What is happening has happened Before – The Canadian Reactionary ‘Freedom’ Convoy/Protests

I didn’t know Brian Peckford was an American. I thought he was a Charter signatory from Newfoundland. His signature is right there. Right wing religious libertarian bastard, I guess.

Maybe – just maybe – there’s more to this than all the usual dismissal tropes reliably and consistently pulled out of the ever present black bag of left wing character smearing any time anything is said contrary to the acceptable ‘progressive’ position.

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When the organizer of that blockade found out about what these newcomers were up to, what did he do? He peacefully recommended the blockade disbanded. The same was true in Sarnia; when then police chief explained how big rigs were being forced to use the parallel 2 lane highway to the 4 lane highway being blocked but that this alternate route had lots of school buses and local traffic mixed with people trying to go fast to the border, she pointed out that the safety of local citizens was becoming a real issue of concern. Can you guess what happened? The blockade was voluntarily disbanded.

Don’t let the few undesirables widely touted by government and MSM to ‘represent’ the movement as if they were ‘deplorables’ paint what’s really going on here or what the underlying issues really are. That’s why the last living signatory of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has issued a court challenge. To call him unpatriotic or deplorable or a yahoo or ignorant or any of the other ‘common’ terms used to smear real Canadians who have raised a very legitimate criticism about the continued public policy response to this pandemic shows just how biased is the view being spread by those in positions of authority.

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JZ, I don’t know. All I know is that a small number of people joined the blockade quite late and that the original truckers themselves – along with local community leaders – were concerned enough about the ‘newbies’ to ‘invite’ the police to check out what they had brought. The result was finding a weapons cache, which has since been used as ‘evidence’ the movement is about regime change. That’s simply not true but has raised enough concern back in the capital to implement the War Measures Act – since last being used by Justin’s father during the FLQ crises in the ’70s that suspended all civil liberties in response to a bunch of terrorist acts in the name of Quebec sovereignty.

The Act has been rewritten since that time as the ‘Emergencies Act’ in the ’80s and is intended to bypass how democratic institutions usually function when facing a national emergency. A national emergency is defined as an urgent, temporary, and critical situation that seriously endangers the health and safety of Canadians or that seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada. It must be a situation that cannot be effectively dealt with by the provinces and territories, or by any other law of Canada. Trudeau’s response to the problems that the truckers’ movement raises regarding the demand to an end to the never-ending mandates that really do curtail civil liberties in the name of public health is a massive overreach to avoid all – and I mean ALL – oversight. The Emergencies Act means no democratic oversight, no legislative oversight, no judicial oversight, to any action the government – meaning Justin Trudeau – decides to authorize as a response to the problems raised by the ongoing demonstration IN OTTAWA. The other blockades at various border crossings have all been dealt with by local authorities. Interestingly – and with almost no mention in the press – is that any towing that has been done (particularly at the very busy Ambassador Bridge (300 million a day in trade between Windsor and Michigan), seems to have been hired from the States. I have heard that few if any Canadian towing agencies will cooperate with ‘official’ requests but that might be more rumor than fact).

To start what this Act means in action, all private information of targeted truckers is now open to the national police without ANY judicial oversight – and used by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is like a combined MI5-MI6 agency or a combination of the FBI and CIA) that heads up the ‘national’ police response using both provincial and municipal police forces to augment the small contingent of RCMP police officers and help local enforcement. So this morning the bank accounts of many truckers were frozen.

So the point here is that civil liberties have been suspended for all Canadians while mainstream media and various governments kowtow to Trudeau’s partisan painting of the situation as if this movement were an emergency to national sovereignty (like using the ‘long gun’ weapons found in the Alberta blockade) to try to justify this massive overreach as if necessary for the ‘safety’ of all (there has been no violence even at blockades later dismantled or disbanded), giving voice only to the notion that anyone who criticizes the federal Liberal government and any of its actions (or failures) – or anyone who supports the truckers’ movement particularly – is a ‘suspect’, which then gives blank slate permission for police agencies to assume such a person could be an enemy of the state and could be treated with ‘justified’ suspicion and official interference with zero legal protections or recourse.

Where is the OUTRAGE from the political Left that such knee-jerk authoritarianism can be so easily imposed by the whim of a weak political leader challenged by circumstances outside of his control armed by legitimate criticism and a significant minority of Canadians in support of the same mandate-ending goals but who so easily uses such extreme legislation as a very real bludgeon against activist citizens with a legitimate civil rights grievance?

This would be a entirely different story – and the sky would be falling – if exactly the same actions were ever used by a non politically correct Right wing government. In fact, such a government action by those unclean deplorables would certainly be called – and justifiably so – a ‘reactionary’ one.

So there’s the red flag right here in the title of this post that reveals just how effective the ideological overview has been packaged and swallowed by those who presume the ’cause’ – a truckers’ movement that causes real life disruption just like the mandates that have and continue to cause real disruption in the lives of many real life people who have been working throughout this pandemic and celebrated when convenient as ‘heroes’ but who are now vilified because they don’t fit the ideologically pure progressive model of the Good Citizen – is justification enough for having their civil rights suspended.

This is a civilian driven (excuse the pun) slow motion movement done in a quintessentially Canadian way – from the outside in, meaning as a wake up call from the ground up to the central government lofty in the certainty of its own righteousness that the narrative they sell is not what’s true. A great many Canadians are really pissed that there is no clear ending of all kinds of related FEDERAL mandates based on facts or science or numbers. That’s what’s missing here and why people are pissed. And no number of arrests or moved trucks or vilification of fellow citizens with a fundamental complaint that is not being addressed and causing this movement will alter that deplorable fact. This is a colossal failure of leadership by all levels of government. They need to get their shit together.

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The divisiveness that opens this door in Canada is what worries me. And the authoritarian response to – relying on a narrative that those involved are ‘bad’ people – causes me great a very great concern. It is the situation being widely supported by various social organs like MSM and all levels of government where there is no discussion, no tolerance, no appreciation for a different point of view that could be justified by reality if it goes against the narrative except by WrongThink. And that attitude is what I think should worry the shit out of all of us. And yet, it doesn’t, which is root cause for the convoy, for the funding, for the ‘foreign’ interference.

And we see in action the inevitable and predictable results sticking to a false narrative: social harm. Such intolerance opens the door to receiving this kind of support (the enemy of my enemy is my friend). And the support is based on resisting authority to infringe on, curtail, and even suspend individual rights and freedoms in the name of something else. That’s the problem: believing intolerance and vilification is somehow more justified than trying to understand why there is justified divisiveness and working to reduce that.

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Yes, I understand. Being threatened that one either gets vaccinated or lose one’s job is not a ‘choice’. It’s coercion. That’s what mandates do: they coerce. You cannot leave Newfoundland unless you’re vaxed. You cannot take a train unless you’re vaxed. So the issue is about WHY vaccination is so damned important.

With alpha and delta, getting vaxed was about doing one’s part to help everyone by achieving herd immunity. That’s gone. The getting vaxed was protecting one’s self from getting infected. That’s gone. The getting vaxed was keeping one out of the hospitals. That’s gone. Now getting vaxed is reducing the likelihood of getting complex symptoms with an endemic virus. That’s why public testing is massively reduced and tracing has gone.

So how is your health improved by coercing someone on Vancouver Island to get vaxed in order to travel to a medical appointment in Vancouver? More importantly, how does having had a previous infection – and remember, there are north of 3 million Canadians in this category – affect the mandate? Well, the truth is, it doesn’t. But you are still subject to all these mandates. And the mandates do… accomplish… can be shown to help…

The problem is widespread belief – and it’s just like a religious belief – in this narrative that mandates help when there is a large body of evidence that such coercive measures not only divide citizens into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories that are PRESUMED to be accurate when they’re factually not , but harm real people in real life by suspending basic Charter rights and freedoms in the name of… what exactly, what public good, what social benefit – as this relates to REALITY?

The mandates brought in two years ago are not relevant to reality today. That’s the problem. That’s what’s driving this movement of resentment and anger and frustration at governments spoiled by a willing and submissive population during a time of crisis that continue to tout mandates as if of known and substantial benefits that simply are not reflected by compelling evidence from reality. And there’s your faith-based belief in action and the identical rejection of reality that interferes with the belief system assigned to be the only virtuous one.

Why other atheists fail to see the same religious impetus driving this progressive ideology is astounding to me when people like to SAY they allow reality to arbitrate their beliefs about it. Well, not when it comes to mandates!

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About 2 million Canadians are ‘fully vaxed’ after receiving 2 Astra Zeneca shots. Their antibody response to omicron exposure 12 weeks after the last shot? Zero.

About 3 million Canadians have recovered from alpha and delta COVID. Their antibody response to omicron? On the low end about 30% immunity. That’s constant and not time sensitive. They are considered by Health Canada as ‘not vaccinated’.

The vaccination mandates allow the former full access to everything during this omicron wave and the latter denial to all kinds of things…. with no end in sight from the federal government. Presumably there will be an end date but nobody knows what constitutes that arrival other than a declaration. Many people are good with that. Many people are not. The first are ‘good’ people; the others not so ‘good’ and probably deplorable.

And this makes sense how? This promotes public health how? This increases the ‘safety’ of vulnerable Canadians how?

Dare anyone suggest that reality play a role. We’ve got a narrative to sell.

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“Jesus, this isn’t about virtue signalling this is about following the evidence. And the evidence is that vaccination and public health measures work in protecting the lives of people in society.”

During a pandemic I agree. The benefits far outweigh the costs in terms of virus-related outcomes. I am well aware of all the ongoing health data.

Omicron changed the situation to an endemic one. Much of the data used to justify public health measures that ‘work’ rely only on health data relative to the situation. Omicron has changed the situation but not the health policy about the role of vaccination and other public health measures like mandates. It is a mistake to use information relative to a pandemic situation to justify public health measures for an endemic situation. In fact, in reality, many of these coercive measure lose ALL justification. That’s the point: aligning public health with good information.

It is the role of government to then fit the best possible health measures against the best possible effects on limiting and constraining all other considerations. No surprise to me, the middle way is usually much closer to the the best possible combined outcomes. Today, we’re moving every further towards some extreme entrenchment usually couched in the terms ‘vaxed’ and ‘anti-vax’. This helps exactly no one and keeps us on track for ever increasing push back and confrontation. I just don’t think this is wise. But pushing it forward towards the extremes like the guy in the OP video I think deserves legitimate criticism because it’s not related to reality TODAY It is an ideological one.

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Faith in mandates is currently holding those reins. And it is not directing us towards but away from dealing with SARS-CoV-2 in a positive and affirming and socially cohesive reality.

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Something worth considering in light of what’s going on these days:

“Populism represents a danger for liberal democracy because it has a deep affinity with the archaic stone-age characteristics of the human mind, evolved to serve the demands of group cooperation rather than the rational discovery of truth. Political movements succeed or fail depending on their ability to mobilise basic psychological needs, and both left-wing and right-wing populism exploit the human need for positive identity, epistemic certainty, simplicity, moral virtue, belonging, and significance. Both ascendant and in-power populist movements from fascism, Marxism, cancel culture, the Proud Boys, Antifa, and woke-ism, all benefit from manipulating these evolutionary vulnerabilities.”

“How can we best respond to the populist challenge? Rational argument has limited utility in convincing “true believers” who reject the value of discussion. A minority of totalitarian ideologues are acquiring undue influence over once-liberal institutions from universities, media, the law, education, and corporations. This is only possible as long as the silent majority remains silent. Understanding how populism operates should be the first step towards standing up to populist tyranny.” (Source)

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