The recent traffic-clogging protests in Canada, Washington, D.C., Europe and elsewhere by long- and short-haul truck drivers were about them being angry over having to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates — right?

Uh … no. That’s the line being put out by right-wing extremists trying to use the legitimate gripes of truckers for their own political gain. As usual, the extremists are nuts — not the truckers.

My Uncle Emmitt was a coast to coast, high-balling trucker in the 1960s, and would attest that back then, trucking was an honest job with decent pay, union protections, benefits and normal hours. Then came the anti-government, deregulation craze of the 1980s, pushed by corporate profiteers and right-wing ideologues. Since then, cheap-rate trucking outfits have become predominant, unions have been cast aside, driver pay has crashed and working conditions have become punishing.

Pay today is so abysmal that most truckers on the road have to drive dangerously long shifts of well over 60 hours a week (with many topping 100 hours) to make a bare-bones living. It’s a grind, too — you can’t stand up for hours, you travel alone, dinner is a gas station burrito, bathroom breaks mean pulling out the plastic jug you carry along … and you won’t get home for days. Exhaustion is a constant companion and a real hazard when they’re wrangling bulky machines known as “40 tons of death.”

Yet corporate, political and media elites — oblivious to all of the above — whine that America has a...

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