The Wrong Protest at the Wrong Time

AS THE COVID 19 DEATH TOLL in the United Staates approached one million, tractor trailor convoys mostl made up of good ole boys converged on the bridge connecting Detroit to Canada, honking horns, snarling traffic, stalling the economies of two nations, forcing law enforcement to take action....all for what, precisely? I recall fifty years ago, when I was a teenager, we'd cleverly respond: "Horn blows, what about the driver"? The answer is, that by inundating Canada's Capitol with truck smoke and noise, the protestors were advocating for a useless, harmful cause; eliminating mask and vaccine mandates from business and government during the worst pandemic in a century. These fanactics acted like they were rising up against Stalinist oppression. Arguably, when thousands of people are dying every day due to a deadly pandemic, temproary mask and vaccine mandates have a very real purpose, and protesting against them on the spurious basis of "fighting for freedom and liberty" becomes a comedy of idiocy. Plus, all these big strong man semi tractor trailor protests came at [recisely the time when mask and vaccine mandates were beginning to expire anyway, having accomplished their purpose of saving lives, no longer necessary as the pandemic subsides. A clownish caravan cruised up through Oklahoma, through Joplin, Missouri, and all the way to Washington D.C., where it turned out to be somewhat of an ineffective fizzle. All these drivers and trucks could have been spending their time better working, by reconnecting that much maligned supply chain, and, as we said in the nineteen seventies, "whip inflation now". We modern spoiled Americans of course have no real idea exactly what "tyranny" is. Get a load of the "Tower of London", or Ivan the Terrible, or the most shocking example of British imperialist tyranny ever: the "black hole of Calcutta". All in all, it didn't reallly hurt any of us to wear facemasks in public for a couple of years, and to get vaccinated. Minor inconveniences, to save lives. Leave it to the American conservative community to, when it finally protests something, to proest the one thing which never should be opposed or protested. The reason why more than one million Americans will soon have died from covid 19 is not because people have been wearing facemasks and getting vaccinated; its because of the people who refuse to do either, and who have thus spent the last two years spreading disease and death throughout the United States and the world. All these temproarary emergency measures which conservatives hate so much would have kept the American deateh toll down, like other countries, if only they had been given the chance to.