I take no pleasure in being right, as my freedom is forcefully taken, my wife and baby suffer, my entire country moves toward full hard tyranny, and my darkest predictions all come true. I have long been a conspiracy theorist, aware of the evil forces lurking underneath society, the technocrats and eugenicists overtly and covertly working to depopulate and enslave humanity. I've spent 15 years trying to snap my family members and fellow Canadian out of the spell keeping them beholden to a mainstream media and government that are lying to them, taking us down the road - and over the cliff - of totalitarianism. I've been heavily censored and ridiculed, but I was right. Now, as everything I was called paranoid for predicting is officially announced and put into effect, my family has cut ties with me, and soon the government will finalize martial law in my town, ending any chance of being able to reach them.
Canada, like many nations cooperating with the Western world's Covid-19 pandemic narrative, has been under increasingly strict lockdowns and restrictions since last March. Currently, with variations by region, Canadians are under orders to stay at home except for essential/official/emergency trips for groceries and medical appointments. Masks are required inside, and recommended outside. All gatherings, socializing, sport, recreation, religion, and most other activities are illegal. Christmas was cancelled and anyone even so much as nodding to a neighbor over the fence was demonized as a "Grandma Killer". Addictions, mental illness, domestic abuse, and suicides have jumped to levels never before seen, and suffering caused by the restrictions is doing far more damage and killing far more people than the virus was EVER projected to do, even by the inaccurate models used by government here to justify the outright tyranny.
And tyranny is exactly what it is. We have to stop avoiding using words simply because they are emotionally charged. If the word fits, we must use it. Tyranny is arbitrary use of power; abuse of authority; a state of absolute rule; oppressive and severe governance; a cruel, harsh, or oppressive action. By every possible definition, this is tyranny. (Not convinced? Use my Tyranny Checklist to find out!) And as I've said for years:
In Canada, in 2021, Liberty is not thriving. Tyranny is festering.
And now, full martial law and house arrest is sweeping from Quebec and Ontario across the rest of the country. Here in BC, we tend to be last to receive each of the new measures. We have a lot of freedom-lovers here on the West coast, and we're geographically far away from Ottawa (the capital). People here don't put up with losing their freedom as easily as people do in the rest of the country. But we aren't shielded for long, as anything that happens there will make its way here before long.
So I will soon be (further) confined to my house.
My well-off parents, who live just a few kilometers away, have been using the pandemic as an excuse not to see me or their 15-month-old grandson. I'll spare you the details, but in short, the restrictions give them a way to avoid dealing with personal issues that need to be dealt with. I'm certain they were happy to hear Christmas was cancelled, for example, because it meant they wouldn't have to explain to me why my wife and I weren't invited over. Meanwhile, they had my brother and his family over to celebrate. My mom predicted "this will all blow over in a few days" back in March, and has been downplaying it ever since. They're in their 70s, and can't wait for the vaccine. When I tried to tell my mother (who gets deathly ill from bee stings and carries an epi-pen) that the vaccine isn't recommended for her, she ignored me. They are literally itching for the jab, no matter how dangerous it is, and no matter how few (or total lack of) positive effects it offers. They claim they're not concerned about the virus at all, but if that were true, why are they clamouring for the vaccine? My wife and I are disabled shut-ins who can't drive, and have trouble getting to the grocery store and back during the best of times, but we can't count on any visits from nearby family members. They're either too afraid to disobey government orders, or they don't want to face me (and the truth), or some combination of the above.
Personally speaking, I have suffered from PTSD (an anxiety disorder) since my grandmother died. I had been her primary caregiver, living with her in the family house in Vancouver, caring for her and her gardens. 5 years ago this week, she fell, broke her hip, and died the next day. My wife and I were quickly pushed off the property so it could be sold into the hot housing market. We ended up homeless and in very bad situations during 2016 and 2017. I was dealing with not only the trauma, but a sudden neurological illness - chronic pain, nerve malfunction, debilitating fatigue, vision problems, bladder and bowel dysfunction, heart problems, and more. I had been healthy all my life but was suddenly extremely ill, and doctors had no explanation for me other than to put me on addictive and dangerous SSRIs.
After struggling to get off those pills, I began to regain my health and push whatever is wrong with me into remission, and my wife @MediKatie and I unexpectedly conceived. We moved out of Vancouver, up to this small BC town, to be near family and raise our baby. We had no idea what was about to hit at the start of 2020!
So here we are, in a little rental house, in the middle of a nonstop construction zone - a roundabout is being built. It has already been 11 months, with another 4 months left to go in the latest extension. There's no bus service in this part of town during the construction, so we have to walk 10 blocks to get groceries. My wife is crippled from spinal cancer. She walks with a limp but is able to get to the shops and back when she's having a good day. I have an undiagnosed neurological condition - something like Multiple Sclerosis. My limbs don't work properly, I have shooting pain through every nerve in my body, and it often feels like I'm burning alive without ever dying. Some days I can walk the 10 blocks and back without problem, some days it's impossible, and other days it seems possible - until I get part way. We're also currently snowed in, and walking conditions aren't likely to improve before March or April. The bottom line is, we have trouble getting groceries. It's not that we can't afford to pay for them. We just can't physically get ourselves to the market, or back home with the food afterward. And we can't count on nearby family members for help.
So when restrictions cause store hours to be decreased, it affects us. Mask mandates affect us. Reduced bus service affects us. Restaurants only serving drive-through customers affects us. Restrictions and even mere recommendations that family don't visit each other affect us. I can't and won't try to explain to you all the ways this is hurting us. Maybe your imagination fills in the gaps, though, and you believe me when I say this has been extremely tough. You're probably going through your own unique struggles, and I'm not trying to downplay them, or compete with you. I'm only trying to be heard, both to get this off my chest, and in the hopes that someone identifies with it and doesn't feel so alone.
Manjeet
When I was working as a nurse during the 2000s, I specialized in psychiatry, and worked with acutely mentally ill adults at an inpatient psychiatric unit. I had patients from all walks of life, and with all kinds of struggles, but one lady really sticks in my memory, and I've been thinking about her lately.
Manjeet was a middle-aged Indian woman who had recently been divorced and ostracized by her husband. In some Indian cultures/castes, divorced women are seen as useless, shameful, and unwanted. My patient was a soft-spoken and very sweet lady. She suffered from deep depression since the divorce and being ostracized. Her ex-husband and his family had been abusive toward her, and she felt her standing in the local Indian community had been lost. She was having trouble eating, sleeping, and caring for her basic needs. The isolation from family was killing her, and she wanted to die to escape the pain. Try as we might, the medications and therapies did little to improve the situation. Her family had been so important to her, that losing it this way was too devastating to go on. I developed a personal rapport with her over several shifts, and despite keeping things professional, I found myself emotionally invested in her recovery. We talked at length during each of my shifts, even when I was not her assigned nurse. She remained pleasant and sweet, but profoundly sad. Even electric shock therapy failed to shake her clinical depression.
After several weeks of treatment, and some supervised day passes that went well, her doctors spoke with her family about plans for return to the community. They were cold and essentially told the hospital their mother would be on her own after discharge. Soon after, she committed suicide by hanging herself on a bath robe in a patient bathroom. When we found her, we had to lift her body up, and cut her down. Some of my fellow nurses were traumatized by that. I handled it well, as I handle all crisis events in the moment. But afterward, I felt quite sad that we had failed her so dramatically. Suicides on the unit were rare (although they unfortunately did happen) and often had an impact on staff. Death is part of life, and certainly part of being a nurse, but still not easy. And for me, it was hard to lose Manjeet, because I had become invested in her recovery. I wanted so badly for her to be happy again, and to be accepted by her family again, but they continued to shun her. I wonder, were they happy to hear she had killed herself? Was that their unspoken intention? Or did they realize afterward they had gone too far? Did any of them have any guilt for their role in her death? Working in psych certainly had ups and downs, and I learned a lot, but to this day I'm troubled by some of the things I experienced, and that was one of them.
I'm not suicidal. On the contrary, I want to live. In fact, you could say I'm the opposite of suicidal - I'm afraid to die! And I don't want to die. I'm quite pleased with life, despite the suffering I go through, and want to continue it. That said, I've been depressed (and even suicidal) before, and I know how it feels. I also know how isolation feels, and how it feels to be ostracized by one's family. I guess that's why I've been thinking back to that patient, lately. She shouldn't have had to suffer like that. She shouldn't have been in such a painful and hopeless situation, that a messy and traumatic death was a better option. Nobody should have to exist in that place.
And yet, that's where we are putting people - millions of them - with these lockdowns. Mass suffering, mass pain, mass isolation, mass sorrow, mass agony. We're social creatures... even introverts like me. We need to see others, be around others, touch others. We need to connect. We need to feel loved, supported, and cared about. Some more than others, but we ALL need it.
To deny ANYONE those things is intensely cruel, and must be justified. Not excused, but fully and completely justified. Where is the justification for imposing martial law and house arrest? This new and extreme level of restriction is going to hurt and kill millions of people. Are we to believe it is also going to SAVE millions of people, and that's why it is being justified? Where are the calculations? I don't believe them. I think they're clamping down to seize control of us, not to help us.
How it feels is like being held underwater, and being told it's for our own good.
The lockdowns and restrictions are the hand holding our head under the surface. Increased restrictions like house arrest mean the hand is holding us even deeper underwater, further from the air we need to live. When things eased a little in the summer, it was like we were allowed to come up to breathe. Now, we're being held under again, before we had really caught our breath.
Those of us who struggle against the hand holding us underwater are said to be troublemakers, anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, anti-lockdowners, shameful refuseniks, paranoid nutjobs, terrorists, and worse. If we don't like being held underwater, they claim there's something wrong with us.
They said it would only be for a minute, but once a minute passed, they extended it for another minute. It's scary and rough, but after we barely survive to the end of THAT minute, they grin, and say it's going to have to be another five.
Nobody can hold their breath forever. But if you panic, you'll lose the last of your oxygen, so remaining calm is the best option. It feels like the barrage of negative news is meant to ensure we can't stay calm. We're being held underwater, and simultaneously tickled and poked. It's akin to waterboarding the entire population, without the waterboard.
We exist in a state somewhere between torture and limbo. We're told that normal is never coming back, and if we can't handle that, it's because we're mentally ill. Those who struggle against the hand holding them under the water are said to be defective. Their deaths will not be considered significant.
We are ALL Manjeet.
After 15 years of knowing this was coming, trying to warn others, and being called paranoid, it is now abundantly clear to all but the willfully ignorant that everything is changing. Liberty is now a dirty word. Anyone who wants freedom is said to be ruining things for the rest of us. If you don't lock yourself down, you're killing Grandma. If you don't diaper your face, you're the reason the bug continues to spread, and therefore the reason for the lockdowns and restrictions. (In other words, if you don't wear a mask, you're the reason everybody has to wear masks!?) After years of being right in literally EVERYTHING I've said, and all my societal projections being flawless, I am shadowbanned by big tech, and ostracized by my family. Nothing I say reaches their ears, let alone their minds. And now, I will soon be even more shut in and locked away than ever before, held underwater and holding my breath, unable to speak.
I'm blinking my eyes. It's morse code. That's the only option I have left to try to get my message across. I'm saying "help... government out of control... permanent state of emergency... lockdown of economy and society... covid threat level is moderate... can't breathe... beginning to panic... please listen to me..."
As things begin to go black, and panic rises to the point of taking over, I glance around for any sign help is coming. Will my family come to their senses? Will the government have mercy? Will the elites behind the scenes decide not to complete their enslavement of humanity? It is difficult to maintain hope.
But if one panics, one loses all credibility. Freak out, you're toast. Get aggressive, you're toast. Say something over the top, you're toast. Cry at the wrong time, you're toast. They're looking for any vulnerability. Any reason to throw you under the bus, to say "he's with the crazy conspiracy theorists", and join in with the crowd mocking you. The media and the state make it easy and safe for them.
They don't realize that once we're gone, they're next. They don't have a full understanding of the situation, or they haven't thought this through, or both.
As police fan out across Canada, arresting anyone not indoors, we have to ask if this is really about fighting a microbe.
This is the formula being used since March. Government controls the testing for covid, so when they want more positives, they run more tests. The media reports cases are up (and other nonsense like a new strain is spreading) to instill fear. The fear allows government to justify more restrictions and more testing, creating a viscous feedback loop they can speed up or slow down as desired.
Right now, they're saying we didn't lock down hard enough at Christmas, and "cases are up" as a result. That's supposedly the justification for holding the entire country's heads under water. It's classic victim-blaming, a form of psychological abuse, like bullying. They lock us down, then claim we aren't obeying fully, resulting in even harsher lockdown. Everything is the fault of the people, according to the government and media. We're the reason the pandemic drags on and on, and we're the reason for all the lockdowns and restrictions. It's gaslighting.
It's amazing to me that my family continues to avoid me and the truth. Some part of them must know that I'm right. Perhaps they simply can't have that discussion because it would mean admitting their entire lives have been based on lies. They're too invested in the official narrative to be willing to consider the truth. That's scary. And I think a LOT of people are just like my parents - ignorant of reality, literal indentured slaves to the system, unable and unwilling to speak against it in any way, even if that means betraying their own children and leaving them to die. It's sad, but people often choose the system over their own flesh and blood. This "pandemic" (mostly the reaction to it) is splitting Canada and the world apart. Families, communities, and cultures, which have been the cornerstone of human society, are for the very first time being nullified and disbanded.
We are a lost people, adrift, fully up for grabs, at the mercy of our fears and the tyrants who stoke them.
To change it, we must first acknowledge it. Perhaps 50 people will read this article, which took me 3 hours to write, representing about 3 days worth of my free time. I could have spent that time on something else, but I chose to attempt to communicate with YOU, because I believe that's my best hope of bringing about any positive change. Will you hear me?
DRutter
Turn off the terrorvision, people! You're being programmed with fear! It's all in your heads! But but, you're saying the coronavirus isn't real? Nah, Karen, I'm saying it's as real as the flu, but you weren't mentally ill a year ago because of it!
I hear you brother.
Yes, it's the kind of thing a lot of people probably identify with... but maybe hard to upvote because of the "bad news" title.
Can hardly believe they are still working on that roundabout 😵. This whole covid crap is getting well and truly out of hand. Is there no grocery delivery service available to you either?
It was supposed to be done at the end of October, but they decided they wanted a budget increase, so they tried to hold it over until the new year. It was embarrassingly contrived; they took most of August off and dicked around all fall and then kept giving themselves extensions for obviously fake reasons until they just blocked it off and said they can't pave when it's cold out, so it'll be done next year. At least there's not dozens of construction workers pretending to work over the winter!
So ridiculous that it's still going, a year later, with months left. Bad enough any time, but during a pandemic and lockdown? Cruel and unusual punishment! And they have been without mail service and delivery because the road and sidewalks are blocked off. Now the snow. You'd think this kind of thing wouldn't happen in a civilized nation!
Only the most truly stupid/ignorant, which is few, really buy what's going on. Most of us in our right minds wouldn't accept this if we weren't severely traumatized and just going along with what everyone else does. People en mass are dealing with this "pandemic" with creepy denial tactics like individuals do when they can't deal with trauma like death or guilt. It's a classic conformity experiment: say the shorter line is longer because everybody else said that's the correct answer = put on the mask and say it's for our safety because everybody else is.