Anti-vax protests miss their mark
Flying gravel is only helping Trudeau, writes Vinay Menon.
If Justin Trudeau wins reelection, he should send a gift basket to every unhinged protester now stalking him on the campaign trail.
People, I’m back in the columnist saddle after three weeks of summer vacation. I missed you so much. What I didn’t miss was waking up on a Tuesday and reading sighinducing headlines, such as this one in the Washington Post: “Trudeau, facing ‘antivaxxer mobs’ on election trail, is met with flying gravel at campaign stop.”
Flying gravel? Those are two words that should never go together. You know, like sassy undertaker. Gravel belongs on the ground, not in the air. In an advanced civilization, gravel should never be turned into an improvised projectile.
But on Monday evening, while campaigning in London, Trudeau was greeted by pro- testers and, yes, airborne peb- bles. “Flying gravel” sounds more violent than what this was. In the clip I watched, the gravel wasn’t hurled at lethal force. It just kind of appeared in the sky like rice at a wedding, gently raining down on Trudeau and his security detail. Even still, the idea that Canada has now become a place where aggrieved voters feel justified throwing stones at a prime minister is not a Canada any of us should embrace. Such behaviour must be condemned without asterisk.
How no arrests were made on Monday night is beyond me.
But this is what I really don’t understand: do these protesters not realize they are only helping Trudeau? I’m no fan of the Liberal leader, who seems to govern strictly by woke hashtag. To me — and let me be clear, the views expressed here do not reflect the Toronto Star, its owners, editors, any subsidiaries or even what my wife thinks — Trudeau scares the living daylights out of me because he is more fiscally irresponsible than a crackhead with a stolen Amex. I know deep in my heart my daughters will one day be dealing with the consequences of his economic policy, or lack thereof.
That said, when I see these anti-Trudeau protesters hurling obscenities and now rocks, it’s all I can do to not donate my RRSP to his re-election campaign. I have zero time for his sunny ways hokum. But holy hell, his progressive talking points, however disingenuous, are wildly preferable to the dark cloud conjured by these lunatics among us who do not believe in science and are aggressively hostile to public health in the dubious name of “personal freedom.” Do you wear a seatbelt? Great, then shut up and roll up your sleeve for a Pfizer or Moderna so we can get on with it.
Getting sick and infecting others is not personal freedom — it’s anti-social. Skeptically refusing to take a global pandemic seriously is not a badge of honour — it’s a neon vest that screams imbecile. Throughout COVID-19, we kept saying we are in this together. What’s clear now is we are in this with imbeciles. It’s like trying to win a tug of war when the person behind you is not pulling and kicking you in the back of the knees.
What these Trudeau protesters don’t realize is they are only creating sympathy for the politician they despise. I’m this close to doing something I’ve never done before, which is hammer a Liberal sign into my front yard. And it’s all because of the signs of these deranged protesters: “No vaccine mandates!” “No lockdowns!” “No masks!”
Really? So you want this pandemic to last another 50 years?
“There is a small fringe element in this country that is angry, that doesn’t believe in science, that is lashing out with racist, misogynistic attacks,” Trudeau told reporters after the gravel incident, as reported by the Star’s Alex Boutilier.
“But Canadians, the vast majority of Canadians, are not represented by them, and will not allow those voices, those special interest groups, those protesters — I don’t even want to call them protesters, those anti-vaxxer mobs — to dictate how this country gets through this pandemic.”
He’s 100 per cent right. The vast majority of Canadians are not anti-vaxxers. The vast majority of Canadians have tried to do everything right from the get-go of this pandemic. We have followed the rules, listened to the experts. The vast majority of Canadians who are eligible are now vaccinated and not at all bothered by shunning those who are not. That’s as it should be. The hell with the imbeciles.
And for the protesters, this is a textbook backfiring. Instead of hurting Trudeau, they have only hurt themselves and improved his chances of another win at the ballot box. By railing against science, by resorting to a sticks-and-literalstones approach to political disagreement, they made themselves look like the unreasonable kooks in this equation. They have allowed Trudeau to weaponize their ignorance and turn it against them. If forced to pick sides, most Canadians will stand with the PM.
The haters are now making Justin Trudeau seem more lovable than he’s ever been.