Truckers of the World Unite!

In recent years, we have seen a fundamental realignment in American, and Western, politics. After something like 200 years of purporting to represent the laboring classes, liberalism has been exposed. Most voters now understand that it is Republicans, and by inference conservatives, who speak for the working class. Democrats (liberals) are seen as the party of the would-be elites, who unfortunately aren’t elite at anything useful.

This is the context of Glenn Reynolds’ excellent New York Post column: “Truckers are starting a working-class revolution — and the left hates it.”

So we’re finally seeing a genuine, bottom-up, working-class revolution. In Canada, and increasingly in the United States, truckers and others are refusing to follow government orders, telling the powerful that, in a popular lefty formulation, if there’s no justice, there’s no peace.

Naturally, the left hates it.

For more than a century, lefties have talked about such a revolt. But if you really paid attention, the actual role of the working class in their working-class revolution was not to call the shots — it was to do what it was told by the “intellectual vanguard” of the left.

Which is a problem when your intellectual vanguard is–to be blunt–stupid.

A working-class revolution led by the working class is the left’s worst nightmare because the working class doesn’t want what the left wants. The working class wants jobs, a stable economy, safe streets, low inflation, schools that teach things and a conservative, non-adventurous foreign policy that won’t get a lot of working-class people killed. It’s not excited about gender fluidity, critical race theory, “modern monetary theory,” foreign adventures and defunding police.

That is the self-interest angle. Why should working people vote for politicians whose policies are antithetical to their interests? But the cultural divide may be equally important:

Worse yet, a huge part of the lefty self-image revolves around feeling superior to the working class and openly expressing disdain for it. One need spend only a few minutes tuning into left media like NPR, CNN or MSNBC to hear the disdain for working-class Americans, inhabitants of “flyover country,” people who live in the middle of nowhere.

Or, as Salena Zito rather brilliantly puts it, the middle of somewhere.

The Left’s response to the Canadian truckers’ protest has been laughable:

That’s why, even as they legitimize and valorize outright rioting and violence by leftist groups, lefties vilify every working-class protest movement, going back before the Tea Party. In Canada, the press even tried to pretend that the thousands of truckers driving to the capital city of Ottawa were actually Russian agents. When that failed, it fell back on its old standard, calling them fascists, Nazi sympathizers and white supremacists.

That is painfully dumb, and no one believes it. So why do leftists fall back on these pitiful tropes?

Now that truckers and other working-class people are pushing back against the laptop class’ nonsensical COVID restrictions, they’re a fringe, a minority, a bunch of white supremacists.

But they’re none of these things.

The “white supremacist” bit we can write right off. If white supremacy were a serious thing, leftists — like hate-crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett — wouldn’t have to invent it.

As for a “fringe minority,” as Trudeau called them, well, as Elon Musk noted in a tweet, if the Canadian government’s positions had substantial support, the truckers would have faced significant numbers of counterprotesters. But they did not. The government itself is the fringe minority, with its only support coming from the loyal sycophants of the media.

More at the link. Let’s finish with Glenn’s conclusion:

Once again, Biden’s main source of support is the press, which will always back a Democrat, especially against working-class opposition.

But as Twitter user Greg Price noted: “If truckers quit their jobs, society would immediately collapse. If politicians quit their jobs, the world would become a better place. We need truckers more than anybody else.”

Truckers have figured that out. Right now Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden are worrying about truckers coming out. They should really worry about truckers staying home.

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