Have you ever seen the movie The Crazies?
Directed in 1973 by George A. Romero (who, five years earlier, had terrorized audiences with his zombie film Night of the Living Dead), this 100% turnip nanar tells what happens in a small farm town in Iowa when a virus that makes people hyper aggressive spreads through the population.
At the time, The Crazies (which was released in French under the title The deranged) was an anticipation film.
Today it could pass for a documentary.
GET ME OUT OF HERE!
This is the impression we get when we leaf through the newspapers and listen to the news bulletins: an epidemic of rabies is – it is fair to say – raging in our societies.
When it’s not a teacher who gets his nose broken by a 7-year-old student, it’s a sixty-year-old who gets attacked in the subway by two intoxicated thugs, a beneficiary attendant who gets attacked in a corridor of hospital, a politician who receives death threats or a traffic controller who is pushed onto the highway by a wild driver with knives.
It seems like everyone is going over the top.
- Listen to Richard Martineau’s commentary via QUB :
Who knows? Romero may have been right: a virus escaped from a laboratory is transforming our cities into jungles.
Hey, that could be an idea for the next season of Get me out of here: instead of sending the participants into the jungle in Panama, you parachute them into the middle of downtown Montreal.
My blonde Sophie impressed me by walking on a wire 200 meters above the ground, but not sure that she would have enough courage to walk on rue Sainte-Catherine at 7 p.m. in the evening.
After all, she is determined, but she is not suicidal…
It’s as if we no longer have a gasket. We go from zero to 100 in two seconds.
It’s quite simple, bus driving has become a dangerous profession. The drivers want Plexiglas cabins to be installed to protect them from passengers.
We’re just going to arm the brigadiers soon.
PERVERT IN THE METAVERSE
In fact, yes, there is a virus that has destabilized our mental balance, a super powerful virus made in Silicon Valley labs: “the internets”.
It changed everything.
First, it made us impatient.
We are so used to everything being done quickly (two clicks, and you can have three gallons of fermented mare’s milk delivered to you from a yurt located in the depths of Mongolia), that we fail as soon as the slightest of our desires are not satisfied in the second.
A traffic signalman tells us to wait until a bulldozer crosses the street?
Quickly, we get out of our tank and settle it with a slap on the face.
And second, it made incivility cool.
Why exchange points of view or debate when you can insult?
No need to go to the metaverse to think you’re completely entitled and act like a cad. The world has become a huge metaverse!
And – what is really strange – the more violent people become, the less harsh sentences are given!
Not only have conditional releases become automatic (at 2/3 of your sentence, you get out, even if you are a pedo with a burning penis), but sentences to be served at home are more and more common!
Respect for individual rights has become a state religion and the slightest manifestation of authority is perceived as aggression.
We are living in an episode of Caillou – with the difference that little Criss is 35 years old and he made a gun with his father’s 3D printer.
“Hon, Caillou, stop shooting at the neighbors! You are incorrigible!”
The question is no longer: What world are we going to leave to our children? But: What children will we leave to our world?
Photo Shutterstock
QUICKLY, A FILM ABOUT MULRONEY!
During a memorable dinner organized by Denise Bombardier, I had the opportunity to chat at length with Brian Mulroney.
The former Prime Minister of Canada told me in detail how he convinced Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to boycott the racist regime in South Africa. Nelson Mandela was so grateful to Brian Mulroney that the first country he visited after his release from prison was Canada!
This victory for Brian Mulroney would, I swear, make an exciting film!
His role could be played by his son Ben, who looks just like him.
A BAD LIFE
French presenter Frédéric Mitterrand, nephew of President François, has died.
In The Bad Lifean autobiographical story published in 2005, he described his evenings in Bangkok bars where minors danced naked.
“All these rituals of ephebe fairs and slave markets excite me enormously. The light is ugly, the spectacle is abominable from a moral point of view. But I like him beyond reason.
“The profusion of very attractive and immediately available boys puts me in a state of desire that I no longer need to restrain or conceal. Money and sex are at the heart of my system; the one that finally works because I know that I won’t be refused.”
Let us emphasize that these remarks have never prevented Mr. Mitterrand from existing in the media.
THE HEDGE OF TIPS
“It’s time to abolish tips,” wrote Francis Gosselin in his column Thursday. Totally agree.
Why do we tip the waiter who fetches us a bottle of wine from the cellar? But not to the shoe salesman who goes back and forth between the showroom and the back room to pick up the models of boots we want?
This is all arbitrary.