Canadian truckers speak for us all

Guy Fawkes Mask © Neydtstock | Dreamstime.com

I spent time Saturday morning catching up on the independent journalist coverage of the Freedom Convoy standoff in Ottawa, where the prime minister of Canada and the premier of Ontario continue to defy the people’s demand to loosen the chains they have put on their nation’s economy.

In a remarkable article by Rupa Subramanya that was posted on Bari Weiss’ Substack, “What the Truckers Want,” she noted that it’s not an “anti-vax” protest seeing as the vast majority (some say 90%) of Canadian truckers have received the injections for COVID-19:

“So it’s about something else. Or many things: a sense that things will never go back to normal, a sense that they are being ganged up on by the government, the media, Big Tech, Big Pharma.”

Subramanya said she has “spoken to 100 of the protestors gathered in the Canadian capital,” in part because she lives nearby. “What’s happening is far bigger than the vaccine mandates.”

As of Saturday the protest/strike has been nonviolent and isn’t stopping despite Big Government/Big Media/Big Tech/Big Pharma’s efforts to smear and misrepresent them. Many local and state governments, understanding the power of the people, have been lifting the mandates that provoked the protests — but the Powers That Be with the biggest stakes in keeping us under the boot, the Justin Trudeaus and Joe Bidens, are doubling down.

Biden’s handlers the other day urged Trudeau to use his powers to do what it takes to open up the Ambassador Bridge between the U.S. and Canada — and they weren’t talking about listening. I fear at some point the government will use violence to break it up, risking civil war rather than following the people’s will, as tyrants always have.

People toss around words like “communist” and “totalitarian” to describe the ideology of this ruling class, but I think “tyrant” is the most appropriate. The word is free of the political implications of communist or Nazi or fascist or whatever, and it names them accurately. They are simply tyrants who want to be in charge, and they don’t cotton resistance. It’s a weird world right now with these tyrants terrorizing everyone.

If “people should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people,” then Justin Trudeau may be the most frightened person in the world right now. Frightened people often do stupid things; fair warning.

Crossroads

W.B.’s Book Report: The Andy Carpenter Mysteries

Andy Carpenter and I have a lot in common, although I have one bone to pick with him. He shares his life with a beautiful golden retriever named Tara, whom he describes as the greatest creature on Earth. This, of course, is a falsehood, seeing as it was my privilege to have spent nearly 12 years with the REAL greatest creature on Earth, Willow The Best Dog There Was (2009-2021).

Tara, of course, is fictional, having sprung from the mind of author David Rosenfelt, but she is also based on a real golden retriever named Tara who Rosenfelt describes with similar language. Rosenfelt may be forgiven his lack of understanding, since he never met Willow.

I haven’t completely recovered from the loss of Willow. She and I had one of those bonds you hear about, and snapping that bond has been as traumatic as one might expect. Red always joked that when the time came, she would have to euthanize me along with Willow because I would be so devastated. I’m glad she didn’t have to follow through on that, but yes, devastation is a good word to describe it.

But I digress. Beyond our love for the greatest creature on the planet, Andy Carpenter and I both grew up in New Jersey. If our family hadn’t moved from one side of the state to the other when I was 10, I would have attended Passaic Valley High School just outside Paterson, where Andy and his wife, Laurie Collins, live and work. When Carpenter talks about the morning traffic on Route 46, I know what he’s talking about, and even though I moved away 50 years ago, I can still see many of the locations in the Carpenter books in my head.

I missed Willow so much that when I realized Tara’s resemblance to her, I started binge-reading the Andy Carpenter series; sometime this week I will finish the 24th and will have to wait until July to hear the 25th because I’m caught up now. I’ve done it all via audiobooks, where Grover Gardner does an amazing job bringing Rosenfelt’s characters to life.

I’ve also read both of Rosenfelt’s non-fiction books about their house full of dogs (as many as 37 at a time) and the adventure of moving them all from California to Maine. And I’ve read the first of the new K Team spin-off books and am on the library waiting list for the second.

This is all thanks to my cousin Christine, who several years ago sent us an Andy Carpenter book knowing that I loved a certain golden retriever, figuring I’d be drawn to a character who loved a certain golden retriever. Red, who doesn’t read books as voraciously as I, loved the book, but for some reason I didn’t pick it until after we lost a certain golden retriever.

My cousin was right, of course. Besides the dog and Jersey connections, Carpenter and I are both sedentary types who want to retire but keep getting drawn back into the job. In his case he’s a defense attorney who keeps bumping into sympathetic characters who have been wrongly accused of murder. How can he say no? Actually, if I had inherited millions as Andy did, I might be inclined to say “no” more often than he does, but millions have not dropped into my bank account, so I can’t say for sure.

The real killer is always someone who is not quite whom we expected, and the final act often involves a potentially unpleasant encounter to unveil the culprit. Between Carpenter’s caustic personality and Gardner’s brilliant performances, Rosenfelt delivers an entertaining tale pretty much every time. Twenty-four thumbs up from me — or should I say paws up?