Thousands of Russian people have been out on the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg protesting against Putin’s inane decision to violate Ukraine. They got arrested in droves, yet the people are still coming. Meanwhile, Ukrainians everywhere are picking up arms, saying goodbye to their children and loved ones, and are mentally preparing themselves to die as the Russian military are rolling in and slaughtering civilians without mercy.
Over on this side of the pond, it was Candace Owens who was calling for U.S. troops to invade …Canada. You know, because Canada is run by a tyrannical despot who arrested truckers blocking traffic. Then there were the Republican lawmakers harassing airline employees decrying “mask tyranny” as the pandemic rages, or the school board anti-vaxxers screaming about Nazis. Now Putin is giving America a crash course refresher on what real tyranny looks like, and the terrifying consequences of it. While watching the horrific videos of what the Ukranian people are up against, and seeing the brave Russian protesters getting loaded into vans knowing what is in store for them, I wonder: could the so-called “Freedom Convoy” on the way to D.C. to block Beltway traffic look anymore stupid, delusional, and petulant?
Although some efforts have spectacularly fizzled, there are two convoys from the West Coast driving to Washington with the expressed purpose of protesting mask mandates—that don’t even fucking exist!! Temporary mandates to wear masks in public, along with bans on large crowds, weren’t arbitrary, they were a response to the largest pandemic our nation has ever faced and designed to protect everyone from a rapidly evolving and spreading virus. Yet even that was too much, and conservative judges and political leaders have had extreme success in banning any requirements for masks and vaccines.
Even local school districts were told they couldn’t institute masks for children when 1) children were not allowed to go to virtual school and 2) many had preexisting conditions and were highly vulnerable to the disease. Here in Florida, if you defied Ron DeSantis’ order on mask requirements, your school budget was cut. Biden was even told he can’t require COVID-19 protections by an activist judge for his own executive work force.
However, these MAGA folks still want to be pissed about something, so the so-called American Truckers Freedom Convoy expressed a litany of supposed grievances besides masks. These run the gamut: “cancel culture,” illegal immigrants, energy independence, and fuel prices to name a few.
What makes this even more ridiculous is they are also very upset about supply chain issues, which really doesn’t square with their attempt to clog the highways around choke points in D.C. and Northern Virginia.
These highways do NOT need to be screwed with for this nonsense, as it was just a month ago that drivers on I-95 near D.C. were stranded for over 24 hours and many required medical attention. Yet the truckers are vowing to clog the Beltway for days or even weeks.
Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have been hyping them up for the past few weeks and encouraging their reckless behavior. After all, the more people suffer, the logic goes, the more they will vote to change things in the upcoming elections. They did this along with their cheerleading for Russia and Vladmir Putin, which has played on endless loops in Russian propaganda-led media. Tucker Carlson has been featured on their state television stations every day.
Now the backtracking begins. Putin didn’t just go into the two Russian friendly districts as he promised, but has launched a full-scale invasion of a sovereign, Democratic nation. The “wonderful invasion” that Trump praised, along with gushing over Putin, isn’t looking so good among videos of Russian military shelling residential apartments with rocket launchers, tanks running over innocent people, and the bombing of hospitals.
Ukrainians do not want to live under the boot of Vladimir Putin. They are fighting. They are everyday citizens taking up arms against a madman tyrant with delusions of grandeur. They are people like this, a man who will likely never see his family again but is willing to defend them against tyranny:
And what about the Russians who are brave enough to stand up to Putin? Look at these people facing down “real” jack-booted thugs. No probation or 60-day sentences for these guys—they will face much harsher punishments.
That is how you fucking stand up to tyranny. Not role playing like these losers:
The young girl protesting outside the Kremlin and refusing to back away is the one standing up to tyranny. The Ukrainian lady giving out sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers and telling them to their faces that their dead bodies will fertilize her flowers is standing up to tyranny. The old men picking up arms in Kiev to face the third largest army in the world, with no support from NATO or the U.S., is standing up to tyranny.
Real consequences. Real stakes. Not dressing up your stupid hillbilly truck with stickers and Trump flags just to protest an extremely minor inconvenience. These right-wing clowns know there is no danger of being arrested or killed. Even the Trumpers who did face any kind of consequence for storming the Capitol over an entirely false grievance quickly folded and begged for mercy when it happened. Those people, the ones who wave stupid flags, make noise, and want everyone to see them as “defenders of liberty,” would actually be the first to run during a real invasion. The juxtaposition is striking.
Words like tyranny get thrown around so much on the right it has almost lost its meaning. Yet these trying times remind everyone that not always getting your way in a democracy is not at all the same as actual tyranny. I never thought much of these so-called convoys, but now that the world is getting a taste of what real tyranny is all about and witnessing ordinary people brave enough to risk death in order to stand up to it, it makes this whinny temper-tantrum road trip all that more pathetic.
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