The mainstream media inform us that Canadian authorities have "cleared out" the truckers who had the temerity to think they could peacefully protest their government's COVID vaccination-and-quarantine mandates.  Note the choice of terminology: "cleared out," as one would clear out an infestation of vermin.  In the propaganda game, words must be chosen carefully and deliberately, and the propaganda-meisters of today (who not only "manage" the news, but frequently just invent it) make the infamous Dr. Goebbels look like a mere tyro.

(A historical note for those for whom the name "Goebbels" may not ring a bell [after all, it seems that, nowadays, school curricula are so focused on LGBT studies there's no time to teach history]: Joseph Goebbels was minister of propaganda under Adolf Hitler [I hope I don't have to explain who Hitler was].  Goebbels's name [an approximation of the German pronunciation is "Gurbles"] has traditionally been synonymous with propaganda, and among the techniques associated with him is the principle of "the big lie" [even though that term, and the concept, may be credited to Hitler himself], which posits that a big enough lie, repeated relentlessly, will come to be accepted as the truth.)

Now there are plans for a similar Freedom Convoy of truckers to be organized and carried out by U.S. truckers, in sympathy for their Canadian brethren.

Should it occur, it will be fodder for propagandists to mischaracterize as they did the Canadian protest.  Anyone who's spent time on America's highways and observed big trucks knows that the Confederate battle flag (the "Stars 'n' Bars") is an emblem frequently displayed on such trucks, and not just in the South, in numbers far in excess of those few that were seen on Canadian trucks.

But the handful of such flags seen on the Canadian trucks was enough for "journalists" to declare that such flags were proof that the Freedom Convoy was, in reality, a rally of "white supremacists."

Those same "journalists" informed us that the appearance of swastikas (whether those were on signs accusing Canadian P.M. Justin Trudeau of Nazi-like tactics or displayed by agents provocateurs using false flag tactics to discredit the protests) constituted proof that the protests were populated by Nazi sympathizers.  We can look forward to even more of such "reporting" should similar protests occur in the U.S.

But what bothers me even more than the propaganda offensive against those who dare to protest government COVID edicts — and the propagandists are currently attempting to sell the idea that the very word "freedom" is actually code (a "dog whistle") for "white supremacy" — is the prospect that American cops will turn on the protesters as unhesitatingly as the Canadian cops did.

There's traditionally been a kinship between cops and truckers.  Sure, the relationship is adversarial: cops are always on the lookout for violations committed by truckers, and truckers are always on the lookout for cops, such as when they warn (via flashing lights or CB radio) fellow truckers of police radar and such.

But the slang terms by which truckers refer to cops — e.g., "Smokey Bear," "county mountie," "local yokel," "bear in the air," "Kojak with a Kodak" (meaning a cop with a radar gun; it's an allusion to the popular '70s TV detective and the first mass-produced, affordable camera) — carry a certain fondness, and truckers have always been ready and willing to help police (such as by forming a "rolling roadblock" to assist in a police chase).

Cops and truckers generally come from the same working-class (and frequently rural) backgrounds and generally harbor the same traditional values.

All of that is as true in Canada as in the U.S.  Or at least it was until the Canadian cops proved only too eager to be the enforcers at the beck and call of politicians and bureaucrats.  The behavior of the Canadian cops against the truckers and their supporters is shameful and alarming.  And I fear that we'll see the same thing in the U.S.

Police in Ottawa arrest a trucker protester (YouTube screen grab).

We've already seen examples of it, like parents being manhandled and branded as domestic terrorists for daring to criticize school boards.

What's all the more shameful and alarming, not to mention ironic, is that the ordinary citizens being targeted by police are the very people who supported the police when they were being ambushed and murdered and police stations were being burned — the very people who stood up against the pernicious agenda that sought to "defund" the police on the grounds that police enable and perpetuate the "systemic racism" that is America's (and, indeed, Western civilization's) original sin and fatal flaw.

Those physical and rhetorical attacks on police have driven many to seek early retirement and otherwise leave the formerly noble profession of law enforcement.

Those who have attempted to organize into groups that revere the Constitution and pledge to stand for the People (such as the Three Percenters) have been vilified by the propagandists' "big lie" that such groups are racists who seek to overthrow the government.

Sadly, that leaves those remaining to more likely be the misfits and power-trippers who prove only too eager to enforce the law, no matter how patently unconstitutional or just plain morally wrong that law may be.

If a law were to pass tomorrow making it illegal to be left-handed, I fear that SWAT teams would be knocking down doors and dragging out anyone suspected of being, or harboring, a southpaw.

Tyranny is difficult to impose without heavy-handed enforcement.  What we've seen in Canada, and what I fear we'll see even more of in the U.S., causes one to no longer wonder where a tyrannical regime manages to find its Gestapo, its Stasi, its jackbooted thugs.  They're already in place, uniformed, armed, and well regimented.

Stu Tarlowe has contributed over 150 pieces to American Thinker.  His personal pantheon of heroes and role models includes Barry Farber, Jean Shepherd, Long John Nebel, Aristide Bruant, Col. Jeff Cooper, Rabbi Meir Kahane and G. Gordon Liddy.  He was recently employed as a staff writer for the online magazine of a think-tank dealing in analysis and forecasting of political and societal trends, but when he had to be hospitalized for COVID, he was replaced.  Having recovered, he now writes on a variety of topics (political and personal) in his newsletter at Substack.com.