Revenge Gets You Nowhere

Recently I heard a story involving a national broadcasting network and a so-called “comedy” production that had been approved as part of a prank show.

When I learned what had actually happened and that it was supported and funded by a national broadcaster, I was honestly disgusted.

It was not funny. It was not comedy. It was humiliation disguised as entertainment.

You can look up the full story yourself if you want, but I’ll share enough here to explain why this bothered me so deeply.

What shocks me most is not just the prank itself, but the lack of serious discussion surrounding it. There seems to be hesitation to criticize it because of who carried it out and who was targeted. But I don’t believe any group, organization, or individual should be exempt from criticism simply because they identify as victims of past injustice.

Here’s what happened.

An Indigenous activist comedy trio reportedly contacted a group of retired RCMP officers under the pretense of producing a respectful television segment highlighting their years of service and their lives after retirement. The retired officers agreed to participate and were later invited to what they believed was a formal event in Vancouver where they would supposedly meet Prince William and be thanked for their service.

They were instructed to arrive wearing their historical ceremonial red serge uniforms.

Instead, when they arrived, they were shown a video announcing that the RCMP was being disbanded because of historical harms connected to the force’s role in Canada’s past.

The entire setup was designed for public humiliation.

The alleged motivation behind the prank was that some retired officers had questioned certain claims surrounding unmarked graves and had asked for more transparency and evidence regarding excavation efforts.

Now, people are free to disagree on those issues. Debate, evidence, and difficult conversations are all part of a healthy society.

But publicly humiliating people because you dislike their organization, opinions, or questions is not justice. It is bullying.

And using taxpayer-funded media platforms to encourage that behavior makes it even worse.

There is no shortage of groups throughout history who can point to mistreatment, discrimination, abuse, or injustice. Many of those harms are real and deserve acknowledgment. But if humiliation and cruelty are wrong when done to one group, they are still wrong when done to another.

Otherwise, we are not building understanding we are simply normalizing retaliation.

These retired officers were not the architects of residential schools or historical government policy. They were individuals who served in policing roles, many for decades, and whatever someone thinks of the RCMP as an institution, deliberately deceiving and humiliating elderly retirees accomplishes nothing productive.

It does not heal wounds. It does not create trust. It does not move reconciliation forward.

What it does create is anger, resentment, and division.

And that division spreads quickly.

We are already watching societies fracture around politics, identity, race, ideology, and historical grievances. More and more, people are encouraged to view each other not as human beings, but as symbols of larger systems they resent. Once that happens, empathy disappears and “getting even” becomes more important than understanding.

Revenge culture may feel satisfying in the moment, but it rarely leads anywhere good.

Humiliation has a way of hardening people rather than changing them. It pushes people into defensive camps. It creates suspicion where trust once existed. And ironically, it can undermine the very causes activists claim to support.

I spent 20 years in the RCMP myself. In my own book, I speak openly about mistreatment and difficult experiences I personally endured during my service. I understand that institutions can fail people. I understand frustration, anger, and disillusionment.

But there is still a right way and a wrong way to seek accountability and healing.

The right way is through evidence, conversation, transparency, lawful process, and honest debate, not public humiliation disguised as comedy.

Because this was never intended to make the participants laugh. The goal was embarrassment. The goal was emotional harm.

And when society starts celebrating cruelty because it is directed at the “right” targets, we are entering dangerous territory.

If the roles had been reversed, there would have been outrage across the country and rightly so. Public humiliation is ugly no matter who is doing it.

I don’t care what group someone belongs to, what ideology they hold, or what institution they represent: I will never support intentionally humiliating another human being for entertainment or political messaging.

That path does not lead to reconciliation.

It leads to more division, more distrust, and more people retreating from meaningful conversations entirely.

Personally, this situation makes me less trusting of public campaigns centered around “healing” or “understanding,” because now I wonder whether people are being invited into honest dialogue or simply being set up as targets.

And honestly, that is a shame.