(2022-02-04) ZviM Convoy

Zvi Mowshowitz: Convoy. Many truckers do not like vaccine mandates.

This makes sense. The big benefits of being a trucker are:
Freedom.
In particular, freedom to go and work where you want, when you want.
Even more in particular, freedom to not interact with other humans.

If there’s one group that both has no need of vaccine mandates, since they spend their time alone, and also likely not to take kindly to vaccine mandates, it would be a trucker

*those who don’t want to get vaccinated are facing a lot of restrictions that no longer make physical sense:

‘I can travel freely through the border, and not be in contact with anyone. Yet I’m locked into my own country right now,’*

the United States won’t let them in unvaccinated at all. Not that any of that makes any physical sense at this point, of course, it’s purely punishment.

It is not terribly surprising that they decided to let their discontent be known and started a convoy to head to Ottawa to peacefully protest, at one point blocking a border crossing for a few days, with lots of emphasis on how violence would be counterproductive

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was having none of it.

He also said this, which is kind of chilling. “The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing

Opposition to mandates is ‘unacceptable views’?

Having a group of people who disagree with the outcome of an election, who want to go a different way and bring in an alternative government, is a nonstarter in a responsible democracy,” Trudeau said. That sounds a lot like saying it is not acceptable to protest against a democratic government when you disagree with it? That asking for different policies is an attempt to overthrow the government, and kind of like rebellion and treason?

Mostly I see this as creating clarity around the response to protest. Trudeau was remarkably direct and honest with his perspective, which we should thank him for. One place these events might turn out to matter is that the next time there’s a protest from another direction, there will be those who are happy to show us the receipts from this round.