Saturday, January 29, 2022

Anti-mandate freedom convoy arrives in Ottawa Canada as Prime Minster Justin Trudeau flees the capitol.

 

Some of the protesters in Ottawa. BBC/AFP.

The anti-mandate freedom convoy has arrived in Ottawa. BBC. The protest, which formed when Trudeau implemented a vaccine mandate for cross border travel for truckers, formed in Western Canada and spent most of last week traveling to the capitol. The protest raised over $7 million through GoFundMe and has remained peaceful so far.  The protesters are now demanding the removal of all mandates related to Coronavirus.

Meanwhile, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau has fled the capitol. Business Insider. Though the protest has remained peaceful with zero arrest having been recorded, Trudeau was moved to a secret location citing "security concerns". 


 

 

 

My Comment:

Fairly impressive protest in Canada. Looks like thousands of people and trucks showed up to protest these vaccine mandates. It seems clear to me that people are sick and tired of vaccine mandates and that these people had nothing left to lose so why not protest? 

I can't say that I am at all impressed with Justin Trudeau's response to this. I have never been a fan of him and consider him to be everything that is wrong with the modern Western rulership class. He's vain, racist, totally out of touch with the common man and more prone to preaching than even the pope. In short, I consider him to be garbage. 

But even I expected more from him than this. These aren't violent people that are attacking him, like Antifa and Black Lives Matter did to the White House back when Donald Trump was still president. These are peaceful protesters yet Trudeau still cut and run to some bunker somewhere. What did he think was going to happen, these middle age Canadians were going to pull him out of his house and Gaddafi him? (though I personally wouldn't mind if they did).

So far Trudeau hasn't backed down, but I can't see that lasting much longer. The groundswell of opposition here is pretty impossible to deny. If he doesn't do something soon, he risks any remaining credibility his government has. I think many of these people are in this for the long haul so Trudeau has limited options. 

The best for everyone is if Trudeau just lifts the mandates. He even has precedent now since many European countries, including the UK, are lifting their restrictions. Indeed, just across the border in the United States, many of the border states have either lifted their restrictions entirely or are limited. Sure, the feds are still screwing around with their mandates but even there the tide has turned. Doing so would cause Trudeau to lose face and anger some of his supporters.

I don't think cracking down on these protesters is an option. The protest has remained peaceful but it would remain so for long if the cops started cracking heads. That's how civil wars start, just look at the Arab Spring. Trudeau reminds me a lot of Joe Biden though, a man who always makes the worst choice, so I could see this happening. 

But I think the most likely outcome is Trudeau just trying to wait the protest out. Most of the protesters are working class people who do not have the funding to just protest indefinitely the way Black Lives Matter and Antifa do here in the United States. Sure, they raised more than $7 million but that goes fast when you have to feed and house so many people. The protesters have an advantage in that many of them brought sleeper cabs but even then, time is on the side of the government. It will be interesting to see if they can keep the energy and anger up long enough to outlast Trudeau. 

I do think that this is the beginning of the end for Coronavirus mandates. Setting aside the efficacy of the vaccines and the weakness of the Omicron variant, it's clear that people have reached their limit of what they are willing to accept, at least in the working class. And this is coming from, for a lack of a better term, the most cucked country on earth. If people in Canada are upset enough at their government that they would basically take over the capital totally organically, what must the leaders of other countries be thinking? 

My guess is that they are finally realizing that the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. Omicron was always the off road for the pandemic and I am guessing that other governments will start to take it. Some of the more authoritarian governments, most notably Australia, will take longer than others, but I am guessing the worlds leadership is watching this protest and realizing that the gig is up. 

What really gets me is how completely unnecessary this whole thing was. Closing the borders to unvaccinated truckers never made any sense given how important free trade and the movement of goods is. Even assuming getting people is a legitimate goal (and I'd argue it might have been last year but is absolutely not now), the marginal returns you would get from this compared to the major economic damage is just stupid. Especially considering that traffic was moving just fine between the two countries even during the worst days of the pandemic. 

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