Stop the Madness!

 “United States of America, looks like another silent night, as we’re sung to sleep by philosophies that save the trees and kill the children.”  —Casting Crowns

I once found humor in the irony in the world around me.  Heck, my favorite Great American, Mr. Lewis Grizzard, had a whole knee-slapping routine about Jimmy Swaggart sweating and crying as he admonished the masses for the sins that would keep them from eternal salvation, all the while running around with prostitutes while raking in $40 million a year.

It ain’t funny anymore.  And it’s no longer ironic.

Paradox.  The U.S. (and the world now, for that matter) are sad and tragic lessons in contradiction.

I would apologize in advance, but that would require me being sorry for what I am about to say.  And I’m not.  I’m pissed.  The stupidity of what we are accepting as “normal” these days boggles my mind.  It would be one thing if it was limited to a single subject, but no…it’s every stinking hot-button topic you can imagine.

We are neck-deep in a global pandemic, one that I am quite confident has origin (or at least considerable influence) in the hands of unscrupulous individuals who really couldn’t care less about the human population.  Regardless of how the bug got out, it did.  And it’s killed a lot of people; it damn near killed me.  You’d think that we could rally behind a common enemy, right?  Especially one not saddled with concern regarding race or religion or identity.  A virus.  We could all hate it together.

Lots of brains got together and managed to roll out a weapon to fight this enemy, a vaccine.  Yeah, there is no shortage of debate on the safety, efficacy, and expediency of the inoculation.  But, sorry, that’s not the point here.  A vaccine was created, for better or worse, offering us an option.  I, personally, through a great deal of my own research and even more consultation with close friends in the medical profession, decided to get vaccinated.  I didn’t do it because I was coerced.  I didn’t do it because my employment was contingent upon doing so or because my favorite sandwich shop implemented a policy that required me to show a card saying I had gotten the shot.  I made the decision because I thought it was the right one; I weighed the risks, the unknowns and knowns, and I made my own call.  However, don’t think for a minute that my being vaccinated affects in any way my view of these so-called “mandates” that are being forced down the public’s collective throat.  For that matter, it really burns my backside when folks assume that my being vaccinated implies my complicit action in what I feel is unconstitutional overstepping.  Still, that ain’t the point either, at least not quite.

Let me set the scene here.  We know that the COVID vaccine, and a heck of a lot of others, don’t prevent transmission.  Vaccines, by design and definition, are meant as a prophylactic (what a fun word) to defend against infection, or at least minimize the symptoms of infection in an individual.  In.  An.  Individual.  Whether or not said individual wants to get stuck in the arm is up to him or her.  It ain’t the mayor’s or the governor’s or the President’s decision.  If Pete the plumber has reservations, let him refuse it.  If Doreen the hairdresser wants to risk having a location chip injected into her veins, it is her body, her choice.

See what I did there?

Yeah, overwhelmingly, the same progressive minds that feel it is a woman’s choice on whether or not she opts to terminate her pregnancy are the same talking heads that are now saying I don’t have the right to decide whether or not I take whatever measures I wish to protect myself.  Give me a freaking break.

I wish that was the only topic where we live in perpetual contradiction.  Nah, not even close.

In case you weren’t aware, television sports no longer center on the sport.  It’s entertainment.  And not unlike media “news”, the more drama, the better.  Even the purest of them all, the Olympics.  This year, we got the added bonus of witnessing the debate regarding transgenderism play out right there in Tokyo.  Yep, women’s weightlifting had a former dude competing as a dame.

It wasn’t specific to the Olympic weightlifting event, but I watched an interview with a female athlete in another sport who was quite vocal and even more critical of the decision of the IOC to promote transgender inclusion.  It should be noted that said female athlete identifies (I think that’s the right word nowadays) as homosexual in a strong committed relationship.  Now I’m not going to lie and say that I have exhausted my effort to dive deeper into just how many athletes, female or gay or straight or whatever, share her views.  I will assume for now that she’s not alone.

I remember in college when I first encountered the acronym.  At the time it was LGB.  Since that time it has expanded to LGBTQ+, which I believe is the latest and longest, with the implication being that all of the letters in the acronym, united in solidarity, strive to promote equal rights for the other letters.

So why, then, would an “L” (in solidarity with a “T”) object to her now brother-turned-sister competing at her level?  The same collective passion that opened her own closet door is opening it for others.  Where is the equity?  For that matter, where is the outcry of opposition to her statement?  Head scratcher, it is.

By now, about half of you who have read this far (probably three or so people) are blowing steam out of your ears.  “Oh, he had to go there…”  You’re right…gender and sexual identity are too much of a landmine.  Fair enough.

What about this?  Do you know that the average early term abortion costs just over $500?  Second trimester abortions cost a little more than $1000.  (I didn’t even bother to look up so-called “late term” abortions, because I think that is just sick and demented to begin with.)  However, a traditional domestic adoption costs more than $50,000!  Forget the moral discussion…well, no, don’t forget it.  We could probably eliminate the moral discussion if adopting a child was not as expensive as half a house and an abortion was a bit pricier than a birthday party for a kid!

Not to go off on COVID again, because this really isn’t about it directly, but here’s another one.  Mask mandates.  Now we could probably chew the fat for days on this—please do, I could stand to get rid of quite a bit of it around my midsection—but I will just state for the record that I don’t believe mask requirements have had any real impact on the rate of infection.  Just my thoughts.  However, I can say with reasonable confidence that outfitting one’s face to look like you are ready to make a hit on a vault is not protecting the mask wearer, but is in fact a measure of protection for those around him or her.  Again, me personally?  I wouldn’t be one of the pols or celebs on the mandate wagon.  (As an aside, I did not realize the incredible medical curriculum that was required in order to first enter politics or be in movies or on stage.  Obviously it is considerable, considering the brilliant expertise imparted to us lesser humans by these fine upstanding individuals on all things medical.)  However, if I were of the mandate ilk, I would like to believe that I have the stones to walk whatever talk I’m spewing.

Now I don’t have a stinking clue what the Met Gala is, and judging by the invitation list I likely won’t ever be in attendance and would probably decline the invitation if by some strange mystic intervention someone determined me worthy enough to attend.  However, the esteemed attendees (all of which were of the political/entertainment/richer-than-Rockefeller persuasion and big proponents of facial fabric) wore not the ultimate prophylactic.  (There’s that word again!)  I’m sure they had mined their vast medical knowledge and deduced that their elite status ensured their immunity to carrying and spreading the ’rona.  Of course, the service personnel, called the “help” in the bougie vernacular and known affectionately as “boy” and “girl” or “hey” for the most part, were completely masked up.

OK, I am going to have to stop now.  My blood pressure medication is starting to wear off, and the vein in my forehead is literally threatening to blow.

Do you know how hard it is these days as a parent to instill hard, rigid values in your children, especially teenagers, when the whole damn world around them is in perpetual paradox?  And what answers do you give to their questions?  “Daddeaux, why do people preach choice and then don’t give you a choice?”  “Why can a Muslim or a Buddhist get away with something by saying it was in the name of his religion, but social media deletes stuff that sounds too pro-Christian?”  Hell if I know.

I remember when I was growing up that it was right up there with spitting in church or putting tomatoes in your gumbo to utter anything disparaging about the President or the governor or most any elected position.  The offices they occupied were just a rung or two below holy.  Didn’t matter if your name was Ike or Carter or Reagan, brother, you got respect.  Retrospectively, of course, the legacy of the individual depended on his or her actual accomplishments.  Look at us now.  First of all, regardless of which side of the aisle you fall on politically, if you honestly believe that there wasn’t some wonkiness in the whole national election of 2020, well, I will refrain from calling you what I really believe you are.  But even at that—and yeah, this can be fact-checked—overwhelmingly, the voting opposition to The Hair fixated on just one thing:  ol’ Don was rude and unlikeable.

I ain’t a fan of Donald Trump, and you can feel free to check my Facebook page if you don’t believe me.  I will say, I would take him over Sniffy Joe any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  But if you don’t recognize the flaming contradiction in Vote 2020, again, I will refrain from name-calling.  Would I choose The Hair to lead a church tent revival?  Heck no!  However, that isn’t one of my metrics in selecting a President, and Joe and Kokomo Show is beyond laughable.  The fact that they are “leading” this country is no laughing matter.

Look, we as a country talk about unity like it’s a destination.  It ain’t.  Unity is the trip.  It’s like being on the bus to a big football game.  If the players are shooting spitballs at each other and pantsing the wide receivers and telling fat jokes about the linemen the whole trip up there, I’ll bet you a dime to a dollar the outcome of the game isn’t going to be pretty for the visiting team.

I’m tired of our “representatives” imposing laws that conveniently are written to exclude those same lawmakers from applicability.  I’m tired of Bible-thumping pastors quoting scriptures in condemnation, only to massage the same texts in defense of questionable, if not downright immoral, actions upon their own part.  I’m exhausted from watching our educational system be torn apart under the banner of “equal education for all” while I witness resource-limited schools in less-than-desirable areas fall apart, physically and otherwise.  I am appalled that we are accepting of neutralization of language, of landmarks, or of anything else of which one or two people are offended should then be translated into renaming, removing, or eliminating the offending material; but by golly, we have free speech, right?  I am scared that my face is going to stick in a position that looks like Bill Belichick on the sideline every time I listen to some environmental purist wail about fossil fuels as he or she scoots around in an electric automobile with a jillion plastic parts (derivative of crude oil) and lithium batteries (look up how those suckers get made and disposed of) which gets recharged with electrical power from a generator at a plant fueled by coal or gas.

It is about darn time for us—every one of us, all of us—to stand up and make it clear that we are ready to see real change.  And you can kiss my large derriere if I am going to keep my mouth shut.  Note the quote that I used at the opening of this post.  That is us, saving trees and killing children.

Stop the madness.

Rant over.

I look forward to hearing from you!