Saturday, April 17, 2021

Doug Ford: Resign.

 I am stressing. Like probably everyone I know who shares a province with me.

Oh, how the worm turns. It wasn't three months ago I was full of pity for the United States. Now I'm full of envy. For all their problems, and boy do they have them...Covid-19 is less and less of one every day. Whereas here, in Ontario? We're seeing numbers twice as high as the ones that prompted the first lockdown, and models suggest we're just getting started. By end-May we can expect ten thousand new cases a day. We're at less than half that now, and our hospitals are bursting at the seams.

So what does Ford do? He manages to piss absolutely everyone off on both sides of the issue. That takes talent.

I've heard from all sorts of people convinced we are now a police state because the cops have the power to ask your purpose for violating the stay-at-home order. Part of me scoffs: what is the point of a stay-at-home order with no teeth? But then my BIPOC friends weigh in. They're scared. Anything that encourages more interaction with police scares them, and why wouldn't it? The stories I've heard. Like how they're in a big group with many white friends, and they're the only one detained. Like how they "fit the description" of someone who committed a crime, and it turns out they look nothing like that person except for, you know, the skin tone. Like how they're told they "don't belong" in the neighbourhood they own a house in. 

Now, both Waterloo Regional Police Service and the Toronto Police Service have indicated they have no intention of stopping cars or people indiscriminately. That means nothing since we're not talking about INdiscriminate stops at all.

So let's look at who is required to violate the stay-at-home order, shall we?

Poor people and minorities, mostly. They're the ones that have minimum wage jobs in the service industry, for the most part, and the service industry is only seeing some actual shutdowns: gyms, hair salons and restaurants. All other stores are open, and so are factories, and let's just see you, a contract worker, complain about the lack of social distancing, masks or hand sanitizer in any of those factories. Your contract will be mysteriously terminated the next day. So you don't complain, and you get sick, and since Ford has legislated sick days out of existence, you go to work anyway because you can't afford to stay home. Now you've infected everyone in your workplace, and they'll bring it home with them and FUCK YOU, DOUG FORD. FUCK YOU SIDEWAYS WITH A RUSTY CHAINSAW. 

They're going to ban us from using parks because they have backyards. They don't think about the dangers of transit because they all drive cars. It is impossible to govern effectively if you don't think, let alone care, about people who don't live exactly as you do. 

"Stay home, and get the vaccine as soon as you're eligible". Yeah, I'll get right on that. I'm not eligible yet, and with the continuing shortages, even when I am I won't actually get a shot for who knows how long. I'm lucky: I CAN stay home. Many others aren't, and have no choice but to go out and work. But Doug Ford doesn't care about those people, they don't donate money to him.

And behind this, the virus and its variants, ripping through the population at ever-increasing rates, and STILL there are so many people suggesting it's all a great big hoax.

I'm tired. I know, you are too. It feels kind of gauche to say what we're all thinking, somehow. But if I don't write this out, I'll simply detonate. 

It was supposed to be four weeks to flatten the curve. The curve is now a steep, steep slope, a year later, and there is absolutely no coherent plan from our government to get things under control. Patrols along the Ontario/Québec and Ontario/Manitoba borders? Yeah, because that's where all the cases are coming from, right, Doug, you incompetent buffoon? 

Entire families are in the ICU right now. We need leadership. Doug Ford, step aside and let a person who actually cares take over. You know you're going to get demolished at the ballot box. Save yourself the humiliation and save hundreds, perhaps thousands of Ontarian lives. They may not donate to you, but that doesn't make them sacrificial pawns. 


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