What planet is Alberta Premier Jason Kenney living on?
Judging by his joy-killing, soul-deadening, anxiety-producing, stress-creating and fear-promoting lockdown policies, it’s a lonely one. On Planet Kenney, people live in a constant state of fear, treating themselves and each other as dangerous, disease-bearing creatures who are simply too vile to hug each other. They seldom experience the joy of authentic human relationships, instead relying almost entirely on two-dimensional Zoom and Skype images on computer screens. They accept indefinite and draconian restrictions on their basic freedoms, and support punishing people who dare to exercise their fundamental human rights to enjoy the gifts of life and freedom.
On Planet Kenney, people drink lots of alcohol, to cure boredom and to lessen the pain of unemployment, poverty and despair. They smoke marijuana, secure in the knowledge that government deems its supply to be essential, unlike the non-essential robust gatherings one might ordinarily expect at churches, mosques, synagogues and temples. On Planet Kenney, parents do not take their kids swimming, to the playground, or to enjoy playdates with other kids. Neither adults nor children play hockey, soccer, football, baseball or any other team sport. They don’t play racquetball or squash, and they most certainly do not socialize with each other, or enjoy meals at restaurants. Parents do not attend school plays or concerts to watch their children on stage. Children are not rewarded with smiles and applause for all the hard work they have put into their piano practices, or for memorizing their lines for a poetry recital. Children don’t get hugged by their own grandparents. Many grandparents would rather live their lives fully and joyfully, instead of eking out a lonely and fear-based existence, but lockdowns deprive them of their personal choice.
Voters on Planet Kenney have no democratic say in shaping the laws under which they must live, because elected representatives have handed power to one unelected, unaccountable, and politically appointed doctor. The people on
Planet Kenney have little understanding of economics, believing that a health care system can be sustained on borrowed money rather than by the prosperity that is only generated when all people are allowed to work. On Planet Kenney, people believe that “we’re all in this together,” even though only public sector workers enjoy job security and full salaries, paid for by the small business owners whose livelihoods are destroyed by lockdowns.
Planet Kenney is a police state, where law enforcement’s top priority is to punish the grave evils of spending time with friends, holding the hand of a dying parent, gathering peacefully outdoors, not covering one’s face, and enjoying Christmas with grandparents. Resources being finite, police on Planet Kenney necessarily spend less time on stopping thefts, vandalism, break-and-enters, murders, assaults, rapes, kidnappings, and the trafficking of women into prostitution. On Planet Kenney, no price is too high to pay for trying to stop a virus, even if a virus cannot be stopped.
On Planet Kenney, only those who died with a particular virus in their body at time of death are worthy of public mourning. A virus-related death triggers media headlines and public announcements by the planet’s reigning medical monarch; the other 97 per cent of deaths are not publicly mentioned and mourned by government officials. Deaths from cancelled surgeries, delayed cancer diagnoses, drug overdoses and suicides must be accepted stoically as part of the “new normal,” even if these unnecessary deaths are caused by a futile attempt to stop the spread of a virus by lockdowns.
On Planet Kenney, it’s considered callous and offensive to mention the fact that people do die, or to mention the fact that people with three, four or more serious illnesses are already close to death. The sad truth that people do not live forever can only be whispered on Planet Kenney; saying it out loud is blasphemous.
The rulers of Planet Kenney deem a person’s physical body to be infinitely more important than a person’s mind, soul and spirit. According to this rather ugly religion, a person’s mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual health are trivial compared to the importance of making one’s physical body live as long as possible, no matter what. Hence all of the unemployment, poverty, misery, anxiety, stress, depression, despair, suicides, drug overdoses and cancer deaths are all worth it, because the central purpose of life is to try to avoid one virus, all else be damned.
The inhabitants of Planet Kenney are smugly confident in their enlightenment. They unquestioningly accept everything the government tells them, because they know that politicians always tell the truth, and politicians never seek to increase their own power. There is no serious debate on Planet Kenney. Anyone who dares to point out the massive harms caused by the government’s violations of human rights is deemed dangerous and utterly untrustworthy. People who support lockdowns are good and scientific; people who point to alternatives, like focused protection of the vulnerable, are bad and unscientific. So why debate?
Kept in a state of fear by daily media propaganda, people on Planet Kenney ignore science. Medical science tells us that loneliness, isolation, excessive alcohol consumption, staying indoors, lack of exercise and poverty, are bad for our health. Contact restricted to Zoom and Skype are insufficient means of maintaining healthy human relationships.
Delayed cancer diagnosis can kill.
As Dr. Dennis Modry pointed out, lockdowns simply do not work once a virus has already infected a large portion of the population.
Sadly, Planet Kenney is not fictional. The Premier has made it Alberta’s reality today.
A holistic concern for citizens’ overall health and well-being has been replaced by a fanatical focus on one virus, even when lockdowns are killing more people than the virus.
Lockdown policies are bad for public health because they promote loneliness, isolation, alcoholism, drug abuse, inactivity, poverty, depression, anxiety, suicide, drug overdoses, cancelled surgeries and delayed cancer diagnoses.
Lockdowns endanger the health and well-being of Canadians by restricting (or banning outright) good and healthy things like singing, socializing, going to the gym, and spending Christmas with friends and family.
While exalting the physical body as far more important than our souls, minds and spirits, Canada’s chief medical officers are in fact harming our physical health, as well as the other dimensions of our humanity.
John Carpay, The Western Standard
