I was meaning to write this whole thing about how my therapy has been going and how great a help TRE has been but I find that I have been thinking a lot lately about “freedom” and absorbing different views and ideas around what it means, and my progress feels kind of back-burner to our social landscape. How can I not be taken by this as a Canadian? We’re somehow fighting over what it means but the American founding fathers that birthed this concept of modern freedom (while owning slaves and oppressing women so we might as well trust their judgement) who, despite often being misrepresented and misquoted by modern “patriots”, were pretty clear about that 250 years ago. It is they who are rolling in their graves once again. They warned us of this very situation all that time ago. It’s about majority, not individuality, even though they were all individuals fighting a majority. They didn’t predict shifting population demographics, human rights advances and globalization when they said that but they knew in years to come the very existence of the “silent-majority working-class middle-America” that didn’t exist yet would be threatened.

There are some who believe freedom is standing up to the business end of a gun, and others who believe freedom is holding it. Freedom is not having the gun there. Reality is knowing that freedom is hypothetical. Just because some have made the existence of weapons necessary doesn’t change what the concept of threat does to freedom. As long as we innately harbor ill will and foster revenge there is no real freedom in the sense we seek. Life is far more nuanced than a sports rivalry and so is our sense of security to feel free. The late M.C. Eyedea had a great line about gun ownership: “You can own it but mostly it’ll own you”. What do rappers know anyway?

I’m pretty sure strong-arming the majority to get your way when it disagrees with you, no matter how “right” you are, under the guise of patriotism and freedom, is the infancy of fascism, not progress. I thought that was predictable since I think that’s happened a couple of times in our recent past but I confuse easily. Seems this fight is so well thought out they showed up for the long-haul (lol) lacking long-term provisions despite supposedly being truckers who do this for a living, also a basic tenet of successfully holding ground as the antagonist in a standoff. Screams of reactionary anger to me, not patriotism. If this was really about freedom this protest would have been coordinated to disrupt the government, not the local citizens. Surround parliament and every MPs constituency office nationwide. EVERY MP, not just the liberal ones. If this is truly for freedom it naturally extends beyond political affiliations at this point so there shouldn’t still be any. Block government buildings and resist removal non-violently. Don’t harass and demean the employees, just stop them from working. If this is for workers then workers who have no say in the fallout shouldn’t be forced to participate by proxy. This isn’t a union strike, it’s a protest. There was no vote. Refuse to pay taxes and fees. Hunger strike. Question the motives of your donors. Prove your point. Please. But respect my freedom. I’m allowed to make my choices too. I’m allowed to have my autonomy protected too. I’m allowed to have my say and my media circus and my sycophants too. I’m allowed to be wherever I want to be too, even if you do have a cause this week and think my disagreement means communism is taking over.

My heart is far more liberal than my politics. Freedom without responsibility is anarchy. Sometimes that responsibility is conscription to fight a war or refusing and facing the inconvenience of protest and civil disobediance on your own liberties, not mine. Sometimes you have to go vote. You have to follow the laws. There are civil avenues to dispute the ones you contest. Freedom means acknowledging that others have it too, theirs to choose their pursuits and ideas and to disagree with yours. If your ideas prove persuasive enough, the majority agrees. If not, they get retooled or discarded. Freedom also comes with the responsibility of facing facts with dignity. Likes, beliefs and feelings do not make truth. They simply constitute how it affects you. Throughout time antagonism has existed. We will never all fully agree. That’s okay. It’s normal. It’s what we do about it that’s becoming pathetic. Lately it seems as though 2 people standing beside each other looking at the same thing will insist they’re each seeing something different based solely on knowing each others gang colours, conservative blue or liberal red. (Or wait; was that the other way around? No. That’s our friends to the south. It’s all so painfully unique it becomes difficult to discern). This is the entire problem, isn’t it? What we think of anything, no matter how obviously and proveably true or false it may be, is based on how we feel about who said it, not its inherent validity and viablility.

Rarely does the man in the mirror possess the awareness to truly see who he’s a reflection of. They’re not there for the cause, they’re there for the fight. They could get everything they wanted and they would still want a fight anyway. Why? They’re all hopped up on the anger from their predetermined outcome and the pressure is constantly building. If they’re not the persecuted antagonist they’ve all but lost their identity. (Why else would American republicans refuse a vaccine they supported the development of under their leader once the powers changed?) Look at the crowd. Notice something about this supposedly representative group of people? Look closely. Let’s just say there’s more colour variety in the reflective striping many of them wear than there is in their skin tones, which is interesting given the copious amounts of minorities who also possess truck licences. This group represents anger, not industry, and it represents those who are safe to express it: “white” folks.

Who’s up for some conspiracy? Ever wonder why some police departments prevented the protestors from gaining access to and occupying key infrastructure while the chief of our national capitol practically helped them park after watching them approach for a week fully knowing their intentions? And while we’re here, if this protest is for freedom and they’ve just been allowed to drive across the country uncontested beyond public opinion and are now in their fourth week of occupying public grounds in the capitol doesn’t that mean they already have it? Isn’t this vaccine stuff just an extension of legislating public health anyway, like drug laws supposedly are? It’s my body, but not when it comes to lines of blow. (Obviously they have to spend our tax money “fighting” crime syndicates that didn’t exist until their prohibition laws did and that now grease their pockets, noses and veins while they spend even more money on policing the broke-ass drug-addicted end dealers and users who can’t afford to fight back to make it look like they care about the problem. Convenient. But I digress. This is about freedom.) Just an observation but ever notice how other governments in the world, ones where the citizens actually aren’t free, would have just killed all the protestors that couldn’t outrun the bullets and hung the bodies in public as examples, becoming footnotes in Amnesty International reports? Hey, let’s keep going. Look at how easily 2 years of strife and isolation has divided and polarized us for them to play with. Think your human nature isn’t being used against you to keep you busy? You’re the fucking string section in the symphony of destruction we’re ALL performing in. Fucking sheep. Baaaaaaah! This shit is too easy. Let’s keep going. Who’s paying for all of this? Who’s keepin’ all those good ol’ boys’ trucks honkin’ and hummin’? Out of work minimum-wage service-industry clock punchers? Right. Anonymous donors giving fake names who are all really just George Soros and his pizzeria pedophiles funding the reset? No wait, that was antifa and they were causing businesses to have to shut down and lose money over their protests. What about the store owners’ rights? Well now it’s for “freedom” so it’s okay. But the racial justice protests were also for “freedom”. No wait. What? My head hurts now. Point is money isn’t free so has anyone really thought about what the money flowing in to fund all this actually costs? Same as any other “movement” in recent times you need to audit the money, not the message. The funding is the message. I can all but guarantee it’s free but it’s not cheap. Money is an antidote to benevolence, not an accelerant. One last go at this shit: who makes money off of vaccines? Who do they donate that money to and to what end? How many financiers of “freedom” secretly profit from having those same drug companies in their portfolios at the same time? It all sinks into the same undertow. I’ll stop now.

I understand everyone grass roots is frustrated and a lot of people over the last few years have seen their lives negatively change in a magnitude of ways that could never have been predicted, and a magnitude of ways that also could have been. The struggle is real. But so is everything else. If you want change, organize properly, think the plot through and seek to inconvenience the people in charge from being able to be in charge, not the rest of us who are just trying to live our own best lives. I don’t want to wear fucking masks and miss celebrations with my extended family either. I don’t want to know people are struggling emotionally and economically as a result of a global catastrophe. I don’t want to feel like my autonomy is being stripped from me either. The responsibility of democracy and freedom is to accept that sometimes those freedoms ebb and flow to maintain longevity. Imagine if you could how things would have played out if a bunch of workers in England in 1942 organized, called the World War happening around them a hoax and made copious amounts of noise while turning all their lights on in protest during the blitz because the blackouts were a personal inconvenience and they didn’t like being told what to do…

The internet is obviously the modern propaganda machine, mirroring the capacity of our own cruelty and lack of humanity, and yet the dead horses are still being fucked. If the “truth” you share and the news you watch is based around online interactions, social media posts and online opinions you are a cog. If there is no first-hand experience or knowledge within your “expertise” yet you still share it readily and with authority you are a cog. Asleep. A sheep. A clone. A drone. Whatever you think you’re not. Don’t trust me either, I’m just a drugged-out doper posting bullshit online too. Turn this shit off before you get out there. Leave it off. Your fellow man needs you in reality far more than the powers that be need you online fighting over intellectual scraps in their virtual wrestling ring of mindlessness and thoughtlessness. He especially needs you now far more than he needs you acting on those fights. You want freedom? Prove it. Break your own chains instead of using them to complain about the bars we all face.

PTSD is not an island when it comes to the appeal of isolation.