As we speak, there’s a trucker convoy known as the “Freedom Convoy” protesting in Canada. Its been going on for about 10 days or so, and has gained Canadian national attention and even international press. The main thing they are protesting against is the Canadian mandate for truckers to have vaccines. Allegedly, 90% of the truckers who are participating are vaccinated, but they’re standing with their trucker peers by fighting against the mandate.

I stand with these truckers, they have my full support. There is no scientific or practical or safety reason to mandate that truckers have to be vaccinated. Although I believe in some mandates in some select areas like healthcare, nursing and the military, requiring it of people who are in their vehicles alone for hours and hours on end is nonsensical.

I’m about as staunch of an advocate of the vaccine as you can be. I believe in their effectiveness and encourage everyone who is capable of getting one to do so. I believe in incentivizing people to get vaccinated, etc. And I get frustrated by anti-vax people just as much as anyone else. But, I also believe that at this point in time (February 2022) if people aren’t vaccinated, they’re probably not going to be. And we need to acknowledge and accept that.

However, other than the few fields (such as healthcare and military) with what we know about COVID at this current time there is no coherent, reasonable, scientific driven reason to force truckers (or almost anyone) to be mandated for their jobs. I have not heard one argument at why anyone needs to be mandated outside of the healthcare (and possibly military) field, and instead, Trudeau and the people who are demonizing the protestors are focusing on the illegality of the protests, making them out to be selfish and ignorant, and even linking the few minor examples of bigotry and Nazism to the entire movement of up to 100,000 people. (It’s almost impossible to get accurate numbers on the size of the movement, some estimate 50% of that aren’t truckers, but supporters of the truckers.) It’s complete bullshit that so little of the main stream media coverage is talking about the actual reason they’re protesting: the vaccine mandate.

One thing that hurts my heart is to see all of the liberals who just 18 months ago supported the BLM protestors, now demonizing these truckers and their convoy. Some in the media and commentary have suggested to slash the trucker’s tires, seize all of the gasoline so they can’t operate (in freezing cold February Canadian winter) and jail and arrest them. All of this is completely the opposite of what these same (type of) people would say about BLM protestors.

What’s different? Is it just simply the cause (police reform, police accountability, treating all races as equal vs vaccine mandates) or is it something different? Well, when conservatives or anti-BLM protestors would complain of the protesting, the average complaint was something like “I’m not against black people, I just don’t believe police are doing anything bad more than just bad apples.” Or you’d hear “I’m not against black people, but just don’t protest like THAT.” The political left in return would call bullshit on that, correctly, because it was never about the inconvenience of protesting, it was simply that the conservatives don’t believe in the BLM movement. They just couldn’t ever admit it openly.

Reverse the roles 18 months later, and it’s now the political left who is saying “Don’t protest like THAT.” And very little of them are saying the honest truth: They fully support vaccine mandates, and think the truckers should STFU about it.

What they should be doing is supporting people’s right to protest against the government’s overreach, EVEN IF they don’t agree with the cause (and do believe in vaccines’ power, as I do.) Instead, the concept of WHY ON EARTH are ‘we’ mandating vaccines with everything we currently know (vaccines doing little to nothing to stop the spread compared to unvaccinated, etc) isn’t even discussed. It’s just pure obfuscation about racism, selfishness, entitlement, and the truckers being uneducated morons. This is complete bullshit and is the easiest way to shut down discussions: paint your opponent as a bigot and an idiot.

The ironic, beautiful thing about this are those on the political left who are now crying of complaints of economic harm from the convoy, while supporting shut downs for nearly two years. Now, to be fair, I understand, sympathize, and even supported some of those select shut downs (mostly prior to vaccines being in existence) however, we supported those shut downs because we knew it was in the best interest of the workers, public safety, etc, EVEN IF it meant some economic harm. We supported BLM protestors even if they impacted road travel and the flow of the populace for the same reasons: it’s all a justifiable means to an end.

The political Left is moving further and further away from the concept of “I don’t agree with you, but I support your right to ________” and instead it’s “If you don’t agree with me, I’ll change my stance.” This is hypocrisy and downright depressing.

The political Right isn’t free of criticism however, though. Most of their reasons for burying their head in the sand about corrupt police work, a lack of police accountability, and a lack of a desire for economic equality for all, has blinded them to hating the BLM protests just 18 months ago. Instead, they demonized the (vast majority of) peaceful protests in the streets, they hated the companies supporting BLM, they didn’t want it discussed during award shows or SuperBowl commercials, blinded themselves to Colin Kapernick’s playing ability because of his kneeling anthem politics, and everything in between. The political Right has almost no moral high ground to criticize the Left right now, because they did the same damn thing just 18 months ago!

There’s a lot more to this issue like a potential American convoy, the degree of misinformation online about this convoy, Trudeau threatening violence against the truckers, Biden being firmly against them as well, and much more. However, I think the main, truly important thing is what my blog covered, as the rest of the details don’t matter if we don’t stop being inconsistent hypocrites practicing unlimited amounts of tribalism and partisanship.