I’m starting to feel like I am a terrible person. Shock and sadness over Tumbler Ridge gives way too quickly for me and I seem to be caught in a doom-loop of blame from which I can’t escape. My heart grows dark as I view the Hallmark Card scene of our political leaders looking weepy and forlorn as they graciously accommodate each other’s solemn laying of flowers for the dead and wounded. To me, in that moment they looked like collaborating mob bosses. Harsh, I know.
Of course, our “leaders” should be seen mourning — but to me, on this cold February day —it feels like performative politics since they are all in on it.
Not one of these gutless wonders had the courage to demand what many other countries have — to put the breaks on a radical ideology that has overtaken education, psychotherapy and medicine. I will be posting Roxanne Halverson’s brilliant piece on this tomorrow. It is a masterclass of research and critical thinking.
The dissonance from this scene feels very COVID. The risk gradient, rarely discussed by health officials, was dramatic. A healthy teenager, out of school — becoming screen and porn obsessed during lockdowns — had a 1000 times less chance of a bad COVID outcome than the elderly. This is what the infection fatality rate reveals, a fraction that was known from Day One. Yet government and media messaged mortal danger to gain compliance and later, to excuse the massive mental health crisis infecting our teenagers.
Not to make excuses, but if its true that the shooter transitioned six years ago — that would have made him twelve. In 2020. At the height of school closures and isolation with nothing but screen-time, fuelling his reported growing obsession with gore and violence. This is a perfect Petri-dish for nurturing a destabilized identity and the seeding of trans as an all-purpose solution to his mental health issues — which were already profound.
We were warned. Many courageous experts predicted that young people might not recover from the trauma of lockdowns. Experts were yelling from the rooftops that we were incubating disaster down the road. Is Tumbler Ridge that disaster? Was it a confluence of bad public policy like COVID lockdowns and transing kids — driven not by science but by craven ideologues who put politics over the safety and well-being of their citizens? How is that different from endangering citizens to prevent them dying of a virus — that in most cases posed no threat?
The Tumbler Ridge victims deserve roses and grace. Everything we can give but they also deserve a reckoning from the cowardly politicians who’ve created a landscape of mental illness and hopelessness in young people — both trans and not.
Of course there were heroes. We must not forget them. But don’t let our cowardly politicians hide behind them, either. As they did Friday night.
A story to remind you of who Canadians really are:
Through the words of British Columbia Premier David Eby, the folk legend of Mark Deeley was revealed to the masses.
Eby was the final speaker at a vigil in Tumbler Ridge Friday night, as a crowd of at least 1,000 residents made a semicircle around the town hall. And he spoke of Deeley, a science teacher at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where five students and a teacher were killed by shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar Tuesday afternoon. Van Rootselaar also killed his mother, Jennifer Jacobs (Strang), and stepbrother Emmett Jacobs earlier that day.
As Eby related, Deeley’s son had just gone to the bathroom, but the teacher knew the protocol. They’d practised lockdowns in the past. He was to lock the class as quickly as possible. So, Deeley jammed a chair against the door, leaving his son outside. The needs of the entire class outweighed the one kid who had to leave.
But Deeley soon left the safety of that class, and his son soon left the bathroom. Both looked for people to help. Deeley brought an injured student back to the class and, with the help of some students, administered first aid.
Yes, there is blame. And we must lay it at the feet of those of who brought this about.
Stay critical.
#truthovertribe
truthovertribe
