Yesterday, I was given a list of side-effects from getting my first vaccine shot. However, not listed was one of blistering rage. For near a full year, I'd been undergoing a series of emotions which all joined together into one formless, unidentifiable mess of a blob. I was numb and useless. Recently though, the emotions have begun to separate and I can identify them one by one: great sorrow, and ceaseless anger.
And they originate from the same place: the inability of our political and business leaders to confront this crisis in a timely manner that would have saved millions upon millions of lives. Had countries shut down flights from China in a timely manner, the spread of the virus could have been stopped there as the Chinese managed to defeat it utterly. Had our countries, the USA, Canada, the EU, et al, simply shut down for six weeks when the virus was discovered locally, then its spread could have been stopped utterly. However, what we got were halfhearted and token efforts. Symbols instead of action, and the central symbol was a giant hand with its middle finger raised at us plebeians: "Fuck off and die!" was the simple message. And we did, in droves.
But they made a mistake: many of us survived. Too many of us did. And coming out of this crisis, I can't be the only one to have come to the realization there is no more compromising with our leaders. They have drawn lines in the sand, and decided who will live and die is not all of us but only themselves. That rather than working for a better society, they would prefer to gate their chosen community off from the consequences of their callous decisions, and plug their ears and cover their eyes to better ignore real human lives falling to pieces about them.
We cannot survive our leadership any longer. They, the Trumps, Bidens, Trudeaus, and Johnsons, are wholly unfit to confront the oncoming challenges of climate change, of which Covid-19 is a part. That rather than preserving lives, what they sought to protect was money and business.
No longer. This cannot be any longer. Reform is no longer possible. What is needed is wholesale change of our political, business, and military leaders and ideologies from top to bottom. This is a call for revolution.
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