Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone why you know which word those asterisk’s are standing in for. This is going to be fun. Or at least as fun as economic theory and addiction can be when pit against each other.
Christ tells us that a house divided cannot stand in Matt 12:25. Now he was doing so to school some experts in the law about where exactly his powers came from. Never mind the good and services he was also packing. But recently, a strange new flailing jab showed up that shed some light onto the current tariff situation in Canada. And my bet is that it does some dividing of its own.
Now, as I’m fond of saying, I have no dog in this fight. The tariff one that is. Nothing my little blog or Substack could publish will affect the decisions and actions taken by the Canadian or American governments as it relates to the trade war that is allegedly going to be the end of the world. I’m an older millennial; you know how many ends of the world’s I’ve seen? I’m not worried. But then the New York Post pointed out that a possible retaliatory tariff and service denial for Canada against the States could be banning Pornhub. I had no idea we were having that kind of serious conversation.
Now it’s always good for a giggle to see Americans try to name a Canadian capital or two. But I can bet you, none, or statistically as close to none as you can get, of the American porn users knew their favourite site, and statistically the most popular site for their indiscretion, was, in fact, Canadian. But then again neither could the Canadians. But now that the New York Post is thinking outside the proverbial box. Well, we at least need to roll play this a bit.
What happens when Canada actually makes it impossible for Americans to access Pornhub? I know as well as most people that there will be scoffs made from the VPN crowd. But get into character and experiment a bit. What would it be like as an American when the massive free archive of naughty you’ve come to addict yourself to, vanishes overnight? Along with the host of other sites Aylo (formerly Mind Geek) might also run. What happens when the tariff war, actually touches something valuable to the consumer. Something that is sacrificed for and to and held in high, if not incognito esteem?
Much of the commentary about the tariff war comes from people who can’t parse their emotions from their politics. All my liberal friends are posting nothing but the same anti Trump rhetoric from early 2015 with just a new misunderstood grasp of the word tariff or trade. The conservatives in my circles aren’t much better. They are all over the map. Some siding with our newly minted PM and others seeking sovereignty with the enemy of the trade war they currently have. And as I’ve said, I have no dog in this particular fight. I get to people watch from the sidelines and wait for a Christian technology angle.
And that’s what we have now. Because as much as the world might think of Pornhub as a place, It’s actually closer to goods and services.
In order for Canada to use Pornhub as a weapon of trade it needs to have control of that weapon. Which it can have in an afternoon if it wants to. Because as objectively far from the concept of the erotic that trucking companies are, trucking companies and the services they render and the goods they have can and were seized just a few short years ago. The Canadian government knows how to seize things that belong to other people and has demonstrated that knowledge. They even did so under the auspice of protecting Canada. Well, we’re still in danger by imaginary threats and numbers, just of a less infectious type. All this to say they did it before with way less moral and popular support during the lockdowns and did it to objectively more productive people than pornographers. So, if they do take control of Pornhub and do so in a meaningful and effective way, what happens?
A blow is solidly struck against both the American trade war effort and a large portion of the traffic Pornhub receives gets blocked to make the blow effective. And all while holding the proverbial stone to cast first.
Hey look, two birds. Or maybe it’s foxes.
“But it came to pass within a while after, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not suffer him to go in. And her father said, I verily thought that thou hadst utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion: is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray thee, instead of her. And Samson said concerning them, Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure. And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails. And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives. Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son in law of the Timnite, because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire. And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease. And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam. Judges 15: 1-8 King James Version”
To say that the Lord works in mysterious ways is cliche. I like to think he works in unknowable ways. Unpredictable ways. Undiscernible ways. No one sees 150 double edges fox torches coming in the morning military strategy meeting. That simply doesn’t come up. Spears yes. Champions sure. But not 150 fire foxes. And no one, aside from the New York Post will see a weaponization of Pornhub coming. Except for God. And it will not be to get cheaper imports and exports for anyone, it will be for the destruction of predators by predators with holy fire to boot.
Samson didn’t catch innocent fire-proof servants to punish the Philistines. He caught predators, and used their destruction to rain down further destruction on deserving and demonic enemies. There is a beauty to a fox that most can’t appreciate because they have only seen picture of them online. Pictures that have been touched up and zoomed in and mass produced for the public to gawk over. And that last string of adjectives applies to the men and women in porn just the same. And just like I would kill a fox for getting too close to my children and chickens, I will rejoice in the death of porn by the levying of tariffs on my behalf.
Only an all-powerful God could orchestrate a move so sublime and subtle. So emotionally violent and culturally effective. To take a man capable of single handedly killing his enemies, only to blind him, bind him, and lead him to the heart of enemy territory. And then place his hand on the cool pillar of an enemy’s demise.
That pillar is firmly in the grasp of a seemly weak and futile Canada right now.
Maybe, just maybe, all it needs is a little push.
”And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.”
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Judges 16:30, Ephesians 6:12, King James Version”