The Ant and the Grasshopper

When I was much younger and just becoming politically aware, I quickly realized that I was a liberal; that I valued humans over corporations and that America worked best when the emphasis was on the most good for the most people rather than just for the privileged few at the top.
However, I would occasionally have one nagging thought that I would never admit to anyone. The one virtue that I admired in conservatives was their fiscal planning and their ability to prepare for the future. They are conservatives after all. It was sort of the fable of "The Ant and the Grasshopper".
Now, with more experience and a little more wisdom, I am perplexed by conservatives today. My first doubt came when I realized that it was the leftys who were concerned with CONSERVING our wildlife and wetlands and the conservatives seemed hell bent on using it all up as quickly as possible. They give various excuses but we all knew it is just greed. Then I also noticed they were disdainful of cleaning up our water and air and landscape and, in fact, resisted efforts to keep it from getting fouled in the first place.
They used to call the Democrats the tax and spend party. It turns out that the Conservatives are the charge and spend party and are sinking us into enormous debt. All of this mega-debt will have to be paid back by our grandchildren. And guess who we are borrowing much of it from . . .the Red Chinese.
This is all topsy-turvy stuff: the conservatives want to spend and the liberals want to save. What a world.
Now I can find absolutely nothing to admire about conservatives except their fabulous ability to convince themselves they are doing it all for America.

The Wallpaper of Fear

When I was about fourteen, I spent much of my time roaming my hometown in an attempt to ward off boredom. Once, I came upon a display with signage just off the city sidewalk. It was a fully functioning underground fallout shelter. The small construction company that built it was offering to build backyard shelters for anyone who wanted to hedge their bets against a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.
This was not idle paranoia. As the Cuban missile crisis a few years later would prove, atomic Armageddon was only minutes away from ruining our lovely little planet whether we ducked and covered properly or not.
This particular shelter was tiny and cramped partly because it was crammed with dried foodstuff, water and various other medical and survival supplies; everything needed for a small nuclear family to cling to existence until they could safely emerge to enjoy the nuclear winter. Do-it-yourself plans showed up in Popular Mechanics and various other science magazines. Talk and news shows discussed it ad infinitum.
The threat of nuclear holocaust loomed in the background of everyday life from morning to night as if every house and business was decorated with mushroom cloud wallpaper; you didn’t think about it continually, but it was always there.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the cold war was over. The background drone of fear suddenly clicked off. It was as if suddenly you could hear again and the muscles in your back relaxed even though you didn’t realize they were tight. It was wonderful.
I think it was only hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks that I realized our little 10-year vacation from fear was over. I knew instinctively the dread was back and, despite Bush’s predictions of “victory”, the same low hum of background fear was here to stay for decades to come.

My Disease

When I was very young, I was taken to several specialists, both psychological and medical, to try to diagnose some strange symptoms that I displayed. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard my parents, family and friends worked with me, I just couldn’t learn how to believe.
The first symptom to manifest itself was the inability to tell one football team from another, or baseball team or basketball team. When watching these games I just couldn’t get past the first ten minutes without my mind drifting off to another subject. Imagine watching a man talking in Greek for three hours. That’s how I felt.
Later, it began to happen at church. The preacher would say important things concerning the world and the afterlife and god and satan and I could not sustain any interest. I figured there was something was wrong with me. Everyone around me found these things to be terribly important but they just sounded like Greek.
Years later I became more and more fascinated, not with god, but with how people believed in god. The numerous ways, ceremonies, rituals, books, laws and systems, complex and convoluted, just amaze me. Following are a few reasons I think people believe in a god. I welcome other reasons that I have missed and would be glad to add any additions to my list.

Transcendence – Surely there must be something more than this: I get up, I go to work, I come back, I eat dinner, I go to sleep, I get up. Wouldn’t it be great if flying saucers landed or we could read minds or do Harry Potter magic or discover dragons or god would talk to us personally and guide us through life?

The Plan – There must be a reason for all of this. Things always have a reason like plumbing or maps or farming. We can’t be here just to reproduce and die, can we?

The Insider – There must be a god who made all this. So I’m going to figure out how to kiss his ass by telling him how great of a god he is and say all the right things. He’ll think I’m really special and then maybe he’ll give me that SUV I’ve been wanting and, oh yeah, maybe he’ll kill that guy I hate.

The Exclusive Club – I have found the One, True Religion and you haven’t. I’m one of the few people in the whole world who found the right one amongst those 4,237 other religions that are obviously stupid which goes to prove have damned superior I am.

The End – I’m me. I’ve known me for a long time. I’m pretty cool. I know things nobody else knows. There’s no way I can just die. It can’t just end. I can’t just end. There has to be more. What would happen to the world if I weren’t here?

Marijuana: the Killer Weed

Cigarette deaths in the United States alone went over 400,000 last year.
Alcohol related deaths hit 65,000 per year in the U.S.
40% of all suicide deaths are alcohol related.
54% of violent crime is alcohol related
60% of emergency room admissions are alcohol related
80% of domestic disputes are alcohol related.
All serious investigation has shown that death from marijuana use is virtually impossible. Read this:
WEBMD

So, here’s the score:

Cigarettes – 400, 000 deaths (US only)– Legal
Alcohol – 65,000 deaths (US only) - Legal
Marijuana – No deaths (worldwide) - Illegal

Well, that makes sense.