It’s not about vaccines. It’s not even about mandates.
It’s about obedience. That thought struck me after reading various articles on the Canadian government’s reaction to the trucker convoy.
I find it to be an inescapable conclusion. At this point in time, the left is discovering that mandates aren’t winning them any friends and in fact are harming them politically, and they’re involved in jettisoning them even in blue states. In Canada, I imagine the situation was already coming close to that, as well. So why force the issue, especially now? And especially in the face of such a populist uprising?
But you see, those truckers and their supporters have defied the government. And the government has learned in the past couple of years how much power it is able to grab without any of the usual boring steps (legislative or otherwise), and it has come to rely on a docile public to cooperate out of fear (and in Canada, perhaps politeness).
It doesn’t matter what the government edict is, really. It’s game of “Simon Says,” and when the government speaks you must obey.
That’s why the truckers must be branded with the left’s favorite all-purpose epithets: white supremacists, Nazis, racists. If there is even a single sign with a swastika on it – and who knows if it’s a bona fide sign or some astroturfing by the left? – the entire movement can be conveniently labeled and vilified that way. It doesn’t matter that the movement and virtually everyone in it stands for something quite different.
It worked with the Tea Party, didn’t it? Although perhaps the general public is getting tired of the same old charges by the left, as tired as they are of mask mandates and vaccine passports.
This bit with the Boston mayor is hilarious.
https://twitter.com/ElectionWiz/status/1492144808529473543
“Obedience” is such a tame word…
“submission” “compliance” “acquiescence” are all closer to the mark.
So much of this is “boot to the throat” sort of stuff. Especially when dissent or discussion of alternatives is crushed by the tech oligarchs & force of law.
I want my kids to obey when I tell them not to play with matches.
The Kung-Flu Tyranny wants me down on my knees vaxxed as often as they dictate, masked beyond all recognition & afraid of every wind that might blow ill so they can slap another diktat on top of the whole stinking pile of rubbish they’ve produced.
The kids are speaking out: here’s a short video of a Las Vegas classroom that erupts in glee when the teacher says that the masks can finally come off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XolvjPPLsI&ab_channel=RonFutrell%2CVegasStrongSports
Maybe these kids will be immunized against future power grabs by their experience of two years of COVID mandates. One can at least hope.
John Guilfoyle:
It’s probably a minor quibble, but I actually think that “obedience” is a stronger word than “compliance” and “acquiescence.” Obedience is strict (even though you may be a very nice parent) and brooks no disobedience, and punishment is the consequence of disobeying. Obedience also implies a rigid hierarchy in which one person is in charge of the other and can make the rules without the consent of the other.
I have watched the Canadian Parliament debates a bit and Trudeau is spouting cliches while the Conservative leader (not the old uniparty fool) is asking serious questions. Even the NDP party has changed it’s tune. Trudeau heads a minority coalition. A no confidence motion is coming.
That those in power want more power is nothing new. But how to acquire even more power when so much of your power is somewhat dependent on the will of the people?
It’s all about achieving the moral highground. And up until recently, the moral high ground had been been farily well established since it was all in the name of saving lives. They successfully put forth the narrative that masking up saved lives. It was Science! And Science can never be questioned (which of course is the exact opposite of what science is actually all about), and anyone who dared question that narrative must be silienced, discredited, deplatformed, shunned.
But recently, as the Omicron wave has been rapidly receding, some information counter to the prevailing narrative has started to become more widespread. And after 2 years of obedience it seems like some people are evidently finally willing to open their minds to other possibilities. These people are finally willing to entertain questions like: Could it actually be that maybe the face coverings foisted on the populace aren’t as effective as has been claimed? And could it actually be that school age children were never, ever really in that much danger anyway? Is it possible that out vaunted experts and technocrats in the government and the media may have been wrong?
While I am happy that these sleepers are slowly beginning to awaken, I’m very frustrated it has taken so long. It’s been 2 years of insanity. 2. Years. I mean, why did it take so long for people to wake up? How many plates full of excrement are people willing to consume before they start to ask questions? Apparently a lot.
Boss I love it when we can disagree and both simultaneously be correct.
😉
My reading of 21 U.S. Code 360bbb-3- tells me that government has no authority whatsoever to impose vaccine mandates. Any state or institution that forced citizens to get vaccinations without giving them the opportunity to say no acted illegally. Yes, they got away with it. In any event, the important thing is not simply to put and end to the mandates, but to make sure nothing like this is ever allowed to happen again. Politicians want this power. They should never get it.
As President Brandon said: “‘I have the freedom to kill you with my Covid,’ I mean come on, freedom.”
That code goes back to the Nuremberg code.
This situation gives insight into the strange alliance between Islam and western leftism. Both are about submission.
Great post and great comments here!
I’ll leave it to those of you making your points more cogently than I can, but just want to add my agreement.
They don’t care about policy, law, race, gender, science or health.
They care about their power and our obedience.
“Simon says masks off.”
“Simon says masks on.”
“Simon says stop driving your car.”
“Simon says men can have babies.”
Note. Most of the provincial governments in Canada are under a Conservative ministry. Quebec’s is under a ministry run by CAQ, which is what passes for a starboard party in Quebec. The Canadian right, such as it is, is deeply implicated in the COVID regime to a degree their American counterparts are not. Trying to sabotage the convoy now is the (Conservative) Premier of Ontario. The one who attempted to ban roadside cheering was the (Conservative) Premier of Nova Scotia.
The paradigm that a democracy accommodates multiple polities all of whom are entitled to basic protections by law and Constitution has been displaced in the dominant discourse by the oppressor/oppressed one model. In this worldview only bad people refuse to defer to the enlightened ones (who speak for the “oppressed”) and as oppressors should be crushed by any means necessary. Trudeau (and all my leftish Canadian friends with him, btw) don’t go “Gee, there are a lot of discontented people out there, maybe I should listen to their grievances and reassure them that as fellow Canadian citizens we are concerned with their welfare too.” No, it’s that their views are “unacceptable” and they are racist transphobes, etc. Beyond the pale.
It’s extremely dangerous, needless to say.
I always wondered about those “Obey” t-shirts in the Obama years, and Neo’s post had me looking them up. I didn’t realize they were by Shepard Fairey, and supposedly “ironic.” I always found them disturbing, as those wearing them didn’t seem particularily skeptical sorts.
There seems a concerted drive to render any talk of rights or liberty or freedom as absurd and dangerous. One Canadian friend on FB reposted “You were never told to surrender your civil liberties. You were asked to help each stay healthy and survive.”
Well stated, Nancy B. I heard one of the Canadian truckers state, “We don’t want the government to protect us. We want the government to protect our rights.”
The concept that a Justin Trudeau or Joe Biden knows what I need and I am unable to obtain it without their “service” is beyond laughable.
What sad, pathetic little men.
They are the stuffed men,
Leaning together.
Headpiece filled with straw.
PG Wodehouse had an apt description of both of them:
cloth headed dummies.
But, unlike Bertie, Brandon and Blackface are malevolent at heart.
“One Canadian friend on FB reposted “You were never told to surrender your civil liberties. You were asked to help each stay healthy and survive.” Nancy B.
Following their dictates to “stay healthy and survive” was the lie based rationale used to coerce obediance.
That Canadian is a perfect example of the millions who’ve been played for fools and is too insecure to face it.
That’s why the truckers must be branded with the left’s favorite all-purpose epithets: white supremacists, Nazis, racists.
– –
It worked with the Tea Party, didn’t it? Although perhaps the general public is getting tired of the same old charges by the left, …
Great stuff Neo. How much railing against racism will the public tolerate, especially in the presence of so little evidence to support it? The latest claim in the news is that meat eating was created by a sexist, racist heterodoxy of white privilege. Vegetarians unite!
I do think the topic goes beyond a pure obedience angle. Rufus hints at it with his statement,
They care about their power and our obedience.
Nonapod has this:
It’s all about achieving the moral highground. And up until recently, the moral high ground had been been farily well established since it was all in the name of saving lives. … and anyone who dared question that narrative must be silienced, discredited, deplatformed, shunned.
Nancy B.:
No, it’s that their views are “unacceptable” and they are racist transphobes, etc. Beyond the pale.
I think it is about power and obedience is just one avenue. The other avenue at work here is devisive wedge politics. Us vs. them. And we (the left) have the moral high ground because we care about the health and safety of others, and they don’t. They must be sub-human troglodytes.
One of the old tenets of anarchists or anarcho-syndicalism is that they will always have less money and a relatively smaller base of supporters. Rather than just giving up, anarchist leaders pushed the idea that their base will be more radicalized and more motivated by far compared to the rest of the electorate. And they set out to achieve that.
One last point: If your base believes that the other guys are sub-humans, then your base can easily employ tactics that cross the lines of fair play and honest politics.
TommyJay:
The idea of obedience implies a hierarchy in which the being doing the ordering around is superior to the one doing the obeying – either because of sheer power, physical or moral superiority, or because the orderee is of a subhuman or inferior class or group. So to me, anyway, it’s all included in the idea of obedience of one group of adults to another.
What they did to the tea party is why you got Trump, and a huge ongoing fight for the soul of the Republican Party.
Trumps great power was he ripped off the mask to show the corruption, incompetence, and fascism of our elite governing class.
The Trucker Revolt is doing something similar in Canada. The conservatives seem to have been willing uniparty partners, junior members. Just like the establishment Gop is in the US is to the Democrats.
But WHY do we have some people that have to be Karen’s and/or real tyrants and attempt to control others, while most of us most of the time prefer to just be left alone (also see Rufus’s comments in prior thread)?
I believe Sowell’s Conflict of Visions between people with constrained vs. unconstrained visions applies here, although my impression is he was not suggesting this was a clean black-white type of dichotomy.
Or is there some other psychological dimension in play here?
R2L,
Whomever controls force controls power. Cuomo and DeSantis had the power in their states. The Karens in New York convinced Governor Cuomo to lock the state down. The Karens in Florida did not do the same with DeSantis. DeSantis respected individual rights, Cuomo did not.
The question isn’t why some people seek power over others. The question is, how to devise a system that doesn’t allow them to succeed.
Back in the Tea Party days I read a column by Frida Ghtis, who is such an unreflective liberal idiot that Jon Stewart once took her to a task on his show. She was trying to understand the Tea Party, and I would say in good faith.
She asked, what does the Tea Party want. She was told that they didn’t want anything. They wanted the government to leave them alone.
She couldn’t process that answer. She kept asking, no, what do *you* want the government to do for *you*.
Same answer.
She couldn’t get it. It was not a possibility for her.
It was amusing and tragic.
Sort of off topic; but two minor things I noticed, and loved, about the Canadians during this nationwide protest in Canada.
First are the videos showing kids and adults (can I assume it is truckers with their kids?) playing street hockey in Ottawa. Americans? we would have started throwing Frisbees around or something. But, leave it to the Canadians to start a game of street hockey!
Second was a video clip showing men on horseback showing up at the closed border crossing out west and one of the men had the Canadian flag flying from a hockey stick.
Both scenes are so Canadian one just has to love it! We Americans are lucky to have some great neighbors to our north.
Some very interesting talk from Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau. Their reaction is very out of line with the nature of the protest. Rather than easing tension their words and actions are prolonging the protest. So far the protesters have been far more civil than Ford and Trudeau, but the latter seem to want provocation.
Neo,
I see your point, but I still think there is an important distinction. To put too blunt of a point on it, contrast the Hitler Youth movement vs. the Nazi treatment of Jews. A foundation of the latter is division and hatred, but not (or much less so) for the former; although I’d argue the Youth movement did produce obedience.
Nowadays, our primary and secondary schools are becoming a version of the Youth movement. Wildly speculating as to the motivations of the left, it seems as though they are pulling all the levers to achieve power. The division and hatred avenue reminds me of Orwell’s quote. Something about playing with fire without realizing that fire can burn.
There are still millions of Americans who regard Fauci as the foremost authority and advisor on Covid. They hear and believe him. They are willing to do horrible things to themselves and their children because he says so. His long sordid history of incompetence, dishonesty and corruption does not matter. No rational person could possibly think him credible or trustworthy. But tens of millions of liberals do.
Obviously, there is no thinking involved. None. Rational thought, logic, benefit/cost analysis are foreign. Because they ALWAYS have been.
Covid believers are liberals for the same reasons and in the same way that they are liberals voting Democrat. They don’t think for themselves. They don’t want to. Men can get pregnant because the party says so. BLM riots are peaceful because the party says so. Jan 6 was an attempted coup despite the complete absence of any evidence to support the claim because the party says so. Women never lie, cops roam the streets looking to kill blacks, the planet is dying, masks work, rape culture, spending trillions will cure inflation, renewables can provide all our power needs, most honest election in history, white supremacy is our most serious terror threat — every single one of these brain dead beliefs is held firmly by liberals because they are told to believe them. And they will do a 180 on any of them the moment the party tells them to.
Being a loyal, believing liberal is all about faith. It’s how they define morality. It would be heresy to do otherwise. If thinking interferes with their liberal faith, abandon the thinking.
Excellent news (i.e., for those who want to save lives):
“States push to ease access to ivermectin, other COVID treatments that establishment blocked.
“Oklahoma attorney general also says he’ll leave alone doctors prescribing FDA-approved drugs for off-label COVID treatment.”—
https://justthenews.com/government/state-houses/lawmakers-tackle-hurdles-covid-patients-get-treatments-opposed-medical
+ Bonus…on how “THE SCIENCE HAS CHANGED”(TM)….
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/the-liberal-retreat-from-mandates-2.php
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/team-doom-suddenly-reversing-covid-restrictions-shows-it-was-never-about-science-only
Simon Says?
How about Red Light Green Light?