I've been watching the responses of a variety of public officials plus the public during this pandemic. The rich and varied tapestry of humanity has been, IMHO, somewhat depressing to watch. It appears that quite a few of our provincial premiers have been more concerned about keeping the economy humming than how to keep more people alive. I've also noticed a lot of folks treat the regulations designed to keep spread under control as silly impositions that should be ignored whenever there is a good chance to get away with it. And others seem to be convinced that this is yet another conspiracy by "dark forces" bent on oppression.
I'm thinking about things like Jason Kenney's unwillingness to condemn---let alone encourage the police to charge---anti-mask protests that simply ignore the province's medical order to limit outside gatherings to 10 or less individuals.
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| Jason Kenney c/o Wikimedia |
“We would ask people not to engage in large-scale protests, and if they do so, please wear masks,” said Kenney, adding enforcement of any measures under the order Hinshaw signed is up to police, not the government."
I'm also thinking about Doug Ford's initial response to the Adamson's BBQ idiocy.
Doug Ford c/o Wikimedia
"I can't get angry at any business person right now," Premier Ford says about Adamson BBQ
I'm also thinking about the abysmal way some members of the clergy have responded to the epidemic. The Mennonite community in Wellington and Waterloo counties seems to have totally "fumbled the ball" when it comes to the pandemic. If their leaders are anything like the ones from Steinbach Manitoba and Aylmer Ontario, I can certainly understand why they had an outbreak. Here's a CBC news clip that talks about the protest in Steinbach.
If you want to know who was the inspiration for this mess, all you need to do is watch the following video of Rev. Tobias Tiessen (the organizer) being fined in Manitoba and which another "plague rat" pastor named Henry Hildebrandt supposedly posted on his FaceBook page. (I got the video from the Steinbachonline.com news blog. I couldn't find the video on either Tiessen or Hildebrandt's pages, so I assume it's been removed.) The video quality is abysmal, but the audio is pretty clear---and I believe worth listening to simply because of the arrogance that drips from this "man of God".
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| Adam D., CBC Original |
Generally this is the point where I make a shameless appeal for readers to send me money. If you want to, please do. But this time I'm going to ask that you send Adam Donaldson some money too. (I do, $10/month.) Here's the link.
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All of the above is just to "set the stage". What I want to make a fuss about in this op-ed is that I think that far, far too many people seem to be incapable of understanding that the current situation isn't "business as usual" and shouldn't be approached the same way that they approach everything else in their lives.
Jason Kenney is someone who's built his brand in Alberta by playing up to the conspiracy theorists who blab on about how 'evil foreign foundations' are funding an anti-tarsands conspiracy. Could it be that he views the plague rats as part of his "core constituency"?
Similarly, Doug Ford is someone who build his brand around what he sees as straight-talking, small business types---presumably like the jerk behind the "Barbecue Revolution".
And, having grown up in a community that had far, far too many churches---all of the evangelical variety---I know from experience that most of their "brand" is build around peddling various conspiracies about how dreadful the "mainstream" world is and how it is riddled with secret conspiracies, satanic pedophiles, how Hell is packed with Jesuits, Rabbis, Mullahs, how environmentalists are all evil pagans, feminists are predatory lesbians, etc, etc. (I had a few years of Sunday school myself before I gagged. I also had friends who got polio because of their anti-vaxxer church.)
Generally most people tolerate this idiocy as a type of "background noise". But during some exceptional times---like now---these people become threats to the public good and need to be constrained. That's because some things simply aren't a question of "individual freedom" but rather "collective rights". And the people of Canada have a collective right to limit the spread of a potentially lethal virus. And the only way to protect that right is by limiting the right of plague rats to thumb their noses at reasonable medical guidelines.
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The problem with the leaders I've identified above is that they seem incapable of understanding that this is a point in time where the old ways of doing things are no longer appropriate and it's time to act totally different. That's not hard to understand, however, because these particular politicians have built their lives around an ideology (libertarianism), and, the pastors around a superstition (fundamentalist Christianity). You can stumble through life on this basis and generally not create too much chaos for the people around you, but when times require quick adaptation, there's really no substitute for logic and evidence. Let's just hope that not too many people end up suffering from our leader's inability to adapt.
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