Bruce Dowbiggin
Far From The Madding Covid Crowd
“The pandemic will end not when some arbitrary government mandated goals are met. It will end when people decide it should end. Texas has decided”. Dr. Eli David
There’s a Terminator quality to the mandatory-vaccine resistance movement. Ridiculed, fired, forbidden from dining, prohibited from flying… they abide. The often-imitated but never-duplicated Media Party has demonized them, while police strong-arm them at the mâitre ‘d table.
And yet. Saturday there were 106,000 people gathered for the Alabama/ Texas A&M football game in College Station, Texas. Oblivious to the admonishments about masking, distancing, vaccinations and relentless PSA pounding they were in full-throated rapture about being jammed together like Hebrew National frankfurters.
They weren’t alone. The NFL featured a huge crowd in London, England, for the Jacksonville/ Atlanta neutral-site game. And now the NHL opens its schedule (with some vaccination restrictions) this week to largely open arenas— with the NBA on the way.
You’d almost think they’d been lied to about Covid-19 being stopped by hand sanitizer (never!) . What is going on here? Do they not understand this is risky behaviour according to Dr. Fauci? Haven’t they seen the un-vaxxed regretting their behaviour on TV from a hospital bed?
Or the texts that ask why Scotiabank Arena can host 16,000 screaming fans while families are told by the always-helpful Liberal shill Patty Hajdu to stay at home for Thanksgiving, tell the family not to come over and, egad, don’t travel to see Grandma and Grandpa. What a bunch of yokels they must be.
In fact, despite the attempts to portray them as Pappy Yokums, almost all these people are now cognizant of the risks. Despite Big Tech censoring opposing viewpoints, they grasp the data. But they have had enough of the pandemic mentality. Specifically, they’ve turned off the righteous and moral wrath of the expert class. They want their lives back.
They have had their fill of being told by the knowledge industry how dumb they are with their online “prohibited claims”. They’re not worrying every moment about a 99 percent chance of surviving the virus with nothing more than a scratchy throat or a blocked sinus. They’ve seen too many deadlines come and go.
As Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight observed, “Low-probability risks are hard for our brains to compute, period. And after a year+ of having our brains rewired by (often legitimately very scary) COVID risks, it’s even harder now.” Author/ cartoon list Scott Adams notes, “Dear government, What level of virus risk do we need to reach before ending all mandates and restrictions? If you don’t have a target, don’t expect compliance.”
Right now they only see word salads about certainty from laptop experts and disgraced politicians. And so the football fans in Texas are deciding the next move in the pandemic progress.
Or perhaps it’s the employees of Southwest Airlines— whose work-to-rule campaign this week in protest of the mandatory vaccine policy of the airline— who have decided (United Airlines employees are said to be replicating the walkout). Or what look to be longshoremen unions and employee groups who resent being the whipping post for authoritarian behaviour. They are threatening to grind the economy to a near-halt to convince Biden to cease his demonization of anyone who has a different opinion.
It’s a demonization that targets Biden’s critics, says author Steven Pinker. “There is a myth that ‘cancel culture’ is a myth. But literally hundreds of scholars have been targeted, & a majority of the attacks result in punishment, often firings.” To say nothing of Biden celebrating the firings of airline, rail and automobile industry workers in his latest tele-prompter ramble.
The crisis he’s inviting, in case you didn’t know, is caused by just 775 people in Canada who have serious or critical Covid-19 infections. And that, in a country of 38 million, has crippled our healthcare system. Here’s Canada “overflowing with Covid” situation: 96,000 hospital beds; 2,700 allegedly with Covid-19. Ergo, 2.8 percent of hospital beds in Canada are reportedly Covid patients.
This is a Healthcare® fail not a virus problem. And Patty Hajdu, whose government can’t sell ice cream in the desert, wants you to shelter in place. Fans in football stadiums are united in saying “stuff it”.
Apparently the public has computed the unreliability of the media, and— like MLB hitters turning down the shift to accept the easy bunt—are taking steps to reclaim their lives from the Fear Merchants. As long as fear won, the entrenched interests sought to exploit the observation of Canadian psychiatrist J.T. MacCurdy. “We are all of us not merely liable to being afraid. We are also prone to being afraid of being afraid.”
What we now are— perhaps— seeing is an epidemic of people casting off fear. It might be the most healthy thing they’ve done since March of 2020Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book with his son Evan is called InExact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” They can be powerful words to live by. Live-and-let-live has underpinned much of the Judeo/Christian tradition. It also informs many of the world’s other religions. For secular people the sentiment works just as well.
If you want to be loved and respected then you must extend love and respect in equal measures to those of whom you’re not all that fond. It is both a brake on hubris and an inspiration to our “better angels”. While that balance has been observed more in the breach than in the commission at times, live-and-let-live nonetheless still provides a path to mutual co-existence.
There was a time when that balance guided society. Or, as they like to say, the Good Old Days. Now, the needle monitoring live-and-let-live swings like a Hillary Clinton polygraph. If you’re with safe-space generation, no micro aggression is too small, no affront to LGBTQ-2 too slight to put off national calamity, no enemy too small to squash.
Woke causes replace empathy in the daily conversation. Why? Journalist Michael Shellenberger says apocalyptic behaviour “provides psychological comfort to secular Western people who have gradually abandoned traditional religions. For over a century, sociologists and psychologists have documented rising rates of depression and anxiety… Is it a coincidence that the people who said Western civilization was unsustainable are making it so?”
Not everyone has succumbed. How can you tell? In the spirit of comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be as redneck if…” here is your guide to discovering if you have become a Woke punchline.
If you’ve forgiven Japan and Germany for the atrocities they inflicted on the world in the 1940s but you can’t get past Sir John A. Macdonald putting the railway through the land of the Sioux, Blackfoot and Lakota… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you are concerned about world over-population but you’re nagging your kids about when they will make you grandparents… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you’re so sensitive about killing animals for food that you go extreme vegan but then attend a Pro-Choice rally in a T-shirt bragging about how many abortions you’ve had…you might be a Woke punchline.
If you’re in favour of Trudeau’s aggressive immigration policy but then your kids say they can’t afford to buy a home in a large Canadian centre… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you try to convince friends at a dinner party that Trudeau’s Carbon Tax really does fight global warming but your monthly hydro bill triples… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think Trudeau family friends are the best people to investigate him ignoring CSIS warnings about China but you think Pierre Polievre is a little too cozy with the international forces of Qanon… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you believe Doug Ford is trying to dismantle free healthcare but then act indignant with the boys at beer-league hockey that you can’t get your knee fixed for over two years… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think Stephen Colbert is still funny, but think that Bill Maher is now sounding like a January 6 insurrectionist… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think banning Muslim and Sikh symbols is racist but Quebec doing the same is their cultural right… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think the B.C. government will cure drug addiction by giving addicts a cozy place to shoot up but you tell people at work that you can’t go downtown anymore for all the junkies blocking the Starbucks entrance… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you firmly believe the prime minister is trying to keep a lid on inflation but you protest that Galen Weston is gouging you on food prices… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you donate to Save The Children but then buy a $350 pair of running shoes made by children in Asian sweatshops… … you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think career criminal George Floyd is a martyr but Egerton Ryerson is a genocidal racist… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think today’s academic standards aren’t what they once were but then you go to school to berate the teacher for not communicating the curriculum properly to your indulged child… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you get to the bottom of this column without recognizing yourself in any of these contradictions… you might be a Woke punchline.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
In the classic 1987 Seinfeld episode The Sponge, Kramer is harassed by AIDS Walk organizers for refusing to wear a ribbon as he walks in the event
VOLUNTEER: But you have to wear an AIDS ribbon.
KRAMER: I have to?
VOLUNTEER: Yes.
KRAMER: Yeah, see, that’s why I don’t want to.
VOLUNTEER: But everyone wears the ribbon. You must wear the ribbon!
KRAMER: You know what you are? You’re a ribbon bully (walks away).
Kramer supports AIDS research, but he doesn’t support meaningless symbols. So some aggressive AIDS walkers eventually track him down and beat him in an alley for not going along with the mob. Comedian and curmudgeon George Carlin summed up Kramer’s resistance: “Religion is like a pair of shoes…..Find one that fits for you, but don’t make me wear your shoes.” But these days you must wear the shoes of the cool kids or suffer the consequences.
Naturally, progressives pushing their myriad causes fail to see the irony— even as they laugh at the skit. Since when was it a cultural crime that 100 percent of people don’t agree on any position? You don’t demand everyone eat meat, worship God or write with your left hand. Why do we demand unanimity on Woke catechism? But white- guilt liberals now look for any excuse for indignation.
The last group you’d have expected to adopt the You Must Wear A Ribbon tactic is the NHL. But no, the league that forgot Don Cherry is once again forcing its sanctity on players who dare to say “No, thanks” to wearing LGBTQ+2 sweaters as part of inclusivity promotions. This time San Jose goalie James Reimer said his Christian religious beliefs preclude him from taking part in their costume drama.
Needless to say the cascade of “homophobia” and “intolerance” cries from the AIDS walkers… er, the LGBTQ+2 media lobby… came down on Reimer’s head. His team and the league huffed and puffed about their virtue, but, thankfully, declined the calls for Reimer to be perp-walked to centre ice. Social media was another story, insisting he wear the ribbon.
Here’s what we wrote in January, the last time the NHL virtue soldiers jammed their holiness down other people’s throats over a Philadelphia Flyer who said, “Nyet”. “As Canada’s Justice Minister in the 1960s, Pierre Trudeau articulated the essence of liberal tolerance with his “government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation”. Sixty years later, PET’s son Justin would like to amend that to “the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation— unless those people are saying nasty things about me.”
What once was a proud definition of liberty has transformed into a confidence game run for the Woke elite and its friends in the Media Party. Example this week: The Philadelphia Flyers— in keeping with their conversion to ESG colossus— staged a Gay Pride night. As part of the promotion they wore rainbow-coloured jerseys in warmup.
All except Ivan Provorov, who is Russian Orthodox. His religion is not slack-jawed with Progressive awe at same-sex marriage. So (while he wished no one ill), he refused to join the parade. Cue the Church ladies of the sporting press. “Adam Proteau: Ivan Provorov has the right to any opinion he chooses. And we have the right to have any opinion on Ivan Provorov that we choose. Like this: he’s a shameful human being whose homophobia is only going to get more shameful over the years.”
Fine. Then answer this: If an NHL team held a Christian night, and players were forced to wear jerseys with a crucifix, would you defend a player who opted out because of his conscience? Or would you go full Proteau and say he’s a “shameful human being whose religious intolerance is only going to get more shameful over the years”?
No one in the chattering class wants to take that on, of course. They don’t see that rights that work for them also must work for people they consider heretics… Meanwhile, the unwashed mass… responded with their wallets. Provorov jerseys sold out on the NHL Shop and Fanatic.”
But your elites want everyone to wear the ribbon. Or take a vaccine. Or wear a mask. Or, in the case of this December column, the NHL announcing it’s now a non-binary league. “… the NHL’s sudden conversion to trans orthodoxy is also highly instructive on how deep the tentacles of this ideology have attached themselves in ordinary culture. The NHL? Men-as-women playing against biological women? Until this radical chic agitprop thrust itself to the fore the last few years this was unthinkable for the NHL or its fans. Laughable. Fantastical.
But now you have a league HQ embedded in the heart of Manhattan— where the global media, business and arts community have already succumbed to the intimidation of cultural blackmail. The NHL’s sponsors, suppliers, broadcast partners and just plain neighbours have also taken the Trans Kool Aid. At some point the NHL’s surrender must have seemed inevitable— even for a league that asks its employees to never back down to bullies.
Seeing Bettman— who has epitomized stubborn resistance in his denial of the science of CTE brain trauma— crumble before the forces of approved speech is instructive to those who think this leaky scow can still be turned around quickly. Or that the forces of objective media might raise a whimper about being.”
Media so embedded in its own vanity it hurts. “Sticks and stones may hurt journalists’ bones but names are first-degree murder. So save a prayer for poor Mr. Bettman. He held out longer than some before accepting the white guilt hemlock. Having known his desire to be the longest-serving commissioner in history he’s probably now wishing he’d quit his job three seasons ago. Because he’ll never wash away his cisgender privilege now.”
It’s telling that the thought police have made organized religion an underdog. James Reimer wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his Christian beliefs. In 2023 that is enough to get you cancelled.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the fifth-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
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