both land and seas were exploited for resources.

Post-independence pressures

Post-independence governments have maintained the top-down institutions put in place by the Dutch. They have also emphasized a continued economic focus on extractive industries, such as pepper, copra and petroleum to fuel Indonesia’s rapid economic growth. These coupled together continue to have devastating impacts on the environment and on the livelihoods of the communities.

In the 1970s, communities in Kuala Langsa, a village in the city of Langsa along Aceh’s east coast, shifted their livelihoods to intensive tiger prawn aquaculture as part of the push to develop marine fisheries under then-president Suharto’s “New Order” political economy regime.

However, a viral disease outbreak led to the collapse of the tiger prawn industry in the early 1990s. Intensive prawn aquaculture significantly degraded the coastal mangrove forests and reduced water quality. That, in turn, undermined the viability of small-scale fisheries that local communities had traditionally relied on.

The conflict between the government and separatists in Aceh from 1976 to 2005 led to an influx of migrants to Kuala Langsa from other parts of the province, putting additional pressures on the environment.

The 2004 tsunami destroyed many mangrove forests along Langsa’s coastline, further negatively affecting the livelihoods of communities that depended on shrimp, crab and fish living in the mangroves.

Policy decisions increase vulnerability

The hazard that struck Langsa and other parts of Aceh did not turn into such a devastating disaster due to climatic and geophysical factors alone. Hazards turn into disasters due to decisions made by those in power that make people vulnerable.

Between 1990 and 2024, almost 160,000 hectares of land was deforested to make way for palm oil monoculture plantations under permits issued by the Ministry of Forestry. Land converted into monoculture plantations loses its capacity to absorb rainwater, turning torrential rain into runoff that can create landslides. The forest on which communities depended for fruits such as durian, mangoes, rambutan and medicinal plants were impacted, affecting local incomes and sources of food, as well as their local knowledge associated with them.

Aceh’s vulnerability stems from environmental degradation from rampant resource extraction, instability and displacement due to armed conflict, top-down, centralized decision-making by the government and weak institutions stemming from poor governance and corruption.

Measures to strengthen disaster preparedness in Aceh have not tackled the region’s underlying vulnerabilities. Oftentimes, projects meant to promote resilience and development do not address the factors and processes that decrease the vulnerability of the most marginalized.

Disaster contingency plans continue to focus on geological hazards instead of taking a multi-hazard approach. These plans have not been successful in strengthening preparedness of institutions responsible for reducing disaster risk.

As the fourth-most flood-prone region in Indonesia, local and provincial authorities in Aceh need to prepare for extreme weather events so future events like Cyclone Senyar do not wreak such havoc.

As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of storms, it is imperative that disaster risk reduction efforts centre on reducing vulnerability and social justice. Equitable distribution of wealth, power and resources can only be realized when local and Indigenous knowledge is acknowledged to help build sustainable communities.

Lisa Hiwasaki has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Haekal A. Haridhi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Cyclone Senyar: Why hazards continue to turn into disasters in Indonesia – https://theconversation.com/cyclone-senyar-why-hazards-continue-to-turn-into-disasters-in-indonesia-272242