"And We Gazed upon the Horns of Freedom Blaring"
The Most Heartening Moment for Democracy Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Do some gazing, the next couple of days, on the greatest celebration of Liberty since the East German socialist government opened their Wall, and on what will likely become regarded as the proudest moment ever in Canadian history. One of the better live-streamers on youtube is a guy named “Ottawalks,” see what he’s got, but there are many others. As for shorter-videos, alongside those of the hard-rock lovin’ guy “Tireroaster’s Garage” I highlighted the other day, “Justin Credible” has posted some excellent stuff, and I particularly like this one, especially the moment at 1:02 where he reports on a large-sample CTV survey indicating that 77% of Canadians support this Freedom Convoy. But gaze upon the whole beautiful thing.
That 77% news is huge, not simply because it directly belies Trudeau’s forever-infamous statement about the truckers being a “fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views,” but because even just yesterday, Canadian legacy media were interviewing “experts,” sadly including some political science professors, quoting previous surveys that purported to find 70% of Canadians supporting vax mandates/passports, with one sorry prof even claiming that 90% did so. I think the truth is likely that until the last couple of weeks, before the significance of Omicron and other major hits to the Narrative fully sunk in, the true number of Canadian mandate supporters was somewhere in the 55-65% range, but the survey questions weren’t capturing the shakiness of that support.
And now, it’s upside-down from what the elites thought it was, thought they had orchestrated so well!
All it took was people seeing others have courage, others willing and able to organize collectively, in the face of massive disapproval from the types able to harm your career and livelihood, and they changed their minds.
To my own shame as a pol-sci prof, I know next-to-nothing about the mechanics of Canadian politics, but I’d be quite surprised if Trudeau doesn’t have to step-down before this is over. A swing in public opinion like that is very telling.
And it very likely indicates a similar swing happening all over the world! Reports are coming in of tribute convoys in Brazil, and copy-cat protests in Finland and other parts of Europe.
Were I still a young man and in striking distance of Ottawa (and the owner of some seriously warm long-johns!), I’d try to get there to be part of it. Not that there is much of a fitting moral comparison between what modern persons have suffered under two years of Covid-quasi-despotism, and the totalitarian terror the subjects of the Eastern European communist regimes had suffered under for forty years, but this really is our time’s Fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall moment. I remember for years in the 90s, you’d meet various people who either directly, or through a friend, had obtained fragment of the Wall—they’d eagerly want to show it to you, such an impact it had on them, and while I’d like to forget it because it was so darn mediocre, there was a song that became Rock’s semi-official celebration of that 1989 moment.
I know, I know, it deserved so much better. Maybe substitute U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)” if you want, or some Ossie punk song. But perhaps, “Right Here, Right Now” was the fitting song for the rock-bohemian element of the West, since they had done so little to bring about the actual moment, and were largely passive observers, and beneficiaries, of it. It’s passive yet still self-focused spirit (“no place, I’d rather be”) reflected the West’s dominant one at the time, the one which forecast its long slide into the Dying Citizenship of our day.
By contrast, to start on the road to Ottawa took great courage, and we all know that the fight is far from over. God only knows what the Canadian corps of our worldwide Slimy Elite will try to pull here, once they grant a few concessions.
The other day, I linked in the comments to a couple C&W songs that might come to stand for this portentous and so-far beautiful 2022 moment in Ottawa, but hearing those blaring horns, it’s this Dylan one that most occurs to me:
Change it to “Horns of Freedom,” and imagine them blaring for all the various folks demoralized over 2020 and 2021 by all the mainstreaming of despotic rules, conformist pressures, and hateful falsehoods, by all the betrayals committed by their supposed leaders and servants, by the grey dismal sense everywhere that no-one could fight any of it, and I think it can fit the spirit of the moment well enough, whatever Bob’s original intentions.
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight An’ for each an’ ev’ry underdog soldier in the night An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
To the Dylan fans, I’d say that like his brilliant “Lay Down Your Weary Tune,” this song seems most of all a poetic reading-of-significance, political/spiritual, into a moment experienced out in nature. In that way it’s nothing like the engine-fumed, bitter-cold, cheering-protest-crowd, droning-loud, proudly white-and-red flagged moment when the Freedom Convoy came to Ottawa.
But maybe it’s best to speak to someone else now, to say, Go North, young man, and give us a New Song about it! You teach the world what the music of this moment ought to be.
Another good vid of today's events: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L-BTvuRJEE&ab_channel=The4KGuy-Fire%26Police