But the most relevant distinction between Virtuals and Physicals is that the Virtuals are now everywhere unambiguously the ruling class. In a world in which knowledge is the primary component of value-added production (or so we are told), and economic activity is increasingly defined by the digital and the abstract, they have been the overwhelming winners, accumulating financial, political, and cultural status and influence. In part this is because the ruling class is also a global class, and so has access to global capital. It is global because the world’s city-brains are directly connected with each other across virtual space, and are in constant communication. Indeed their residents have far more in common with each other, including across national borders, than they do with the local people of their own hinterlands, who are in comparison practically from another planet. But the Virtual ruling class has a vulnerability that it has not yet solved. The cities in which their bodies continue to occupy mundane physical reality require a whole lot of physical infrastructure and manpower to function: electricity, sewage, food, the vital Sumatra-to-latte supply chain, etc. Ultimately, they still remain reliant on the physical world. The great brain hubs of the Virtuals float suspended in the expanse of the Physicals, complex arterial networks pumping life-sustaining resources inward from their hosts. So when the Physicals of the Canadian host-body revolted against their control, the Virtual class suddenly faced a huge problem. When the truckers rolled their big rigs, which weigh about 35,000 pounds, up to the political elite’s doorstep, engaged their parking brakes (or removed their wheels entirely), and refused to leave until their concerns were addressed, this was like dropping a very solid boulder of reality in the Virtuals’ front lawn and daring them to remove it without assistance. And because the Virtuals do not yet actually have the Jedi powers to move things with their minds, the truckers effectively called their bluff on who ultimately has control over the world. It turns out that not only do the Physicals still exist, and are (for now) still able to drive themselves into the heart of the cities, they actually still have power – a lot of power. In the middle of a supply chain crisis, those truckers represent the total reliance of the ruling elite on the very people they find alien and abhorrent. To many of the Virtuals, this is existentially frightening. The reaction of the Virtual ruling class – represented by the absolutely archetypal modern progressive male, Justin Trudeau – to this challenge has been extremely telling, and rather predictable. Their first reaction was to dismiss the 50,000-strong convoy as representing, in Trudeau’s words, a “small fringe minority with unacceptable views.” Being, after all, divorced from reality, he did not seem to have any understanding of the implications of what was barrelling toward him. No one in his government seems to have prepared at all in the days leading up to the truckers’ arrival as the Freedom Convoy drove all the way across the country to Ottawa. But once they grasped the situation, the Virtuals’ response was to turn immediately to their default means of dealing with any problem: narrative and informational control.
Trudeau checked his diary list of most used phrases and – after fleeing the city for “security reasons” – unleashed all of them at once in one great shotgun blast of smears, saying the truckers were guilty of “antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia,” not to mention “misogyny” and being “anti-science.” He accused them of flying “racist flags” and “waving swastikas” (only one seems to have ever been spotted, before being swiftly ejected by the crowd), and announced that he would refuse to meet with them because of he could not go “anywhere near protests that have expressed hateful rhetoric and violence.” He declared Canadians to be “shocked and frankly, disgusted” with the protestors. His class allies leaped to the same line of attack. Catherine McKenney, Ottawa’s non-binary, social justice-loving councillor, accused the Freedom Convoy of promoting “very right-wing extremist messages” and being “part of a movement, that is extreme and that is xenophobic.” Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly declared them to be “increasingly dangerous” and “hateful.” Ontario Premier Doug Ford labeled it “an occupation” and a “siege.” The chair of the city’s police services board ranted that the “siege” was part of a “nationwide insurrection” and “a threat to our democracy.” Angry demands started being made for Trudeau to call in the military. Canadian state media lustily played along, attempting to ham-fistedly shove the whole phenomenon into an American political frame. The whole convoy was a “pseudo-Trumpian grift” that was “organized and led by documented racists and QAnon-style nutters.” Anchors gravely compared footage of smiling, Canadian flag waving grandmas, diverse crowds of dancing Sikhs, and children playing in bouncy castles to “January 6” and “white supremacy.” American outlets like Politico and the New York Times warned of the “far-right” having been “galvanized” worldwide. Allegations of the protests having been organized and funded by no less than the Russians were seriously aired. Academic “extremism experts” were trundled onto television to confirm that this was in fact a pack of literal terrorists, and that if even the protests were technically entirely peaceful (crime in downtown Ottawa having actually fallen), this was only a maliciously cunning cover to enable mass violence. “By what common understanding of the term does what we are seeing on the ground, on TV, in our social media feeds qualify as ‘peaceful protest?’” asked one, presumably talking about the hug-ins, or maybe the on-site meals for the homeless. “Is it merely the absence of physical violence and injury? That’s not unimportant but is insufficient as a definitional threshold.” TV talking heads nod sagely. Facebook and Twitter of course also quickly shut down the accounts and groups set up by protestors to communicate (often with hundreds of thousands of members), not only in Canada but in countries across the world. They cited the need to prevent the spread of “misinformation.” If all this seemed awfully synchronized, that’s the whole point. Systematic information control, or what the Chinese Communist Party refers to as “public opinion management,” is now the entire strategic response of the Virtual class to every political problem.
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