Escalation
If you’re paying attention to how the police are treating protestors in Ottawa, then you’re probably realizing something. BLM protests led with violence and massive property damage – and got results. Local governments couldn’t bend over backwards fast enough for them.
But peaceful protests coming from a centrist or right-wing foundation are crushed by the governments.
It’s disgraceful and it’s educational. Somewhere I guarantee people are paying attention and taking notes. They can look at the contrast and they are capable of two thoughts.
First, the West is dead. Europe is in Putin’s shadow, and even in the face of that, they are incapable of presenting a unified front. Canada, New Zealand, and Australia all act like banana republics the moment someone dares protest a covid policy. America truly is the last best hope of freedom. But we have nanny stated and distracted ourselves into obsolescence. The arsenal of democracy is gone. Our business leaders and politicians are more beholden to Chinese interests than any American interest.
Second is that violence gets results - which is scary. Often, democratic societies recoil from violence. A cause using violence would be rejected by the masses, because even if they agreed with the ends they abhorred the means used. That is no longer the case. The people who care, the people who donate money, the people who empower causes no longer have strong principles about means. Instead, the only justification is the ends.
I’m not talking about the person who watches CNN for five minutes at the gym once a week and shakes his head at how bad the world has gotten. To be blunt, those people don’t matter to causes. They just exist and are a non-factor. It’s like a massive football game, but 9 out of 10 spectators are just sitting there staring at their phones. They aren’t cheering for either team and because of that they don’t enter into the equation.
They are important because they are people, but they don’t drive events. They are driven along by the course of events.
At its core, if Ottawa continues the way it is going and Trudeau holds on to power, than the lesson will have been taught. If a trucker convoy shows up in D.C., then similar tactics will be used - hopefully to louder uproar, but perhaps not.
And the people in the back, the people who aren’t involved now but will be the planners and activists of five to ten years from now, will remember what works.
As someone who spent a couple years in the infantry, I have a deep appreciation for dark humor. And I can’t help but laugh at how short-sighted we are as a society. The people who scream “fascism” the moment a conservative says anything are the same people who are cheering the beat-downs in Ottawa. Yet, it is the government’s response to the protestors that will drive fascism. Violence will beget violence. It could be five years or twenty, but it seems like there’s a 50% chance of fascism and a 50% chance of communism and a 0% chance that rights-orientated, classically liberal democracies will exist.
*It is funny to see that Covid policies have done more to separate conservatism from supporting the police than any BLM protest or defund the police movement prior to Covid.
*At some level I’m assuming the protests remain peaceful. Considering that Canada has openly talked about seizing children and pets, that peacefulness might not last. I really don’t think anyone in Ottawa has really considered just how dangerous a group of people who drive semis and heavy equipment for a living could be.