X Ox Have an idea for a story? M opinions@theotherpress.ca ett sae eel ¢ A whole lot of hesitancy ¢ Creeping on one year of lockdown ¢ Thoughts on an insurrection ..and more How long can this keep going on? >» Creeping on one year of lockdown Matthew Fraser Opinions Editor C has just surpassed 1000 accumulated COVID-19 deaths. There were also whooping 1475 new cases in three days. Quebec has okayed some of the most draconian lockdown measures I’ve ever heard of and I suspect that I have typed some variation of this article at least twice already. With a maze of regulations and forced closures, Quebec has entered some strange variation of a police state. What else do you call it when a city is forcibly shuttered every night by 8pm outside of war time? How else do you view a curfew that the province’s own minister of health, Horacio Arruda, has acknowledged as having no hard scientific evidence to support it? The idea behind Quebec's lockdown seems to be that you must do something if doing nothing might look bad... and what a great idea. Its always nice to know that for fear of a few disapproving comments or an OP-ED or two, a province will catapult its people into house arrest. Here in BC, we are better off in terms of restrictions: no 8pm curfew, no location- based restriction to walking your dog, no written note from your employer to explain your curfew movements—yet I have no Thoughts on an insurrection » Falling from above Matthew Fraser Opinions Editor ecently, I’ve been thinking about Cicero's parable The Sword of Damocles. Damocles was a court jester under King Dionysius who had been overcome with jealousy; King Dionysius tells Damocles to lay on his golden couch and orders the other servants to serve him a feast. While Damocles eats, the king tells another servant to go and bring him his sword which he sharpens and hangs above Damocles by a single horsehair. Damocles now turned king is overcome with fear, he can see the sharp sword above him, and he knows the hair may well break at any second leaving the sword to fall directly on him. Terror washes over him, and Damocles begs to get off the throne as the opulent life of a king could not distract from the looming spectre of death. I personally believe that in a democracy the voice of the governed should be loud, taken seriously, and well respected. The governed should make their will known to those who seek to govern them, and that will should weigh heavily on the minds of those who seek to stalk through the halls of power as if it were their personal fiefdom. The will of the people reason to believe that that will not be attempted here. Though my not-so- secret anarchist leanings are commonly on display, I have no reason to suspect this as a creeping pace towards totalitarianism, instead, this worries me because we seem to have forgotten how important debate on these types of decisions actually is. I'm not sure I would live all that differently if all restrictions were lifted but I sure would like to know that we as a population appreciate and thoroughly consider the changes that are being brought into our world. Do we really want to quietly allow a provincial government to admit it has no thought-out reason to limit the freedom and movements of citizens? Should we not demand that the federal and provincial governments evolve their plans to include more than just longer and longer lockdowns? How much longer should we pretend as if the polite and carefully should hang over the government like the sword of Damocles, ready to drop with an awesome and terrible fury at any moment. Had Americans stormed the capitol some time in June of 2020 to demand healthcare and stimulus cheques in a pandemic; had they realized years ago that congress works for them and that the halls of power are filled with representatives beholden and directed by the will of the electorate, not corporate juggernauts, | would not have been surprised, shocked, or disappointed. However, to see so many white supremacist symbols on display, to see people waving Qanon flags, to know that this insurrectionist act was spurned by the foolish lies of an uncouth and lazy con artist tells me that the sword that hangs above is dull and malleable, blunted, and misshapen. The people's will should be well thought out, directed, and unsullied by the selfish lies of an attempted demagogue. To be clear, I had little to no qualms about the last summers BLM protests in no small part because I saw the cause as just. When the protests crossed over into riots and looting, I was certainly disheartened, and I do not condone those actions, but the act of burning down a police precinct after the clearly unjust murder of George Floyd worded speeches of the ruling class are acceptable substitutes for an evolution in the way we deal with this pandemic? We must be able to both respect social distancing and travel within a city; people can certainly avoid travel out of the country and enjoy the life outside of their homes, but none of these things are possible when it is accepted without question that every and the consistently unyielding pattern of police brutality was to me but the horsehair above drawn thin. Tam not condoning or encouraging insurrections and coups, nor am I taking lightly the threats against politicians lives. Iam not pretending as if there are excuses to be made for the actions of the many state players that led to this scandal. I am even willing to acknowledge my hypocrisy for holding differently motivated acts of political violence to different standards (though looting a Target and storming the capitol are VASTLY : different). But when government WS serves corporate interest first and second, when the war machine becomes the heartbeat \ of a country, when the poor and working class of a country are left to starve while airlines and tech firms get subsidies on top of tailor-made tax plans, a wellspring of public fury will eventually burst. The political class should be thankful that it was just the foolish, mislead, and ignorant who came. It’s much easier for the ~~ A <« ¥ Illustration by CJ Sommerfeld edict is in fact right. A Montreal litigator turned YouTuber under the name Viva Frei recently remarked that: “Democracy is when the government answers to the people. Tyranny is when the people answer to the government.’ Though I can't yet call this tyranny, its heartening to know that someone else is questioning. rest of us to push them aside and choose not to emulate them, but the next time the string breaks it may not be the neo-Nazis at the steps of the capitol. It could be the students and the working poor; it might be the indebted and exploited. It might be the people whose cause is just.