An Idaho Man Has Healthy Respect for Truck Drivers

I had a seat inside a window facing the Perrine Bridge.  It was a sunny afternoon and I watched the 18-wheelers rolling in two directions.  I counted hundreds over the span of a couple of hours.  This is only in one small corner of Idaho and an even smaller corner measured against the vastness of North America.

Trucks are the Economy's Achilles Heel

Southern Idaho needs two things to prop up modern civilization.  Water and trucks.  Drivers know they have clout.  As a group, they’ve never been angry enough to bring the economy to a standstill.  Our neighbors to the north are getting a small taste of what this could look like.  An estimated 1,000 vehicles have paralyzed Canada’s capital city.  I’ve lived more than 5 decades of my life in border states and have had more exposure to Canadian news than most Americans.  This is the second greatest crisis I’ve ever seen befall our neighbors and, yet.  There appears a lack of respect for the drivers.

A writer at NBC suggests support for the truckers may be growing.  For the time being, the Prime Minister is using the crisis to whet the appetite of his base.  Stoking differences among a population wouldn’t seem to be a path to national unity.  When did it become the governing philosophy for western democracies?

How the Trucking Crisis Could Change the Map of North America

The greatest Canadian crisis I recall was during the 1990s when a vote on Quebec secession was narrowly defeated.  The margin was razor-thin.  Some of the prairie provinces were talking about petitioning Washington to join the United States in the event the separatists carried the day.

Which is a scenario that could play out in a decade.  One wealthy financier predicts the U.S. is headed for civil war.  You can see coastal and Great Lakes cities going one way and the deplorable country another direction.  The tsunami will likely roll over to Canada.  Vancouver would join an alliance with the city-states to its south.  Toronto to the Atlantic would link arms with New England and others around the lakes.  The prairie would join the bitter clingers to the south.  If truck drivers on both sides of the border decide to take a week off, it could possibly kick-start the entire process.

All observations sprouted from watching a bridge one sunny afternoon while eating at IHOP.