oh canada

All society depends on force. We don’t like to think about it that way, but PJ O’Rourke nailed it with accuracy and precision when he pointed out that at the end of the day, all government revenue comes from holding a gun to someone’s head. When we demand something, there is always an “or else”: what happens when you have rules with no compliance mechanism? No one follows the rules. A rule that is unenforced is worse than no rule at all, because indifference to one rule nurtures indifference to more of them.

This is what I tend to shorthand away with “these kids have never been spanked” – not that it’s a bad thing necessarily that no one has laid hands on them in a violent manner, but that they have not faced consequences commensurate with their misdeeds. If a pre-verbal toddler stays sticking your shoes in the oven, you don’t have to spank them, but you can’t very well reason it out with them. You can’t sing them a song about rules and show them the error of their ways. You have to use a stern voice and the word “No” will be concerned in there somewhere, and somebody will probably have to sit in the corner.

This is something that has weighed heavy on my mind as Ottawa enters its third week of siege by overgrown toddlers. These are people who have been told the rules, and their reply is “No.” Now you can argue that they should be reasoned with, there should be negotiation, we should come to an understanding – but there is nothing more foolish than trying to reason someone out of something they didn’t reason themselves into. This is a gut level emotional response, a barbaric yawp that at its heart boils down to “I don’t like being told what to do.” And if they’re going to just sit there bleating “No,” then you need a plan B.

This is where everyone failed – the city of Ottawa, the province of Ontario, the RCMP, the Trudeau government, all the way down – they clung too long to the idea that you could fix this with reason and good faith, when it stems from a movement and an ideology that cast off both years ago. It’s of a piece with Brexit, or Trump, or Modi, or Bolsanaro – a unified international front of mental defect insisting that it’s actually genius. And no one can say they weren’t warned, not when the convoy took a week to cross Canada and made no secret of where it was headed.

Here’s the thing: much as they fall about themselves comparing their effort to Black Lives Matter protests or civil disobedience, I’m having trouble remembering where those actually rendered a national capital’s downtown non-functional for days on end. I’m also having a hard time remembering the exact contents of Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “Letter From the Rain Man Suite At The Top Of the Tutwiler Hotel In Downtown Birmingham.” The police and government in Ottawa and Ontario have declared that there is no God, because there are no consequences for actions and these Caucasians with their big rigs are apparently above an ass-whipping. And now it’s been two weeks and it’s out of hand and it’s going to take force majure to dislodge them, and Canada hasn’t got the hydrogen bomb.

“Peace, order and good government” is a fine slogan, but it kind of falls apart when the third part of it privileges the appearance of the first part at the expense of the second part. Now matters are worse, and there are only bad options left. But one prerequisite – and an absolutely essential one – is for the 2/3 of Canadians who want no part of this to go batshit loonball angry. Calling their MP every hour of every day. Screaming at every CBC microphone in sight. Hassling Strombo on the street. Whatever it takes. The vast majority of Canadians disagree with this. Hell, the vast, vast majority of Canadian truck drivers are long since vaccinated. As in the United States, nutters are being given the privilege of coverage and consideration far out of proportion to their numbers on the ground or their support in the wider community.

When I lived in DC, we billed ourselves as the People Against Marching. We did not care what your cause was. You could be out there marching for free Guinness to be served every day by topless supermodels, but if your march lasted into a second day, you were officially the enemy. Once the locals have turned on you, the cops will do their thing, and the cards will fall where they must. MLK knew this. The whole SCLC knew this, and they abided by my family’s motto: buy the ticket, take the ride, and relied on the moral opprobrium of their circumstances to make the case in the court of public opinion.

And that’s where this cause will fall apart. They aren’t marching for freedom, they aren’t marching for liberty, they aren’t marching for equality: they are throwing a tantrum to get their way. We may not spank children any more, but it’s long past time to start spanking adults. Ideally with a fully-automatic spanking. And maybe if they do it up there, it will prevent us having to do it down here.

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