Title : "The Giddy, Terrifying Siege of Ottawa" — a great headline with a great photograph...
link : "The Giddy, Terrifying Siege of Ottawa" — a great headline with a great photograph...
"The Giddy, Terrifying Siege of Ottawa" — a great headline with a great photograph...
"... for a NYT column by Michelle Goldberg.I'm blogging this because not because I'm terrified or think what's happening in Ottawa is "giddy." I'm just interested and I love the photograph (by Dave Chan). The photo centers on an exulting, shirtless man who reminds me of the QAnon Shaman:
Go to the link for the full photograph. He's surrounded by all sorts of signs and flags. The word "freedom" is key. I kept the upside down maple leaf, though I have no sense of how intense Canadians feel about their flag. Do they venerate the leaf?
The sign on the left reads: "Freedom pour nos enfants tabarnak/tabarouette." I had to look up "tabarnak," and was interested to see that it originally means "tabernacle" — the place in a Christian church where they keep the communion materials — but has come to mean "fuck." "Tabarouette" is a toning down of "tabarnak." Those links go to Urban Dictionary, which I'll trust at least for now. So the sign seems to mean "Freedom for our fucking frigging children."
There are 6 more Dave Chan photographs at the link, and I've been studying all the details in them rather than scanning to figure out what's so terrifying and giddy to Michelle Goldberg. None of the other photos show anyone as "terrifying" as the shirtless man I've shown you. They seem pretty nice. One photo has the caption "A relatively small number of people have snarled the capital."
Goldberg reports from Ottawa. She's actually talking to the people, not opining from afar. I like the first 2 paragraphs, but I see nothing giddy or terrifying about them:
When I asked Matthew Wall, a 36-year-old electrician from Manitoba, what brought him to this city, which has been overwhelmed by a giant protest encampment, he answered with one word: “Mushrooms.” Searching for his purpose in life, he said, he went on a psychedelic spiritual journey and had an image of the Freedom Convoy, a demonstration against Covid rules that has converged on the Canadian capital with trucks and other large vehicles.
“I’m here for the rights of our kids, for parents’ rights, for everyone’s rights,” said Wall. “So kids can live in a future where they don’t have to have something covering their face, lose emotion. You don’t have the human connection, don’t see them smile anymore. It’s dehumanizing.” His daughters, he told me, were seeing a school therapist weekly because of the emotional fallout of the pandemic. “You’re taking away the love!” he said.
ADDED: A bit more from Goldberg:
The thrust of the Ottawa protests is clearly reactionary...
Clearly? Show me anyway.
... but there were plenty of people on the streets who seemed genuinely baffled by the media’s description of them as part of a far-right movement. They’d been infuriated and in some cases unmoored by Canada’s pandemic restrictions, which have been stricter than America’s...
Their willingness to not just go to Ottawa, but in many cases to stay there in the freezing cold for weeks on end, is a sign of how profoundly the pandemic has eroded trust in the authorities....
I didn’t see any Confederate or Nazi flags... I saw one Gadsden flag, and a guy in a MAGA hat who’d taped over the word “America” and written “Canada” on it. I saw lots of anti-vax paranoia, but few efforts to own the libs. The one word that was repeated over and over again — on signs, in chants and in conversation — was “freedom.”...
So where is the "clearly reactionary"?
Imad Arraj, who installs HVAC systems and helps his wife run an Ottawa hunting and fishing shop... [said the pandemic restrictions] 'did a lot of damage.... Me myself, I’m sitting home, I’m just feeling so down because all these friendships that you used to have, get together for a card game or whatever, it’s no longer there. We disconnected from each other... We used to have a lot of people at our house — my brothers, my sisters, my mom come to visit... I was in depression, sitting at home. I thought I was alone. I thought I was going crazy. I thought I was the only person thinking that way... And when this happened, I came down to see.... The love that you’ll receive here, you are never, ever going to see it anywhere else,” he said...
Is that "clearly reactionary"? Is it "giddy" and "terrifying"? Maybe "terrifying" in the headline is supposed to be ironic and we shouldn't be terrified at all.
Goldberg goes on to talk about how unpleasant the noise and traffic jams are to the residents of Ottawa, but that's about annoyance, not terror. I take it there's no looting or vandalism. There's one anecdote about a man getting shoved for wearing a mask, and we are told that the "organizers" of the protests are "far right." And:
Throughout the protests, men in black pickup trucks flying Canadian flags have menaced people in residential neighborhoods.
“Frequently, over and over again, we get the reports from residents that the trucks are slowing down, they’re accosting residents on the street for wearing masks, and frequently they’re accompanying that with some sort of misogynist, homophobic or racist slur,” said [Jeff Leiper, a member of the Ottawa City Council]....
“I don’t think any of us have accepted at this point it’s inevitable that this will end in a firefight,” Leiper said on Wednesday. But, he added, “we’re all worried about it.”...
A firefight? Is that really in the works? That sounds terrifying. Goldberg talks to a man named Dana Wilson, who said he was "raised in Mississippi... served in the U.S. military in Central America... [and moved] to Canada in 1987":
“From a military man’s perspective, you want to talk jargon, this is the last hill,” he said, describing Trudeau as “a narcissistic globalist sociopath” who has used “medical tyranny” to control the population, all for profit.
I asked him what he thought would happen when the police moved in. “We’ve got some things that we’re not prepared to talk about,” he said slyly. “We’ve got an arsenal too. People power, darling.”
When I pressed, he said that the arsenal was metaphorical. He called the encampment “the Canadian Alamo,” but then said that was a metaphor, too.
Of the police, he said, “I hope they don’t start shooting people like they did at Kent State, but you know what, the world’s got to see.”
I'm blogging this because not because I'm terrified or think what's happening in Ottawa is "giddy." I'm just interested and I love the photograph (by Dave Chan). The photo centers on an exulting, shirtless man who reminds me of the QAnon Shaman:
Go to the link for the full photograph. He's surrounded by all sorts of signs and flags. The word "freedom" is key. I kept the upside down maple leaf, though I have no sense of how intense Canadians feel about their flag. Do they venerate the leaf?
The sign on the left reads: "Freedom pour nos enfants tabarnak/tabarouette." I had to look up "tabarnak," and was interested to see that it originally means "tabernacle" — the place in a Christian church where they keep the communion materials — but has come to mean "fuck." "Tabarouette" is a toning down of "tabarnak." Those links go to Urban Dictionary, which I'll trust at least for now. So the sign seems to mean "Freedom for our fucking frigging children."
There are 6 more Dave Chan photographs at the link, and I've been studying all the details in them rather than scanning to figure out what's so terrifying and giddy to Michelle Goldberg. None of the other photos show anyone as "terrifying" as the shirtless man I've shown you. They seem pretty nice. One photo has the caption "A relatively small number of people have snarled the capital."
Goldberg reports from Ottawa. She's actually talking to the people, not opining from afar. I like the first 2 paragraphs, but I see nothing giddy or terrifying about them:
When I asked Matthew Wall, a 36-year-old electrician from Manitoba, what brought him to this city, which has been overwhelmed by a giant protest encampment, he answered with one word: “Mushrooms.” Searching for his purpose in life, he said, he went on a psychedelic spiritual journey and had an image of the Freedom Convoy, a demonstration against Covid rules that has converged on the Canadian capital with trucks and other large vehicles.
“I’m here for the rights of our kids, for parents’ rights, for everyone’s rights,” said Wall. “So kids can live in a future where they don’t have to have something covering their face, lose emotion. You don’t have the human connection, don’t see them smile anymore. It’s dehumanizing.” His daughters, he told me, were seeing a school therapist weekly because of the emotional fallout of the pandemic. “You’re taking away the love!” he said.
ADDED: A bit more from Goldberg:
The thrust of the Ottawa protests is clearly reactionary...
Clearly? Show me anyway.
... but there were plenty of people on the streets who
Their willingness to not just go to Ottawa, but in many cases to stay there in the freezing cold for weeks on end, is a sign of how profoundly the pandemic has eroded trust in the authorities....
I didn’t see any Confederate or Nazi flags... I saw one Gadsden flag, and a guy in a MAGA hat who’d taped over the word “America” and written “Canada” on it. I saw lots of anti-vax paranoia, but few efforts to own the libs. The one word that was repeated over and over again — on signs, in chants and in conversation — was “freedom.”...
So where is the "clearly reactionary"?
Imad Arraj, who installs HVAC systems and helps his wife run an Ottawa hunting and fishing shop... [said the pandemic restrictions] 'did a lot of damage.... Me myself, I’m sitting home, I’m just feeling so down because all these friendships that you used to have, get together for a card game or whatever, it’s no longer there. We disconnected from each other... We used to have a lot of people at our house — my brothers, my sisters, my mom come to visit... I was in depression, sitting at home. I thought I was alone. I thought I was going crazy. I thought I was the only person thinking that way... And when this happened, I came down to see.... The love that you’ll receive here, you are never, ever going to see it anywhere else,” he said...
Is that "clearly reactionary"? Is it "giddy" and "terrifying"? Maybe "terrifying" in the headline is supposed to be ironic and we shouldn't be terrified at all.
Goldberg goes on to talk about how unpleasant the noise and traffic jams are to the residents of Ottawa, but that's about annoyance, not terror. I take it there's no looting or vandalism. There's one anecdote about a man getting shoved for wearing a mask, and we are told that the "organizers" of the protests are "far right." And:
Throughout the protests, men in black pickup trucks flying Canadian flags have menaced people in residential neighborhoods.
“Frequently, over and over again, we get the reports from residents that the trucks are slowing down, they’re accosting residents on the street for wearing masks, and frequently they’re accompanying that with some sort of misogynist, homophobic or racist slur,” said [Jeff Leiper, a member of the Ottawa City Council]....
“I don’t think any of us have accepted at this point it’s inevitable that this will end in a firefight,” Leiper said on Wednesday. But, he added, “we’re all worried about it.”...
A firefight? Is that really in the works? That sounds terrifying. Goldberg talks to a man named Dana Wilson, who said he was "raised in Mississippi... served in the U.S. military in Central America... [and moved] to Canada in 1987":
“From a military man’s perspective, you want to talk jargon, this is the last hill,” he said, describing Trudeau as “a narcissistic globalist sociopath” who has used “medical tyranny” to control the population, all for profit.
I asked him what he thought would happen when the police moved in. “We’ve got some things that we’re not prepared to talk about,” he said slyly. “We’ve got an arsenal too. People power, darling.”
When I pressed, he said that the arsenal was metaphorical. He called the encampment “the Canadian Alamo,” but then said that was a metaphor, too.
Of the police, he said, “I hope they don’t start shooting people like they did at Kent State, but you know what, the world’s got to see.”
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