How does one gently and reasonably point out to someone the clear and present destruction caused by lockdowns, who is convinced that they are somehow a good idea? And by ‘destruction’, we mean not only the obvious economic havoc wreaked, especially on small businesses, which are the bulk of whatever wealth-production is left, but also the breakdown of trust, between persons and the state, the police and politicians, as well as between and amongst neighbours, friends, relations – divided and bitter. The long-term effects of the loneliness and resentment may never be fully healed in this life, and the inversion of the proper order between the individual and government will perhaps never be righted. Destroyed livelihoods, suicides, divorces, domestic abuse, mental illness – even amongst the youngest – and a growing sense of panic and fear. Civic rights have been trampled by politicians, by a medical magisterium whose infallibility and global power is unquestioned, and by roving police officers, now with authority to pull you over or enter your residence at the mere whiff of a rumour, handing out crushing fines to those already crushed.
And keep in mind, the politicians, police, doctors – along with all the other government employees – teachers, university faculty and staff, military personnel and the legions of bureaucrats forging these iron-clad decrees in their Bauhaus office buildings, like orcs in Saruman’s redoubt – have never missed a paycheque, and never will – barring total societal collapse, of course, which we shouldn’t rule out, should this continue much longer.
Perhaps this take on Doug Ford, outlining his unconscionable treatment of his sometime MPP Roman Baber, who has lived through and escaped from a Communist regime; the same who dared to critique the polices of Herr Leader of the ‘Conservatives’, just might convince a few people of the folly and obtuseness of these policies.
The author, Marty Gobin, a lawyer, makes a number of good points, one of which I too have pondered. If the politicians staging these press conferences announcing yet-another extension of the lockdown (legal for only two weeks – but they take that to mean ‘two weeks at a time’, consecutively, in saecula saeculorum) – if they truly believed this was a plague of such magnitude and lethality – say, similar to that which took out Gwenyth Paltrow’s character in Contagion – so as to warrant what has never been done before in history, a global shutdown of ‘life, would they really be standing a few feet a way from each other in the same room, trusting in the talisman of flimsy masks?
To take this one step further, if this were such, people would be voluntarily locking their doors and ‘staying home’, without the need for draconian enforcement of universal house arrest.
One does not need to be a full-bore conspiracy theorist to wonder what really is going on.
On a note of hope, even though ’tis tough to keep one’s mental equilibrium, but with grace, prayer, music and a bit of humour, one just might. There are signs of a better tomorrow – small, for now, but growing, as citizens say, enough’s enough. Like the tens of thousands of restaurants across Italy who have also cried ‘Basta!’, here are at least two businesses in small-town Alberta willing to face the immoral and illegal fines, just to stay alive. Might some of our churches, schools, colleges follow suit? Hope, and let the groundswell begin…
Bashaw businesses ready to battle government over restrictions