Dear Truckers
This is no way to run a rebellion
Look, we get it. Nobody likes a pandemic except for a few Wall Street profiteers. Social distancing’s a drag, masks can ruin our makeup and bend our beards, porch pirates can shadow all the extra delivery trucks and finding ways to educate and entertain our children is a haphazard mess.
We also well recognize the vital role truckers play in keeping the world going through thick and thin. And that most of you are still doing that now. And we thank and respect you. But this postcard’s more for the scanty few doing this crappy rendition of the Declaration of Independence in Ottawa and the Ambassador Bridge and in a few other cities in Canada and a few other countries.
Your grievance list is pitiful. The vaccine mandate you face was less than two weeks old when you began your siege of Ottawa and the Ambassador Bridge. All because you’re afraid to get a shot. The shots that have saved millions of lives.
Most of the online support you’ve gotten has come from conspiracy kooks, like literal Flat-Earthers and MicrocHipsters and failed Canadian politicians who couldn’t get elected to a term as dogcatcher. And, of course, white supremacists and their broad array of pink and orange and tan skin colors.
And where is your pride in actively seeking out their support? You cry ‘Freedom’ as a trigger word but just like the Freedom Fries cry used to whip up support for a War on Iraq, your cry is transparent. It means ‘Freedom For Me, and everyone else can fuck off.’ It’s a pisswater version of freedom. Supported by people publicly advocating piss drinking to protect you from The Virus. REALLY? The decades of research and billions spent by multiple countries in preparation for a coronavirus outbreak has no merit but online wackos bearing urine is who you have religious faith in?
Yeah, liberal or conservative, we value the freedom to live our lives as best as we see fit. But we also understand implicitly that doing stuff for the public good, for the common wealth, for the neighborhood, for the communities we live in is the stronger form of freedom, the only kind built to last. We don’t object to peaceful protests or boycott efforts. But when you disrupt neighborhoods with horns and smoke and excessive displays of juvenile delinquent behavior, you’re reducing yourselves to nothing more than a public nuisance.
That’s just weak. It’s the stuff of clowns and losers, not real fighters.
Were you aware that on one side of the Ambassador Bridge, there’s Detroit, where 20% of the work force is unemployed still, more than double its pre-pandemic levels. For wage earners who typically make less than $30K per year, unemployment is around 40% in Detroit. Fight for freedom for them or go home. You can’t be a champion if you only champion for you. Do you think your blockades have made it easier for the working families of Detroit?
And how did your boycott mushroom from vaccine limits into call for popular majority elected governments to be toppled? Ninety percent of Canadians are vaccinated, one of the highest rates in the world. 90% of its truckers are vaccinated, too. Canadians are well known to be patient, civil and polite, yet you’ve managed to get them riled up. Not to support you; they’re mad at local leaders and local police for not shutting down your actions that have destroyed the peaceful calm of their neighborhoods. Who came up with this flawed strategy?
And now planned convoys in the US are ready to mess up even more communities across the US?
And on top of everything, else, your protests are being heavily funded by Americans and Canadians, including an American software billionaire. You do realize when you take money from The Man to protest The Man, that you look like little doggies chasing your own tails, right? That’s what mooks do, not real freedom fighters. And
”a Bangladeshi digital marketing firm was behind two of the largest Facebook groups related to the Canadian Freedom Convoy”.
When foreign governments can create troll farms and marketing firms can also hit you with messages that appeal to protesters like yourself, that makes you open to be played by people with no interest in the best for you or your community. Don’t be their fool.
I come from a family that fought to defend this country in every war from World War I through the first Iraq War. I had a couple of uncles, a cousin and a sister who are or were truck drivers. I understand very well the sacrifices and struggles of each. And like hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of people globally, I certainly understand the losses we’ve incurred from this pandemic.
I also understand that we’re all human beings. We’re capable of rash decisions that prove to be mistakes. Take the long view here. Demonstrate that you’re rational and take responsibility for your actions.
The governments your quarreling with provided most of the roads and bridges that your livelihood depended on. They’ve helped provide masks, tests, vaccines and treatments to fight this pandemic. They even provided extra cash to us citizens. Did you cash your checks? The ones these supposedly tyrannical governments sent to you?
Trump and Biden both supported the vaccine rollout. Both have been vaccinated. If governments were planning something nefarious, it’d be much simpler for them to put it in your hamburger or coffee or your tapwater than in a vaccine shot.
Your protest is limited. It will not ignite and sustain a populist revolt. It’s just spreading to the same old cast of questionable characters that have been selling us dewormers and piss. This is not how public safety and protection works.
Stop insulting generations of real Freedom Fighters, left, right middle, of all colors, ethnicities and most religions. Get a freaking clue.
One stalwart of accurate pandemic information is Stat News and they want to tell you about a miracle today. You really need to read about it.
“Retracted financial statements”? So they no longer will verify that the last dozen years of Trump financial statements are true. So no true record exists in the public domain, yet. Unlike any former president.
Now that I’ve re-launched the newsletter - on Valentines Day - I want to encourage you, with every action going forward, to infuse more kindness in your thoughts and deeds. Everything that makes life worth living has kindness at its foundation.
I dedicate this and all future newsletters to my late Love of My Life, Marlene Young-Humberd, who lives on in our hearts. She taught me more about how to strive towards more kindness than anyone I’ve ever met (and I’ve known some exceptionally kind people). She also supported my efforts to write to a larger audience, so I have no choice but to comply.
It’s taken me more than a year to compose myself to say something meaningful about this Wonder Woman. I was committed to her as a life partner and we were working out what that would mean for a common living arrangement for the rest of our days, before her days were cut tragically short.
Her longer and better partner, her late husband David, was also a marvel of human kindness, too. Implausible or not, I wish I could have met him, based on all she told me about him.
I hope I can do enough to carry on Marlene’s legacy properly. She was a great mother, sister, teacher, artist and home remodeller. I loved finding new ways to make her laugh as her laugh was infectious. I should add she was exceptionally smart and beautiful because she absolutely was.
Friends, family and even strangers on first meeting her will back me on these definitions. So folks, find new ways to be even kinder.
Happy Valentines!
"Your grievance list is pitiful. " -- Doesn't that sum it up?