There is so much crazy stuff going on in the world this week, there's no way I could comment on all of it. Instead of making lengthy comments, I thought that I might try to just ask a few questions, relating to the ones that stand out the most to me. I guess I'm still trying to find a format that I can follow on a weekly basis, but that may not be a realistic goal. Some weeks there are a bunch of stupid public statements, and some weeks I just have to disagree with one of my favorite media hosts. This week, I'm going to try a different approach, though it was inspired by some commentators I watched this week.
One of the biggest issues on most news shows has been the Canadian trucker protest against their vaccine mandate. It's become an international issue, because the truckers have shut down the bridge between the US and Canada that carries millions of dollars in trade every day. I am no fan of impeding trade, or transportation. In fact, I am on the record saying that union strikers should be penalized for the harm that they do to the public. However, in that case, I was railing against union workers trying to suck more money out of the taxpayers' pockets. In the case of the Canadian truckers, what is the financial cost of their demand? Nothing. In fact, ending the vaccine mandate will improve the economy.
My question is "Why won't Justin Trudeau, the Blackface wearing Prime Minister of Canada, just drop the unscientifically supported vaccine mandate? The only answer I can see is that he is an autocrat, not unlike Putin or Xi, in his aspirations.
Another big news story this week is that Russia is about to invade Ukraine. Well, Russia has occupied the Crimean peninsula since 2014, and didn't pay a high price for that invasion. Now, they've amassed 100,000 troops on Ukraine's border, and are demanding that NATO formally declares that it will not move toward making Ukraine a NATO member, in a treaty with Russia.
The fact that Ukraine's Crimea region is already occupied by Russia makes this demand a moot point. NATO is not going to accept a member state that is not fully under it's own control. Some people think this is a reason to give in to Putin's treaty demand, and some don't. Pres. Biden, while starting out with weak and mixed messages, has sent troops to some Eastern European NATO allies. In any case, Ukraine is not joining NATO anytime soon, with or without a formal statement from NATO.
Several key NATO allies have been weak in response to Russia's actions, and the latest news reports say an invasion is imminent. My question is why did the Biden administration not act pre-emptively, and kill the Nord Stream 2 pipeline sooner, as well as continuing to pressure our NATO allies to pull their weight in defense against Russian aggression? For an administration that talked big about Russia being an enemy that we must oppose, they sure seemed to kiss their ass much more than Pres. Trump ever did, until this week. This whole concern about war with Russia breaking out could have been avoided by a firm policy from the start of the administration. Of course, that also would have precluded the Afghanistan disaster. My second question is why are these incompetent people in charge?
One more question: Does anyone think that Kyiv will be this century's Sarajevo? My answer is NO.
On the homefront, several Democrat governors are finally following the science, because the politics are forcing them to. This issue is perhaps bigger, and more important than any of the previous, international issues I had questions about in this post. It's been two years since I first heard someone say "two weeks to get past this." If someone said we'd still be fighting over masking and lockdowns, plus vaccine mandates in 2022 back then, they would've been called crazy.
Looking back, how dumb and gullible we all were. All of us. The courts allowed freedom of assembly, religion, and commerce to be abrogated by executive fiat, without any public debate or input. Freedom of speech was curtailed, unless it was approved by the "gatekeepers" of the pandemic. Ethics took a holiday from reality, and most people just went along.
It was easy to believe that "we were all going to die" if we didn't follow the rules, at first. After a short while, though, some started questioning the rules. That's when it got ugly, and political. After two years of bullshit masking, lockdown, and more recently mandate rules, none of which have made a difference in the outcomes, scientifically, my question is "What leg does any government have to stand on, to infringe upon anyone's freedoms?"
These are just a few simple questions I have, about a few of this week's big issues. There are many possible answers, and many more questions that mine may spur. I'm just hoping that some of you are inspired to ask these questions, or some of your own, before buying into any storyline that you read in the media. It's also okay to question the storylines that I presented here!
