11 tweets · February 2022 · 72 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
idk what to make of the Canada Emergency Act / trucker thing Obviously downstream of inability to dialogue & get on the same page in the first place. Good case for cryptocurrency in any case. I am opposed to mandates in general, tho in favor of vaccines. thinking out loud:
One thought that came to mind today is something like, the government has things it's supposed to care for that it can make some headway on using powers it has, but it doesn't have the wisdom nor legitimacy to use those powers properly. This is a pickle.
There are sorta two layers here: A) the nature of the protest being made B) the demands the protesters are making If the protest were very violent and the demands were something 99% of people disagreed with, the govt would have a clear mandate to do whatever it could to stop it.
Instead, the protest is obnoxious & costly and the demands are something that maybe ~70% of cdns disagree with. Hm. Part of the issue here is... how does the government go about knowing that it's right about what policies are correct? How do those 70%? We've all been wrong.
Democracy in the "vote for preferred action" sense is profoundly limited by peoples' ability to actually come up with good options, and to get a shared sense of reality. These have been in short supply through the pandemic.
Obviously we shouldn't do something *simply* because 0.01% of the population is willing to be a nuisance until they get their way—all sorts of bullshit could be caused that way. Coercion. Making problems for other people until they capitulate.
A former activist friend of mine said that the best cases for protests like this are ones where most people are unaware of the issue, but if made aware, popular opinion very obviously goes in the direction of the protesters.
This doesn't seem like such a situation, although part of that may be that the whole protest is tangled up: a mix of "people shouldn't be forced to get vaccinated" (something I wholeheartedly agree with!) & eg "overthrow the government!" which uhhh guys wtf u do not want dis
A small number of citizens chaotically trying to disrupt the government, funded in part by foreign (incl US) money (which I read is part of what's in those bank accounts getting frozen—haven't verified) seems like the sort of thing a democratic govt should stop, somehow.
Then again, if the government is gradually shoving the overton window into absurdity, then having a small number of citizens stand up & object is VITAL! I regret not having been more vocal about how bad I think mandates/vaxpassports are (even tho I agree with the aims!)
Where the hell is conversation supposed to happen about all of this? That's the thing I feel most sad & angry about. How do we get people sharing their experiences and & steelmanning each others' perspectives?