I wanted to write about the unions destroying Hostess Brands – a situation that got even worse this morning with the announcement that they really are closing down – but even though the unions are killing Twinkies and Wonderbread, and about 18,000 jobs (a third of which were their own), and I shouldn’t characterize that as “nothing”, it really is nothing compared to the Wounded Warrior parade accident.
I usually value having a good perspective on things. Other times, not so much.
What initially set me off yesterday was an article entitled “Public Health Proposal Considers Mandatory ‘Smokers License’”. Yet another instance of activists advocating for yet more nanny-state totalitarianism. You see, I’ve got a “thing” about smoking and so-called “smokers’ rights”.
Here’s my take:
- I am not a smoker (or to be honest, at least not since college, which was way back before the Kali Yuga, or so it seems)
- I hate cigarette smoke
- Smoking is a filthy habit
- If you were born with certain proto-oncogenes, and most of us are, then smoking greatly increases the chance that you will get one or more of the typical “smoking-related” cancers.
- Of course, if you do not carry those proto-oncogenes, you can smoke like a chimney all your life, and you’ll eventually die of something else, although you’ll likely have to deal with emphysema towards the end.
- BUT, I am a big, big fan of property rights
- AND, I am a big, big fan of personal responsibility, and personal sovereignty (although please do not confuse my position with anything advocated by the anarchistic idiots in the Sovereign Citizen Movement – I’m talking about something else entirely when I say “personal sovereignty”).
But you see, right now Israel is fighting for its life. Hamas has recently been lobbing hundreds of missiles into Israel, so – having already displayed far more patience then I would have been capable of in their stead – the IDF finally said “Enough!”, and struck back.
Immediately the world press went into full anti-Israel mode (if you ask "weren't they already?" the answer is "yes, but now they're putting in overtime."), saying Israel attacked “on the pretext of self-defense”. Pallywood went into overdrive, with Palestinian “victims” making miraculous recoveries (which we can assume were not meant to be done on camera) after having their “rescues” staged.
Pop quiz and/or Sidebar Comment:
- How many Palestinians are there actually living in what is often inaccurately referred to as Palestine?
- How much foreign aid have the Palestinians received, and not just from the USA, but overall, since 1967?
So why write about a STUPID anti-smoking proposal, or STUPID Union shenanigans, or on any of another of other even-worthier topics, like how our STUPID “captain of the ship of state” apparently thinks said ship is supposed to be a freakin’ submarine, or how our economy is not so much about to drive off a financial cliff as it is (extending the previous metaphor) as it is about to slam into one, and this one being the side of an underwater seamount, when abroad the islamists are trying to scrub Israel off the map and at home some of our own heroic veterans are killed by a STUPID train accident shortly before they were to be featured in a parade being thrown in their honor?
I tell ya - if the Left were a band, it would be a one-hit-wonder, and its hit a funeral dirge.
Some people advocate “going Galt”. Others insist we should “starve the beast”. Still others – many others – recommend we secede. I also like some (most? all?) of the things Bill Whittle has been saying since the election. What’s the answer? What’s the best course of action?
Will the liberals and other recipients of the public largesse ever get a clue? History isn’t very reassuring on this topic. The New Deal extended the Great Depression, significantly delaying its recovery, yet people just kept on voting for FDR, and the Keynsian repercussions reverberate to this day. In fact they’re getting louder. I would go so far as to say that even an American-based repeat of China’s great man-made famine, which killed about 36 million people between 1958 and 1962, will likely not sway future generations away from following Leftist doctrine, my evidence being that no horrific leftist-made catastrophe has been able to so far.
Sure, there will be individual converts… we can always hope and pray and celebrate when it happens, but en masse? Not so sure…
I don’t have all the answers. I’m tired of the Left always setting the agenda for our arguments, and I’m tired of the endless smokescreens (labor and environmentalism being but two of many) when behind the scenes the advice of “follow the money” is eternally sage, and should be considered “The Big Clue” to everything this administration does.
I’m not sure what to do. But I do know one thing I’m going to keep in mind: The Left, personified and taken as a whole, reminds me of the Monarch of Pointland, except that even that deluded creature, being alone, had no one to be a vampiric parasite upon, which the actual Left requires – even if eventually only in a cannibalistic sense.
"Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self- contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now listen."
He ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, as from one of your Spaceland phonographs, from which I caught these words, "Infinite beatitude of existence! It is; and there is none else beside It."
"What," said I, "does the puny creature mean by it'?" "He means himself," said the Sphere: "have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the Third Person? But hush!"
"It fills all Space," continued the little soliloquizing Creature, "and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness ah, the happiness of Being!"
"Can you not startle the little thing out of its complacency?" said I. "Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher." "That is no easy task," said my Master; "try you."
Hereon, raising my voice to the uttermost, I addressed the Point as follows:
"Silence, silence, contemptible Creature. You call yourself the All in All, but you are the Nothing: your so-called Universe is a mere speck in a Line, and a Line is a mere shadow as compared with - " "Hush, hush, you have said enough," interrupted the Sphere, "now listen, and mark the effect of your harangue on the King of Pointland."
The lustre of the Monarch, who beamed more brightly than ever upon hearing my words, shewed clearly that he retained his complacency; and I had hardly ceased when he took up his strain again. "Ah, the joy, ah, the joy of Thought! What can It not achieve by thinking! Its own Thought coming to Itself, suggestive of Its disparagement, thereby to enhance Its happiness! Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in triumph! Ah, the divine creative power of the All in One! Ah, the joy, the joy of Being!"
"You see," said my Teacher, "how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understands them at all, he accepts them as his own - for he cannot conceive of any other except himself - and plumes himself upon the variety of Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction."
- Flatland
Rest in peace, our fallen honored.
That was beautiful.
ReplyDelete