They find something quite, if not extremely negative, in everything they don't like, right this second, which is a lot.

Tomorrow it could be the greatest thing in the world however, as long as the right people say so.

First of all, great to see you back! It has been quite a while since I've seen a new post from ya. And also, I appreciate your sensitivity (I do indeed struggle with mental illness) and your being more civil than I was in my original post. I'll try and reciprocate. Since you've neatly itemized your arguments, I'll respond to them individually.

The first case you make here is that it's not unreasonable for people to be expected to mask in public during a pandemic. It's a simple enough argument. Too simple to match the reality of the point in time. I would argue that you're not taking into account the evolution of both the virus itself over time or the evolution of the tools we have available to combat it at our disposable over time either. Your mindset here seems frozen in the world of 2020 when we didn't have vaccines. Matter-of-factly, my motivations for getting vaccinated in the first place were two-fold. One motivation was, of course, to do my part to minimize the spread; the responsible thing. The other motivation, which was just as compelling to me, was to be able to go forward with life in a way that was reasonably safe without having to mask in public anymore. During the early days of the Biden Administration last year, that seemed to align with the direction things were indeed moving in: most people got vaccinated, virus cases collapsed, and the masking requirements went away, including at my workplace. For two months. I'd characterize that brief interlude as the happiest two months I've experienced in the last decade. Now that was for a number of reasons of which the lifting of remaining Covid restrictions was only one part and which also included factors like my deepening relationship with my at-the-time girlfriend and my sweet $1,400 check from the Covid relief bill the same administration had also recently passed that made it possible for me to actually pay my bills on time for a while and even enjoy some rare frills on top of it -- literally the best thing that's ever happened to me financially -- but it was a big factor for me psychologically. The onset of the virus and the lockdown period were both genuinely traumatizing experiences for me for reasons I don't have time to go into here and to me, and I think to lots of people who had similar experiences, masks aren't just a piece of fabric on your face, they're a symbol of an era and a constant reminder of those traumatic experiences. Not having to wear them anymore made it so much easier to start psychologically moving forward with my life and feeling I'd say dozens of times better. Then compulsory masking came back in response to the delta wave late last summer. That I would say for me was a very negative turning point in my mental health (and in my relationship to the Biden Administration).

I understood the seriousness of the delta strain, considering that it was not only more contagious than the preceding alpha one, but also deadlier as well: truly the worst of both worlds. Politically speaking, my response to this development was to become a champion of vaccine mandates, which I viewed as a less onerous and constant life invasion than compulsory masking and a way back out of that regime, and also back out of the fresh wave of lockdowns that got imposed in some parts of the country. I've never understood anti-vaccine sentiment. I was okay with lockdowns at first when the science around masking was unclear because I didn't know what else could be done to slow the spread. Once the science around masking became clear, I supported that as an alternative to lockdowns. Once vaccines became available, I supported those as an alternative to compulsory masking. That's been the evolution of my thinking on appropriate Covid response measures over time. Omicron has thrown a monkey wrench into all of that by being both milder on a per capita basis than previous strains and also more inevitable by way of its ability to evade the vaccines that most people have taken. There was nothing we could do to stop it. It was functionally as if most people were unvaccinated once omicron hit. In a way though, I take it as good news. In contrast to previous waves, the omicron surge lasted only a few weeks rather than a few months and is leaving behind extremely high levels of immunity that could potentially last for years rather than months like our vaccines do. This kind of development is often how pandemics end: they become weaker over time because vaccines stop the more severe, deadlier varieties, allowing only weaker variants to spread. Then those peak and the situation stabilizes from there. That's what I feel like is happening right now. It's possible that a more contagious strain yet may emerge, but unlikely, most epidemiologists seem to believe, because viruses have limits too in terms of their transmissibility, and even if one does emerge it'll likely be a less severe variety even than omicron. In other words, we are almost certainly at the tail end of the pandemic phase of this thing. Cases and hospitalization rates fall pretty dramatically by the day now. I feel it's plenty safe to start phasing out Covid restrictions at this time, especially for those of us who've already been boosted (and for whom, as such, masking provides only marginal additional protection at best). I'd like to believe that politicians are responding to that reality in lifting restrictions suddenly in this wave all in one week last week, but it's hard for me to be that naive in consideration of political developments like the Freedom Convoy blocking access to that bridge to Detroit from exactly the start of the week.

Okay, so that's where I stand on the public health stuff. So the second thing you address here is impact of the virus on the economy. You contend that the virus spread hampers goods production and distribution, thereby causing the price inflation that we're seeing today, and therefore Covid restrictions are the fastest path out of this predicament available. Most liberals take that position, but events have proven it to be mostly a myth. When the virus spread is especially acute, it does indeed cause delays and problems and sometimes those are very visible, like all the flight cancellations that occurred in late December and early January because there weren't enough healthy pilots and flight attendants. Even in the case of that example though, you'll notice that the Biden Administration's response was to have the CDC reduce its recommended quarantine time for those who test positive so that airline workers could get back on the job more quickly after recovering from Covid. The reality is that businesses have chased after states and localities with fewer Covid restrictions, and to which end areas that lifted restrictions earlier have experienced a faster economic rebound than others.

EDIT: For some of the larger moral concerns I have with the continuation of Covid restrictions at this point, see my response to some of JWeinCom's comments back on page 5.

There's actually not much here that I disagree with. I mainly just disagree with your argument against the civil disobedience of blocking traffic. I mean yeah, of course it's not legal to do that, to which end you're seeing arrests now, but civil disobedience, especially that causes economic pain, has proven the most effective tack here; the thing that has gotten the swiftest policy concessions, and I don't just mean in Canada, but here Stateside as well. The disruption to normal life caused by the Convoy pales in comparison to that which has been caused by Covid restrictions and has proven effective at accelerating the end thereof in more than just one country. The truth is that if you want to make an omelet, you have to be willing to break some eggs. If you're not willing to do anything controversial, you prolly ain't gonna change much.

That said, I would add some more details here, like the fact that more than 80% of Canadians and Quebecers have already gotten at least two vaccine shots; a fact that, combined with the roughly 50-50 nature of people's positions on the Convoy, implies that most Convoy supporters themselves are already vaxxed, not fanatical loons who've always opposed restrictions because they're selfish and place little value on other people's lives. I'd also point out that the surveys reveal that the difference of opinion on the Convoy in Canada and Quebec breaks down primarily along age and class lines, with substantial majorities of both younger and poorer people landing in the supportive column. Those are the people statistically most exposed to the virus; the most likely to work public-facing jobs and so forth. Restrictions on those people's lives, by contrast, are favored mostly by more affluent people who lead a safer, less public-facing existence. That's the picture that's emerging here.

Speaking of that demographic breakdown, the survey data also implies that liberal and left wing parties in Canada and Quebec have reason to be concerned about the ongoing loyalty of their supporters, as 44% of Bloc voters and 43% of New Democrats (Canada's major left wing party) are Convoy supporters. Those numbers are large enough to be politically perilous if they continue to be ignored by party leaders. It's really just the governing Liberal Party who's members are overwhelmingly against the Convoy.

You're conflating issues here. I'm very much in favor of the natural internationalism of the working class. I'm also not against immigration.

But you're definitely wrong if you're suggesting that the situation on the U.S. southern border is currently reasonable and well in-hand because not only is it not, but the fact that it's not currently polls as the leading issue of concern among the residents of my border state of Texas and the main reason why our once-unpopular governor Greg Abbott is currently polling 11 points ahead of his top Democratic challenger, Beto O'Rourke, and why Biden fares significantly worse here still at present. It's the main problem for the Democrats' hopes of turning this state blue in the near future. Border policy has long been, in fact, the issue on which the current presidential administration is least popular. It's the Biden Administration's single worst issue. Illegal border crossings are currently at their highest levels in decades.

Here are a couple articles that provide what I consider to be a reasonable and nuanced perspective on the current situation at the U.S. southern border: Here's Pew Research's data analysis. And here's National Public Radio's summary of the situation. One especially noteworthy excerpt I would highlight here though would be the words of Brandon Judd, president of the union that represents Border Patrol agents:

What that sounds like to me is ramifications to the end of the previous administration's Stay in Mexico policy. The theory I used to hear from liberals on the matter was that the sudden resultant surge was just the consequence of pent up need from the Trump years that suddenly had access thanks to the new administration and that that unnatural surplus of demand for access to the U.S. would shortly subside. And yet here we are.

MSNBC was my overall preferred news outlet during the Trump years. Guess part of me just finds the sharpest critiques of the people in power to be the most compelling.

As it pertains to this moment in time though, the issue is that the way the press writ large has responded to this largely working class political action with smug, moralizing scorn and demonization has just been very clarifying as to what they actually think of people like me in the final analysis. Fox News coverage of the Convoy has been by far the most honest. They provide all kinds of footage and interviews and a clear picture of the situation on the ground that, while stilted, is much more complete and believable overall than the other coverage. I actually find it pathetic that Fox is now the source I turn to the most often for something at least adjacent to the honest truth about this and most other news. I have traditionally garnered my info from a variety of sources, with Fox being an especially rare choice that came off as especially deceitful. Not anymore.

On another level, it's also a matter of the topics that are covered by the different cable news networks on a given evening. When I watch Tucker or Hannity, they've got lots of topics to talk about that seem pertinent to my life. When I change the channel to CNN or some other rival news source, it's most often topics like the death of Bob Saget or how we need to start sending aid to Afghanistan apparently without regard to who controls the country and therefore the flow of its finances. NBC grade questions for the current administration are in the vein of "Why aren't there enough Covid tests out there?" and other half-hearted concerns that are neatly compatible with a left wing worldview. They're not serious, and sometimes more offensive to me than anything I hear from Tucker Carlson. It just seems like most of the press bends over backward to coddle, shield, and defend this administration. And I think that perception many people have is why the whole "Let's Go Brandon!" thing has caught on as a slogan; because it concentrates that perception, alluding to a cartoonishly pathetic example. I mean one can understand why, given the last administration's dangerously hostile relationship to the press, endorsing violence against journalists who questioned him (which was...a lot) and so forth...but still. It really does seem like there's a press overreaction to the Trump era that has led them overall to a highly partisan place in favor of the Democrats, of which the prime time CNN anchoring career of Chris Cuomo, brother of disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, has symbolically epitomized in my mind. They used to market themselves as the politically neutral network.

The fact is that you can't understand the current political reality of the United States -- why Biden and the Democrats are polling so terribly heading into this midterm election year -- without watching Fox News. If you get your info exclusively from other television news sources, you'll never figure it out. If you're just too good to ever consume any right wing media then you're too good for the working class because lots of them do so.

There's a leap of logic here. You go from my critiques of the progressive movement's disastrous soft-on-crime policy prescriptions that are leading to major spikes in violent crime across the country to the conclusion that I'm against criminal justice reform itself. That's just not the case. There's absolutely no question in my mind that our current system has shielded racist cops from justice and frankly targeted non-white people for imprisonment in a disproportionate and criminally unfair way that has to be stopped, to which end I do actually consider myself a critical supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and favor serious reforms ranging from abolishing qualified immunity for police officers to ending incarceration for drug possession and a number of other changes in-between. I also support reparations (including in the form of direct payments) for this nation's long era of slavery and subsequent Jim Crow quasi-feudal repression of black Americans in particular. Maybe I come off as callous toward the cause of racial justice sometimes anymore, but I do in fact care.

Matter-of-factly, I don't understand why progressives so often view concerns about social violence and the need of our society to address drug addiction and sex trafficking as attacks on non-white people, considering that there's no one more concerned about those things than non-white people. The question of whether one feels there should be more or fewer cops on the streets, for example, is one that I find breaks down primarily along class lines, with wealthier white people who live in safer areas being the most apt to favor fewer and poorer black people who live in more dangerous neighborhoods landing solidly in favor of more. If we define reductions in law enforcement itself as the goal here, the result is just going to keep being more dead black and brown bodies like it is right now and I don't see how that outcome exactly epitomizes the idea that black lives matter to us as a society. Does it really matter, in the final analysis, if the perpetrator is a cop or not? And if so, why?

I definitely disagree with the contention that President Biden's current unpopularity was just inevitable. Relative to the analogous point in their respective terms, Biden is currently the second or third-least popular president we've had in the last century, and the absolute least popular Democratic president we've had in that span of time. The end of the honeymoon period that accompanies the start of most new administrations is pretty inevitable, but this grade of failure definitely isn't.

Don't get me wrong, I don't fault Biden for everything that's currently wrong with this country, but he is the Commander-in-Chief presiding over it after all; not exactly powerless to affect anything. To me, the main problem with Biden isn't ideological in nature, it's his attitude. Biden comes off to me as a lazy, entitled president of general inaction. One sees that attitude reflected in his foreign policies, his border policies, his economic and monetary policies, his disinterest in the crime wave we've seen tick up pretty steadily in recent years, in his general lack of press conferences and public events, his routine whining about the few and generally mild criticisms he gets from the press (not even talking about Fox here), in his insistence on running for re-election despite this spectacular job he's done so far and the fact that less than 30% of Americans want him to...etc. He feels that his long years of experience in Washington entitle him to the White House and to the unconditional and unquestioning respect and admiration of all. That's how he comes across to me, and that attitude is precisely the core problem with his presidency, I think. People tend to expect something other than apathy from their presidents. If you don't care about the issues, why run for such an office in the first place? Why are you president if you simply don't care? The perception that you cared is the whole reason you got elected in the first place!

Whelp, there's one more fairly major update to offer here: in addition to the 12 U.S. states (11 of which were blue states) that have now moved to reduce compulsory masking requirements since the blockade of that one bridge to Detroit began last week, Joe Biden's CDC itself just announced yesterday their intention to loosen their own masking recommendations as well so as to align with hospitalization rates instead of raw case counts (a higher bar). THAT's the big one; the one that will likely result in my company finally dropping their compulsory masking policy for employees because, like many other major business corporations that operate in this country, their policy is to follow CDC guidance. In other words, Biden and the Democrats at this point have basically conceded the issue, to what will likely be my personal benefit. With this I am happy. Also Biden's State of the Union Address is scheduled for March 1st, so, you know, time was of the essence here.

In stark contrast, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has responded to these protests -- which are based in his country -- by declaring a national state of emergency that suspends many basic rights of the population and limits people's freedom of movement...! Personally, I'll take Biden's response any day of the week over this preppy hipster snowflake who has the audacity to accuse, among other people, a Jewish lesbian of color who's descended from Holocaust survivors of "standing with people who wave swastikas" because she opposes his declaration transforming of Canada into something remarkably akin to a police state, apparently failing to grasp the irony! The Canadian Prime Minister's lack because of self-awareness is galling! Frankly, it's worth watching the entire exchange I'm referencing and the aftermath because it's so telling about what the mindset is here. I'll post it below for your (anyone's) edification.

The difference, of course, is that the American Democrats face midterm elections this fall, whereas there's no new election in sight facing Canada's governing Liberal Party. No accountability, no restraint.

sorry didn't understand you.can you say it in simpler words?

Can you really call it so outlandish when swastikas and other neo-nazi symbols have literally been displayed at the Convoy? It seems like he is just accurately describing reality to me.

Your spiel focuses on the law and order application of their hypocrisy, but more and more it seems to extend to being bound by facts, truth, or reality itself. It's how the majority of the party can either genuinely believe or performatively declare that Biden is not the legitimately elected president. If you haven't seen it yet, this video focuses primarily on conspiracy theorists but includes excellent commentary on reactionary and protofascistic politics in general. The ending in particular is bloody brilliant:

Okay well then by this logic I guess we have to also conclude that the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, participated in by over a million Americans, was also a kind of sustained neo-Nazi organizing rally because there were opportunistic swastika-brandishing Nazis there too on occasion to explain to the rest of us with their crappy, moronic signs how supposedly the Jews control all the banks and yadda yadda rest of the bullshit stereotypes that such know-nothing idiots still use and rely on. That matter was widely publicized by both Fox News and CNN at the time as proof that the million plus people protesting the recent destruction of the world economy by financial aristocrats through organized, systematic fraud that they weren't being prosecuted for were all a bunch of racist, xenophobic bigots who had to be shut down and shut up. Sound like a fair characterization?

Or, by the same token, perhaps the racial justice protests that swept the nation after George Floyd's murder in late spring and summer of 2020, led primarily by the Black Lives Matter movement and joined by millions of Americans and at least initially supported by more than 60% of the U.S. population, were actually about ending all law enforcement in the country because there were small fringe groups using the slogan "Abolish the Police" at some of these events? Does that seem like a fair characterization of the entire movement, or of the movement overall, to you? Were 62% of Americans actually anarchists?

The Freedom Convoy is a Canadian movement and Canada and Quebec together have one-tenth as many people as the United States, so their protests tend to be smaller in scale, but nevertheless hundreds of thousands and Canadians and Quebecers have participated in the Freedom Convoys and surveys suggest that it's enjoyed the support of about half the population of Canada and Quebec. Would you say that half the population of Canada and Quebec consists of swastika-brandishing Nazis? No? Okay then!

The guilt-by-association pseudo-logic at work here is bullshit and you know it. You're not that dumb. That's just what people recourse to when they'd rather not bother confronting the actual positions represented by a movement's mainstream because doing so could prove a lot tougher. Neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate opportunists have composed only a tiny fringe section of the Freedom Convoy participants and I've observed that they're often forced out once the recognizable insignia comes out, much like at Occupy encampments, because nobody who isn't one of those loons actually wants to be associated with them.

Matter-of-factly, I find it a remarkable exercise in gaslighting that the Canadian Prime Minister accuses his critics of supporting the formation of a police state in Canada by virtue of opposing the one he's actually, in fact, creating right now in real life!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I wish I could say that I felt like properly responding to it all, but honestly to do so would just be to repeat points that I've already made earlier on this thread in response to JWeinCom and Nemo, so I will simply point you to those remarks, which should suffice to give you my fuller perspective and more precise position on the whole issue of this virus and of what I've felt at different points in time was the appropriate response thereto, and also why there is, if anything, in my view a strong moral case for ending Covid restrictions at this point.

Response to Nemo. <-- Includes detailed position.

(Main) response to JWeinCom. <-- Includes moral case for ending Covid restrictions at this point in time. That's right, there's more than my personal convenience (and sanity) at stake here. A lot more.

Together, these summarize my position much better than I can repeat. It took me an eternity to write them out too, so I'd rather not try and repeat myself more eloquently here.

I will say this though: like all my critics here invariably, you rely on over-simplifying dissent. Here you consistently brand everyone who supports the Convoys as a conservative rightist who clearly voted for Trump twice (if American), supported the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, and wants humanity to go extinct. That's just where you go wrong. Demonizing everyone who disagrees with you, painting all as the same. You don't understand me or my position at all. It's a lot more nuanced than that. Seriously, if I have to hear just one more time how supposedly the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol is my fault because I'm tired of masking months after my third vaccination and am happy that I probably soon will no longer have to thanks realistically in large part to this Canadian movement, I think I'm going to have to scream and hit something. Seriously. Just drop that argument please, everyone who's using it. It's unbelievably stupid and offensive and anyone who knows me knows better.

You seem to imply that I said/meant a lot of things that I didn't say. Let me make what I mean clear: You could very well argue that guilt-by-association can often be a poor judge. What you can't argue is that the association is very much real. These individuals are literally standing beside neo-nazis, so don't act like Trudeau is off base by calling it out. 

As for whether the association between extremist groups and opinions, and the convoy is as shallow as you imply, it certainly doesn't seem like it to me. I mean for one, the Ottawa Police set up a hotline to deal with the hundreds of hate crime reports that have poured in. Then, you have the open displays of support for nazis, extremist groups (eg. Three Percenters) and conspiracy groups (eg. Q). Finally, you have several of the most prominent figures in the convoy like organizer Pat King who supports the "great replacement"/"white genocide" white nationalist talking point and makes comments about how the jews control the world.

The way I see, no matter how you slice it, you are going to be left with a lot of alt-right bullshit and that shouldn't surprise you, as this convoy is nakedly about airing the grievances of the alt-right. 

I would still say that the big fish here is about freedom and the nazi bullshit is just little remora fish clinging on there and trying to make use of the situation. Again, there's nuance and the mainstream media on either side are conveniently obscuring that. Tribalism and hyperbole as per usual.

Also, the term alt-right is a slippery one nowadays. It seems to mean anybody that doesn't echo the far left talking points, so basically the vast majority of any given population. Maybe just say far right or extreme right, when talking about nazis or supremacists or that kind of fringe crap. I don't even know whether that shit is really left or right at all, just crazy.