Here's the headline of an editorial in the New York Times:
Please stop this. As the Times admits in its first sentence, this protest rates as little more than a nuisance: "The number of protesters, about 8,000 at their peak, is modest; there have been no serious injuries or altercations, the truckers stopped blaring their horns after residents got a temporary court injunction against them, and most Canadians support neither the truckers nor their cause."
Not everything is a test of democracy. Even if the Trudeau government eventually reacts harshly and stupidly to break up the protests, it still wouldn't be a test of democracy. It would just be a minor protest that was handled badly. That happens in democracies all the time.
Western democracy is in much better shape than the doomsayers claim. It has its problems, but there's no point in pretending that every minor crisis is yet another log on the fire of civilization.
I’m curious to know what Kevin would consider as a warning sign that a country’s democratic form of government is in jeopardy. Canada’s trade routes are blockaded by far right militants. It’s capital city is effectively occupied by a hostile militia which is going out of its way to make it clear to residents that they, and not the democratically elected government, rules and the residents are helpless against them.
The militants occupying Ottawa have begun trying to arrest police officers, they’ve set fires in occupied buildings and terrorized people who are forced to live under occupation. The Canadian government has demonstrated that it’s incapable or unwilling of standing up to the far right (although, naturally, it’s taking a increasingly hard line against those who are gathering to protest against the occupation of their city).
I think what Kevin’s saying is that it can’t happen anywhere. Or at least, it’s not happening until it happens. Which is wrong and shortsighted. It’s increasingly clear that small numbers of militants have considerable power when they’re back by conservatives and billionaires.
You're overstating. There was ONE arson which; the arsonists are not obviously protesters. Every major protest attracts people who are not part of it but try to exploit it for their own ends, with those ends varying from simple looting to promotion of their own cause. The arsonists may have been such "free riders" or they may have been unrelated to the protest. The protesters are blocking a few streets; Ottawa is a city of about one million people and most of it is unaffected by the protests.
The border crossings are being cleared. Canada is a peaceful and stable enough country that it prefers to take some time dealing with protesters in order to avoid bloodshed. Canadian police are to a considerable degree operationally independent of politicians. This avoids "political" policing, but has the disadvantage in situations like the present that the police are unresponsive to public opinion. It's not that "The Canadian government has demonstrated that it’s incapable or unwilling of standing up to the far right ", it's that the police involved are taking their time; the protests will be dealt with, probably without anybody getting killed.
In a way, the trucker protests in Canada are similar to the Occupy protests in the US. Those protests made it appear for days or weeks that the responsible police forces were not able to deal with them, but in the end they were dealt with. You need to remember that Canadian culture is different from American culture; Canadians are much less bellicose and more patient. Over the last few decades, the Canadian pattern with protests is to avoid hasty and excessively forceful action. These protests are following the same pattern as dozens before them.
There’s every reason to believe that attempt to burn down that building was done by far right militants who wanted kill as many people as possible. The front door was taped shut by the arsonists on their way out. And the arson attempt was preceded by a confrontation between building residents and militants.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/video-confrontation-with-protesters-preceded-alleged-arson-in-ottawa/
From the maps I’ve seen on the CBC and Globe websites , it seems that the bulk of the city center is indeed under occupation (which is spreading as more militant convoys arrived unimpeded by police and hospitals (and health care workers) continue to be under sustained attack. There are numerous articles and news reports from reputable sources like the CBC and the Globe talking about how living under occupation has made the lives of the residents miserable. More importantly, it’s becoming clear that the government’s tacit support of the militants is starting to undermine the democratic foundations of the country as Canadians understand that the far right has been granted an increasingly powerful veto to the outcome of elections it doesn’t like.
The trade routes have not, in fact, not been reopened. Some vehicles were removed but the occupation of the trades routes has been permitted to continue by the Canadian government.
Nope, they have been reopened. Stop lying.
What you describe doesn't really sound any different from what my friends who live (or used to live) in Minneapolis describe there. It's unpleasant when your neighborhood becomes a protest site, but it isn't a "test of democracy," nor is destroying neighborhoods exactly a preserve of the far right.
Speaking as a Canadian, we don't go for a lot of loud noise and confrontation. Sometimes, doing nothing is the solution. In this instance, maybe these fools would have tired themselves out in their idiocy. Canada does not support them!
If the US had Canada’s death rate over 600,000 Americans would still be alive, so Canada must be doing something right. Odd that I haven’t seen this mentioned.
All credit to Doug Ford, Gavin Mc Innes, & Jordan Peterson. Thanks to their alternative for Canada, not even Justin Trudeau's shitlibbery can hold the North down.
Methinks the alarmism is over the top
A crackdown would certainly backfire in a big way. Let’s hope Trudy has some cooler heads advising him than this
What is it about the situation that leads you to think that the best idea is to just wait it out until the far right militants decide they’re bored and that it’s time to go home? And how do you deal with future occupations given this precedent?
Do the normal damage control and let them discredit themselves. The entire point of these protests is to trigger an inordinate crackdown so that you can swing public opinion. If they don’t get that, don’t get any concessions, and all everyone remembers is them disrupting peoples lives, the protest is a failure
The absolute worst thing you can do is let them paint themselves as the victim. I would say committing yourself to cracking heads at every new protest like this is far worse than letting it fizzle. Watching government agents kick the crap out of people protesting a government policy is what I would call “marketing material”
I think the point of these protests is to demonstrate their power over Canadian life and to delegitimize both the government and the very idea of democracy. One of the critical, albeit paradoxical, less that have come from different revolutionary movements of the 20th century is that people demand safety and security from the state and they tend to hold the state rather than the insurgents or terrorists who are harming them.
It’s also worth noting that the police failure to protect the locals is something that will indeed be remembered but likely not in the way you think. The message is bullying works and you can’t count on the government to protect you (although the more vigorous response to the counter protesters suggests that the government can, however, be counted on to protect the bullies). The government response is essentially an endorsement of the right wing argument that you shouldn’t look to the government for help.
I understand where you’re coming from, but I respectfully disagree. At the end of the day, if the protesters do not convince people to join them, they haven’t made progress. Take the short term pain in the knowledge that brutal action is exactly what they want the government to do
Sure they can do their best to delegitimize the government and their democracy, but if these right wing groups are the disrupters themselves, how does that help them? If I’m a normal Canadian who doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other, then I’m put through a huge protest by a bunch of a-holes, their stock immediately drops in my mind. What they NEED is a response that garners sympathy and validates their core grievance that they are an politically oppressed group
Additionally, they are complaining about government overreach. How would a complacent, helpless government help their argument? They need an aggressor
It's the self-conceit and delusion of these people that's key, they will think they've won almost whatever happens, just because they've done it at all, --unless they end up in jail where they'll have to sit and be bored for who knows how long. Confinement aggravates their ADHD.
I don't believe that you've correctly analyzed what the "trucker" militant want or the likely outcome of allowing them to run wild. I don't think they're looking to become sympathetic; they're looking to bring about the delegitimization of democracy in Canada, in Europe, and here in the states. It is government inaction and vacillating that drives them from victory to victory.
I think there’s a real danger of being too complacent in the face of things that have been associated historically with the breaking apart of democratic societies. The most important democratic norm is that the government protects its people. If it refuses to do that and stands by while these kinds of attacks occur on the assumption (or, more accurately, in the hope) that the anti-democratic militants will become tired and just go home, it will eventually stop being legitimate and the electoral process will stop being legitimate because the government has accepted that this one group has an effective veto on everything.
If you look at various studies about how democracies die (such as, for example, the important book of that name by Levitsky and Zibiatt), it is the accumulation of attacks on the states and the inability of the state to protect its citizens that gradually subvert the legitimacy of the state and are important catalysts to revolutionary change; we saw this most clear in the fall of the Weimar Republic but these same kinds of attacks are consistently present when we look at democracies (or, even more broadly, legitimate non-authoritarian governments) have become de-legitimized and fallen to various kinds of anti-democratic forces.
Similarly, we look at civil wars historically, all of these events like these occupations in Canada, the rise of militias and the January 6th attempted coup, and the rise of Trump himself, are familiar events that are associated with the tearing apart of civil society. And one of the equally consistent things one can observe is that the significance of these types of events or social phenomena are hardly ever recognized as harbingers of civil war until long after it’s too late.
There’s historical patters which tell us that we are in dangerous times. For a democratic government to aloofly stand by and watch its cities being occupied, private armies and even small militias being formed, and coups being attempted is courting disaster. Canada’s response has been foolish, shortsighted and disastrous. There are now only three possible endings: The government uses extreme force to remove and punish the militants, the government essentially submits to the militants who eventually go home—this time, or the people of Ottawa rise up and drive the militants out.
The third sounds like the best but, in fact, it is nearly as dangerous for a functioning democracy as the other two. The potential for delegitimization of the Canadian government at all levels would be very strong if the people band together to do what government should have done. I think respect for government and for the police would be greatly and dangerously diminished. And that’s pushing us closer to the abyss.
Ottawans are already starting to take matters into their own hands: https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.5769001
‘Residents push back at counter-protest’
It’s interesting but not entirely unexpected. If I were in their shoes I’d be doing the same thing and probably a lot less nonviolently. My problem is that it feeds into the delegitimization of the Canadian government and of democracy itself. At every level, the Canadian state has failed in its most fundamental duty and basically told the people that the legal system is either disinterested in protecting them or is incapable. So a resort to mild vigilanteism is the inevitable next step towards the repudiation of democratically elected government.
Frankly, taking a hard line stance is a horrible idea
Your entire stance rests on this idea of “delegitimization of democracy” by the truckers. My issue with this is that it’s entirely unclear how the occupation of one city delegitimizes democracy in Canada. Further, to whose benefit does this happen? The convoy people annoy the hell out of people and get people pissed off at the government for not beating convoy ass, and how exactly does the far right gain from this? Unless you sincerely think an grassroots armed insurrection is going to overthrow a stable, wealthy, Western, industrialized democracy. I’m sorry, but it’s too far fetched. They would lose, and quickly
Barring a widespread armed revolt, one can only assume they will beat the government in popular support during an election. Except, how will this happen when EVERYONE HATES THEM?
Right now, this is a protest movement. Let’s consider successful protest movements of the past: MLK, Gandhi, etc. What are some common threads?
1. Non-violence (more or less the case here, at most it’s a sit-in)
2. A claim to political repression (yep, that’s the root cause here, with the mandates)
3. Victims of a violent government crackdown (this is the one you want ASAP)
Again, this isn’t the end of the world, and it isn’t an armed revolt. In all honesty, this conflict probably only ever makes it to the ballot box, and no further. Are we really going to throw out every lesson we’ve learned about protests because honking is annoying and they’re blocking roads? Let’s not be stupid and do the one thing they are practically begging us to do. For Pete’s sake
I’m inclined toward Mitch Guthman’s point of view on this, and there are some relevant examples of the risk in recent US history. Nixon was voted into office on a ‘law and order’ platform, mostly by voters who had not been directly affected by the disorder and violence of the 1960’s; he proceeded to countenance and commit felonies to further his re-election chances. Trump raised fears of ‘criminals, drug dealers, rapists’ streaming across the border while the government did nothing; he tried outright to steal an election. Two cases in which a demagogue convinced enough voters that they would act forcefully when the incumbent government could not. And they did - they acted to maintain themselves in power.
And how did that work out for Nixon and Trump? Take as much time as you need.
The problem with historical analogies is that they have to be analogous, not just rhyme. Appeals to, e.g., Weimar Germany and Boshevik Russia are specious. In the case of Germany, it had only been a single nation for 40 years and had just emerged from a massive loss in WWI and was under the punitive sanctions of Versailles. The Bolsheviks took over a mostly agrarian and impoverished country that spanned 13 time zones and had only ended its monarchy in the past couple of years--it never really had a democracy that could die.
Of course, both Nixon and Trump failed to hold onto office. That is no guarantee that every demagogue will fail.
Of course. But why mention Nixon and Trump, except as examples of failure?
Is the Trucker Convoy Justin Trudeau's Waco Siege?
My guess is that Trudeau's political career is over. The people he's patronizing and trying to attract won't vote for him under any circumstances. And the center and center-left see him as feckless and politically inept (if for no reason other than his stubborn refusal to try to stick Ford with the blame for this mess). I think he's through.
What happens to Ford strikes me as a lot more interesting.
Uh, he ended the blockade. Your such a fraud.
The wrong Ford died.
My perspective is that an insufficient number of Fords died.
"This precedent" is already long established in Canada.
One dead Ford is not much of a precedent. Barely a good start.
Very funny. As you well know, since you wrote the comment "this precedent" refers to "wait it out until the far right militants decide they’re bored and that it’s time to go home".
Your reply was sufficiently cryptic that its meaning eluded me.
Law enforcement in Canada, like in the US but more so, is a provincial responsibility. Trudeau has little to do with it.
Fan runs onto the field during second half of the Super Bowl. Democracy is tested.
Was it KanYe?
Courtesy and decorum are tested by such behavior. But not democratic norms.
I also tend to believe that delayed responses are viewed by those ostensibly advocating against public-health policy measures increase the perception of failure. I'm just glad that the Ottawa judge called out GiveSendGo LLC. While he may not be able to actually block all funds remain unavailable to the convoy, it's a start. That "Christian" fund has supported pure evil in the past: Enrique Tarrio & Kyle Rittenhouse.
Inadvertently deleted a response far below much earlier, but the item found by the link below makes me think that the responsible people in our government often act - or don't- through a fear of another WACO or Ruby [Caribou] Ridge incident & possible reactions as bad as the one in Oklahoma City.
While I also know the dishonest blaming & pushback that would result from strong government responses to RW blockages, not doing enough to counter them does seem to encourage more, & worse, behavior by the outlaws who see it as weakness. But the blocking of trade also causes worsening price increases & supply problems - & we know that Biden & the Democrats will be blamed, regardless.
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/14/the-bundy-takeover-is-now-complete-how-the-has-embraced-pro-terrorist/
It is/was a small, mainly wing-nut fringe, protest. Best analogy--a kid throwing a tantrum because they can't have it their way. And should be treated as such.
Over at TPM, it was taken far to seriously, but they did point out it the protest movement had two different parts. A few disgruntled truckers and the wing-nutters--neither had any meaningful support in Canada.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-situation-in-canada-is-worse-than-it-looks
And yet, that small group continues to blockade Canada’s trade routes with its largest and most important trading partner. And that same handful of strange people occupy and effectively control Canada’s capital. This isn’t something that one could reasonably consider as a harbinger of a democracy in peril?
The 8,000 in Canada and even the few thousand who took over the US Capitol are not direct threats to democracy. But 74 million voted for Trump in 2020 and a swing of a few tens of thousands in some states would have given him the Presidency. The vote for control of the Senate also hinged on a few thousand.
Trump has basically declared that he would do away with democracy if elected - in fact he admissted that he wanted to overturn the vote in 2020 and there is no reason he would not do the same again. Republicans in Congress and in the states have shown no real signs of opposing Trump - most would lose their own positions in primaries if they did. Will McConnell keep his position if he actually opposes Trump in a meaningful way? At the point there are no plausible Republican successors to Trump who are not at least as bad - in fact almost any successor may be more competent at subverting democracy.
If the economy continues to improve and inflation abates Democrats may not do too badly in the 2022 and 2024 elections. But if the next financial crash comes before 2024 the Republicans will surely take over again. Biden could also be blamed for a resurgence of covid.
The Canadian protests are not of much significance in themselves, but that hardly means that democracy in the US is not in danger.
This!
Republican policies are not the best for the average person, so they take their frustrations out on those trying to make gov't work for them. Pick a syndrome.
Robert Reich has good perspective too....
The protests in Canada are basically trivial--but the historical trends Reich brings up is scary:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/13/us-republicans-oligarchs-economics-nationalism
Robert B. Reich also thinks that Bill & Shrillary Climpton are the leadership of the impending Americlintonian Corportatist State.
How about a repentant Joe Walsh?
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/11/joe-walsh-on-what-the-left-doesnt-get-trumpworld-would-happily-this-country-down/
Like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, my world is turned upside down. Bill Climpton Labor Secretary Robert Reich is more out of step with the country than 2010 teabagging deadbeat dad Joe Walsh.
No Republican has had more of a road to Damascus experience here than Joe Walsh.
Terrific interview.
Unlike John Dean, though, he never had to go to jail to get there.
I dunno man. If they butchered AOC, Pelosi and Pence who knows what would have happened.
One part of me is almost tempted think a non-terrible* outcome for the US might be: A) DeSantis denies Trump the 2024 nomination B) DeSantis wins the White House relatively easily without cheating (country is feeling effects of a recent, Fed-induced recession), and C) The combination of A+B—PLUS the fact that a lot of January 6 plotters have gone to jail—concentrates minds in the GOP, and the establishment re-takes control, having decided flirting with authoritarianism wasn't such a great idea, after all...
*No, non-terrible doesn't mean "optimal." Optimal would see the electorate finally—at long last!—getting fed up with all the MAGA and anti-vax nonsense en route to handing the GOP a couple of bad defeats in '22 and '24, thereby precipitating an 1850s style breakup and implosion of the party.
One can dream.
Demagoguery and wingnuttery have served DeSantis well, so far, I don’t see him or his party abandoning them any time soon.
He would definitely issue a blanket pardon to the January 6, 2021, March on Washington attendees as one of his first acts as president, citing James Earl Carter, Jr., pardoning the Vietnam draft deserters as precedent.
It may be that no single right-wing protest or demonstration signifies The End Of Democracy™.
But I do think the fact that these groups -- miraculously, just over the past five or six years or so, and repeatedly -- feel **emboldened** enough to do this, time after time, is something worth considering.
Also the fact that these groups by and large are often allowed to do their thing with, at most, a light slap on the wrist, while other groups protesting racial or economic inequality or environmental or industrial issues are dealt with much more immediately and violently by police and government … is also worth considering.
While I agree it's worth resisting overreactions, I also often wonder how many other countries throughout history that slipped into fascism or dictatorship or population purges were preceded by a period of regular people pontificating that it was only a few fringe elements that would never actually get around to seizing power and everything would naturally be Just Fine™.
"how many other countries throughout history that slipped into fascism or dictatorship or population purges were preceded by a period of regular people pontificating that it was only a few fringe elements"
I'd guess all of them.
I guess I don’t get it. If most Canadians disagree, then what’s the issue? The best thing you can do is let them discredit themselves by being boorish and disruptive. That strategy worked very well against BLM in the summer of 2020: the disruption and violence did more to hurt their cause than anything the police actively did
I think people don’t understood the victimhood complex inherent in most far right movements. The worst thing you can do is give them license to take over the country in self-defense. Stepping on necks might feel good in the short term but, short of some lunatic military figure launching a coup, I have a hard time thinking of a successful far right movement that succeeded without an antagonistic foil. If they’re just punching at air, they have a hard time winning over supporters
Just let them burn themselves out. Sorry Ottawans
Hungary, Russia, Brazil, Singapore, Belarus, and Uzbekistan come immediately to mind as authoritarian countries where the far right came to power by exploiting weaknesses of democratic states rather than through a military coup. Nor were there left wingers with bad slogan who “forced” the hard right to take over the government even though they were opposed by large majorities (except, perhaps, in Russia).
Two famous hard right regimes (Hitler in Germany and I’ll Duce in Italy) came to power through their willingness to use raw power to intimidate other political actors. And, in both cases, with the support of the incumbent government who thought they’d be easily controllable as people tired of their antics and also become more responsible once they were in government. Neither instance worked out well for moderates and leftists.
And here in this country, the far right has been emboldened by the submissiveness of government and law enforcement. We’re seeing the result of the failure to hold anyone truly accountable for the January 6th attempted coup as the talk of armed, violent demonstrations is continuing to build among the far right. It’s worth mentioning yet again that most scholars in the relevant fields think that the name for an foiled coup that goes unpunished is a “rehearsal”.
The Nazis, a left hegelian legacy group came to power via the great depression and Russian led Leninism to its east. Do not be a idiot. Capitalism was dying quickly.
You’ll have to educate me on Singapore, I was not aware of a far right movement which seized power. As for the rest of the list, I see a collection of unstable post-Soviet republics and developing nations. Then we have the Germans and Italians surging in from a devastating world war along with the worst ever economic crisis
It takes a lot more to topple an established, post-industrialization Western democracy. In fact, it has not happened. This is precisely for the reasons I’ve mentioned: there’s no antagonist. Right wingers punching at air and generating disorder where there was peace does not exactly lay ideal foundations for a far right uprising, in fact it hurts their cause
Never interrupt an opponent in the process of punching themselves in the face. Just let them keep going. The worst thing you can do is increase the level of chaos and turmoil, because history tells us that this is fertile soil for upheaval
It doesn't take that much to topple democracies. Democracy is an historical aberration. It is extremely fragile and depends on the adherence to various norms by all of the political players.
There was a brief window of opportunity for Canada and the government stood by and allowed its trade routes to be blockaded and its capital city to be occupied by right wing militants. The fact that he stood by and allowed it to happen isn't going to help Trudeau and the militants aren't looking to move public opinion or win elections—they're looking for ways that a small minority can win power without winning elections.
History does not quite agree with you. Democracy is actually the most resilient form of government. Unless you strangle it in the cradle, it’s very hard to get people to give up self-governance (as compared to the ease with which dictatorships fall)
The mechanics of seizing power as you mention are incredibly fraught. More importantly, if they instigate a revolt without popular support or government support, how could they ever expect to win?
I think it’s plain wrong to say they’re not gunning for popular support. Why a protest then? Forget this dumb preamble if we want to just take over. Start shooting already!
Again, a crackdown is a horrible, horrible idea if you’re anti-convoy
I think we see history somewhat differently. I can’t think of a single democracy that has proven durable in the face of internal pressures such as the west is facing now. And, in the sweep of history, there’s no real democracies or constitutional monarchy until maybe the 19th century. And they’re all basically in Western Europe or the USA.
In the 20th century, no new democracies except for Japan and devolved portions of the British empire. Germany and Italy both allowed small minorities with elite backing to overthrow democratic governments. In the US, India,and the Uk there’s substantial anti democratic movements gaining traction in much the same way that democratic governments were lost in Germany and Italy.
The idea isn’t that people stop wanting democratic governments, it’s that the leadership of the western democracies is feckless and incapable or unwilling to defend democratic principles.
The UK has been a democracy continuously since 1659.
That’s true. As have all of its “constituent parts” that were spun off to become independent countries. And, since I count constitutional monarchies with legitimate monarchs as democratic for our purposes, it’s also essentially true for France and the Benelux countries.
But over thousands of years, the world over, that’s barely a handful. And barely the blink of an eye. And both England and France are increasingly beset with the same problems of anti democratic political movements.
Moreover, one thing that’s clear is that the acceptance and conformity with social and political norms related to democratic institutions is essential to the survival of a democracy. Those norms remain strong elsewhere but, as we have been discussing, they’re under sustained attack by extremely powerful forces.
You have a very expansive definition of democracy.
You posted late in the day yesterday so I'm going to accuse you of not paying attention: the Ambassador Bridge.
And I'm not sure what you mean by democracies failing to remain stable. If you mean never change course in the face of protest and pressure, then why on earth would that be a virtue? The whole point of a democracy is that it should be capable change. Excess rigidity is not a virtue in a governing regime.
I mean that democratic states can be destabilized and are unable to continue as such because domestic enemies of democracy come to power without actually winning popular support. Nazi Germany and the Italy of Il Duce are the two best known examples and I’ve previously argued at some length that they are cautionary tales with important similarities and great significance for our own present situation.
Over the decades, a number of democratically elected governments in Latin America by military coups. Hungary transitioned from a democracy to an increasingly authoritarian state as the nominally elected leaders used by violence and control over state assets to consolidate power.
So all the right-wingers that got arrested for instigating violence in 2020 around the BLM protests and you... blame the BLM protestors?
You mistake my statement as a personal judgement on my part. I’m just observing the fact that the summer of protests actually dropped the stock of BLM and related movements (sort of paradoxically)
I’m not handing out blame to this group or that. Just noting that the disruption and violence that accompanied those protests did not help their cause. Whether that’s fair or unfair to BLM, why not recognize this phenomenon when dealing with this convoy thing? They’re not winning many hearts and minds with their behavior
The Umbrella Mam was a social justice warrior crisis actor cosplaying as a conservative online to discredit legitimate right-wing opposition to Only Black Lives Matter.
Kindof neat how convenient it is that this is happening as Putin prepares for a conquest. It's a fash-intern.
Ha, that’s a good one. To be fair though, Putin is a lot more like the leader of an oligopoly than anything else
The protesters are awful but I do think the vaccine mandates have outlived their usefulness. We’re still having 2400 or so deaths per day in the US, but since the vast majority are willfully unvaccinated there isn’t anything we can do about it. I don’t personally think those folks are worth all the drama these mandates cause.
We all know how to protect ourselves.
Not yet--mandates are still working. A lot of them have just fully kicked in.
Mandates are going to be withdrawn by spring. Victory declared.
I guess some are getting fired. My employer has a requirement and I think most have gotten it. There are a couple of vocal people who may not have.
I wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble for the super bowl though. Apparently they need proof of vaccination or a negative test to get in. And I don’t think the restaurant requirements for customers is particularly useful. We don’t have those requirements where I live. I’ve only ever shown my card once and that was to be able to work out at my health club without wearing a mask.
So the idea that these mandates can have some impact is, I think, quite limited now.
That’s not strictly true. Last September I went to a squash tournament in San Francisco that required vaccine passports to enter the venue, as did all of the restaurants in the city. For me, it was pretty much living my life as I did pre-pandemic.
I mingled and sat in the stands with the other ticket holders without masks but safe in the knowledge that everyone was vaccinated and that this was a reasonably safe situation. Similarly, I ate in restaurants for the first time and I felt reasonably safe.
There’s only two ways to return to “normal”. One is to exclude voluntarily unvaccinated people from all nonessential activities. The other is to simply abandon all public health measures and hope for the best. Hope that if you get sick all the hospital beds won’t be occupied by the unvaccinated. Hope that none of the constantly mutating variants escapes the vaccines and restarts the pandemic.
For me, the choice is an easy one. We need to exclude the unvaccinated from employment, taking up space in hospitals if they get Covid-19, and rigorously excluding the voluntarily unvaccinated from all nonessential activities so that the rest of us can return to living normal, reasonably safe lives.
“exclude voluntarily unvaccinated people from all nonessential activities.”
There was a time not all that long ago when I would agree with you, but I don’t think it’s worth doing that now. In fact, we’re not doing that now so you are suggesting a change in policy which seems out of touch with the situation we face today.
My life is “normal” again. It has been normal since the summer of 2020 and so all this debate about restrictions and precautions seem rather silly by now.
When community spread is happening, I stop going to the gym, work from home more, and skip eating at restaurants. When things ease up, I resume those activities.
I keep coming back to the idea that, for the most part, those of us who are vaccinated and careful will be just fine regardless.
It’s just not worth the fight anymore. Not to me anyway.
You’ll be fine unless you get injured or sick and the hospitals can’t help you because they’re overwhelmed by unvaccinated Covid-19 patients. Or a new variant has the ability to escape the vaccines and then the vaccinated people like ourselves will be back in the crosshairs.
Well the new Omicron variant can already be readily transmitted to vaccinated people. It kills some of them too
I also don’t think a mandate makes sense until we get a more effective vaccine against new variants
Government mandates are dead soon. Omicron has collapsed. Victory will be declared. Propaganda can take many successful forms.
If we suppress the virus and prevent it from finding new hosts we can significantly reduce the risk of a new mutation that will escape the vaccines. We’re in this fix because we’re unwilling to confront the militants and act in the best interests of our society as a whole.
We had an effective vaccine that could have stopped the virus on its tracks before Omicron showed up. That's the problem of taking half-assed measures when dealing with health issues. If you have the means to nip it in the bud, make sure you do, otherwise sooner than later the measures you have will no longer work.
I regard the failure to get vaccinated, absent serious medical or financial reasons, as total folly. But I see your solution as grossly totalitarian, and a good deal worse than the pandemic.
I wonder if you could explain how you arrived at that conclusion. Mandatory vaccination has been a staple of public head measures for hundreds of years. Throughout most of the 20th century it’s been obligatory for attending schools, for attending university, for travel, and for many other aspects of daily life. Except by fringe kooks, it’s never been seen as an impingement on one’s freedom.
The economic costs to society aside, there’s easily 300,000 people in this country alone who would likely still be alive if vaccines had been required. So I don’t see how the minor inconvenience of getting vaccinated balances out again the toll of the dead.
That's a good point but it's obviously also true for these "protesters". If they want "freedom", get the shot. It's also the best way to get back quickly to "normal". Sure wish there were someone as loud and obnoxious as Tucker Carlson delivering that message.
There are hardly any mandates in the US. I wish we had more, because they work. If right wing conspiracy kooks don't like vaccine mandates in those jurisdictions that maintain them, let them pay the price in reduced participation in civil society, or, if they cross a line, let them go to prison.
Vaccine mandates are nothing new. We've long mandated near universal compliance because of mandates involving public schools. In essence, all we're doing now is adding Covid vaccination. Big whup.
The fact that's it's a very small number of people doing an innordinate about of economic damage and social disruption is exactly why it represents a test for, if not democracy, certainly for canada's current government. And thus far it seems that Canada's government is failing the test.
According to my sources, they went for the money first. Then came the arrests. I would have used pr calling them foreign backed globalist globalism while their
flanks diminish without foreign help. Then arrested.
Yes.
Personally, I think the more worrisome interpretation is not that any of these individual "controversies" (angry truckers, angry parents, angry cops and firefighters, etc) matter in themselves, but rather that they are flareups largely caused the same thing: out of control inequality, and the fact that once you squeeze the working class the way the robber barons have been doing for the past 5 decades, it then becomes all that much easier to then yank them around with absurd propaganda like that promulgated by Joe Rogan (the US government is paying hospitals to report that people are sick with covid etc etc, this is all liberals loving to control society etc etc) and the like. And that's kinda depressing, because surely we liberals were hoping that there would be a strong counter-reaction to the inequality; for instance that these angry truckers would demand that their representatives pass bills making it easier to join a union and harder to fight one off, for instance. I say that because, quite obviously, if it's actual power and recognition they want, it's much better to join a union than park your truck on a bridge.
In short, I'm less worried about any individual media-friendly hoo hah like blocking a bridge, and a lot more worried about Joe Biden's approval ratings. It's the latter that really matters to whether democracy survives long term, I think. Because if people really don't like the government doing good stuff for them, then I don't know what's next.
Biden approval ratings are up in swing states, down on the coasts. I take that trade fool.
Inequality caused well-to-do to protest?
That's... odd.
You’re saying the average truck driver makes as much as the average hedge fund manager? Got any evidence of that?
Half of the peak was foreigners. Guthman in his stupidity, fails to understand that. Once the money turned off, it dramatically decreased. I still don't get why morons like Guthman can't figure out their being conned. Billionaire globalism is basically the real point of these morons. I would have killed them, tortured them. Called them globalist elites who want to create international slave states.
kevin, does calling for murder and torture get you banned here? or is it just no standards at all now? cause it really undermines the community when you allow this kind of garbage to keep posting this kind of garbage.
Strongly agree! This troll makes no contribution whatsoever to discussion.
Absolutely! It is a racist, anti-semitic semiliterate troll. It only leaves its droppings to get attention.
Don't encourage him/it. He's/It's been especially active of late because people are responding/acknowledging him/it.
What is so fucking difficult about "DFTT?"
Sorry to be potty-mouthed, but it's frustrating: this very basic rule of commenting 101 is as old as the hills.
i generally agree with ignoring trolls, but when it gets to this level of comment (outright calls for murder) i expect the platform owner, aka kevin, to moderate and ban.
It takes all kinds and all sorts of opinions. Stupidity cannot be fixed.
Strongly agree!
Aaagh, this was supposed to be a reply to kahner! No, SoG is not ‘expressing opinions’, it’s just trolling. Racist, anti-Semitic and frequently incoherent. The purpose is not to argue a point of view, or to persuade, but to provoke.
ha. for a minute was confused about how you agreed with both my comment and heysus. and yeah, he serves no purpose and has no goal but to troll. allowing him to continue posting is absurd.
Trying not to engage in both sides-ism but I’m very unclear on what is so different between this protest and any other. During the BLM summer protests, big parts of my home city were shut down and commute routes were blockaded. Yet those protests were a cause celebre (is that the right way to spell it?) in most media accounts I read
Regardless of whether or not you think a vaccine mandate is the right call, it is a serious topic for some people, and they’re registering their discontent with a protest. Forgive me, but isn’t that how democracy is supposed to work? They haven’t burned down Ottawa and I don’t really even think anyone has died or gotten injured (besides the guy who drove through them like Charlottesville), right?
Sure, there are bad elements mixed in, people who deny the legitimacy of the current government. But that’s true with any high profile protest. Militant communists abound at the BLM 2020 protests, but you have to be dumb to think that a group of people can be summarized by the most extreme member you can find. For me, you don’t have to agree, but this is democracy in action. People registering discontent loudly and in a way that can’t be ignored, whether or not you sympathize with their ideas (and I don’t)
I really want someone to explain to me the difference between this and other protests which makes this such a test for democracy, other than these people aren’t “our guys”. Is it because there was a Nazi flag or reports of intimidation? You’ve gotta do better than that
Communists?
Lol, nope. The actual real black communist group, black hammer thought the "protests" were a joke. Their rejection of the "BLM" movement is well known. It's a put up fraud as the now close to defunct "BLM" is no longer meaningful.
You need a finger snap. Then a eye gouged out to discipline you for your ignorance. This protest and the blm protest are connected idiot. Vaccine mandates are smf........bleh. Most of the 28-100 demographic globally in "white countries" are vaxxed. Sometimes when you kick up dust, it goes back into your eyes.
You write like a lunatic, and I don’t know what you’re talking about at all. Not gonna spend any of my time decoding your gibberish, sperg
Also, Taiwan is not part of China. It’s a completely independent country and actually is the rightful ruler of all Chinese people
Your talking gibberish. Billionaire elites finance these bogus protests. Mainstream corporations turned against the protesters by the end summer once they became unpopular.
These so called "far right" protesters are cons. Globalist, billionaire elites manipulating you.
Where their Nigerian mercenaries there?? I bet there was!!!!!
Dude shut the fuck up lmao
Please don't feed the racist, anti-semitic semiliterate troll. It only leaves its droppings to get attention.
What commute routes were blockaded when where for how long?
This is Minneapolis I’m talking about
I-35 and I-94 were blocked intermittently, the light rail blue line (which I took frequently) was also blocked intermittently and the trains backed up. This was over a period of maybe 2-3 weeks when the protests were the largest. I take your point that it was not a multi-day, constant blockage. Downtown was essentially no-go for a month or so and a few hundred commercial businesses put out of commission across the cities (not spitballing on that one, someone compiled a list). Yet that was deemed a “nationwide racial reckoning” and this is a “existential test for democracy”
Anyways, my larger point is that the difference between the summer 2020 protests and this one seems to be a matter of degrees rather than a categorical difference. I mean, even CHAZ was worse than this, and no one called it a test for democracy. I get it that these aren’t “our guys” but is that really all there is to it?
Your telling a story. Who said it was a racial reckoning by the time the protests failed??? There is no us or them. There are 100 uses and 100 others.
Nobody cared about these sham protests until they bothered commerce. No doubt, you are responded to journalism opinion guy. Maybe, just maybe your overreacting.
The CHAZ provocateurs achieved what the Rebel flag flying Canuck truckers could only dream: murdering two Black people.
That reminds me, has CHAZ endorsed John Fetterman yet?
Golly, Xi, you're right: Cesar Sayoc, Jr., did nothing wrong.
I've had similar thoughts.
Blockading the bridge was a bridge too far, though (sorry!).
I don't know about the extent of the Ottawa protest. How much of the city have they taken over? But yeah, doesn't seem fundamentally different in scope from a lot of the protests on the left over the years.
Those truckers was just a minor problem. Many countries has had similar minor incidents by similar groups but of no importance since it’s just small groups that has been keeping themselves mostly within what is acceptable in a democracy . It hasn’t been a threat to democracy.
If we are talking about threats to democracy are we talking about completely different problems … like this one :
By 2025 there is a significant probability that your newly elected Republican president will have lost the popular vote by more than 10 million, that your House of Representatives will be led by a Republican party whose candidates received in aggregate more than 10 million fewer votes than the minority Democrats, and that the majority Republicans in the Senate will represent 40 million less citizens than the “minority”
An inconvenient truth from a Swedish troll
Nope, but you still don't get swing/single issue voters. When Republicans lose them again, your post will be dead.
Yeah, that is the real problem. Some will want to say that such a government is illegitimate and want to do something about it.
OR you can ask the question: why do certain people (or more precisely, why do certain positions and organizations, as opposed to certain individuals) feel it is important to keep pushing this narrative in spite of the fact that it has been proven wrong so often?
At that point you might be ready to understand one of Andrew Sullivan's genuine insights, posted before it happened (and so in some sense something of a prediction), as to how a new cause would *have* to arise to take the place of gay rights as the thing that the non-woke were not strongly enough supportive of, now that gay marriage was ho-hum. Every ideology needs an other – how do I know who I am except through who it is that I hate?
Dude, nobody cared about gay marriage and never did. State marriage is a scam and is used for inheritance. It's why classical socialism wanted it abolished. It's part of the game the ole aristocracy uses to maintain power.
Your so bourgeois.
Spades, of all the people on the blog, I am probably the one most sympathetic to you and your stance. And yet you do not bother to understand the point I am making even when it is EXACTLY YOUR POINT, and the exact opposite of what you claim I meant!
You might want to consider that...
It’s not looking for allies. You might want to consider that.
What the hell is its stance? Can you actually make out some outlines through the spattered "English"?
My stance is, the trucker protesters are typical neoliberal shills. Nationalism and Capitalism won't work together anymore. It simply won't without a huge correction in living standards. Innovation isn't growing fast enough to service debt. "White people" that can't accept this reality are morons. They whine about a world that died in 1929. It's global capitalism that is their enemy and they refuse to fight it.
Oh come on.
Ignoring the specifics, it's very clear that spades is massively irritated by the *pretense* that is political conversation in our time. The fact that certain things cannot be said, that other things we have to pretend are about X rather than about Y, the choice of prioritizing idiocy of the day over on-going permanently important issues. And all this is engaged in by the people who are supposed to be the adults: politicians, the media, much of the universities.
He is absolutely correct about all of this.
There are two significant dimensions to politics right now.
One is the left-right axis, one is the dim-bright axis.
Left-right gets all the press, but dim-bright is the one that matters. The dims are always in a majority, but not always in control; society collapses when dims manage to wrest control. Many of the people currently most hated by mainstream progresives are not even understood by those same people who call *anyone* they don't understand alt-right. People like Eric Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Thomas Sowell do not differ from the mainstream substantially in their "left-vs-rightness" they differ in having a substantially lower tolerance for BS, which is the defining characteristic of the dim-bright axis. Even someone like Joe Rogan is primarily defined not by being "rightwing" (whatever that is supposed to mean, these days) nor by being especially smart; he's defined simply be being *smart enough* to realize how much of what he's being fed is self-serving BS.
All three of us, myself, spades, Joe Rogan -- we differ massively in various other aspects of our politics, but we can all see socially-sanctioned BS for what is; and we're all three constantly amazed that the rest of you can not, that no matter how many times Lucy pulls the football away, you'll fall for it the next time -- all the while congratulating yourselves on how smart you are, how well you understand society and politics because you listened so assiduously to your social studies professors, follow what every politician says, and read "the news" every day.
Only you and Spades are bright enough to see the truth. Why don't you two go off and trade racist and anti-Semitic bon mots in a private chat room.
I'm glad Canada slow walked an end to the protesting fools. Wait em out and they will go home and maybe have time to consider their stupidity. Or not.
Guys, according to a FBI buddy of mine, Guthman is a troll. He doesn't exist. More later.
I wish I could believe Kevin. But the echoes of the nineteen thirties are just too loud now to let us all sleep comfortably.
Nope. More like 1880's
Or, looking non-historically we have now two parties with entirely different definitions of democracy. The democrats believe that a democracy is when majorities win elections. The GOP believes democracy is when the GOP wins and if the other party wins it is a fraud.
All party elites think that. Democrats should have yelled more in 2004.
Democracy generally isn't destroyed in one fell swoop, but by a thousand cuts.
While not falling to the level of a backhanded compliment, neither does that wording rise to a ringing endorsement...
The real threat to Democracy of this protest in Canada is the same one of the Jan 6 terrorists. Most in the media focused on the across the board "anti-COVID" stance of the protesters, which was always a red-herring and was never going to be fulfilled since Trudeau had no say in most measures. The federal government only set COVID restrictions related to international travel, while the majority of the restrictions, like mask mandates, vaccine passports for restaurants and other businesses, in-door capacity restrictions, etc, are all set by each Province. Even if Trudeau wanted to appease them and agree with them, he never had the power to remove most of the restrictions these nuts where supposedly protesting.
What was often left out in the media, is that one more "request" the protestors had was to have the current Government dissolve. The leaders of the protest actually offered all the opposition parties to sit down with them to plan a vote of no confidence in order to remove Trudeau and install someone of their choosing.
All of this is just one more example of the extreme right, which thankfully in Canada was kicked out by the Conservative Party (unlike the GOP, who embraced them and kneeled to them), trying to use force to turn an election that didn't go according to their plans. Luckily all the opposition parties told them to take a hike and go pound snow, but had they actually sided with them for political gain, things could have gotten a lot uglier, considering that Canada just had a Federal election a few months ago.
Same as in the US, the system held, but only because people in certain positions of power decided to act honorably. The threat is that the likelihood of these types of events where violence (either physical or economic) is used to try to override the will of the majority of people will increase. Sooner or later enough people in power may decide to act selfishly and that would be it for Democracy. Which democracies will hold against these attacks or which ones will hold the longest depends on the conditions of each country. At least here in North America the US is at a much higher peril than Canada, with Mexico also being in pretty rough shape with their own version of Trump currently in power. In the end, this event shows that not even a political system and society that is generally polite and respectful (much more so than the American one) is immune from these types of right wing extremist attacks.
Solar, I would argue the opposite these bogus protesters blew through a lot of capital.....just to pop Truie's popularity. They kicked up dust alright. Right into their face.