Will the Truckers Convoy Have An Impact?

Mercy Sakes Alive, Looks Like We Got Us a Convoy.” (H/T, C.W. McCall!)

I just saw demonstrators by the side, and on the overpasses, of the New Jersey Turnpike. Most groups waved Old Glories and brandished handmade signs, e.g. Coersion (sic) is Not Consent.

I commend the American Freedom Convoy for repudiating disruption and violence. Yet, how will it become consequential?

I’m a connoisseur of street protests.

In 2000, I participated in the massive anti-World Bank/IMF protests in D.C. I may have been about the only demonstrator wearing a suit and tie, awash in an ocean of denim.

Why hadn’t they invited the hard right (of which I’m a proud member)? Why didn’t any other right winger (besides, briefly, Peter Roff) just show up?

We conservatives, too, detested the World Bank and the IMF. Why not join forces?

So, I approached one of the rally coordinators, Patrick, to ask about our temporarily amalgamating our respective vast conspiracies. He checked in with his San Francisco-based anarchist collective.

Nope. No “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” love there.

Why not? The totalitarian left, euphemized as “Progressives,” are bent on more than victory.

They seek hegemony.

Becoming mortal frenemies, he and I stayed in light touch. In August 2000 I invited him to join me, front row, in the supply-side breakout session at the Republican nominating convention in Philadelphia.

He succumbed to curiosity and attended. Departing wide-eyed, he remarked, “Just as we imagined! They really get together in a room and plot the future!”

To which I could only reply, “I wish!”

We supply-siders then had, and now have, trivial influence on the Republican party. It had just nominated George W. Bush, son of the man who had ridiculed our doctrine as “voodoo economics.”

No love for us in the GOP, either!

In 2009 I was tapped to co-emcee the July 4th Boston Tea Party in Boston Common. The associated declaration stated:

“The insidious growth of the federal government has gone far enough. … Our ‘Federal’ Government is quickly becoming a ‘National’ Government. While their supporters are chanting their mantra of ‘Yes We Can’, those of us who have read and understand the Constitution say ‘No You Can't!’ In December of 1773 184 people rose up against an over-reaching excessive government and literally changed the world. On July 4th We Will Do It Again!”

The Boston city authorities, unamused, did not issue the necessary parade permits. Nor did they respond to queries.

So, I called the state chief of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to ask her if they would intercede. Teddy Kennedy was a classical liberal, devoted to civil liberties.

I thought he would do right by us and, as Massachusetts political royalty, had the power. An hour later the permits mysteriously appeared.

The rally, which drew only a tiny crowd, went off without a hitch. And our sound and fury, like that of the national Tea Party, ended up signifying nothing.

Thereafter, while in Pittsburgh on Vast Right Wing Conspiracy business, I went to watch the left protesting the G-20. After their afterparty, to which they generously invited me, I formulated my credo:

“Capitalize with the capitalists but socialize with the socialists. They throw much better parties.”

In 2012, I frequently mingled with the Occupy DC/Occupy Wall Street protestors in D.C. I even traveled to New York City’s Zuccotti Park to see the epicenter of the Occupy movement up close.

If there was a there, there, I couldn’t find it. Occupy fizzled.

Now? The Freedom Convoy is protesting … repealed COVID mandates.

And celebrating Freedom? Huzzah for freedom!

Per NJ.com:

“Waving American flags and signs decrying vaccine mandates, hundreds of people lined overpass bridges and highway shoulders around New Jersey to cheer on a truck and vehicle convoy, part of a loosely organized series of protests around the country Saturday. … The Washington Post reported that about a thousand vehicles arrived in Hagerstown, Maryland by Saturday but organizers were unclear about whether they would head next to Washington.”

NBC’s DC affiliate reported on Sunday:

“‘Beltway here we come,’ the group said in a Facebook post. A long line of vehicles is departing from the Hagerstown Speedway and driving in one lane of Interstate 81. Organizers say the People's Convoy group plans to drive onto the Capital Beltway/Interstate 495 on Sunday morning, circle the interstate twice then return to Hagerstown.”

Circle the Beltway twice? As T.S. Eliot wrote in The Hollow Men:

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Or as “C.W. McCall” sang,

“Mercy Sakes Alive, Looks Like We Got Us a Convoy.”

Convoyers? Not my first rodeo.

Now, please, go on to discover how to convey your exuberant civic virtue effectively.