Big Wheels Keep On Turning

 

H/t Michael de Adder

Indicted By Their Words

 

H/t Theo Moudakis

I find myself singularly uninterested in the so-called freedom convoy making its way to Ottawa. Peopled by many rabid-anti-vaxxers and those filled with a messianic zeal in the belief that they are 'standing up for freedom and democracy', they are in fact arguing for the opposite, a short-circuiting of  democracy, demanding the government's immediate resignation.

They are truly deluded and contemptible.

The true measure of these benighted people can be taken in the kind of hate-filled screeds they send off to politicians, medical personnel and journalists. It is the latter that Bob Hepburn writes about, saying it is time to call out nasty, hate-filled anti-vaxers.

Here are some of the milder excerpts of missives he has received:

“If I see you on the street I would Smash your face in YOU FU*KING IGNORANT COMMIE,” wrote a person identifying themselves as Sonny.

“You are a hate-monger and a sad excuse for a journalist. What you are doing is un-Canadian. You are a piece of sh* t,” wrote Rob, who works as a multimedia specialist.

“You are a menace to society. You have obviously lost your mind and need mental help if you think unvaccinated people are a threat to society. You are deranged,” wrote Nicole from Alberta.

“This is what causes racism. You have no business knowing what goes in my body. You piece of human waste,” wrote John.

“God bless your soul if you still even have one,” wrote Diane.

“You are an arrogant moron,” wrote Dave.

“Stop spewing hate and writing sh*t articles. Grow a pair and write something useful. Gerbil looking ass,” wrote Brad. 

Not surprisingly, these cowards refused Hepburn's request to publish their names, places where they live, or companies they work at if the email was sent from a business. Such hate-mongers shun the sanitizing light of day.

Hepburn ends his piece with this:

It’s time to call them out — and it’s time that others who are unvaccinated get to know the type of anti-vaxxers who believe they speak on their behalf.

And well we should. Their very words indict them. 

Covidiots: The Clay Feet Edition

Boomers like me often live in the past when it comes to musical idols: the Beatles, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison. to name but three, were the gods at whose altars we worshipped. The problems with gods, however, is that they often have clay feet, something we would have been inclined perhaps to overlook in our younger years.

The time for such willful blindness, however, has passed, especially since some idols are now abusing their power to the detriment of society. Going beyond the incomprehensible and inexcusable anti-lockdown stance taken by fellow-musician Van Morrison, Eric Clapton has gone into the realm of the absurd, claiming that those of us who have acted responsibly by getting vaccinated against Covid-19 are victims of mass hypnosis.

In a new interview for The Real Music Observer YouTube channel, Eric has claimed that [...] subliminal messaging hidden in advertising led people to get the jab. 

His eyes were 'opened' by 

....a guy, Mattias Desmet [professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium], [who] talked about it.

'And it's great. The theory of mass formation hypnosis. And I could see it then. Once I kind of started to look for it, I saw it everywhere.

'Then I remembered seeing little things on YouTube which were like subliminal advertising. It had been going on for a long time: that thing about "you will own nothing and you will be happy." 

'And I thought, "What's that mean?" And bit by bit, I put a rough kind of jigsaw puzzle together. And that made me even more resolute.'

Mass formation psychosis - an attempt to hypnotise groups of people to follow messages against their will - has been widely discredited by scientists.  

What led Clapton into this disordered thinking? It was his personal experience with the AstraZeneca vaccine which, he says, worsened his pre-existing peripheral neuropathy.

In a message to his music producer, he said: 'I took the first jab of AZ [AstraZeneca] and straight away had severe reactions which lasted ten days.' 

The 76-year-old said he 'recovered eventually' but suffered further 'disastrous reactions' six weeks later after the second shot.

He added: 'My hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks, I feared I would never play again...

'I should never have gone near the needle. But the propaganda said the vaccine was safe for everyone.'

I am certainly willing to admit the possibility that the vaccine, in his case, worsened his neuropathy. However, doctors say that the risks of getting Covid are greater than the risk of adverse reactions from vaccines. In any event, what I find unforgiveable about Clapton's stance is his monstrous ego. Because he says he suffered an adverse reaction, he is now actively discouraging others from getting protection, putting countless lives at risk.

That is not the work of a god. It is more like that of a devil.

UPDATED: Oh, The (In)humanity

I doubt there is anyone amongst us who is not thoroughly tired of Covid-19, the terrible virus that has forced us to live circumscribed lives for the past two years. Our forced confinement, record hospitalizations and deaths, unprecedented in our lifetime, have taken their toll on us in so many ways, not least of all our mental well-being.

Despite all of that, the majority have endured, doing what we can for both ourselves and our fellow-citizens, getting vaccinated, isolating when required, wearing masks and keeping safe physical distances.

But, to borrow from Charles Dickens, it has proven to be the best of times and the worst of times when it comes to how we treat others. The best is seen in the tireless health-care workers whose exhaustion and frustration over the unvaccinated crowding our hospitals is hard to imagine. The worst comes from the villains of our time, the anti-vaxxers and those of such little character that they have to take out their frustrations on others.

It is what Heather Scofield calls pandemic rage. She writes about Adam, a 26-year-old Toronto cashier:

Adam, who doesn’t want to use their last name for job security reasons, has begun refusing to serve customers who won’t wear masks. They’ll offer up a free mask, first. But if the customers resist, Adam simply won’t serve them.

That’s when the harassment begins. Perhaps it’s just eye-rolling or a mild comment. But on occasion, it’s mocking, accusations, yelling, shoving groceries, complaints to the manager or even filing formal grievances with the head office.

Service-sector workers, predominantly young, bear the brunt of the rage coming from a segment of the approximately 14% of adults not vaccinated.

Almost a third of workers aged 15 to 24 work in retail, and that’s up a full three percentage points from before the pandemic. About 16 per cent work in accommodations and food services, which is down significantly from the 20 per cent share two years ago, says Brendon Bernard, economist at jobs website Indeed Canada.

Whether they realize it or not, these workers do have some power. They can quit and seek other jobs.

Clearly, any employer or policy-maker aiming to respect young workers could see some quick fixes. Arming them with the best of masks, lots of paid sick days, and all the support they need to turn rule-breakers away at a moment’s notice would certainly go a long way. So would consistency and clarity on vaccine requirements in public-facing spaces.

Clearly, if they want to prevent excessive job churn, employers need to act quickly to address the cruelty and egotism of some. The following, which occurred in the U.S., is an illustration of the terrible behaviour people are inflicting on young workers. That the perpetrator is unmasked may be a solid indication of his 'values'. Be warned that the language is rough:

I've identified this man as James Iannazzo of

@MerrillLynch

being racist and assaulting a minor

H/t Danesh (@thatdaneshguy) / Twitter

When the Hindenburg crashed and burned, reporter Herbert Morrison used a timeless phrase, "Oh, the humanity," which was an expression of horror at what he was witnessing. To close out this post, permit me one slight alteration that seems to epitomize our current zeitgeist:

Oh, the inhumanity.

UPDATE: A little justice.

#breaking

@BankofAmerica

confirms to me that #jamesiannazzo, that man arrested for Intimidation Based on Bigotry or Bias and breach of the peace, has been fired.

H/t Naveed Jameli

 

 

 

A Line Of Inquiry

If you are as much a fan of Britain's Line of Duty (available on Netflix) as I am, you will enjoy this lacerating parody as the team interrogates Boris Johnson over partygate. Led By Donkeys, the collective that created it, 

worked with Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice to create a memorial wall of pink hearts opposite parliament.

“We spent a lot of time down there with bereaved families, painting hearts with them. And so we’ve come to see the party scandal, to a certain extent, through their eyes. There are people who sat in a car outside a hospital, unable to hold their loved ones’ hands as they slipped away from Covid, but they just wanted to be close to them.

“Johnson regarded the sacrifices that people were making in such a cavalier way and people are deeply hurt. I think it’s important that there is a price to pay for making these rules and breaking these rules, because people will live for the rest of their lives with [the impact] of abiding by the rules. This matters to people on a deep and visceral level.”

Enjoy this cathartic video.

 

The Costanza Defence

I think there can be little doubt that Boris Johnson, whatever his shortcomings, is a student of Seinfeld.

Here is what he had to say about the drink fests he hosted during Covid-19 lockdowns.

And here is what George Costanza offered as he faced termination after having sex with the office cleaning lady.

And who said watching the telly was a waste of time?

The Unthinking Hordes

H/t Greg Perry

As a student of human behaviour, one of the things this pandemic has made abundantly clear to me is that a significant number of people are ill-equipped to think. Whether through a lack of education or the sometimes cruel play of genetics, there are those amongst us who, no matter the evidence, will insist that their misbegotten notion of reality is the 'real truth.' This is particularly evident in the anti-vaxxer crowd.

Because such people can 'think' only in the broadest of terms, they often resort to hysterical and grossly inappropriate language and historical allusion. This has not escaped the notice of columnist Michael Coren, who begins his piece, There's no vaccination against human cruelty, with a fond memory of his great aunt, who he called bubba.

It wasn’t until long after she died and I was a teenager that I was finally told bubba’s story. She had been in a death camp, and the mark on her arm was a tattoo. The Nazis sadistically scraped them into the flesh of their chosen victims so as to dehumanize them before they were tortured and murdered. She survived, but many of her family and friends did not.

The reason I mention this is because of an increasing and repugnant fetish within the anti-vaccination crowd. Their hysteria, rejection of science and truth, and sheer irrationality are surely self-evident. Now they are comparing their experience to that of the victims of Nazism. They speak of the entirely ethical and admirable COVID vaccination campaign as being “Nazi-like”; they casually throw around the word Holocaust; they even wear yellow stars at demonstrations, and display that image on their social media pages. The yellow star that my bubba was forced to wear.

Coren rightly regards such antics as abhorrent. 

How dare they? How the hell dare they! They insult — they desecrate — the memory of those who suffered and died, and they do it with an obscene absence of self-awareness, empathy and sensitivity. They are using genocide as a cheap political ploy in their crazed campaign, playing with the horror of all that screaming and weeping. Once again, how the hell dare they!

This pandemic will eventually be overcome, and the victors will be the scientists, the medical staff, and the vast majority of ordinary, good, ethical people who were part of the great and communal movement to help save all of us.

But those who blithely trod on the mass graves of the persecuted will not suddenly disappear. Their malice and their arrogance will continue, waiting to be awakened and empowered in some future crisis.

The human condition has always lived with this brokenness — this virus, if you like — and that’s not going to change. Alas, there is no vaccination against cruelty. But while we may not be able to expunge this nonsense, we can at least be aware of it. Fanaticism and ignorance can have truly terrible consequences.

Jesus famously said, "Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do."

I, and countless others, will find forgiveness of those who cause so much pain, suffering and death very, very difficult to muster.