Happy Easter! A time of astonishing negligence, incompetence and mismanagement by Alberta’s UCP Government

And how much more for ‘oil by rail’ fiasco? Plus $120 Millions for the cartoon watchers!!

The litany of retrogressive UCP policies, many quite puzzling —even to other viewpoints of the political right—, goes on and on, the intransigent Alberta government digging in, lacing breastworks, erecting palisades and positioning counter-siege engines while scanning surrounding horizons for the telltale haze of distant dust tramped aloft by JT riding at the head of his Bigfoot horde.

Eventually, on the backside of Covid—for those who believe such a thing exists in order to have a backside, and trust we’ll get there by concentrated, coordinated, cooperative effort—outliers, laggards, and modern-day Luddites will become more and more discernible, surrounded, contrasted and cystically irritating. Short of psychomagical forcefields, leper colonies, or cherubim wielding flaming swords, the delusion of benignity will inevitably start disappearing like atoll islands and icebergs in a warm, rising sea. This new, Covid world will of course have to consider the malignancy of those holdouts remaining only by the connivance of strategic, technological, or ideological contrivance. Perhaps not all, but surely some, will have to be mopped up, not so much because they would remain point sources to reinfect the inoculated mainstream, but because they would remain opportunities for the virus to mutate with potential to render all the vaccine developments and restrictive protocols the cooperative have worked so hard to get moot. Too many around the planet are too all-in for beating Covid to allow contrarians to nullify the investment; sooner or later they will be judged wicked.

Abrahamists should be able to understand the logic: it’s in the Bible, the Genesis story of The Flood. Christians ought to correlate the idea of renewal, especially on this long weekend: it’s in the Gospels, in its penultimate episode of the Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (Olympians, Druids, Hopi, Gulf Island gardeners of every or no faith—and many, many others— also get the rites of spring and promise of renewal).

But then there are certain denominations of the Christian Right which cherry-pick from history’s most well-known book despite the lesson of one of the world’s most respected literary critics and ordained United Church of Canada minister, Northrop Frye, who instructed all students to learn their Bible as a whole, Genesis to Revelation and everything betwixt. Every examiner knows the lazy pupil’s tactic of reading only the first and last chapters of the work he or she is supposed to know thoroughly (the clever ones who also read something in the middle get the best marks, though they could do better). But only the willfully ignorant fancy themselves more clever by discounting or skipping over major parts— say, the Old Testament because it is the “Bible” of Jews who, revisionists claim, “murdered Jesus.” The wizen professor easily recognizes the resulting hypocrisy when these smart-asses contradictorily provoke conflict because public schools don’t teach that the Genesis Creation Story is as true as the scientific understanding of the cosmos. Regardless their marks, the willfully ignorant are content to signal ‘virtue’ amongst themselves—the thumbprints on their noses, for example.

A particularly bellicose variety of SoCon seems to ignore the liberal promise of renewal, of Spring and its hemispheric germination of rejuvenation; Christians’ Easter is but one such celebration of many. Rather, many SoCons’ ‘renewal’ is of a certain kind where Jews, for example, may be tolerated only insofar as they’re instruments to achieve the supremacy of Christianity (indeed, as any evangelical guests of cheesy Holy Land re-enactments will assure, Jews—supposed essential ingredients for the unfolding of Christological Judgement Day—will be forced to convert on pain of eternal Hellfire, the supremacist’s way of saying “thanks for the Rapture, suckers!”). This kind of ‘renewal’ is not only exclusive to True Believers by way of the rewarding process of “Rapture,” it is also otherworldly, condemning this world with indifference and fostering bigotry while awaiting it. Renewing this world doesn’t concern those with a ticket on the Rapture Express. Indeed, the notion is regarded by many SoCons as sinful, like denying ticket-holders’ exceptionalism—the Bow and the Christ, set upon the clouds of Ararat or Golgotha— or any other story set between Eden and Armageddon— notwithstanding.

It’s tough having to watch the kind of Covid obstinance on display in many locales like Alberta— or Texas or Brazil—especially when so many have been and will be hurt by it, and while so many are cooperating to end this year-long pandemic—even in said places where the holdouts are really loud minority factions supporting one of the smallest subsets of society: politicians. Although this past year has been very hard for everybody, the missus and I acknowledge, every, single day, that we are among the least impacted by Covid: we are pensioners safe at home with no mortgage (and, with respect Alberta, we live on the West Coast with a lot of other expat Albertans). We pray every day for our compatriots to hang on, tough it out, do our parts and get through this. We know it’s really hard on families and young workers (we have kids and grandkids working). But, no matter how hard it seems right now, the hope of renewal is real—real for everyone, Abrahamists, Hindus, Buddhists, Druids, Rastafarians, gardeners —everybody, even atheists like me and my Dove. And it’s everyday real, not simply at the conspicuous festivals of the annulus.

The wilfully ignorant are included, naturally, even if they don’t know it (anyone who’s been a parent knows how to do this). That’s what Jesus recommended.

The real future here on earth is: our societies will get through this, although some won’t see it—for them, it will suffice that their communities and descendants will; some paradigms will have to be abandoned —but at least parts can be salvaged and repurposed; many paradigms will need to be adjusted or amended with new or reused parts; new paradigms never seen hitherto will be developed to ameliorate the globalized world’s vulnerability to emergent viruses. That’s what’s on the backside of Covid 19.

I’m of the age when I’m not sure I’ll be around long enough to say, “I told you so.”

So I’m saying it now. Hang in there: we’ve been needing a new world anyway. We’re gonna get there!

Good luck and be safe, my friends!