I'm going to take both sides here, Lonous, so bear with me for a minute.
Actually, I'm even going to take a third side.
Lonous wrote:If any government is so weak that it feels threatened by bouncy castles, it deserves to be overthrown.
Oh, yes, the bouncy castle.
When you hear the truckers talk, they spend an awful lot of time talking about the bouncy castle and the barbeques and the sing-alongs. What a happy, family-friendly event it was! Totally something you wish you brought your kids to! Like the Lyons Club Carnival on steroids!
The reality was not so benign. If you lived in an apartment downtown, or worked in a downtown office, the psychological effect of having air horns blowing 24 hours a day in front of your office or apartment was pretty distressing. (Sleep deprivation and loud noises are commonly mentioned in report on non-lethal torture in dictatorships, from Iran to Brazil.) Even after the truckers agreed to stop blowing their horns at night (I suspect mainly because they themselves wanted to sleep!) that still meant horns blowing from dawn 'till dusk, for weeks on end, and with the downtown streets and the tall buildings it doesn't spread out like on the highway. It echoes and reverberates and is channeled up the street.
I know some people who live in Ottawa. Fairly normal and rational people, but you can't have a conversation with them on this subject. They were quite literally traumatized, and if we had a referendum on bringing back the death penalty for truckers, they would vote Yes!
I'm a trucker myself, don't forget. Maybe I don't drive any more, but I did. Like a lot of people, I originally became a trucker because I'm antisocial, and don't want to spend my working day having to talk to anyone. A lot of these guys don't (looking for a kind way to put it) have a future in public relations.
Imagine if you live downtown, and to go home you have to run the gauntlet of a few hundred (mostly) men, largely indistinguishable from bikers, with big stainless steel belt buckles, long beards, many of whom haven't bathed since the protest began, swearing up a storm, and carrying signs with right-wing slogans and spewing conspiracy theories through bullhorns. It's annoying even if you agree with them, and it's downright painful if you don't.
For the people of Ottawa, this was not a good time. A lot are traumatized, some have been diagnosed with PTSD, some have left town. None thought it was harmless.
Lonous wrote:Imagine being such a delicate prima donna that you suspend the rights of your entire nation because a group is peacefully protesting your mandates.
And labeling these guys as terrorists
Okay, on this I agree with you.
There was absolutely no need for the War Measures Act (yeah, yeah, I know it's been renamed the Emergency Powers Act, but I'm a curmudgeon who refuses to re-learn the English language every time some marketing asshole dreams up a new name for something.)
Basically, this was a cynical and calculated political manoeuvre by Trudeau. It didn't work.
To understand why, you have to go back half a century to the days of Trudeau Sr. and the FLQ.
In October of 1970, the FLQ was having a bit of a romp in Quebec. (FLQ = Front de libération du Québec. Until October, they were doing basically student hijinks like setting off smoke bombs in mailboxes and stuff like that which would go under the heading of ordinary college pranks.) (Quebec independence is one of those on-again off-again political issues which sometimes dies down and fades in to the background, but always finds new support and resurges once a generation or so. In the 60's and 70's, it was running high.) In October of 1970, the FLQ kidnapped (and killed) a provincial cabinet minister, and they also kidnapped (but eventually released) the British High Commissioner.
Two weeks after the first kidnapping, Trudeau Sr. used to War Measures Act to suspend civil liberties and basically declare martial law. 23 members of the FLQ were rounded up and shot. Just kidding, lol. Five eventually got long jail terms. Most got very short jail terms. Five were given safe passage to Cuba in return for releasing James Cross (the British HC) unharmed. (The five who went to Cuba eventually went home and served their time of their own free will. Apparently living in a Canadian jail is preferable to life in Cuba.)
The decisive action in breaking up the FLQ and bringing an end to the crisis resulted in a surge of popularity for Trudeau.
Now flash forward 51.4 years. In January of 2022, the pandemic was basically waning, but politicians everywhere were still dealing with the aftermath. Most Canadians were vaccinated, but health care in Canada is a provincial issue, where the federal government doesn't do much except hand out money to the provinces. Trudeau Jr., who is a publicity whore extraordinaire, felt he wasn't getting any credit for the things he hadn't done. (It reminds me of something Michael Emerling used to say -- the definition of a politician is someone who looks to see where people are going, and then races out in front of them and yells "follow me!") In order to look like he was doing something, he came up with the mandate forcing truckers to get vaccinated to cross the border. That in itself was just a pointless exercise to gain publicity. It was a lot like closing the barn door after the horses get away, and it was unlikely to make any difference. But as we all know, the whole pandemic thing had been a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and extremists in every category, and like a powder keg it went off in Trudeau's face.
So, on to the Trucker Convoy. It started on January 29th, and the Ottawa Police thought the truckers were just there for the weekend. Sure enough, the majority had left by Sunday night. But Monday morning, there were still 250 trucks, and as the days went on, more people arrived. The new arrivals were mostly not truckers, they were from a lot of different nutjob organizations -- the Maverick Party, the Canadian Yellow Vests, Soldiers of Odin, Diagolon, Canada Unity, etc. Still, after the first weekend, there were never more than 4,000 of them, and most days a lot fewer. Your typical anti-G7 rally has ten times as many people. If the Ottawa police chief had any balls at all, they could have been cleared out at any time.
Anyway, in this, the publicity whore Trudeau Jr. smelled an opportunity. History taught how much his father's approval rating had surged after declaring the War Measures Act. His own popularity was waning, and I think he smelled a chance to wrap himself in the flag and play the hero. It didn't really work. I don't think he fully understood that it was not at all the same situation. The FLQ was a genuine terrorist organization, and they had a lot of people genuinely scared. The truckers, while they may have been distasteful to most of us and downright nasty to the people of downtown Ottawa, were never truly dangerous. When Junior invoked the War Measures Act (sorry, Emergency Powers Act, lol) most Canadians looked at each other and asked "really?"
Anyway, my take is that I'm not siding with either of them. The truckers are right-wing idiots. Trudeau Junior is a left-wing idiot. Hard to take sides between Dumb and Dumber. However, I do think there a golden opportunity was missed.
If I was in charge, I would have seized this golden opportunity. I would have had the cops out there day and night, ticketing the truckers for all their bylaw infractions. Want to honk your horn for no reason? Noise violation, $100, boom! Block traffic? $250, kapow! Want to park in a handicap zone? oh goody goody gumdrops, that $300! Barbecuing on the sidewalk? Fire code, $175! I would have made a mint off these dumb cunts. I would have paid the City of Ottawa's budget for the next 100 years, lol!
ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion)... 
