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Opinion — Do you see it coming?

We’re so accepting — and in a way, that’s a nice thing … like being an apologetic, laid back Canadian.

 

We’re so accepting — and in a way, that’s a nice thing … like being an apologetic, laid back Canadian. But I’m sorry to say, and pardon me for going on — but many among us seem to have lost the ability to question what they are seeing and hearing.

 

Does no one else cringe when they hear the term “War Room” as the ‘working title’ of the provincial government’s Canadian Energy Network. The War Room? C’mon … grandiose much? But we just nod and accept it as though our province is about to storm the beaches of Normandy.

 

The Orphan Wells Fund is another example. We might know a little about it from the recent reports that municipalities are not getting tax dollars from big oil business, or little-big oil businesses that are no longer in business because of the dismal oil and gas economy. We hear the term Orphan Wells Fund, and its explanation as a subsidy provided by the province and the industry to reclaim wells that have been abandoned by companies unable to turn a profit, and we just say OK. But shouldn’t we be commenting on the name? Are we now that pummeled by stories of woe and hardship that we can’t see the humour?

 

Surely, there’s a sci-fi nerd or movie buff sitting in a corporate oil and gas office just dying to hear the first story linking the little fund, whose name he created, to the voice behind the classic radio broadcast of War of the Worlds? Isn’t there. Shouldn’t there be? Have we really lost that glimmer?

 

How about the images shown on the news for the Coronavirus in China? Why are heat-sensitive infra-red images of people in an airport running with the story? And no one is thinking … “Hmm, that’s just like what they did in the movie Contagion/Virus/12 Monkeys/I am Legend/World War Z/Outbreak/28 Weeks Later/Resident Evil 1-7/… or the 1970 classic I Drink Your Blood?”

It doesn’t cross your mind? Really? We just accept it … and then flick the channel and hope we haven’t missed too much of the Bachelor’s rose ceremony.

Have we become an accepting population with no sense of humour or inquisitiveness? Let’s just hope that real life doesn’t imitate art, then.

In War of the Worlds, those who didn’t care were captured and turned into mind-numbed slaves by those attempting to take over their world (see barely 60 per cent voter turnouts in most Canadian elections). To take it a step further — and again, I apologize — In I Drink Your Blood, the ones who don’t fight, die.

 

 

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