My latest in Sun Media: mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
It is that time of year when we admit to our failings.
It’s a timely time, too. For example, all over the Caribbean and various sun spots, nervous politicians are sitting on unmade beds in resort rooms, listening to their spouses on the phone as they try and get them a flight back to Canada that lands in the middle of the night. Mistakes, they’ve had a few.
Us, too.
This writer has had enough to meet his 600 words allotment, and then some. To err is human; to confess to them in a nationally-syndicated opinion column is superhuman.
So, herewith and heretofore, here’s some of the whoppers Yours Screwly typed out at the start of the pandemic. There’s some beauts, here.
Ten pessimistic pandemic predictions were done up, and ten optimistic ones.
Two pessimistic ones that were wildly, hilariously wrong were these: “Far-Right leader(s) will attract popular support with anti-capitalist, xenophobic, conspiratorial/evangelical fundamentalist movement(s). Far-Left leader(s) will ascend with anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, possibly anti-Semitic — but secular — movements favouring state control and ownership.”
Neither happened. There’s jerks and fanatics on both sides of the ideological spectrum, to be sure. But they were there before the pandemic, weren’t they?
These two prognostications are so false, so faulty, so flubbed, they aren’t even funny. They’re so big in their stupidity, they have their own weather system: “The economy will largely collapse, but a few will profit from it. People will develop community-based support networks, barter, etc. Certain essential services will simply cease, localized corruption and underground economies will grow, and many will cease paying taxes.”
Yes, Warren went all Mad Max/Planet of the Apes there. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. In my defence, I plead that I had not had my morning tea yet.
More Kinsell-apocalypse: “Wide swaths of urban centres will become unliveable due to collapsing infrastructure/services, homes will be abandoned due to inability to pay mortgages/rent, and many will be obliged to squat or relocate to rural areas.”
To be sure, some folks stopped paying rent and mortgages. But governments largely stepped up to help out. And those who moved to rural areas like mine? They mainly did that because (a) it’s way cheaper and (b) they have a way better internet connection, and can work anywhere.
Not all of my Pithy Prognostications were dramatically, egregiously, hilariously mistaken. Some were almost, sort-of, accurate.
Fer instance: “People will reconsider past views about politicians and institutions, and re-assess.”
And: “People will accept that there is a right and proper role for government, and reject the Trumpian anti-government populist bullshit.”
Full disclosure, as we say: this scribe volunteered for Joe Biden for months, so he was disinclined to cheer on Donald Trump, like, ever. But that prediction came true. Wherever a mid-pandemic election took place — B.C., Saskatchewan, New Brunswick — the incumbents were re-elected. Those governments won because they were activist during the pandemic. They used government as a force for good.
Not so Trump, the Mango Mussolini. He called the coronavirus a hoax, and he asked us to consider getting injected with bleach. He, with the world’s tiniest hands, even mocked the size of Joe Biden’s mask.
He lost, bigly. Being anti-government during a global health crisis is no path to re-election.
Another bit of fortune-telling that didn’t go awry: “People will come together and find a cure for this beast, because so much depends on it.”
And they did, they did. Thousands of folks, all over, volunteered to participate in drug trials that set land-speed records. Incredibly, some Big Pharma companies briefly waived profiteering to find a vaccine. And the aforementioned governments helped pay a lot of the cost.
The result: vaccinations are happening. In Canada — as this writer also predicted, further into the pandemic — the feds dropped the ball on acquiring vaccines. As of this writing, 0.193% of the Canadian population have been vaccinated.
But at least we have vaccines, now. Which recalls another prediction, and one worthy of a columnar conclusion: “People will love each other more deeply, because they are seeing for the first time how quickly life can slip away.”
And it can, and it does. We have lost too many, and we will lose many more.
Be safe, be careful, and have a 2021 that is full of joy, life and good health.
