Devolving Democracies

 

We are in much fragmentation. Our world churns with ingredients, political, social, religious, and even spiritual. Much differentiation pervades. Much unhappiness persists. And like the old movie, ‘Network’, one may feel the need to thrust one’s head out of the window and shout out something like: “I’m fed up with the system and I won’t take it anymore!”

Democracy as an ideal holds to the simple rubric of majority rule. It works so long as one is comfortably not marginalized. It is an anathema to the spirit if one is outcast, vilified, traduced, or culminated. We wish to keep things simple. Let live and let live. Be who you are. Just don’t expect me to be the same as you. Be vegetarian. Be against blood transfusion. Be against (Covid) vaccinations. Be a Baptist or a Catholic or a Jew. Just don’t over-mandate me ‘to be’ too.

Majority rule can create a disabling sense of one’s worth. We don’t want ‘them’ over-taking us. We don’t wish for our current status quo to be threatened. And so, as a majority of blue smarties, say, we grow uncomfortable with more and more purple smarties entering our domain. They clothe themselves differently. They make for a distaste in our life. They break our codes of conduct. They clack together in a language we don’t understand. And now, as their numbers grow, we find ourselves too soon under threat of being overwhelmed by their voting powers, and we don’t like it!

Mandates have that effect on us. We lose our vote. Mandates demand. We lose our freedom. Yet safely enough, should the majority vote that everyone must wear a seat-belt, we can choose never to drive or be a passenger in a vehicle again. We can choose. We can stay home. We can walk. We can talk. We can write freely. … Or can we?

Democracy has it that we give in to the group’s wishes, or one may choose not to participate. Draconian measures have it that one must comply; or suffer direct censure. Our bank balances can be frozen. Our freedom of movement can be rigidly curtailed. Our social participation can be severely restricted. Our religious assembly can be cauterized. Our individualism becomes eradicated, and a social credit system can be imposed. As a person of the state one is subject to personal checks and balances. Yes, even the purchase of too much broccoli may also be affected.

In the ‘free world’ we did not think it would come to this. We did not expect to have our livelihoods threatened by the gods of health and pharmaceutical industries and complicit governments and puppet leaders of essentially non-scientific narratives. Like science itself, we expected instead to have our lives evolving on established truths, yet perpetually fluid to new information, new verifications, new admissions of the need to alter course. Such is the stream of life. Such is going with the flow. One has choices! But what if it is too late?

What is done cannot necessarily be undone. We can return most purchases we make for a full refund. We can unsubscribe. We can walk out of the urgent care clinic if the wait is too long for us, and we grow too impatient. We nowadays can even choose the right to die. But once having had the polio vaccine we cannot take it out of us; nor so for measles, the shingles, the smallpox, or the malaria vaccine. In the bloodstream, they do their thing. Still, we are mostly comfortable, if not even grateful, for their validation in us. They’re tested. We can feel secure.

Not so for Covid. There is far too much controversy surrounding ‘The Jab’. There are far too many news reports, articles, web sites, interviews, gainsayers, and medical experts warning one not to admit the vaccine into one’s bloodstream. As well, much research revealing the pro-phy-lac-tic in-efficacy of the vaccine hardly gives one a realistic boost of confidence. And so, it comes down to ‘The Mandate’. As proven, letting off steam by our shouting out of the window does not do much for all of us, effectively. Choice is a precious commodity. One cannot un-ring a bell. Yet in the bonny province of B.C., with Bill 36, the mandate remains clear: Get jabbed, or else! (Now then, heard of British Columbia's Bill 36? One loses all confidentiality with any Health Care Worker, at the Government's demand, or that Health Care worker loses their license, or worse*.)

*Bill 36 BC is a new law that replaces the Health Professions Act and changes how health professions are regulated12. It gives the Health Minister the authority to appoint College Boards, to mandate vaccines for health practitioners, and to punish them for challenging government policies345. Some critics say it violates the independence and rights of self-governing professions and the public interest345. It was approved by the legislature on November 24, 2022 and received Royal Assent the same day12. It will come into force by a Cabinet order2.