Truckers, Truth and Joseph Goebbels

 "If you tell a lie over and over again, people will start to believe it."

Wow. I moved into a small town in Southern Alberta and wandered around to some shops. I ended up being sworn at and barred by a shop owner because I was wearing a mask. Ok guy, I'll avoid your shop from now on. 

Then I stopped for coffee and pastry at another little shop, cute place, with a well-flagged truck outside. They were aghast that I had been sworn at by a shopkeeper down the road simply because I was wearing a mask. Of course, the mother of the pastry shop owner was just returning from driving her truck in a truckers' convoy in Calgary. We live in interesting times.

Afterwards, a neighbour came over to welcome me to this town while her dog urinated on my front yard shrubbery. Yup, it feels like home. Welcome to small town Alberta. It feels really good to be here.

The truckers and supporters, or let's just say, the convoy, are frustrated as hell because no one will listen to them. And, of course, there are those among their supporters who won't listen to anyone else, either. This is called polarization. It's supposed to be about freedom of choice, and what is happening is that choices, and anyone's freedom to choose, are being eliminated. Such is the way of chaos. So the convoy side is in anguish and rebels against their loss of freedom to choose And this plays out with nurses in Vancouver fearing for their lives because of an incoming convoy of truckers.

And the most bizarre thing about all of this is that neither side wants this to be happening. But neither side has any choice. So what is going on?

Russia invades the Ukraine. I guess trying to get Ukraine to be part of NATO and putting nukes into the Ukraine didn't sit too well with the Russian leadership. Neither did throwing mortar fire onto Eastern Ukraine from Western Ukraine on a daily basis for years was all that well taken either. And collapsing a government and causing a civil war and then sticking nukes in the middle of it all: that didn't seem like the brightest ideas either.

So let's look at choices. Russia invades Ukraine, and now what choice does Ukraine have? Did Russia have a choice? And what choice does either the US or Europe have? What choice does Canada or China have? Did the truckers have a choice? Do we have a choice now?

There is no justification for war. War means you have screwed up with such incompetence that y'all should just be removed from any form of influence forever. The only just and moral thing anyone can do in a war is to end it. And there are only two ways to end a war. You can win it or you can lose it. There is no middle ground. The word is that the Ukraine will grind down and turn into a long drawn out guerrilla war like Vietnam. It will go on forever. There was a civil war in the Ukraine which no one ended and was supported by both the East and the West. What is the only outcome of not ending a war? Only more bigger and better war. Now it's an invasion deteriorating into a grind which will spread, eventually, to engulf us all. Covid kind of showed us the way. Everything has global consequence.

The trucker protest was not about trucks and involved a lot more than restrictions alone. It involved being lied to and being deluded by incompetent twits who had no idea what they were doing. The war in Ukraine has a lot more going for it than nukes, NATO and Nazis; it's got to do with delusion and spin. It has to do with being lied to. And we're all going to be expected, some day in the future, to try and straighten out this God damned mess.