Essays in Idleness

My heart was lifted by the sight of the ladies, from a Polish deli and bakery in my neighbourhood, delivering a van-load of sausages and much else to the truckers on the front line in Ottawa. It was one of many “meaningful gestures,” that could be traced on the informal Internet, even though news that strays “off-narrative” is ignored by the state-owned CBC. For the moment, before the government (which has huge malice, but very little competence) has the time to re-organize itself, much can be done; and as I suggested the “freedom” trucks, and the beautiful farm tractors, are now appearing at border stations and at Queen’s Park — on the streets of provincial capitals, such as Toronto.

But maybe, like the Polish communist government on which they model themselves (down to the ripely absurd answers to simple factual questions in Parliament), they won’t be able to “get their act together.” Justin Trudeau will go the way of the late General Wojciech Jaruzelski, into the shadows of opprobrium. Things like the police “crackdown” that Ottawa currently threatens, or the open theft of “Go-Fund-Me” donations for the truckers, or the range of very evil lies and smears spread by Liberal Party functionaries, will cease to be aggravating and become a silly joke, should they ever be remembered.

Non-violent civil resistance is the road behind and the road ahead. Like Solidarność and the various slave uprisings of history, good strategy will win through. For what we must teach we must also learn about ourselves: to rise to the responsible government we so easily abandoned. For we only became slaves when we allowed it to happen.