I have been struggling for months to wrap my head around the fierce and destructive debate that has been playing out in our state and across our country over mask and vaccine mandates.
Has caring for our loved ones and concern for our neighbors flown out the window? Were we always this bad as a society at understanding the impact of our actions or omissions on those around us? Have we always placed personal freedom on a pedestal so far above the common good? Since when has the fairy tale that closing our eyes and making a wish actually made our dreams come true?
Clearly, I’ve been asking the wrong questions. Looking now at our neighbor to the north, Canada, I’m beginning to understand that to an angry minority, masks and mandates are just a touchpoint. The issues go much deeper.
Canada has always stood out to me as a beacon of decency, tolerance and common sense. Its citizens are generally hardworking and law-abiding. Its government appears to have little of the rancor and deep divisions of our own. Its healthcare system, imperfect though it may be, is a model of fairness in an unfair world.
Yet at the moment I am writing this, one of its main entry points from the U.S., a bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario is completely closed, thanks to protesters and truckers. Its capital city, Ottawa, is paralyzed by a massive traffic snarl caused by this “Freedom Convoy.”
Ordinary citizens wearing masks and trying to go about their business feel threatened by angry mobs. Persons of color and members of the LGBTQ community are being harassed. Businesses are unable to operate. The auto industry on both sides of the border has taken a huge hit.
What’s the problem? The given excuse for the shutdown was that it is a protest over the Canadian government’s COVID restrictions, which specify that all truckers entering the country must be vaccinated. But 90% of the truckers are indeed vaccinated, as is 84% of the Canadian population, far better than the 64% of the U.S. population who are at least partially vaccinated.
According to a number of sociologists studying right-wing extremism, the real motivation appears to be the same issues currently wracking American society: xenophobia, homophobia, anarchism and white supremacy.
And this “Freedom Convoy” has clear links to far-right groups in our own country and the world. Nazi symbols and Confederate flags weave themselves into the traffic tangle.
No wonder I’m feeling so uneasy. It seems that COVID restrictions have become a useful scapegoat for any and every resentment felt by a minority of people. Their resentment has been whipped into a frenzy by an even smaller minority of people, and those so-called leaders have the interest of no one but themselves at heart.
I am still hopeful that common sense, cool heads, and care and concern for those around us will prevail in our battle against COVID, but the battle has taken yet another ugly turn.
(Millie LaFontaine lives in Concord.)