You know who to back by whom the media calls “toxic”
As the pandemic’s grip on society is clearly waning, governments at various levels and locales seem to be sorting themselves into two buckets:
- End all emergency measures and learn to live with COVID
- Cling to emergency powers and up the ante
Canada is vast country that is run primarily by left-wing liberals who select their PMs from political dynasties in Quebec and who couldn’t pull it off without the support of urban Toronto (the 416).
The corporate media in Canada is largely homogenous, liberal and unabashedly globalist. To them, anything outside of Toronto or Ottawa is “flyover country”. Anything that happens there doesn’t matter unless it’s some issue that can wrapped within a narrative of victimhood to shame the populace into believing their country is a structurally racist, carbon spewing abomination.
In Canada, a pitched ideological battle between the Liberals and Conservatives would be whether the top marginal tax rate should be 53% (where it is now) or 45%. If things got really wild and bare knuckled, maybe Trudeau would come out with a “double-mask” mandate and Erin O’Toole, a third-rate non-entity who has lost two fat-pitch elections, would say “1.5 masks!” Even then he would waffle as soon as some polling data came out.
That’s the political spectrum in Canada, unless you count the NDPs who are even further left than the Liberals. Federally, the NDPs are led by a millionaire socialist.
The Libertarians here are a joke (sorry, but it’s true. I ran for the Libertarian Party federally in 2015 so I get to say that).
Political leaders actually standing up for the civil rights of all Canadians are few and far between: Maxime Bernier federally, running the PPC, and here in Ontario the likes of Randy Hillier and Roman Baber – a couple of MPPs who were jettisoned from #FordNation for resisting the lockdowns and mandates.
When it comes to these rare political voices, and despite rising popular support for them, the corporate media circles the wagons and demonizes them as (what else?) racists, far-right, etc.
Out of nowhere, comes the truckers
By “nowhere” I mean any place outside of Toronto, the economic hub of Canada where progressivism is dominant and compulsory. Here in the city, bare shelves in the grocery stores are more likely to spark angry calls to the Amazon Prime support desk than any serious introspection on why. There is no awareness that everything that magically appears on the shelves of Whole Foods, without fail, every day, was grown, farmed, raised, slaughtered, processed and then transported by non-cosmopolitan plebes from backwoods Canada (or US).
The #FreedomConvoy is on their way to Ottawa to protest vax passports and lockdown tyranny because nobody else will do it.
It was the political opposition’s job, they instead supported it.
It was a mainstream media’s job to examine and question it. Instead they propagandized it.
So it comes down to these (in the eyes of the media) backward, racist, infantile hillbillies, to stand up for constitutionally guaranteed human rights that most Canadians are too cowardly or sycophantic to demand back.
Predictably, Canada’s corporate media, who received hundreds of millions of dollars in rebates, tax credits and funding from the federal government has come out with hostility against the truckers. And their pals in Big Tech are helping them.
On the left: a search via Google in a clean browser on Freedomconvoy, on the right, same search via DuckDuckGo.
Note how the entire issue is framed by Google:
The Canadian outlets are outright hostile. The US ones at least acknowledge the phenomenon but are quick to lend a hand with an op-ed calling them “toxic”.
Contrast with DuckDuckGo: which unassumingly pulls in excerpts from websites involved with the convoy itself and its Wikipedia entry.
Which one is biased and trying to shoehorn you into a predetermined narrative? Which one looks to be simply trying to pull in what the user is actually searching for?
For awhile it also looked like the GoFundMe for the Freedom Convoy, which has raised $7.9 million from over 21,000 donors as I write this, was initially going to suspend it and freeze their funds. Fortunately they backed off when they had the beginnings of a major shitstorm on their hands. (Disclosure: I have made a donation to Freedom Convoy)
Trudeau, for his part, when not demonizing fellow Canadians as racists and misogynists will not be on hand in Ottawa to face the truckers (whom he called “fringe”). He’s claiming a community COVID exposure to go into hiding….
Last night, I learned that I have been exposed to COVID-19. My rapid test result was negative. I am following @OttawaHealth rules and isolating for five days. I feel fine and will be working from home. Stay safe, everyone – and please get vaccinated.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 27, 2022
The problem with Trudeau’s story is the Ottawa Public Health rules clearly do not call for five day isolation for an asymptomatic community contact accompanied by a negative test. Trudeau is basically lying.
I wrote at the beginning of this month, on New Year’s Day that the pandemic was over. It’s just a matter of how fervently the most brainwashed and self-serving will cling to failed narratives. The truckers are part of the resistance. I’m part of the resistance, and you should be part of the resistance.
Hold your politicians accountable: vote every single incumbent politician out. Anybody who held any office at any level of government in any jurisdiction who was not vocally opposed to lockdown tyranny has to go. Cancel all your mainstream media subscriptions. Turn off your TV.
It’s over and it’s time for anybody and everybody who stands in the way of full restoration of civil and human rights to be held accountable.
The Decentralized Revolution is happening. Bitcoin and crypto-currencies are the global opt-out and empowering technologies of non-state money. Get our macro investment thesis about the monetary regime change for free when you join the Bombthrower mailing list.
>governments at various levels and locales seem to be sorting
>themselves into two buckets:
>
>1. End all emergency measures and learn to live with COVID
>2. Cling to emergency powers and up the ante
Neither option really seems acceptable to me.
What I want in government is someone who will:
-look at what has or hasn’t worked in all the waves so far
-try to minimize the spread in the short term
-get us to where every household will be well enough stocked to
isolate for 4 weeks (not even any grocery shopping), yes there
are people too poor to stock up on their own so the government
will have to build a list of people that will need a ration
package dropped off right before the lock down. If we had a
“prepper culture” most people would already be ready on their
own and that group would be much fewer and more manageable.
-While this build up is being done round up the homeless in batches,
put them into a temporary solitary isolation for 2 weeks, those who
at the end of that test negative for COVID can be moved to a longer
term center that will be bubbled off to keep COVID from getting in.
Those who have it will have to be isolated for longer. (There are
probably too many to simply solitary isolate them all for the full
duration.)
Once that’s done:
-Give everyone a reminder to not do stupid shit so as to minimize
accidents and reduce the number of emergencies that abulance crews
and hospitals have to deal with.
-(Almost) Everyone stay home for the same 4 week period. The
few people who would be out working (police, fire, ambulance,
minimal hospital staff to deal with the actual unanticipated
emergencies, military helping the police patrol the streets,
utility workers) taking as many precautions as possible.
-After that the only people that might have COVID are those that
caught it from someone in their household or an exposure while
working one of the above listed jobs. Those few can isolate at
home while someone does a non-contact drop off of supplies for
them.
-We continue with masking for a period of time while doing
some random monitoring testing to make sure we didn’t miss
anyone.
At some point we can have a “all clear” declared and all
restrictions removed. Except for anyone returning from an area
that didn’t participate will have to isolate for 2 weeks (or maybe
longer) under watch. (Unfortunately enough people have proven
that taking people at their word to isolate on their own at home
doesn’t work, we can’t risk one dumb ass undoing all the work
everyone else did.)
Really if we did this in 2020 we probably could have had this
over before winter hit. We could have had it over before the
vaccine was developed so we wouldn’t even be having any debate
about the vaccine. The only people that would have even needed
the vaccine would be the few who were going to travel outside
the “safe zone” who would have to get it to reduce their own risk.
(And they still would have had to isolate upon return because the
vaccines aren’t 100% and with something like this anything less
than 100% is not enough.)
As for my thought’s on the vaccines I’ve gotten them for my own
protection for those few times I do have to go out. I am scheduled
for my booster shot about mid-February so as to maximize immunity
in early March when I go to my parent’s house for several hours
to help them with their taxes. (Unfortunately my dad isn’t able to
figure it out on his own anymore because the government keeps
changing stuff around on the forms almost like they are
intentionally making it more difficult to try and force people
to go to a tax preparer. He’s fine doing anything where he’s
“burned in” how to do it but struggles with learning new things.)
I was the one family member that didn’t go over at Christmas.
My observations on my family is if there is an order from the
government to not gather they will follow it but they won’t think
things a step past that to asses risk on their own like I will.
There are probably a large number of people in this country
that need direction like that.
Really I don’t like the whole system of 2 separate rules for
vaccinated and unvaccinated for the simple reason the vaccine
is not effective enough at stopping transmission. (Even if
it is a little bit effective.) At the time they made those
rules we really had no idea how effective the vaccine would
be. Looking at the Manitoba numbers it seems the vaccines
slowed the spread but didn’t stop it based on comparing trends
to last year. Unfortunately as soon as Omicron hit Manitoba
in a significant way that benefit was largely reduced except
now the unvaccinated are under no restrictions like last year
so that more than negates any minor advantage that is left
at least on a population wide suppressing the spread basis.
(It still seems to make cases less severe reducing
hospitalizations and deaths and _might_ still slow the
spread if all other things were equal.)
When I seen the rise in numbers at the beginning of this winter
being slower I actually briefly had a bit of hope that maybe
the vaccine would slow it enough that if someone finally wised
up and fine tuned other measures maybe we could crush this thing.
Nope, now with Omicron nothing short of the mass shutdown will
work.
Really if we had been quarantining anyone crossing a border
anywhere in the world for 2 weeks all along each new variant
could be kept from escaping it’s geographic origin area.
Some people may have some legit concerns about how the vaccine
will interact with some other conditions they may have and
really any effectiveness gained by chasing down the last few
unvaccinated Canadians at this point probably won’t make as
much of a difference as other transmission reduction strategies
would. (Which should apply equally to the vaccinated and
unvaccinated.)
As for people who refuse to even wear a mask when around other
people or refuse to isolate after travel or a known exposure I
think they are just full on retarded and a danger to others.
They are the main reason this thing is still running.
Living in Manitoba I remember the first wave and coming down from
it. We were literally down to 1 known case at one point. If
we’d kept the restrictions we had just a bit longer to sus out
the last few then unknown cases and tightened up everything at
the provincial boundaries with quarantine for everyone entering
the province we would have been clear of this thing now.
Instead they started lifting restrictions telling people they
didn’t have to isolate when returning to the province so everybody
thought that meant it’s safe. No it’s not safe, the government is
just trying to see what level of COVID they can get away with
letting run. Apparently they don’t understand exponential
functions.
Each wave since I’ve seen our government repeatedly drop the ball
and fail to keep our eyes on the prize because it seems like nobody
on either side can seem to look more than a few weeks out. Time
after time they will run it to the edge of the health care system
collapsing because before that point they don’t consider it a
priority.
Getting booster shots forever because COVID keeps running in the
background is not a viable long term solution. We don’t even know
if that will keep working or not.
Really the best thing in the long run is to starve this escaped
lab experiment of new hosts and drive it to extinction so we don’t
have to deal with it again. Ideally for the whole world, if not
for our continent, if not for our country, if we can’t even get
enough co-operation to do it for our whole country then province
by province with inter-provincial travel controlled until the
remaining provinces figure out they are doing it wrong and finally
agree to also purge this thing.
We are humans! Driving things to extinction is something we are
supposed to be good at! ^_-
As for the idea of just dropping all restrictions now, if we allow
COVID to keep running in the background forever things will _never_
return to normal. Even if you allow indoor dining, no vaccine
passport check, no capacity limits people who own the restaurants
will evetually notice some people coming back but it will _never_
return to pre-pandemic levels as there will be noticeable numbers
of people like me that will be fine with self-isolating as much as
circumstance allows us to and only eating shelf-stable foods
that have been under our custody and control for a week or more.
(Probably more as we expect ongoing disruptions to supplies every
time a COVID flare up takes critical people out of commission
again.) So the people like me will never go to a restaurant again
if society as a whole doesn’t get it’s act together. The same goes
for a lot of other optional things, you will never see a return to
what it was before unless COVID is fully purged!
Unfortunately I have not seen anyone in the political sphere take
anywhere near this approach. The big 3 parties cling to the failed
“vaccinate everyone and hope for the best” approach trying to use
various carrot and stick measures to rope in the last few unvaccinated
some of which open other risks. Also that strategy is feeding the fuel
of conspiracy theorists that just keep saying “I told you they would
force it on people” and keeps people fighting each other instead of
fighting the virus. I think the PPC and Libertarian parties are both
being outright irresponsible fools that seem to be acting like COVID
isn’t real and can’t think forward to the long term. I have literally
nobody worth voting for right now.