This was entirely preventable. Entirely.
The fact that it happened anyways is nothing short of a stinging indictment on a provincial government that has allowed itself to be kowtowed by a loud, resentful, closed, and suspicious demographic within the broader population. A demographic with out-sized influence, but also one driven by the darkness of willful ignorance, which they happen to view as enlightened biblical interpretation.
These people, when set loose upon the land, are dangerous and can cause an awful lot of harm, both personal and economic, harms that don’t just impact themselves, but also the rest of us.
They are the religious right, who appear to be gravitating uncomfortably close to a form of religious extremism whipped to a frenzy by exploitative politicians and even more so by exploitative church leadership.
And, as a Christian myself, it hurts me to say that the vast majority of these types causing all the trouble are Christian as well. Radical, dogmatic Christians.
The last thing I want to do is to paint all Christians with the same condemnatory brush. We’re not all part of this, nor are we all like this. In fact, many of us, likely most of us, are decidedly different from the types I’m referring to today. We prefer not to be extremists. We prefer not to be radicalized by spun-out charlatans who claim to be on speed-dial with God. We prefer to do no harm, or cause harm to be done through our statements, actions, or omissions.
As best we can, we walk in the footsteps of Christ. We do so imperfectly, and even with our failings, our vulnerabilities, we still manage to make it through the day without consigning others to the flames of hell for things they do or don’t do that we don’t understand because of the huge blinders our church and family have slapped on us and maintained over the years.
God is not a cult. Love should be self-evident. We do our best to follow the teachings, to follow our faith, knowing that all of us are on our own journey, independent of one another, although related by the commonality of the journey itself.
What we don’t do is instil fear in our brothers and sisters. We don’t threaten them with punishments and calamities for choices they’ve made that may be different from ours.
We are kind, as we’re called to be. We help one another, comfort one another, and we’re here for each other. We’re not accusatory, conspiratorial, judgemental, and self-proclaimed to be morally superior.
We don’t speak for God, we speak in the spirit of God, with love, patience, kindness, and support.
And so, with all of that, it could have been avoided. Entirely avoided.
I’m referring to the crisis in Alberta as cases of measles sweep through the province. So much so that Alberta, all by itself, has more reported measles cases than the entirety of the United States of America. That’s pretty significant, given that’s comparing a province of 4.7 million people with a nation of some 347 million people. A province with more cases of measles than an entire country, and with just 1.35% of the population.
As has been said before, make that make sense.
As to the hard-assed Christians.
Their built-in suspicion of everyone and just about anything really got hummed-up during Covid 19 with their rejection of Covid vaccines despite witnessing people dying right in front of them, some 4,591 in Alberta alone at a fatality rate of 0.78%. In their minds, those deaths were God’s will, his loving hand at work.
What poppycock.
The influence of hard-right Christians in Alberta is evidenced by the fact that they successfully rose up and turfed former premier Jason Kenney from office, despite the fact that Jason is a hard-right Catholic himself, with not much political room available to the right of him. They replaced him with another, yet different whack job, that being current premier Danielle Smith, an agreeable bootlicker who understands that she keeps the premier’s chair only for as long as she continues to advance and support the demands of this one constituency.
She hasn’t disappointed. One of her first statements as premier was to claim that Albertans required to have the Covid vaccine were oppressed more than any other people in history, which is a bit rich considering history and all the Ukrainians who call Alberta home. She gutted Alberta Health, the agency responsible for health care in the province. She fired the Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, perhaps the most trustworthy and articulate health care professional around, and chased her out of the province. British Columbia couldn’t scoop her up fast enough, and she’s now the Deputy Provincial Health Officer for that province. And the Covid vaccines, of which there are now as many as four in total for a person to be completely up to date? What was once free of charge now costs over $100.00 a shot out of pocket.
Which now means that a lot of people aren’t going to be boosting their Covid protections, not out of any sense of principle, but rather because they simply can’t afford it. And fewer vaccinated people raises the risk of transmission for themselves and for the rest of us.
And it’s not just Covid, but now all vaccinations are seemingly under review, including those mitigating the development and spread of measles.
And God wanted all this? Like, really?
Almost all democracies have a built-in separation of church and state, a secularism that protects the democracy from the so-called moral certainty of those who claim to be the guardians of God, of his word, his plan, of his everything.
God needs no guardians. He needs no protectors. He needs no minions to flash their righteous indignation towards anyone else not toe-ing the lines as defined by themselves. God needs no sword-bearers as warriors. In fact, he needs warriors not at all.
Democracy has thusly been able to flourish, albeit not perfectly, despite the howls of protest that emanate from that constituency, that hard-right religious constituency. And yes, the hard-right Christian militancy that springs from it.
When the religious right can marshal their forces to attack the ballot boxes of the province, and when the provincial government lives in political fear of these folks, when they enact harmful policies to placate these zealots, have we not started to stray from the concept of separating church from state?
I understand people are allowed to coalesce around certain issues of importance and bring that leverage with them into the voting booth. That’s, of course, a legitimate exercise in democracy. But when that pressure changes the face of the province and puts the health and lives of others, many others, at risk, then is that not a greater danger than pushing forward with science and medically-based policies and legislation these hard-right types disagree with, yet keep the rest of us (and them too) safe?
People aren’t perfect, nor is perfection the thing that’s expected. So maybe I don’t have a perfect solution at hand for how to solve this problem.
But there is nothing in me that can get behind a large group of people who seem intent on causing harm and trouble for the rest of us through their own wilful blindness and horrific self-directed ignorance.
More measles cases than the entire United States.
Bravo Alberta. Bravo.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 