A cynical friend asked me why I’m wasting my time even reading about the freedom convoy – or politics in general – let alone going to the demonstrations. At first, I tried to give him a philosophical answer.
But the real answer came to me when I went for a short walk: my favourite bar in my neighborhood where I used to hang out with my friends has permanently closed. My favourite comedy club where I did open mic and was the one of few venues of its kind in Vancouver has permanently closed after nearly 30 years. And my favourite coffee shop, which is the only place I can quickly go to get out of my house and feel like I’m around people has reduced capacity such that it’s nearly impossible to ever get a table. My only hobby that used to involve being around people has been outlawed.
I’m in the most privileged position to weather these measures. I can kick my feet up on the sofa and just work and socialize from the comfort of my MacBook. Even I have had enough. Every one of these closed businesses has an owner that once cared about it and now has to find a new purpose and a means of making a living. The city that was already a cultural desert is now even worse off, and the result of this will be felt for years by the community.
This is to say nothing of the morally heinous policies that we allowed ourselves to enact over the last two years. We forced people to die in isolation. We stopped people from visitng their loved ones in nursing homes. We robbed children of friends.
We did this because we allowed fearmongerers to run amock. A mother in Texas was so terrified of catching COVID that she put her 13-year-old son in the trunk on the way to getting him tested.
What is this all for? This is really the crux of the matter. It was for fucking nothing.
We are living with draconian rules that don’t work against a threat that has been overblown – specially now with the milder variant and widespread immunity – by incompetent technocrats who are scrambling to find a way to save face. For shame.
We need to stop this all right now. Then they need to resign. Then the real work begins: making sure the stupidity of the last two years can’t ever be repeated.