Are we all in this together?

As the number of jet setting UCP MLA’s and staffers to the U.K., Hawaii, Mexico and Las Vegas climbs, (whose salaries have not been affected by the lockdown), one is reminded of the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Meanwhile, we, the plebeians, are under lockdown, being ordered over and over again to stay home, hunker down and mask up.

As these elitist public servants embarked on their international holidays, did they contemplate those whose livelihoods have been deeply affected, and even destroyed by the lockdown?

Small business hair salons, pubs and restaurants have been ordered to shutter during their busiest time of the year. Did they think of the psychological and financial distress this brought on? Did they think about the people who could not visit their families over Christmas, isolated individuals in nursing homes, those who are already prone to suicide whose psychological anxiety has been increased by the restrictions?

And Kenney says he wasn’t clear about no international travel, so they get off the hook?

How come the rest of us knew about the directive which is clearly posted on the Alberta government website?

The nauseating battle cry, “We are all in this together” is and has been from the beginning a lie. David Foster Wallace got it right when he said: “It’s depressing and painful to believe that the would-be ‘public servants’ you’re forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously with such a straight face that you just know they have to believe you’re an idiot.”

Maureen Remus

Coaldale