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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   38176 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.

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.

I admit I don't follow Canadian politics too closely, but I remember the protests happened in early 2022. The ever helpful Wikipedia confirms it was end of January 2022. 8 months from that is October 2022. Nobody had restrictions in October 2022. It's not some heroic achievement. It's like claiming you punched your enemy and he died, 80 years later, in the age of 103. Whatever happened, he didn't die from your punch, that much we could be sure of. In fact, 4 months is June 2022. California lifted its general indoor mask mandate in March 2022 and for schools, prisons and other dangerous spaces in April 2022. Israel (which reacted to covid with very severe restrictions) scrapped their Green Pass system in February 2022 and its mask mandates in April. Removing restrictions in June 2022 is not something that can be seriously taken as a big win of the protest movement.

The aftermath is: Trudeau put Canada under effectively dictatorship for 9 days, and suffered no noticeable consequences. The commission they tasked with whitewashing the ordeal after the fact successfully whitewashed it and confirmed the dictatorship was the appropriate measure to take (which means, in similar circumstances, the Canadian government won't hesitate to do it again). Note also that this is the only use of the Emergency Act ever - thus confirming that this is exactly what it is for, suppressing dissent. The weapon of asset confiscation have been successfully deployed against political enemies, and again, no consequences to speak of, and again, fully confirmed as appropriate and in fact, "unavoidable". Absolutely nothing was "overthrown", or, in fact, changed and absolutely no power was moved from one hands to other. Some victory.

You remind me of Russian liberals in early 2020s (before the war), where they would assemble a protest, get brutally crushed and beaten up, then parade on social media proclaiming "Putin is afraid! We showed him we are the power!" and invent a new form of "creative protesting" - white strips, flashlights, flashmobs, whatever. It ended up with their head person - Navalny - miraculously escaping the murder attempt and ending up in prison, likely for as long as Putin is alive (if he's not murdered by an "unfortunate accident" or "commits suicide"). And all their movement and their goals achieving squat, short of landing the more brave (or less smart, if you will) ones in prison and more smart (or less brave, if you will) ones in exile, where they can continue babbling about how Putin is deathly afraid of them. I'm sure Trudeau is "afraid" of the truckers in the same way.

DID YOU READ!?

A province's government changed, the second largest politcal party switched from vehemently pro to anti-lockdown with the Pro-lockdown losing their jobs, Trudeau's government is basically crippled all of his policies since have failed as seen with his gun ban falling through...

And the emergencies act failed to be extended, the relevant powers were lost when its 7 (not 9) limit expired without the power to extend it.

The fetishism of defeat. The desire to be powerless in the case of clear and undeniable victory is disgusting.

Your enemies can be absolutely as irredeemable, corrupt, and tyrannical as their worst critics imagine, AND STILL BE WEAK.

The hell do you want? Do you want the CBC to pat you on the back and say "No its OK. You won"

Grow up. Politics is war by other means, casualties on your own side are acceptable in the pursuit of victory.

And the truckers won a complete victory. Every freedom I had lost from 2019 to 2022, everything I expected to never get back and to suffer across decades of insurgency trying to claw back... Was restored, mostly within a month, and the rest in half a year.

THAT IS TOTAL VICTORY.

I will not let blackpilled moldbuggians tarnish it with their own impotence.

FLYOVER country won whilst all the theory-cells and blackpilled cosmopolitan right wing wing intellectual wrung their hands... Becuase the flyover rubes are better than you. More fit to rule. More fit for combat. More able to organize. And now it is the job of the right wing intellectuals to catch up with the 40 year old small businessmen and conpsiracy theorists who've shown themselves more capable that the entire right wing political class

Be less antagonistic.

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