It’s like these people went to anti-governing school.

From The Great International Convoy Fiasco by Matt Taibbi.  The subheading is "As America puts the Canadian Prime Minister's unmentionables in a vise over a truck protest, it's clearer than ever: the world's leaders have forgotten how to govern."

It is a pleasure to see Taibbi stretching his wings with the freedom Substack seems to have provided him.  

An anxious Trudeau promised to deploy law enforcement in a “predictable, progressive approach” that would emphasize fines and other punishments. Because demonstrators will see that the “consequences” for those continuing to engage in “illegal protests” are “going to be more and more extensive,” he said, “we are very hopeful” that “people will choose to leave these protests peacefully.”

Switching gears just a bit, he then added, “We are a long way from ever having to call in the military.”

Such a move, he said, would only be a “last resort.”

And, er: “We have to be ready for any eventuality”:

[snip]

Now that the “Freedom Convoy” is inspiring similar protests not just in the United States but in France, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, and other places, it’s clear every Western leader from Biden to Emmanuel Macron on down wants Trudeau, rather than any of them, to take the political hit that would ensue from any use-of-force resolution to this crisis. All of these leaders seem equally to be laboring under the delusion that a decisive enough ass-kicking in the Great White North will make this all go away. Until then, there seems to be no plan in any country that doesn’t involve tear gas, truncheons, or getting Facebook to blame troll farms in Bangladesh for stirring up the “discord”:

[snip]

As for talking to protesters, that’s out of the question. As Politico recently put it, the “conspiratorial mindset” of the demonstrators means “sitting down with them could legitimize their concerns.” Since we can’t under any circumstances have that, the only option left is the military “eventuality.” Or, as former Obama Deputy Homeland Security Secretary and CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem (the same person who went nanny-bonkers over the Southwest Air “Let’s Go Brandon” incident) put it, “Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks.”

Any sane person should be able to see where any of these ideas would lead. The problem is, we’re heading into our third decade of Western leaders embracing not thinking ahead as a core national security concept. It’s like these people went to anti-governing school.

Taibbi turns to some domestic political history for a while before coming back.

Not listening to terrorists or “rogue states” quickly turned into not listening to anyone, even at home. In 2016, the propaganda surrounding the motives behind both the Trump and Sanders campaigns was strikingly similar to the Bush-era takes on Why do they hate us? We were again told we didn’t need to ask questions about the sources of anger. Trump supporters were uneducated white men who couldn’t accept their loss of status, and “Bernie Bros” were a related species of hopeless malcontent, perhaps sharing an ancestor in the Pliocene period.

He then finishes with his central argument.  The establishment political parties across the West no longer wish to do the hard work of governing, making hard trade-off compromises, and achieving consensus.  They want to rule and are ill-equipped to govern.

The Bush administration at least had a plan for dealing with Middle East discontent. It was idiotic beyond belief — invade the wrong country, democratize it by force, and solve the Arab inadequacy problem by turning them into Americans — but at least it was a plan.

There has never been a plan for dealing with the Trump phenomenon, or Leavers, or the gilets jaunes, or any other populist uprising in the modern era. All our leaders have come up with are strategies of suppression and containment: combinations of policing, surveillance, censorship, and propaganda (and even the propaganda is mostly just mocking). Over and over, we’re told the only thing we need to know about the opposition is that it’s insane, wrong, and won’t get anywhere. Which brings us back to the “Freedom Convoy.”

[snip]

Let’s assume critics are right about everything: the protesters are a distinct minority, and unpopular, and maybe not even truckers mostly, and all far-right nuts whose brains have been scrambled by vaccine misinformation, and willingly led by QAnon figures and neo-Nazis, with the help of Russia and other “foreign threat actors.” I don’t think that portrait is right, but let’s say.

What would any of that change? Do people disappear once you’ve declared them illegitimate? Center-left leaders around the world seem more interested now in defending the principle of not listening than in the practical question of amping down tensions, a logistical problem that in this case needs to be solved somehow, sooner rather than later. A mass-covering of official ears while shouting “QAnon Holocaust Derp!” isn’t going to get it done, and sending in the military is pretty much guaranteed to work about as well as it did in the Middle East.

What’s happening in Canada and other countries seems less about specific demands than about the general principle of being listened to. Leaders like Trudeau could likely make this thing go away if they’d make even a slight gesture toward the idea that legitimate differences of opinion exist on questions like mandates, vaccine passports, surveillance tracking, lockdowns, the vaccination of children, and other matters. You don’t have to agree with people, just find a way to look at them without betraying your profound regret they were ever born. The longer this convoy phenomenon goes on, the clearer it becomes that none of the leaders involved knows how to do this. They’re not choosing to govern without listening. They just don’t know any other way.

The post has only been up 14 hours, overnight, and it already has 725 comments.  The comment section sometimes veers a little towards conspiratorial but it is full of insights, history, literary allusions and references, etc.  In other words, a discussion among smart citizens frustrated by the collapse in governing competence they see occurring.  

In the US, this has been one of the most avoidable crises imaginable.  The voice of those being misgoverned has been clear and distinct at least since the Tea Party emerged in 2008.  The Tea Party in 2008, Trump in 2016, The Great Rejection of 2020-2022 - citizens have been rebelling against the incompetence and cultural misalignment of the governing class for fourteen years.  There have been serial off-ramps for fourteen years requiring merely a return to governance through consent.

That apparently has been a philosophical commitment to far for the establishment.  And here we are with rising citizen dissatisfaction and spiraling governing class panic.