“An armada of drivers calling themselves the ‘People’s Convoy’ circled the Beltway for more than four hours Sunday to protest pandemic restrictions, and it plans to do so again on Monday.” — The Washington Post, 3/6/2022
I have decided to drive very slowly in my truck. I may even put my truck in park, right here in the middle of the road. I am going to cause a traffic jam with my truck. Why am I blocking traffic with my truck? I am blocking traffic with my truck to send a message, and that message is this: I have a truck.
I used to have some other messages—they all involved the government capitulating to my demands. But the government already mostly capitulated, without my ever having to make demands. So now I am sitting in standstill traffic that I am actively causing with my truck because I want to say one thing loud and clear: I have a truck.
I may be alone inside my truck, but I am not alone on the road I am blocking with my truck. Some of my friends and coworkers are doing the same thing with their own trucks. They are also driving slowly in their trucks, because they have a message too. We all have a message we are sending with our trucks, and our collective message is this: we all have trucks.
We have other collective messages we are sending with our trucks. But those messages vary in subject and scope, and many no longer apply to the current situation of our country. So we are focused on slowly driving our trucks to send the one message we all agree on: we each have a truck.
So now I am driving in rush hour traffic in my truck, and there is so much traffic that it is becoming hard for all the people who are not in trucks to see that I am here to send the message that I have a truck. It is actually starting to feel a lot like I am just driving my truck in regular rush hour traffic, and I am beginning to wonder if anyone in this country even cares that I have a truck.
In fact, there are reports on the news of people in other countries sending messages that seem much more important and dire than the message I am sending, which, as a reminder, is to let everyone know that I have a truck. I am beginning to think that it may not be very important or newsworthy that I have a truck.
So I have decided that enough new people know that I have a truck, and now I am going to go back to driving my truck normally. But I do not want my message to fade away like the cloud of diesel exhaust from the back of my truck. Hopefully, even while I go back to using my truck in the way it was intended, the people I pass with my truck will continue to hear my message: I have a truck.