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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   38163 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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The Canadian Truckers Won. Everything.

by Kulak

I keep encountering this misconception from people who don't follow Canadian politics...

That somehow the Trucker convoy was defeated.

The Freedom Convoy was the most wildly immediately successful protest in Canadian history, maybe WORLD history.

People remember Trudeau's crackdown, old ladies having their skulls cracked with batons, Disabled indigenous grandmothers trampled by police horses, Bank accounts frozen and public employees investigated for mere donations...

And there's a big reason people remember this... It was dramatic, and the media and the regime certainly wanted you to think resistance was futile...

What people don't remember is what happened in the immediate aftermath: The government caved on absolutely everything within a week for the most important things, and then a month or so for the rest.

First off there was the massive political shift that happened as the convoy was occurring:

Jason Kenny, the pro-lockdown Premiere of Alberta (Canada's most conservative province) was forced to announce his resignation, and Alberta immediately lifted all it's lockdown impositions.

Erin O'Toole the pro-lockdown leader of the Conservative Party was likewise forced to resign, his temporary replacement Candice Bergen (not to be mistaken with the actress) being a longtime rival opposed to lockdowns, and his main rival who replaced her after intra-party elections was Pierre Poilievre, the Politician after Maxime Bernier who was quickest to embrace the Truckers and their cry for freedom.

As the convoy was ongoing Trudeau invoked the Emergencies act (the Act which replaced the War Meassures Act for invoking Martial Law)... Now these grant the government almost unlimited powers, famously the War Meassures Act was invoked by Trudeau's Father to detain Quebeckers and raid hundreds of homes without warrants during the FLQ separatist crisis of 1972...the catch is that while the follow on Emergencies act can be invoked by a Prime Minister parlaiment has to sign off on the act's continued use within one week.

Well skulls were cracked, accounts frozen, and as the week passed things came down to the deadline... On the very last night... Trudeau managed to get sign-off (without the conservative opposition) from the House of Commons, but it had to go to the Upper House, the Canadian Senate.

NOW. The Canadian Senate is a shameful institution.

It's like the British House of Lords but without the nobility.

A senate seat is a lifetime appointment, by the prime minister... and that's it. Little to no review, no democratic input, and this is supposed to be equivalent or superior to our elected House of Commons...

Naturally the go-to use of the Senate is as a spoils system for cronies. Do some shameful favour for a prime minister, raise a lot of money for the party, be politically connected to a provincial gov the PM wants to buy off... Get a Senate seat.

One of the longest-standing political agreements in Canada is how badly the Senate needs to be abolished... but can't be because Quebec is nominally overrepresented in the Senate, and abolishing it would cause a constitutional crisis.

So mostly the Senate keeps it's head down and tries to avoid the news... because it will never be sympathetic.

So this nursing home for cronies, criminals, fall guys, and connected activists past...people who's names haven't been spoken aloud since 1996... an institution that was last in the news 10 years ago for an expense scandal whose essence was "Wait we're paying these leeches expenses!?"... that body was called upon to sign off on the emergencies act...

And all these self-important losers smelled blood in the water.

Did they have some principled stand on civil liberties grounds? Absolutely NOT.

They had a principled objection that they weren't being treated as more important!

Sure they'd consider signing off on Trudeau's abuses, but they wanted an ongoing senate committee to continuously review the abuses, with cabinet level briefings for the committee members, regular pressers, inclusion on the forming of policy... Juicy Juicy INFLUENCE.

The exact thing these shameful roaches had been denied ever since their real political careers flamed out in '92 and they'd been forced to become lost souls in the senate.

The speeches these delusional 70-year-old nobodies gave...MY GOD barely coherent gibberish from geriatrics convinced they were great statesmen... convinced their wisdom might now be included in great volumes of Canadian oratory next to Laurier, Macdonald, and Pearson...

With mere hours left to the deadline, no passage in sight, and the nightmare of dealing with these people before him ... Trudeau voluntarily withdrew the act.

In the preceding week his Finance minister Crystia Freeland had given press statements and interviews to the effect that they planned to hunt down everyone who donated to the convoy, and create an expansive new system of financial control... with hints this would extend not only to the protesters, but all the unvaccinated...none of this would happen.

Instead Trudeau weekly tried to claim victory... There were no protestors in Ottawa or on bridges! But in the week that followed lockdown measures were quickly and quietly pulled back. Alberta had already rescinded their measures, and other provinces were following suit. By June almost all domestic restrictions were gone the regime desperately afraid that if the Protesters were able to shut down the capital and cross-border trade in minus 20 to minus 40 degree weather...what might they do in the Summer? Canada Day (July 1) was approached with fear.

By August I travelled to the US for a wedding... Unvaccinated. The greater barrier being the risk the US would refuse me entry than that Canada would hastle me. The US border guard didn't ask.

And on the way back the Canadian border guard, obviously over with this stuff, told me "Now because you're unvaccinated you do technically have to quarantine, and they could possibly call, and if you say you haven't been quarantining they might do something..." I received one email from public health and immediately deleted it. There was no enforcement.

I travelled again in October, and was not even asked uponreturn.

The last measures had been withdrawn.

The Greatest barrier to travel was US border restrictions and requirements... which technically only ended in May this year.

WITHIN 1 month the trucker convoy had effected a hostile overthrow of the Governments of Alberta and the official opposition, the Conservative Party of Canada, from pro to anti- lockdown, and crushed the moderate wing of the conservative movement.

At Multiple points Trudeau was nearly forced out by his own party and his government was humiliated with most of it's perceived power destroyed, it now exists as a rump failing to pass gun control bills (IN CANADA!) against moderate opposition.

Within 2-4 months all domestic restrictions were gone and within 8 months even the pantomime of international restrictions didn't exist, Canada had fewer covid restrictions than the US.

COMPLETE CONSENSUS had be totally destroyed such that in less than a year the national consensus was the polar opposite.

And all the actual action took place in 1 month, on the coldest days of the year, with a movement who's key members had to drive 4000-5000km (~3000 miles) along treacherous northern roads being greeted roadside by supporters who stood out in minus 40 to give them coffee food and support.

This was at once the most logistically challenging protest in human history involving the volunteering of tens of millions of dollars of equipment, weeks of time, tens of thousands of people, across a continent...

And it might just have been the most successful individual protest in human history. The most successful violent revolutions have not achieved such total reversals in culture and policy across so many levels of government, in such few short months.

THERE IS A VERY GOOD REASON THE REGIME WANTS YOU TO THINK OF IT AS A FAILURE.

The same reason things like Brexit, the Yellow Vests in France, or Jan 6th, or the Dutch Farmers protest freaked out the elite so much.

The greatest possible threat to them is that the mass of the Suburban and rural Middle-class: Flyover country, the Petite Bourgeoise, the small business owners, the farmers, the truckers, the Kulaks... The greatest possible threat to the regime is that this mass will realize its incredible power both in coordination, logistics, and initiative... And that it will overthrow the governing class of Bureaucrats, Regulators, Lawyers, DEI Administrators, and leaches who've gotten rich surviving of their tax cattle who actually work and produce things.

They HAVE to play off the Truckers as a failure... Trudeau had to declare victory then cave on every single individual policy.... because they can't let people see what it was:

A premonition of the great Class War to come.

Good synopsis and I think you're correct.

But there are two types of "winning", and the truckers only got one of them. It's true that they achieved their policy goals - and how! But they didn't personally win. The truckers aren't being ushered into the halls of power in the manner of Lech Walesa or Aung San Suu Kyi. No, they they are still reviled by the elite. There will be no statues on Parliament hill of a brave trucker, CB in hand, fighting for freedom. And I doubt they'll ever be given the credit they deserve. Truckers, and people like them, don't write history.

Do you care about getitng your policy goals? Or getting spoils for your activist class?

The left has won none of its real policy goals in 30-50 years (no income equality, no real improvement in the quality of black lives, no eviromental improvements) but they won tons of spoils for their activist class.

The leading trucker acitvists paid a high price... But a year later literally every single policy goal was achieved. (Canada has no covid requirements of any type)

Any true supporter of any cause would much prefer a trucker victory to a DEI victory.

The left has won none of its real policy goals in 30-50 years (no income equality, no real improvement in the quality of black lives, no eviromental improvements)

If you think there have been no environmental improvements, you have a very short memory. And clearly there have been massive successes re discrimination against all sorts of groups. People here are constantly complaining about the left's successes, so presumably they exist.

People complain about the lefts EXCESSES... their successes are non-existent. Look at black test scores failure to do anything or their hand wringing about how global warming will end everything and nothing's improved or rising inequality that's only accelerating in its rise.

We're just so used to political activism achieving nothing except "do something" initiatives that yield no results and spoils for the activist class, that actual 100% pure and total policy success look irrelevant...

We've been trained so long to thing policy is meant to fail and victory is getting your allies into positions with perma salaries the idea that with politics you could actually achieve the totality of your stated desired results in an reasonable timeframe is completely alien.

their successes are non-existent. Look at black test scores failure

If we define as "success" achieving one's goals, then the left is quite successful. Their goals has never been improving "black test scores", if you believe that, please urgently contact me about a lucrative bridge ownership opportunity I have available for you in New York. Their goal is power, which is to be used to fundamentally transform the society along their ideological guidelines. Until that is achieved, their theory states improving anything is impossible, and in fact, it can be considered harmful, as it only entrenches the broken capitalist racist white supremacist cisheteropatriarchical sexist oppression system. Dismantling this system is the ultimate goal, and the reason why some score is not improving is because the goal has not been achieved yet.

And if you realize this, you can see that they have a lot of power - political power, organizational power (they own the Deep State by now), cultural power (they own the academia and the entertainment industry) and they are pretty close to taking over the military too. And the institution they have hard time to take over - like the police, which is very decentralized and thus have been quite resistant - they are openly undermining and destroying. You can not ignore that and claim it's not their successes.

Now, if you looked at the country already fully ruled by the Left - then their goals have to be identified differently. You can't say Communist Party has been very successful in the USSR since 1920s - because, achieving their first goal, to take over, they then failed at many other goals (most of them, in fact, and ultimately at the main second goal - keeping the power). But for the Left in the West, their takeover and rebuilding the society has not been complete yet, so their first goal is not achieved. And their success has to be measured against this goal - and there, we must realistically admit, they have a lot of it. Which is nothing to be happy about - because if they manage to achieve the first goal, the inevitable failure that waits for them past that will affect everybody, and cost very dearly.

People complain about the lefts EXCESSES... their successes are non-existent. Look at black test scores failure to do anything or their hand wringing about how global warming will end everything and nothing's improved or rising inequality that's only accelerating in its rise.

Their goals are not to do something about global warming or improve black test scores or combat "rising inequality". Their goals are to use those things to arrogate power to themselves. Non-improving black test scores demonstrate the need for more and more DEI programs. Inequality demonstrates the need for more confiscatory redistribution. Global warming the need for carbon taxes and micromanaging of people's lifestyle.

YES! Exactly.

Which is why its so remarkable the truckers emerged out of nowhere claimed massive amounts of cultural and politcal power, changed the major perrsonel of multiple politcal parties and provinces, and achieved 100% of their policy goals... within months. Canada opened vastly faster than even the Us after the Trucker Convoy, even red states didn't have the complete removal of requirements that existed in Canada in October 2022

You must be reading different posts than I if you think people only complain about excesses.

And given the number of states that have outlawed anti-LGBT discrimination, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1991 and others I am missing, the aforementioned environmental progress, the Voting Rights Act and its repeated renewal, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, laws re bilingual education, etc, it is pretty hard to say that their successes are non-existent. But I understand that it might feel good to pretend otherwise.

No that's the thing.

The left has massive stated goals they never achieve or even meaningfully pretend to be trying to achieve...Every single one of their policy fails, and was basically intended to fail so that the people hired to execute the policy never lose the jobs created by it.

Meanwhile the Truckers achieved their stated plain highest level policy goals, the majority within a few months, and 100% entirely within a year.

This would be as if MLK marched on selma and one year later black and white test scores and median incomes were equivalent.

was basically intended to fail

The crazy thing is that I think you believe that.

This would be as if MLK marched on selma and one year later black and white test scores and median incomes were equivalent.

No, it would be as if MLK marched on Selma and five months later the Voting Rights Act passed.

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