Compromise and the Possible in Politics

If you wanted to create a compromise position that would address the concerns of the Freedom Convoy and also the political/managerial class in Canada, would it be possible? The Prime Minister says no (through Twitter and Zoom, continuing not to explain exactly where he is physically located). This is because:

• His opponents cannot be compromised with because they are racist Nazis (the Managers seem to encounter a highly improbable number of Nazis in the world; this time the evidence seems to be that some placards compare vax mandates with the treatment of Jews by the Nazis -- which hardly puts the Nazis in the position of good guys, I notice, oddly for those who are supposedly Nazis themselves); 
• who lie and insult (and apparently threaten, although they assert they will be peaceful he shows no signs of being willing to appear in public anywhere near any of them, regardless of security arrangements); 
• and who desecrate war memorials (this latter apparently referring to a single woman who was dancing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Canada).

This definitely requires thinking the absolute worst it is possible to think of tens of thousands of your fellow citizens who normally work for a living and pay the taxes that funds your salary. Politics was supposed to be the art of the possible, which meant seeking compromise in spite of differences.

The attitude is nevertheless common among the Convoy opponents. If you ask the Manager whom the Washington Post hired to explain the situation to Americans, there can be absolutely no compromise because opponents are too irrational to formulate a position: instead, the government must be "a strict line of resistance that doubles down" on everything they hate -- which, actually, suggests to me that the author knows perfectly well what they want and could easily compromise with them if inclined. (Is it appropriate for a party allegedly aligned with the common man, in a democratic society, to 'strictly resist' the people while 'doubling down' on everything they hate?)

Weirdly, to me, a compromise position appears to be quite obviously in reach because they both want the same thing. Ottawa's mayor put it this way (quote in first link, above): "You have the right to protest, you've had your protest, please move on. Our city has to get back in normal stead." 

The protest itself is merely a demand to "get back to normal." That's literally all they want: they want the Canada of the last hundred years back. (Cf. "Make America Great Again," which likewise merely demanded a return to the normal condition before we started making trade deals against our interests and policing the global economic order instead of pursuing national interests like defense). You could give them at least some of their normal back, in return for them giving you at least some of yours.

The Managers do not want that normal, which is also very odd. Canada has always been described to me as a pretty happy place, where people are exceedingly polite and the health care system is supposed to be enviable compared to our own. 

That is now how the Managers describe their own society. It's almost as bad as ours, to hear them tell it. 

The convoy speaks of threats to liberty. It would be close to something if the participants weren’t so far off. Threats to liberty are rampant in Canada, but not because of vaccine mandates. Rather, it is income and wealth inequality; worker exploitation; gendered, religious, racialized and other forms of hate violence; ongoing settler colonialism; and other forms of structural marginalization and oppression that compromise liberty. Same as it ever was.

The “Freedom Convoy” is a regrettable movement that offers a reminder that open societies will produce protest movements — as they should. However, when those movements are toxic, they must be denounced and resisted. 

I think I may have to adopt the policy of referring to this class as 'the Managers' on a semi-permanent basis, and to this sort of I-hate-my-country description as "the Litany of Bullshit." Canada is a perfectly nice place that is having some hard times that are self-inflicted by its own government, which apparently hates it, its people, and its history. Such a government cannot have any claim to democratic legitimacy, which at minimum requires loyalty to and love of the demos of which one is a part.