Attenuating Canada
Building antibodies against the fascism virus
Events in Canada are unfolding quicker than I can write and it is quite possible that by the time I get this post out, a precedent will be set, one way or another, of humanity’s next paradigm shift: total control or total empowerment.
If this article is catching you at a mindless, scrolling-through-distractions-looking-for-digital-soma time, save it for later. If you remember to come back to it, hello again, let’s keep things meta. Take a deep breath and ask yourself: “Who is this person, reading these lines right now? Who am I in relation to my understanding of humanity? What lens (identity) do I view the world through?” Your answers are yours (both private and of great importance), what I seek so urgently is your awareness that you and your perspective are not one and the same.
Let’s dive right in. By this point you have heard or seen something about the protests in Ottawa. You might even have formed an opinion from the wide range of labels such as “White Supremacist”, “Freedom Fighter”, “#blackfacehitler”, “State of Emergency” and the like. If you live in the Western World, what the protests in Canada represent is a megaphone for your own identity.
The Upheavel unraveled this in great length in its latest post and I urge you to read it before moving on.
I couldn’t have put it more eloquently. Here’s a highlight:
“The post-modern fish swims in a narrative sea, and their first reaction is always to try to control it (through what the CCP calls “discourse power”) because at heart they well and truly believe in the idea of the “social construction of reality,” ... If there is no fixed, objective truth, only power, then the mind’s will rules the world. Facts can be reframed as needed to create the story that best produces the correct results for Progress.”
And who best to frame narrative than those who don on the label “media”. Of course that includes the alphabet soup of conglomerates, but it also includes Rebel News, and Joe Rogan, and The View, and Neil Oliver, and John Oliver for that matter, and you, and me, and every human with a camera, or a cell phone, or a computer, or a Substack.
We consume our experiences and weave our stories, together shaping our reality. Here I am, spinning mine.
Me, a 43 year old post-commusim immigrée theatre nerd with three kids who voted for Bernie. Sheesh, just writing that descriptor for the first time right now gives me cognitive vertigo. Now, imagine all of our nuanced perspectives coming together forming reality. 🤯
It suffices to say that since we can’t experience everything with our own senses, we tend to rely on witness accounts who document and archive events. Some in film form like this medley of footage I was able to stitch together into a documentary from various sources who generously post their content on the web. Its narrative is different than what you might see on your TV. Does it make it less credible? It’s up for your interpretation. What do you see?
In addition to witness accounts, there are folks who watch the above footage and write commentary based (and biased) on their own personal experiences, exactly as I am doing now in this essay. If something resonates with you, it will become a part of your view. Hopefully you share your opinions back, or forwards with others and the constant tuning of the lenses puts things into focus. The sharing of ideas isn’t about proving whose way is right or wrong. It’s about co-creating our reality. Through the process, we build trust. How has legacy media earned your trust lately?
At this point, most folks ought to have outgrown media’s magic bag of manipulation tricks. From disingenuous fact checkers with zero credibility to high end highfalutin hypocrisy in what used to be the most esteemed publications, the act is as stale as a two bit Vegas show. They drool with anticipation to attack those who they claim to inform.
I suppose I’m grateful for the agonizing slow death of legacy media. I would never have found the courage to be an independent writer if it wasn’t for the (what can only be described as) desperation:
No worries, WaPo, thousands of photos and videos easily colorize your pale views. Turns out they’re easily uploaded and shared without a paywall.
But more importantly, I would have never found the community that seeks to escape the echo chambers of conforming opinions and challenge any narrative so that we can collaboratively piece together a more cohesive, a more nuanced, and a more complete picture. We don’t have to change each other’s minds. That might happen, but it isn’t the goal. The goal is to learn and rise together. The way to do that is to engage.
It doesn’t have to be this post. Or any of my other posts. Although, I’m in a peculiar position, having up until recently aligned myself with a regime that I currently see as oppressive, to provide more objective observations. This wild shift from one end of the spectrum to the other keeps the pendulum swinging and my desire to seek out the authentic overshadows my desire to be right. Truth only has allegiance to itself. Lucky us, it doesn’t care about anyone’s tribe, epidermis, genitalia, or bank account. Frankly, when satire can so closely resemble truth, we need to reassess how we go about handling information.
My contextual frame for the Freedom Convoy consists of economical drivers, governmental powers, and personal autonomy. What is happening in Canada is so much more important than just the occupation of Ottawa. Depending on which way it goes, the response will become a blueprint for how a government can deal with those whose political views oppose the mainstream and that roadmap will echo around the world. I hope you are paying attention.
Trudeau’s Emergency Act powers are already enmeshed in Martial Law marriage. Although a two year pandemic has not been a reason big enough to call on this act in Canada, dancing Canucks, bouncy castles and hot tubs have thrown Mister Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, (he/hid) in a panic. And as of today, has announced that even though Ottawa has been cleared, he is going to hold on to his powers Justin case someone else dares ask him for a dialogue over lifting the mandates.
Meanwhile, provincial MPs are reversing course and his constituency are sending clear signals of opposition.
And although none of the protests in Ottawa had caused any gridlocks during their stay, the downtown area has now transformed into a police state. Arrests were made, but since there was nothing to charge the flag waving, garbage cleaning, homeless feeding aggressors, they just processed them and let them go. For now.
But not without the looming threat (and in some cases, the living reality) of frozen bank accounts and credit cards, confiscation of property, and the special honor of being on The List. For a man who so vehemently claims to oppose fascistic ends, Trudeau so earnestly embraces despotic means. Unlike Washington Post’s claim that democracy dies in darkness, it would appear that in the Western World, democracy can expire in broad daylight. Having met with dissent among his own police, the Prime Minister must have tapped into some mysterious new forces- officers with no name tags, highly organized and unresponsive to pleas to stand with their fellow men.
Correlation doesn’t mean causation, but Occam’s Razor cuts kinda sharp on this one. Who said suspending civil liberties didn’t come with some great autocratic perks?
So, Marshal Law it is. To prove this point, democratic governments can now point the finger at anyone who speaks a language outside of the approved narrative and call them a domestic terrorist.
This essay is an act of domestic terrorism.
Free speech has been equated to criminality. When political dissent carries harsher punishments than violent crimes, whether in darkness or daylight, democracy has died.
So here we are. The battle in Ottawa lost, but the war raging on. Truckers went from “essential workers” to “angry people with industrial machinery”. You can now be charged without being tried for hate pre-crimes. The consequences are worse for you than for convicted sexual predator Ghislaine Maxwell. Simply donating 20 bucks to a convoy can earn you
loss of employment
a spot on the no-fly list
bail denial
a frozen bank account
The path towards enslavement has been paved. No one would follow it willingly unless they were doing so unknowingly. There is no sitting on the fence on this one. The dizzying merry-go-round of discovering what the future holds for us will be expelling unwitting compliers and jabaholics alike because none of it is palpable enough to just go along to get along.
And if you think that Democracy doesn’t end in Collectivism, you’re forgetting that the Nazis, too, started out as a liberal party. To echo the article from the top of this post:
For some, the general upheaval produced by the uprooting of any grounding whatsoever has begun to make life feel like a carnival funhouse: a disorienting and grotesque celebration of the absurd. I don’t think there is really a partisan political divide to this feeling, but it’s the Extremely Online Right, with its now near total distrust of established authorities, that has come up with a name for this place: Clown World.
Clown World is a place deliberately and malevolently divorced from reality. In Clown World nothing you do matters, but everyone can hear you scream.
N.S. Lyons
The Ring Masters will never abuse their powers because they love people and democracy, right? You’re invited to play enslavement poker and bet against a full house without being able to draw anymore cards. What next?
A tyrant has risen in the Western World. Even a liberal rag like Huffington Post ominously predicted it. We were too busy scrolling through newsfeeds and cancelling Dr. Seuss. We were too distracted treating politics like entertainment. We were too docile trading sovereignty for protection.
Yet, as rigged as the game is, it isn’t over. More and more are paying attention. More and more are making connections. More and more are asking questions. How about you? Where in your journey are you? If this post has resonated on any level, do you have the courage to take a peek behind the curtain? Remember, inane immunity against fascism might not be as strong as natural immunity, but both sure do beat the hell out of the force fed quasi-inoculations proposed by those in power. Maybe this time, the world can finally achieve herd immunity and eradicate tyranny once and for all.
Earning those antibodies along with you is an honor.
Only reading this after seeing it in your one-year anniversary post, so... roughly 8 months late. Actually my own one-year substacker-versary will be in February - begun during the heat of the convoy madness. I find thinking back to that time still too raw, the trauma of it all too newly-receded, and having only very recently been able to find any peace, if I take myself back there, the level of emotion disables me. That being said, this was very well written in terms of the perspective it gives, and Very poignant.
Wow! This one was amazing!