Did they have permits? What about insurance? Did anyone check their liabilities and legal risks? Will there be any consequences if they didnʼt? How do these unauthorized planned events called ʻpeaceful protestsʼ change things for artists and producers who have followed the rules and not held unlawful shows for two years and counting, thereby damaging their own businesses to respect our public healthcare system? Why would law-abiding event planners bother with costly insurance, arduous applications & bureaucratic permit processes when no-one cares if you just hold an unsanctioned and likely illegal ʻpeaceful protestʼ? If youʼre a privileged white person who leans right-wing even if youʼre not aware of it, you seem to able to get away with breaking all the pivotal rules that used to be sacrosanct laws, especially if you put ʻfreedomʼ on your signs and posters so that the local police state will approve of your fascistic support of a bigoted cult who wish to be the supreme leaders of an undemocratic revolutionary movement. 

Do our uninformed friends at these selfish pep rallies for misguided patriots understand the links between their flag-waving social media celebration of (anti)Canada Day and the anti-semitic, racist & harmful rhetoric and manifestos of their so-called leaders and self-sabotaging organizers led by Pee King? Because if these foolish friends really do believe in the Canamerican lawlessness on full display in our capital and multiple border crossings that have truly enraged the sleeping Minotaur beside us who hates sacrificing his Manmoron-worshipping economy to anybody or anything, then how do we continue to be friends with them knowing what we now know about their self-absorbed ignorance which lurks beneath their salt-of-the-earth glimmering veneers of ‘peace’ and ʻloveʼ? 

With Chief Slowly belatedly resigning today, questions must be asked about the overly conservative Nelsonia Police State and its seemingly tacit endorsement of Smellisonʼs lame freedom rave. Does our erstwhile Creep of Police approve of their DJ-led dance-partyʼs rejection of most of our communal values around social care in its support of materialistic individualism? Is Worksafe okay with Smellisonʼsʼ repeated mask mandate violations if not outright defiance of its selectively enforced dictates? The arrogant convoy sympathizers who are running Smellisonʼs into the ground of public disrepute claim mask exemptions for them and their fatalistic followers, but how can the bulk of their Gaia-devoted redneck hordes all need mask exemptions that put their self-obsessed demographic way out of whack with the statistical probabilities of the Koots populace as a divided whole? In other less kind words, they are making a mockery of the compassionate system weʼve created to weather this storm together as best we can for all of our sakes, and theyʼre not the only deceptively health-based food store in this entitled gentrifying town who are blithely unmasking when regional hospitalizations are still at their highest and health workers are scarcely there to take care of these unvaccinated deniers and fighters of freedom as nurses flee the industry in droves and burn out on their feet while working enforced overtime against their wills in defiance of UN protocols around completely exploiting your most valuable and vulnerable workforce that is primarily underpaid women. Misogyny, racism & bigotry rule the current days, as usual, do they not? 

If youʼre posting on social media about your ill-advised presence at the Smellfest Protest, do you support Ottawa residents being purposefully terrorized in their homes with the armed authoritiesʼ implicit permission? Would you like it if our own hoity-toity country-hick haven was invaded and gridlocked by diesel-swilling jerry-cans in hot tubs and saunas, not to mention bouncy castles? If your suffering business was shut down for almost a month by patriarchal goons loosely governed by a mafia-like cartel of Greater Albertan negligence and incompetence, would you be goofily celebrating with your digital friends about how awesome you and Freedom Land are? If your elderly parents couldnʼt access their medical appointments in the Ghoulie Zone on Baked Street, or feel safe enough to shop at the mask-friendly Coop for weeks on end, would you be the first in line to slobber all over the gonads who have infested your diseased streets with rampant crime, disgustingness & grotesqueries? Would you eagerly kowtow to the keystone cops who are visibly loving the macho vibes at ProtestFest while getting paid big coin on the public dime if your jobs were shuttered indefinitely without societal understanding by mainstream nitwits that donʼt want to play along with kindness and caring like the rest of us do, despite all the same hardships that weʼve endured so far? 

Didnʼt Ghoulie, Wormtongue & the City Mangler all come out in favour of public health restrictions way too late, but not so long ago? Do they care that the Smelly dissenters showed their asses to Shitty Hall just up the highway from where the ʻfreedomʼ convoy honks? Or does the appeasing CoN only care about unleashing Lizzyʼs unaccountable attack-dogs on our drug-using homeless population when it comes to upholding their beloved law-and-order? Theyʼd rather threaten innocent mothers and children with jail-time and ten-thousand dollar fines in a pandemic depression than do anything in the slightest about a nationalistic orgy of middle-fingers to the kind efforts of the rest of us? We all know that friendships are being tested if not broken by this crisis of humanity, but itʼs extra disappointing to see purportedly civil people you cared about laughing in your masked face while ignoring mask mandates in a retail workplace against the law, or attending a know-it-all conspiracy theory free-for-all in favour of anarchy and extremism. 

Mainly, itʼs incredibly frustrating for those of us who used to be chided by these same lawbreakers for performing actions that are now considered to be legal enough to make a shit-ton of dough for the white-volk majority who gets off on torturing the non-white entrepreneurs for doing the exact same fracking thing! Snobs who tended to lord their law-abiding records over those who deign to walk the line from time to time are now telling us that they get to break these much more serious and harm-related laws just because theyʼve had enough of a viral disease that saps them of their god-given rights to do whatever the hell they want to do, whenever they want to, however they want to do it. Seeing privileged settlers moan, complain & whine about having to live under even somewhat close conditions to what Indigenous peoples have suffered through at the diabolical hands of an imperial empire of gluttonous excess overseen by Queen Camilla the Consort is infuriating enough even for mostly-white creatives who aren’t persecuted merely for being born in the same native paradise where the upside-down flag wavers and subwoofer bozos decided to exercise their irreligious rights to express their barely veiled hatred and disdain for anyone who does not think, act & behave just like them. 

They call us ʻsheepleʼ, but whatʼs wrong with animals that donʼt kill or harm anyone who provide us with ample warmth to wear for surviving our subarctic midwinters? And how can you be a sheeple when your people were here first, such as Algonquin writer Alberto Dumont, who says, “the so-called Freedom Convoy is disturbing the peace, not only of the sleeping land but also of many decent, kind-hearted, law-abiding people living in Algonquin territory. The supporters of the convoy don’t seem to give a damn about that. I wonder just what kind of “freedom” they want to defend. Whose freedom? Theirs only? How can an individual claiming to stand up for freedom feel righteous in interfering and obstructing the freedom of innocent people so callously and so cruelly as some of the convoy supporters have done? The leaders tell us the convoy is a peaceful one. Explain then, who among them is going out into the streets and businesses of the city, terrorizing innocent citizens? The supporters of the convoy don’t seem to give a damn about the fact that some among them are violent and mean-spirited. They have forgotten that in a democracy, it’s the majority that rules, not the minority! … The war on COVID is a war not yet won. The vile virus plaguing Canada’s provinces has found an ally in the people of the Freedom Convoy. To them I say this: Stop behaving as if you are the centre of the universe. You are not. You are no more and no less special than I am, nor are you more special than any other human being anywhere on this planet. Your ‘rights’ do not override mine! The protesters’ definition of ‘freedom’ has a repulsive stench around it. It reaches my home and sickens me, though I live 135 km from the city. Theirs is the kind of freedom I don’t want anything to do with.”

 

#forstmedia #golden heron #opinion