Today, in late January, when I Google search “only elite should vote” I get 106 million results. When I Google search “should only the elite vote” (ignoring question marks because I’m trying to fit in with the younger generation) I get 154 million results.
The elite has time to noodle around Google (many of us are in that camp, from a global perspective – university-educated, own a house, two vehicles in the garage, and maybe a Tesla thrown in so we can hold our heads high) apparently; and the blue-collar do not. That is one reason we see tens of thousands of trucks barreling down highways from all over North America, heading for government centres under the guise of vaccine mandates, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The New York Times pondered the issue in 2016 in a piece called Should Everybody Vote? The article speculated that having a more focused and well-informed (ominous music in background) group would do a better job of running the country: “We can think of this approach as a matter of modeling our voting on our jury system. We would never accept deciding important and highly publicized trials by a vote of the general public… We could have an unofficial jury — chosen, perhaps, by a consortium of major universities or of television news divisions — that would meet, discuss in-depth and vote several weeks before the actual election.”
Bringing the issue of blue-collar vs. elites back to Canada, back in 2018 we had our ultra-elite Prime Minister say this at a G20 conference: “Well, you know, there are gender impacts when you bring construction workers into a rural area. There are social impacts because they’re mostly male construction workers. How are you adjusting and adapting to those?”
To give the guy credit, taken in context, he could have a point, in a way, if a small town is overrun by a thousand workers for a very short time. But that can happen in any industry, and when you have a trust fund kid, UN-led, Ottawa-centred (with occasional holidays to Tofino on important First Nations days, but I digress), singling out the negative impact construction workers have on communities, what do you get?
This is what you get. Left-wing media outlet the National Observer ran a story in 2019 called Green New Deal tour seeks hope and reconciliation in Canada. How did they elaborate on reconciliation? Quote from story: “(Pipelines and resource developments) involve large numbers of man camps, and wherever there are man camps or any kind of natural resource development, you have high rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, human trafficking, high rates of child-porn rings — both in Canada and in the U.S.” The accompanying picture showed David Suzuki and Naomi Klein beaming with those vicious smiles/smirks that capture so well the hatred and loathing of the entire movement.
While admittedly a fringe view, or one would hope that is accepted as a fringe view, those attitudes have seeped into the generally accepted conversations on our national media channels (we all know who I’m talking about) and are therefore part of the “intelligent discourse” that the NYT ponders might be the best prerequisite for allowing people to vote.
And that is why we are seeing this massive wave of truckers sweep not just Canada but the US as well. The border vaccine mandate is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The convoys are the result of years of frustration. Not just frustration with this overarching elitist frame of politics, but also things like the inimitable Gerald Butts, who took to Twitter after Canada’s most recent election to stand in awe of what a great job the Liberals did to hold onto power – he called it electoral efficiency; the Liberals won by focusing all their efforts on key ridings and won with the absolute minimum of national support required. That’s our elite? What kind of a civic-minded person finds that a good thing? What kind of person at all finds that a good thing?
And those are just a few more tips of the iceberg. Truckers are the ultimate representation of the blue-collar voice that Ottawa shuns like the plague. They will stand for photo ops all day with Greta, but will never set foot in a cab to see what the world looks like for those whose livelihood requires them to do something other than type.29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html
I don’t know if it will end well; the knives are out for the truckers, and the media is doing a bizarre maneuver where they cover every complaint against the convoy but do not focus on the convoy itself. Leading media figure heads like CTV News personnel take to Twitter to mock the whole thing, guaranteeing there to be more fireworks.
Maybe if that was the media’s consistent job and role, the great unwashed masses could live with it. But it’s not. A few years ago, Extinction Rebellion took to the streets to blockade various streets across the country. The media was out in full force; ten protesters at a bridge in Edmonton garnered more media attention than ten thousand trucks.
No one in the media was fretting about whether emergency vehicles would get through or not, as they are with the truckers, and that is possibly the most revolting aspect of this whole media implosion – Extinction Rebellion did not care at all if no one got through. Unbelievably, the police guarded the protesters from angry citizens. Now, the trucking convoy is going to great lengths to keep channels open for emergency vehicles – and the media reports that it may not work.
Interestingly, the more the media and the cultural elites try to disparage the convoy on whatever flimsy grounds they find, the stronger support gets. Support is coming in from the US, Quebec, BC and all over the world. When the laptop class takes to the media to stir inflammatory stories about how GoFundMe donations “may be a form of terrorist funding” if any violence or property damage occurs (I kid you not), the rate of donations goes up.
This has gone far beyond a vaccine mandate issue. It may be Canada’s yellow vest time. It will be an interesting weekend.
How did we get in such an energy quagmire? Find out how, and how to get out – pick up “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com. Thanks for the support.
Robert Heinlein wrote about who should vote in the late 50’s. In Starship Troopers, he posited that only military veterans or those who served in civilian Peace Corps type groups received the right to vote. There is also a large amount of social commentary. I highly recommend it. If you saw the movie you did not get any sense of Heinlein’s book. The movie was a travesty.
Wait, that movie was based on the book? Who knew, eh?
As a Canadian now living in the US, I have been appalled since Covid started at the amount of fellow Canadians who were so quick to report people who didn’t follow the government line. It smacked so much of Germany before the war. Now the trucker convoy with its message of freedom has raised my hopes for a country I love.
It is quite funny to think of the NYT asking whether only the elite should vote when they are forever full of concern about “voting rights”. When the US was being created, some advocated for only allowing property owners to vote. I liked that idea when I first read about it.
Had you property, i.e. slaves then?
Life, Liberty, Property is the John Locke British effort for Carolina, adopted later for the Confederate secessionists.
Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness is the Leibniz motto, adopted by Franklin. Impossible to pursue happiness as property, a slave.
In what passes as your feeble attempt at a mind, owning property also means owning slaves?
It’s Locke, not Leibniz.
It’s Jefferson, not Franklin.
Is there anything you know that is actually true?
The answer, as it usually is for wacko conspiracy theorists like bonbon, is a resounding no.
“Life, Liberty, Property is the John Locke British effort for Carolina, adopted later for the Confederate secessionists.”
It’s always hate for the British with you.
Locke also said: “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.”
and
“SLAVERY is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation; that it is hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it”
Not exactly ringing endorsements of slavery.
Like all the figures of his time, in regards to slavery, the reality is a lot more complex then the neat little false narrative you try to paint.
Whlie Locke had a hand in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina under the Stuart (Charles II and James II) reign, he also later wrote the Two Treatises of Government, which all the Founders read and were influenced by, especially in the Declaration of Independence, which was a reaction to the the ideas of the Stuart empire and the ideas laid out in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina.
At the time of the founding, most taxes were land based. So limiting voting to land owners was also a way of limiting voting to just those who paid taxes. Something we need to get back to.
This event has underscored the contempt the media has for its viewership. So, I am enjoying it immensely.
Truckers beware! The lefts useful idiots will be checking the trucks for real or imagined infractions then having the trucks towed away and the drivers fined the maximum allowable along with license suspension. Then they will try to start unrest with the faithful police waiting 10 meters away ready to arrest truckers while the instigators, with some help, slip away. Finally the police will tell them to disperse because our illustrious MPs and their staff can’t get to work(?) and they’re scared of the mob of unruly, unwashed, back country slobs.
They’ve had microscopes up our asses for many years already and have kept increasing the power of the lens every chance they get.
Conservative MP, Pierre Poilievre, is keeping an eye on things at the convoy. He tweeted:
“The truckers I’ve met today have been peaceful, kind and patriotic.
I’ve not seen anyone dressed up in blackface or other racist costumes.”
Terrorist funding!? For sending a few bucks to support the truckers Canadian Freedom Project? Yiikes! What does that make my $1k donation to PDJT?
Please realize that there are many of us whose livelihood depends on the hands pounding the keyboard – and are still fully cognizant that there would be nothing for that livelihood to BUY without the hands that are turning the wrenches, holding the wheels, etc.
Terry ==> Well said — and it is about time. The Aussies tried in Melbourne and were brown-shirted into submission. I wish the truckers of Canada better luck and better results,
Isn’t royalty, a feudal system, an example of elites ruling?
Christianity was meant to provide the guidance for good government for the whole population, through education of a selfless elite, so the Italian families forced their second born to become clergy. These then were helped to become bishops and Popes.
Robespierre was well educated and all for democracy. So much that he executed anyone against him.
Whatever system you develop, you get humans screwing it up. Whether it’s selfishness or “It ain’t ignorance causes so much trouble; it’s folks knowing so much that ain’t so.”, it doesn’t matter. It’s either democracy or war that resets the government when it goes pear shaped.
Those in power are intent on leaving a legacy. They are blinkered. Not necessarily wrong, but a much greater mess when they get it wrong then when the masses reject a good idea.
All human institutions devolve into systems for power and control because those who desire power over others gravitate to postitions of power. Identifying those personalities is a key to reducing corruption.
And who pray tell is the Canadian Head of State?
Many moons ago I was providing safety consulting to a construction outfit involved in pipelines and the associated facilities. One of the sites was located in Piapot Sakatchewan, a very small place. To accommodate the crew every empty house in the town was either bought by the company or rented, arrangements were made with what once was a small diner to feed the crew meaning extra people were hired out of the local commmunity. Anybody in the crew who created more than a minor disturbance in town was fired and the minor infractions resulted in suspensions. The townspeople were happy and made money they would otherwise have not, the construction was done on time. nobody was assaulted, raped or otherwise harmed. So, in my experience, the article cited by the author re man camps has little relationship to reality.
It was your Prime Minister who asked the question so why would you expect it to have any relationship to reality?
The convoy is about way more than just the mandates. It is a call for unity against totalitarian tyranny. It’s about freedom beyond ideology.
The elite succeed through a divide and conquer strategy that keeps the masses polarized in every way possible through propaganda. Their biggest fear is a united population against the massive corruption they are getting away with.
The brainwashing techniques we saw tested for the climate crisis are now being used for the “pandemic”. This time the lies are so obvious that even the vaxxed are realizing the narrative makes no sense. The extent of corruption in media and government is plain to see for anyone paying attention.
Every human being has something they can do to make a better world. Their highest purpose is connected to those abilities. Inclusiveness is moving beyond ideology to the real world impacts individuals can contribute.
Polarity is the enemy that prevents our common interests from being realized. The desire to belong to ideological groups and be a member of the “good tribe” is what allows the manipulation of belief systems to flourish. Seeing our selves as a member of the human tribe with shared needs is a way to get beyond the closed loop of perception ideological propaganda facilitates. Observing how cause and effect brings everything into being is the way to know truth.
What is this … what is the link to climate ? http://www.blah.com
Too much irrelevant to WUWT focus?
Why?
What you can’t see it Danley?
Belief in CAGW makes you so stupid you can contract Coward-19.
Just look at the snivelling Twat that is currently my Prime Minister.
Climate Change is upon us,a change of political climate.
Hope that helps your concern .
This protest is about everything including idiotic climate emergency, carbon taxes and all the stupidity that goes with it
Etam is right, it’s an actual tipping point (climate reference for you).
The Canadian Prime Mincer has gone in to hiding with a dose of Coward-19. So the 50,000 truckies in a 50+ mile convoy has to the elites spooked. Great news!
I found him
Given that the elite are largely lefties and given that most of the failing democracies are now largely run by said elite either through voting or because they just ignore the elected governments and do their own thing, then I would argue that the evidence is pretty clear that they should not be allowed to run anything more complex than a chook raffle. They have no idea how things work, they don’t know where things come from, they seem to think food and other goods grow on supermarket shelves and they cannot recognise their own incompetence and blame others.
The manifestation here in Oz recently was last year when, the lefty electorates on the coast where demanding the western suburbs of Sydney be locked down and then wondering why the supermarket shelves were empty. they had no concept that because all those nasty little uneducated truckies, plumbers, electricians etc lived in the western suburbs they were busy trying to lock down, the consequences would be those empty shelves. Morons! but unfortunately well paid ones.
The city of Ottawa had a week of advance notice to prepare outdoor facilities, parking and even ask for part of the 8 million to defray costs … but no, better to hope for the “agents provocateurs” to create a need for police.
These truckers have shown everyone how you attack infrastructure without violence. The Irishman Michael Collins said “Attack the infrastructure” and “Isolate and eliminate the locals going along with it not the higher ups”. Here’s hoping it doesn’t get to part 2.
Now imagine if hundreds of people took their cars downtown and pulled into the left turn lane or on/off ramp, turned the car off, put the hazard lights, lift the hood and wait 5 minutes then “fix” it and leave before the cops or tow trucks get there. Traffic backs up and causes huge problems.
If one person does it there is not much effect but if 10-100 do it on one part of the city it grinds to a halt. This is impossible to stop and could be communicated publicly “Wed at Noon Downtown”. Cars come from a dozen random directions and stop/stall.
I miss former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The former economist was an intellectual heavyweight. More importantly, he grew up in suburban Calgary, with an upbringing similar to the vast majority of Canadians. He understood everyday people. Now he’s starting up an investment fund.
Trudeau is a trust fund baby who spent his life in private school, an intellectual lightweight who never had a real job. Even worse, he has no life experience beyond the very sheltered upbringing amongst the most privileged people in the country.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Trudeau has never met a working class person in a real, meaningful way. He’s probably never spent an hour just chatting or hanging out with someone middle income background.
I met Harper several times, always at sporting events as he is a real canadian, I had Flames season tickets and when he was in town at a game, he would spend the entire first and second intermission getting pictures taken.
The last time I saw him was grey cup 2018 in Edmonton, I was entering the stadium through a security gate and he was two lines over, lined up to enter like a regular canadian.
A real person, unlike the current fop
In the US, the age requirement for national office are:
25 House of Representatives
30 Senate
35 President.
Just think about that, you can pretty much go directly from grad school to the House of Representatives, and many Democrats do.
Those ages made sense in 1776, by the age of 25 most people had been living independently for close to a decade, were married and probably had a kid or two.
I’d like to see those ages changed to something more like 35, 45 and 55 respectively.
This is an event organized by the devil – Vlad Putin, my beloved P.M. has told us and I look forward to sheltering under some table in some bomb shelter somewhere in the pre cambrian shield with him and other Liberal party stalwarts.
It’s like the liberal media is literally possessed by Satan and cannot but help spew lies.
I got as far as the mention gooooogle!
Can any sane (university Educated – there’s the problem) person use that ridiculous marxist THING and then write an article?
Sorry I gave up at that juncture.
Just observe how the “ELITES” have performed the last year. Rocketman is firing missiles around Japan again., Putin is invading Ukraine in an International incident unseen since the Sudetenland 1938, USA has IMMEDIATELY reverted from leading the World in Energy production and net exporter of oil to being dependent upon OPEC again, peoples jobs and livliehoods are being taken for failing to knuckle under to injected unwanted experiemntal drugs into their bodies at the decree of a Tyrant that everyone knows is a Fraud. And these same “ELITES” deny the openly obvious rampant Inflation caused by their Socialist minions in Power. Gas is 4 dollars and milk is 5 as these despicable lying pricks tell us there is no Inflation as we see the gas price rise on the electric signs in real time. ALL IN ONE YEAR!!!!!!!!!.
The current system is broken but better than reliance upon an inept and corrupt elite. Those who are apolitical or uninformed often don’t vote, at least when the elite is successfully managing the country. That is why I’ve never worried about low turnout in good times. When things go pear shaped, however, even the apolitical and uniformed know something is wrong and will vote. Not all and not always, but often and eventually. Nothing scares an incompetent and corrupt elite more than people noticing their incompetence and corruption. Nothing is different today or in Canada other than the fact that, from the outside at least, the Canadian elite has achieved a new high (or is it low) in stupidity such that they can no longer hide their corruption and incompetence. They were always stupid, but had the low cunning of a street thug. Now they are simply stupid.
“the Liberals won by focusing all their efforts on key ridings and won with the absolute minimum of national support required. That’s our elite? What kind of a civic-minded person finds that a good thing? What kind of person at all finds that a good thing?”
How terribly shocking. The major parties in the UK have been doing that for years. They don’t see much point in using lots of resources to defend ‘safe seats’. Instead, they concentrate their resources on ‘target seats’. It makes total sense if you have a First-Past-the-Post electoral system. Donald Trump did much the same. He wasn’t after winning the popular vote. He knew they key to winning was to win Electoral College votes.
The MSM is dead now , we live in a network society now so most people will be reading about it elsewhere. The more the MSM refuse to cover these stories the quicker their demise. Joe Rogan pull in 3X more viewers than the top three cable news shows.
Twinkle toes goes off the deep end.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/01/31/canadian-prime-minister-accuses-protesting-truck-drivers-of-stealing-food-from-homeless-people-while-flying-racist-flags/