Home/Opinion/People’s Convoy of truckers shows nation divided by realityOpinion[h=People’s Convoy of truckers shows nation divided by reality]1[/h]3 weeks ago0 2 7 minutes read
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SACRAMENTODonny Thomas and I agreed on many things when we spoke at the California Capitol this week. That’s alarming when you consider he’s part of the so-called People’s Convoy that has crisscrossed the nation in recent days protesting coronavirus health measures and serving as an echo chamber of conspiracy theories and propaganda.
Standing next to his silver BMW 550i, with “free your body and mind” scrawled in pink and yellow on the rear window, he and I concurred that we are fooling ourselves if we think billionaires have the best interests of society at heart.
We also both believe there are bad politicians in both parties. As Donny put it, they’re “two wings of one bird. It’s a lot of bird poop.”
As we watched about 100 of his compatriots gathered on the side stairs of the building, shouting through bullhorns about mandates that largely don’t exist and the consequences of treason, we also both agreed the world needs more gardens, more hands in the earth, outdoorsy stuff to get us away from technology and social media. He’d like to see us turn football stadiums into community plots.
No, I’m not here to convince you the far right is righteous. But writing off the many people who are orbiting extremism — not quite there but rubbing shoulders with those who are — as hateful and hate-filled (or even just stupid or gullible) is too simplistic.
Donny Thomas has driven about 12,000 miles in his BMW as part of the so-called People’s Convoy. Here he is at the California Capitol, holding a flier decrying state legislation his convoy opposes.
(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)
Thomas — who says he’s not political, right or left — was reasonable and reasoned, congenial and engaging, at least on the surface, a guy you could have a drink with if you avoid drilling down into the details of his beliefs.
He’s the kind of ordinary person we are missing when we talk about the Republican Party marching into the darkness of the very tyranny they proclaim to be fighting. And for those who care about democracy, we ignore them at our own peril.
When media have covered the People’s Convoy, and the increasingly far-right Republican Party, it’s often in terms of Donald Trump and the anger he feeds and feeds upon. We see rallies with his supporters waving all kinds of flags that in one way or another symbolize rollbacks of civil rights or a claiming of patriotism as a conservative Christian value that the “libs” know nothing about.
A handful of truckers and hangers-on driving circles around the Washington, DC, Beltway seems more tiresome than worrying, so it’s easy to dismiss much of it as either extremism or comical theatrics or both — a minority vein of unhinged fear mongering that is given oxygen only by our notice.
But that doesn’t take into account the Donnys of the movement, and there are a lot of them. They are the foot soldiers who genuinely believe they are in a fight of good versus evil, isolated by their abilities to see the true dangers facing America and therefore the nation’s only possible saviors.
Many of the truckers and their allies see themselves coming from a place of goodness, not discrimination or division. They seem firmly convinced of the lies that bind them together — the global cabal seeking world domination, the rings of pedophiles, the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines for a pandemic that they say was nothing more than the flu.
That is the power of misinformation and disinformation. At its worst, it undermines reality. If you believed what they believeyou would probably be in the convoy too.
Danny was living in Santa Cruz, working as a heavy-machine operator before the pandemic, he told me. As are many construction workers in the cold months, he was out of work in the winter of 2019. When the lockdown hit, he went on unemployment and started questioning what was happening. He just didn’t want to wear a mask, he said. The wives and girlfriends of some of his friends on social media were irked at his thoughts, he said. But he didn’t seem to care much, and he never went back to work.
Instead, he moved back home to his parents’ farm in Ohio for a while. It’s 300 acres, and as a kid he had the choice between working on Sundays or going to Sunday school. He choose work, he said with a laugh. He took off his hat and closed his eyes at the rally when the crowd did a half-hearted verse of “Amazing Grace,” but religion isn’t really his thing.
But neither was Butler, the town where he grew up. Too many of his old friends had never left, he said. He couldn’t fit in with them anymore. “I was the Cali boy now,” he said. He lasted less then a year, then moved back to Santa Cruz.
By the time the Canadian trucker convoy was haranguing the streets of Ottawa in January, Thomas was ready for action. He has no mortgage, no kids, no ties to hold him down.
When he heard about the US version of the north-of-the-border protest, he packed up the BMW, which he had just finished rebuilding and which has nearly 200,000 miles on it, and headed out to meet the like-minded in Kingman , Ariz., about 100 miles southeast of Las Vegas on Route 66.
And there he found his tribe, though there were some “bad actors” trying to derail the camaraderie, he said. He’s traveled with the convoy for more than 12,000 miles in under 60 days. The leaders reimburse him for gas, and sometimes he shares a hotel room with fellow protesters. Mostly he sleeps in the car, or in a tent if they’re stopping for a few days. The tent isnt worth it for an overnighter.
The convoy has had its ups and downs, and “it’s not just cruising along,” Thomas said. He’s taken on the job of being the first car in line after the big rigs — running interference if strangers try to cut them off or get in their way, he said. He pulls up with his cellphone, letting the drivers know they’re being filmed, license plates and all.
In DC he ran into trouble — literally. A woman accused him of bumping her with the BMW while he was stuck in traffic near Dupont Circle. It made the Daily Beast, Thomas said the woman lay down in front of his car. She told media he purposefully hit her and she broke her ankle. Police were called. I got the report and it says both Thomas and the woman declined medical services when the medics arrived, and the case is now “pending/inactive.”
In Sacramento, Thomas passed out fliers warning of the dangers of 10 bills the convoy deems tyrannical. He pointed out Senate Bill 1390 by Dr. Richard Pan, a much-hated figure in anti-vaxxer circles, which the pamphlet contends would prohibit “any person/entity from making statements the government deems untrue or misleading by any means including on internets/ads.”
I suggested he look up the bill himself, because that’s not what it says. He shrugged, clearly unconvinced by my take on it.
I let it go with that because, well, Donny isn’t the first Donny I’ve spoken to, I’ve met lots of people with his misguided conviction and determination these past two years. What I’ve learned is that there is no common ground to find when it comes to the big issues. We may agree on community gardens, but ultimately, Thomas believes he’s been freed from the “Matrix,” as he puts it, and sees truths I can’t.
I believe he’s been lied to and manipulated by those seeking political and financial gain. It’s not that I think he’s a bad person, or has ill intent. I liked Donny. I just think he’s not functioning in reality, the same way he thinks I’m not.
But I don’t think there’s anything I can say that will make him reconsider these false “truths” he now holds dear. I’ve spoken to families desperate to pull their loved ones out of conspiracies such as QAnonand reported on the intricacies and extremes that have taken ordinary people like Thomas and made them feel as if they are in an extraordinary moment.
It’s the energy of that alternative belief system that should concern us all. Trump isn’t the center holding these believers together anymore. As much as many still love Trump and will rally to a 2024 campaign, their focus is also on school boards and election offices and health departmentseven as the rest of us pay little attention to the institutions of everyday life they are trying to transform.
The protections of Roe vs. Wade will almost certainly end in a few months. Laws against LGBTQ+ rights are sadly common across the country, chipping away civil rights from people who only recently won them. Such malevolent statuses will embolden more rollbacks if they are not challenged. Teachers are under attack, pilloried for any comment that touches on race or gender identity. Books are being banned, Elections are coming, and those who oversee them are being driven out of office.
My daughter is reading “Fahrenheit 451″ for school, and last night we came across this passage about how its authoritarian regime began: “It didn’t come from the Government down,” Ray Bradbury wrote 70 years ago. “There was no dictum , no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick.”
That trinity of forces is more relevant than ever, yet in the United States, Bradbury’s dystopian vision has not come to pass.
But he understood how easily it could, if the many ignore a powerful few.
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perhaps we should be watching, to see , should the peoples convoy turn out to be another culling operation, like occupy.
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3743 replies | 483868 view(s)
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27 FEB, 12:51
[h=Kiev regime’s leaders to be inevitably punished - Russian Defense Ministry]1[/h]The civilian population is not at risk, the Defense Ministry said
MOSCOW, February 27. /TASS/. The Kiev regime’s ringleaders and their minions will be tracked down and inevitably and properly punished, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told a news briefing on Sunday.
"All faces, voices, telephones, whereabouts, IP-addresses and messages among all Ukrainian Nazis, who are responsible for humiliation and torture of our comrades are being identified and put on record. The same concerns the ringleaders of the Kiev regime and their minions, who call for torture of Russian soldiers in violation of the prisoners-of-war treatment convention. All of you will be tracked down and inevitably and properly punished," he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24 said in an early morning televised address he had launched a special military operation in Ukraine in response to a request for help from the leaders of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans for an occupation of Ukrainian territories. The sole purpose is the country’s demilitarization and denazification. The Russian Defense Ministry has said that its forces are not attacking cities, key military infrastructures being its main targets. The civilian population is not at risk, the Defense Ministry said.
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Female Artists in History - Anne W. Brigman (American photographer) 1869 - 1950 The Ancient Pine, 1912 platinum print 24 x 16.2 cm. (9 7/16 x 6 3/8 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States of America Born in Hawaii, Anne Brigman moved to California when she was sixteen years old. Trained as a painter, she turned to photography in 1902. "[S]lim, hearty, unaffected women of early maturity living a hardy out-of-door life in high boots and jeans, toughened to wind and sun" were Brigman's favored subjects, and she photographed them nude in the landscape of the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California. Brigman was one of two original California members of the art photography group the Photo-Secession, founded by Alfred Stieglitz, and she was the only Western photographer to be made a Fellow of the group. Three issues of Camera Work featured her photographs, and the British Linked Ring society of photographers elected her a member. Around 1929 she moved to Long Beach in Southern California, where she continued to photograph, focusing on a series of sand erosions. A year before her death inEagle Rock, near Los Angeles, in 1950, she published a book of her poems and photographs titled Songs of a Pagan. | Facebook
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Незаслуженно забытый мистический триллер родом из СССР | Ещё один блог о кино | Яндекс Дзен
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[h=Undeservedly forgotten mystery thriller originally from the USSR]1[/h][COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)]24 March
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In Soviet times, films were made in all the republics, but the most successful were Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Uzbek and Georgian studios. The famous Belarusian film studio Belarusfilm was distinguished by its special fecundity, variety of film production and some kind of creative freedom unique at that time.
Filmmakers from the BSSR boldly experimented with genres, including those that were considered Western in the Union, and therefore alien. It so happened that the first Soviet mystery thriller was shot on Belarusfilm, which gives you a chill even in our time, when the film market is literally bursting with all sorts of"horror movies".
This film is called "King Stach's Wild Hunt".
The film is based on the novel of the same name by the Belarusian classic Vladimir Semyonovich Korotkevich. In his novel, Korotkevich artistically presented the story of the real-life 96-year-old ethnographer Andrei Beloretsky, who once had to face the embodiment of the ancient Belarusian legend about the wild hunt of King Stach.
Wild hunting in European culture is the hunting of dead ghosts with ghostly dogs.
Chilling legend is extremely interested in the director Valery Rubinchik and in 1979 he began filming the film.
[h=Movie plot]3[/h]Belorusskoe Polesie, 1899. Quiet and incredibly beautiful wilderness.
Young, delicate and timid ethnographer Andrei Beloretsky (played by Boris Plotnikov, Dr. Bormental from "The Heart of a Dog"), comes here to study folk legends, Belarusian myths and legends. Andrey stops at the Bolotnye Yaliny estate , an ancient noble manor with a castle.
[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5)]Boris Plotnikov in the film "King Stach's Wild Hunt". A still image from the movie.[/COLOR]
Nadezhda Yanovskaya owns the estate - a beautiful, mysterious girl, the last of an old aristocratic family that once owned all these lands, but gradually died out.
The manor hosts a ball in honor of the coming of age of Nadezhda. Beloretsky gets acquainted with the guests, including Pan Dubotovk, who is the guardian of the mistress of the castle. In honor of her birthday, Dubotovk presents the girl with an ancient royal headdress and a huge painting depicting her ancestor, voivode Roman Yanovsky.
After the ball, the ethnographer learns from the estate manager the legend of King Stach's wild hunt, which is popular in these parts.
Stakh Gorsky-a young warrior, descendant of Grand Duke Alexander. Gorsky wants to achieve the independence of the Belarusian lands from the Poles. Stakha supports the people, especially it is popular among ordinary people. The peasants love Stach so much that they call him the king.
Stakh is characterized by nobility and trustfulness. When his former enemy Roman Yanovsky offers the king friendship, he happily agrees. Roman receives generous gifts from Stach and an invitation to hunt.
While hunting, Yanovsky is attacked by a swamp lynx, but Gorsky saves
the "friend". When Stach fell asleep, Romanus killed the king with a treacherous blow to the back of the head. Meanwhile, Yanovsky's squad dealt with the Stakha huntsmen. The dead or seriously wounded warriors were tied to their horses and the horses were set to gallop. Roman did not know then that this mad leap would be the beginning of the ancestral curse...
After a while, Roman Yanovsky sees a strange thing - the ghost of a Little Man. Roman is scared, but soon forgets about what he saw and goes hunting. During the hunt, Yanovsky is attacked by ghostly dead riders led by King Stach. Roman runs, but Stakh catches up with him and kills him.
Since then, the curse of Wild Hunting has constantly haunted the Yanovsky family. Many, many descendants of Roman have fallen under the swords of the vengeful ghosts!
But here, the last representative of the genus remained. Or rather, a representative. Nadezhda Yanovskaya. An 18-year-old beauty who wholeheartedly hates her ancestor (she even burns a portrait Dubotovka gave her with acid).
But the curse is relentless. The girl tells the ethnographer Beloretsky that she has already seen a Little Ghost Man who appears to those people from the Yanovsky family who are not destined to die a natural death.
[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5)]Nadezhda Yanovskaya goes through an ancient ritual designed to protect her from ghosts. A still image from the movie.[/COLOR]
Beloretsky does not believe Nadezhda and tries to calm her down with stories about progress "on the threshold of the XX century".
If Nadezhda Yanovskaya does not have children, then the Bolotnye Yaliny estate will go to her guardian Ryhor Dubotovka.
Despite all his disbelief, Andrey finds more and more evidence of the reality of King Stach's Wild Hunt every day of his stay in the Swampy Yaliny. So, poor children tell him that ghost hunters killed their parents.
After some time, a student of Kiev University Svetilovich - one of the few friends of Beloretsky in Bolotny Yaliny, as well as the manager of the Yanovsky estate Ignatius Berman-Gatsevich, who told the legend to the ethnographer, are killed. The police do not want to investigate the case - it is obvious that the police also believe in Wild Hunting and are very afraid of it.
Andrey, at the invitation of Ryhor Dubotovka, goes to his estate. Here they give a play about King Stakha.
Returning from the estate, Beloretsky is captured by his fear: ghost riders ride out of the fog at him. A wild hunt pursues Andrey, but he miraculously manages to escape.
After some time, Beloretsky finds out that the wild hunt of King Stakh is staged by the same Dubotovk, who organizes it to get rid of representatives of the Yanovsky family. The peasants in a rage go to storm the estate of Ryhor Dubotovka, who fiercely resists, but in the end dies under the blows of angry people.
But here comes the first day of the XX century. The police arrive in Bolotnye Yaliny. Beloretsky is accused of inciting peasants to revolt. The young man is arrested and sent to St. Petersburg. Nadezhda Yanovskaya, who has long dreamed of leaving the gloomy estate, goes with Andrey.
"King Stach's Wild Hunt" is a multi-faceted, complex movie, and, of course, a simple retelling of the plot does not give a complete picture of this film. The narration is viscous, unhurried, and slow. Some episodes are very, very frightening.
Summing up, we can say that "The Wild Hunt of King Stach" is a parable about a man's victory over his own fears, presented in an adventure genre, with unexpected plot twists, mysticism and a unique Gothic atmosphere for our cinema.
Feel free to recommend it!
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