SCIENCE AND PUBLIC GOOD

It would be easy, and correct, to classify the people that blockaded Ottawa and some border crossings, the ones spewing hate and inflicting damage on normal Canadians, as under-informed, that being possibly the most generous way to put it.

These blockaders are the kind of people who tend to lash out at things they don’t understand, particularly as they increasingly find themselves marginalized or shunted to the fringe. Some of them drove trucks, but most were not truckers. It’s another indication of who these people are that they rather inflict their nonsense on normal people, all while sponging off taxpayers, rather than do a decent day’s work, like the people who legitimately can be called truckers.

These insurrectionists were people bound together by what, in their mind, is common persecution. This is not an agenda or a cause, but more of an identity – look at me, I’m part of something. In the U.S. it was a “stolen” election, here it’s a vaccine “mandate.”

They failed to comprehend (amongst a whole list of other things) that one side-effect of COVID-19 has been that the vast majority of Canadians -- people in medicine, science, doctors and nurses and all health care workers, people “forced” into contact with people like waiters, cooks, small business people, teachers, civil servants, sports teams, pilots and soldiers – have been vaccinated.

It has been said that science teaches us reality, and in this case it did expose, to the vast majority, the reality of COVID. While governments don’t often resort to science-based decisions and rules, they did this time, even though their response was inconsistent, messy, far too often tentative, and poorly orchestrated.

This insurrection by people arrogant enough to revel in the fact they don’t care about the health of Canadians, is viewed by most people as disgusting and pathetic.

But equally as problematic, and just as disgusting and pathetic, was the failure of governments and law enforcement to shut these bullies down. The damage to an already shaky level of social stability, and to our already superficial democracy, has been severe and will linger for decades.

This country faces a day of reckoning not too far down the road. All political parties have fueled extremism through their growing inaction and special interest bias; no party is capable of dealing with the free for all about to descend upon us. And law-abiding citizens are deluding themselves if they think they are ready for it.

Brian L. Horejsi, Penticton