There is a contradiction in the rhetoric of the demonstrators who stormed Ottawa, as dizzying as the sound of truck horns blaring with youthful enthusiasm.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
These demonstrators oppose the compulsory vaccination of cross-border truckers AND they demand the end of all sanitary measures.
However, the best way to make these measures disappear is… to get vaccinated.
Justin Trudeau underlined it Monday during his meeting with the press.
That was what had to be said.
Alas, it will do absolutely nothing.
It has now been understood that no one will listen to reason with these demonstrators, some of whom are now promising to stay in Ottawa “until Prime Minister Trudeau is gone”.
Impossible to negotiate with them.
Their demands are so vast – and fanciful – that it is no longer quite clear what would satisfy them.
A little more and they would call for an end to the pandemic…
That’s what everyone wants. But no matter how many millions there are in the streets screaming for this virus to disappear overnight, it won’t happen.
Some of the protesters’ anger is legitimate, of course.
Few are those who adapt, with a smile, to confinements and other measures imposed in the name of public health.
The large, very large majority of citizens from one end of the country to the other understand the usefulness of it, however, even if discontent increases over the weeks.
The truckers gathered in Ottawa feel stigmatized. Just like the other demonstrators who came to support them. However, they do not have the monopoly of being fed up.
One can understand their distress, but they are false martyrs.
In the game of comparisons, they do not do very well.
Rather, the real martyrs are those who have seen loved ones die of the disease.
Those, too, who have lost their jobs and are beginning to lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.
Or even those whose life has been turned upside down in such a way that they cannot yet find their balance.
What can be said, finally, of all the health workers who carry the network at arm’s length?
It is all the more difficult to pity the demonstrators that those who refuse to be vaccinated are responsible, in a disproportionate way, for the overflow of our hospitals, in particular the intensive care units.
And let’s put ourselves in the place, for a moment, of other true martyrs: those whose surgeries have been postponed… and who hear these demonstrators persist in demonizing vaccines.
Difficult to show compassion towards those whose irresponsibility is at the source of your ordeal.
Difficult, moreover, to pass the towel on the slippages of certain demonstrators during the weekend.
We will not practice demagoguery. We will not pretend that the events had any resemblance to the January 6, 2021 uprising in Washington, even if some had feared such a scenario.
Nevertheless, swastikas, Confederate flags, desecrated monuments and demonstrations of hatred and intolerance are all misconduct that make us understand that the truckers’ anger has been exploited.
These slippages make us hope that the demonstration will end as soon as possible (like the residents of Ottawa, who can’t take it anymore).
The only ones who, in the federal capital, still defend the demonstrators with zeal are the elected conservatives.
Suggestion: why wouldn’t they take advantage of this privileged (and unhealthy) relationship with the protesters to convince them to leave as quickly as possible? For once, they would do useful work in this case!