Musings of an anarchist misfit
Published at 22:00 on 17 February 2022
All the warnings, that is. Not to mention the open announcement to the media that an operation is “imminent” and that things will be different by this weekend. The authorities don’t seem too keen on creating and exploiting the advantage of surprise. Maybe that will work, but I fear it will just cause more digging in and resistance, which will just make violence more likely.
Published at 08:56 on 14 February 2022
If so, if the state of emergency is just more “go away or else, I really, really mean it this time,” is is but a prelude to tragedy, because it just digs an already deep hole deeper, further constraining the immediate future to capitulation to the occupation or using violence to end it.
If so, the result will be a tragedy for the principles of an open and democratic society, and not just in the immediate term, for it will create a source of lasting division by giving the political right a legitimate narrative of having been oppressed.
Published at 20:25 on 12 February 2022
Before I continue, a word of explanation is in order. I almost did not choose this title, because: a) 90% of Canadian truckers are fully vaccinated, and only a tiny fraction of them are illegally occupying downtowns and border crossings, and b) most currently participating in the occupations do not appear to be truckers.
Yet the protests did start as a truckers’ convoy, before they morphed into something else. That begs the question asked by the title above.
You see, if I were to pick a group of working class people adversely affected by the pandemic, it would have to be workers employed in the hospitality, travel, and live entertainment industries. Those industries suffered almost total shutdowns.
One working class group that it would definitely not be would be truckers. Trucking is a vital service; as truckers are fond of pointing out, whatever you buy in a store, at some point it travelled by truck. While restaurants, hotels, airlines, and live music venues were shut down, the trucks kept rolling.
In fact, if you type the phrase “shortage of truck drivers” into your favourite search engine, you will quickly discover any number of articles in reputable sources reporting just that. Basically, if you want to drive a truck, and you have the necessary training, and you are not banned for some reason related to safety, you have work. And your wages are going up, because that is how the law of supply and demand plays out during a labour shortage.
Truck drivers are, in short, about the last people one would rationally expect to be upset about hardship-inducing pandemic restrictions. Yet it was a truckers’ convoy, and not protests of upset restaurant, hotel, or airline workers, that inspired the occupations.
And, of course, the vaccinated and responsible majority of truck drivers are having no problem finding work and earning a living. It is the small and vocal minority, insisting (paraphrasing Isaac Asimov) that their ignorance be regarded as good as others’ knowledge, who are making all the noise.
But, again, why?
I have a theory and it relates to loners. Driving a truck is a great job for a loner because you will be alone behind the wheel most of the time. Now, not all loners are antisocial, but the vast majority of antisocial people are loners (they basically have to be, it gets them away from those other people they have such a disregard for).
So by simple virtue of the profession being a magnet for loners, being a truck driver is also a magnet for the antisocial, and the proportion of antisocial people amongst truck drivers can reasonably be expected to be higher than in society as a whole. This being the case, it is not a big surprise that within this industry a critical mass of selfish people formed. And they had tools at their disposal (their trucks) with which to use to express their contempt for the concept of being asked to consider the well-being of others.
Now we get into the mythology of the Trumpist right. (Despite being Canadians, it is completely fair to call them Trumpists. There has been no shortage of MAGA hats and Trump campaign flags at the occupations. But I digress.) They vocally proclaim themselves to be the majority, to be “true” Americans (or, in this case, Canadians), as if those with values different from theirs do not even deserve to be considered full citizens in their own country. No amount of data to the contrary will shake them of this belief.
Related to this, they believe themselves to be salt-of-the-earth, humble, regular, working-class type people, or at least that their movement is comprised of mainly such people. (This is also incorrect. The much-reported factoid of Trump voters tending to be less affluent is mostly an artifact of Trump voters being more rural, and rural incomes and property values trailing urban ones. Within rural communities, the affluent support Trump at higher rates than the non-affluent. Again I digress.)
But if facts were relevant to the beliefs of Trumpers, they wouldn’t believe most of what they do. Their myth requires them to be humble, genuine, “real” types, so that is what they are to themselves. A movement that got its start from a subset of truckers is therefore proclaimed to be a truckers’ movement, because believing it to be so is politically convenient.
It’s not because those poor truckers are having their livelihoods ruined by all those uncaring elites and city-dwellers. That is a right-wing myth, nothing more.
Published at 23:28 on 11 February 2022
If I were Trudeau, I would right now probably not be doing all that much differently, when it comes to publicly visible actions: simply making increasingly stern warnings that the occupations must end ASAP. Given that the worst occupations are in Ontario, I would probably try to get Doug Ford to issue a similar message. (Interestingly, Ford did exactly that today. I would not be surprised to later learn there was coordination behind the scenes.)
The one thing different I would do is I would not openly rule out the use of military force. Mind you, I would still try very hard to avoid it, but publicly I would be much more in “all options are open” mode. Something like “We would like very much to avoid using the military to end the occupations, but the occupations must end and we are willing to use whatever means are necessary to this end.”
The goal here is to instill a sense of uncertainty and fear amongst the occupiers, in order to encourage them to disperse. And definitely let them disperse, don’t make arrests as they walk away. Punishing people for doing what you want is not the way to get more of them to do it. Arrests can always be made and charges pressed later, after the occupation has dispersed.
Aside from that, though, openly I wouldn’t be doing much. Behind the scenes it would be a different story entirely. Plans would be being made and put into place to break the occupations up. The planning would be kept secret, with as little signs as possible of how concrete plans actually were, or what the time frame was. It is key to have the element of surprise.
So far as the time of day, sometime between midnight and dawn would be ideal. That is when most participants would be asleep and thus at their most vulnerable. Then come in aggressively but at the same time using non-lethal means only.
So far as the trucks go, they are not so easy to remove as those who drove them, but once the latter individuals have been removed, the trucks can be dealt with. Any motor vehicle can be hotwired, particularly if those doing the hotwiring are themselves the authorities and therefore do not have any reason to fear getting apprehended while doing so. Hotwiring is in fact not even necessary; give a manufacturer a VIN and you can often get a set of keys made. At that point, there are plenty of trucks in the military, and therefore plenty of military members trained in driving trucks. Drive them away.
So far as the time of week, early Monday morning would seem ideal. It would keep the story out of the weekend news for the longest. And I mean this Monday: the occupations have already gone on unacceptably long, and the occupiers are getting both physically and psychologically more entrenched with every passing day. Waiting another week would invite tragedy.
This would have to be a coordinated effort. Both the Ottawa and the Ambassador Bridge occupations would have to be broken up simultaneously. If they are not, the one not broken up first will have to be broken up later without so much benefit of surprise.
In other words, don’t be surprised if Monday morning dawns a big news day.
Published at 07:50 on 10 February 2022
So far, your chief strategy in confronting the spreading, increasingly disruptive, and increasingly illegal protests has been to show weakness. It’s not working. Well, it’s not working to limit the scope and impact of the demonstrations.
Nobody wants this to go to the point of violence, but the window is rapidly closing to resolve this via nonviolent means. The time for various levels of government to get serious about cooperating is now. We need to see things like business licenses getting pulled for those who disrupt trade and traffic, and cumulative fines starting to really add up (with special measures for expedited and aggressive collection). If we don’t, things will get to the point where such actions basically cease to matter anymore. Then the only options will be violence or total capitulation.
Make no mistake, they have a right to demonstrate, no matter how wrong I believe them to be. That’s a basic freedom in any open society. What they don’t have the right to do is to unilaterally call the shots for everyone else.
Let’s do a little math here. The most recent Canadian federal election was under a year ago. The general politics of the protests are right up the alley of People’s Party, so let’s assume that all their voters are behind them. That’s about 5% of the electorate. The Conservatives polled 34%, but not all of them back the protests. Just listen to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a pretty conservative Conservative, to prove that point. But let’s be generous and assume ⅔ of them do. That’s ⅔ of 34% or 23%. Add the earlier 5% to that and you have 28%.
Where is the “freedom” in letting 28% call the shots and telling the other 72% (who support COVID-19 policies distinctly more organized and interventionist than the 28%) to go lump it? That is what the policy of continuing to show nothing but weakness will get us.
Published at 17:52 on 24 January 2022
The story is still in the news, in fact the situation seems to be escalating, so let’s look into it some more.
First, that it is escalating should be no surprise. As I wrote before, multiple factors favor Putin ordering the troops under his command to invade.
What could be done to stop him? Ultimately, not much. Putin is not stupid. To reiterate, knows that NATO won’t consider it worth their soldiers’ lives to contest the issue militarily. Putin is a dictator and the leaders of most NATO nations are freely elected. Putin does not have to answer to citizens nearly so much; this also gives him significantly more freedom to escalate.
Probably the best thing NATO can do is drive home that they are really willing to make Putin pay (via measures that nonetheless fall short of military ones) if he invades, even if that means some sacrifices on the part of the NATO nations. The question is how much sacrificing the European NATO nations are willing to make. Many of them are addicted to Russian natural gas; confronting Putin could well cause an energy embargo with all the attendant economic harm that does. The threats must be plausible; Putin will call the bluff for ones obviously unlikely to be followed through on.
Even for plausible ones, he may call NATO’s bluff. In that case, it is imperative to follow through. So it’s critical to get things right in terms of the sacrifices the NATO nations are willing to make. See how tricky this all is? It is why I believe Putin will go in.
All that said, if sanctions are tolerable enough on the NATO side to be followed through with, yet harsh enough to the Putin regime, they may well prompt a recalculation on Putin’s part as to the wisdom of aggression.(And note that the invasion would still happen. There would just be a recalculation on Putin’s part (and maybe, just maybe, the consequences would drive Putin from power). But all that, as they say, is a pretty big if.
Published at 08:31 on 20 January 2022
Let’s interrupt all this smug mocking of how stupid righties can be for a moment. Because yes, they were stupid for doing that. Big deal, they were basically selected for their stupidity. They are the rubes who fell for Trump’s rhetoric to show up at the Capitol. Then they do something else stupid as well. Big surprise.
What I am interested in is the big picture. Which party has more overall average stupidity? Anyone can pick the game of cherry-picking a particularly stupid subset of the other side’s adherents to make fun of, so exercises like the one engaged in by the linked article really do not say much.
So, which party, in the aggregate, is stupider?
So spare me the self-satisfied smugness about how some cherry-picked members of the other party (generally, those without much power in it) are stupid, Democrats. If you want to see real political stupidity, look in the mirror.
Published at 09:25 on 19 January 2022
I mean, sure, he runs a disgusting right-wing authoritarian regime. I don’t like Putin either. Check.
That formality dispensed with, why wouldn’t Putin threaten Ukraine? It’s a far weaker power, so Russia can get away with it.
Russia is unlikely to invade all of Ukraine, for the simple matter that doing so would be taking a bite of something way too big to chew. There would be resistance. Russia might well be able to eventually prevail over it, but it would take a major effort. It would not be a convenient little war.
So Russia is more likely to whittle off yet another chunk of Ukraine by force. Russia already forcibly annexed Crimea, and got away with it. And Russia would likely get away with whittling off another chunk.
NATO members are likely to be upset about it, but the level of upset will not rise to the level where anyone is willing to put the lives of their own troops on the line. This is particularly the case when one realizes how much of a has-been power NATO is.
This is because NATO relies primarily on the USA, and the USA is a seriously compromised nation with an extremely powerful domestic fascist movement with pro-Russia sympathies, a movement poised to almost certainly take power soon. And you better believe that latter fact is entering Putin’s calculus, too.
Published at 20:39 on 6 January 2022
Biden’s much-belated decision to speak forcefully about the coup attempt a year ago is exactly the sort of thing we need more of. Alas, odds strongly disfavor seeing much more of it. Everything I have observed about the Democratic Party points to its almost total uselessness as an institution when it comes to confronting fascism and preserving democracy.
And lo, in the article linked to above, we see the following: “Biden’s remarks do not mark a permanent shift in strategy about how to handle Trump, according to the president’s aides and allies.”
There really is no plausible scenario for the next forty of fifty years except for the USA to become a fascist state much like Portugal under Salazar or Spain under Franco. That will do the historically necessary task of burning the Democratic Party to the ground. Then, eventually, a better generation of Americans, painfully cleansed of the shortcomings that paved way for Trumpist fascism, can rise and burn the Republican Party to the ground, a task even more historically necessary.
Out of all those ashes there will be hope for something better, but only then.
Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But all the evidence I see today points to a scenario similar to the above.
Published at 19:18 on 30 November 2021
So, at midnight local time this morning, Barbados became a republic.
If you are in the USA, you are probably unaware of this fact. If you are in Canada, you can’t escape it. The news media are covering this story over and over and over again. It started a few days before the transition, and continues today, on Barbados’ first day as a republic.
This is obviously quite telling, as though there is presently no serious effort to get rid of the monarchy in Canada, the remarkable degree of coverage of what is an aspect of the internal affairs of a tiny island nation shows that many Canadians are obviously thinking about it on some level.