America Has Gone Nuts

    After typing the title, I simply sat and stared at it for a while, hands on the keyboard, waiting for the next thought to come to mind.  What else is necessary? That pretty much sums it up. 

    Perhaps, I thought, some examples. But there are so many. Where does one start? How ‘bout an analogy?  It’s like it’s 1968 again, and I’m fighting over space in the back seat of my dad’s Mercury Montego with my younger sister and brother – all the way to grandma’s house.

    “He’s touching me!”

    “Move over then!”

    “They’re making me sit in the floorboard!”

    “I said ‘Shuttup!’ I’ll turn this damn car around right now!”

    “Aaughhhh! He just put his toe in my mouth!”

    “No, she bit my toe!”

    “Put your shoes on, your feet stink!”

    “Your face stinks.”

    “Mom!”

    “Honey, can you stick your feet out the window?”

    “Ri…Rob…Ran…. I’ll put you all in the trunk and you can fight it out in there!”

    “I’ll just ride up here in the back glass.”

    “No! It’s MY turn!”

     This is America today.  Whining and moaning and crying and being offended and needing to offend and struggling to appease is the rule of the day. On one end of the spectrum, we have people resigning from their jobs rather than continuing to work for a company, or a government, that condones same-sex marriage.  Like, no matter what that company or government did in the past, it’s this that’s bringing the downfall – the end of times, as many have actually called it.  Or, could it be that they were dissatisfied with their employment all along and just recognized the opportunity to get out seeming honorable?  Call me cynical, but I think God’s probably got better things to do than worry about the design of the icing you squirt on some cake or who you issue marriage licenses to in your Podunk little town. If you’re a dude that doesn’t want to marry another dude then … don’t. Nobody is making you.  Requiring you to register your gun doesn’t equate to having your doors kicked down by storm troopers and being drug away to a concentration camp. Allowing your employees to have birth control paid by their insurance doesn’t tell Jesus that you’re condoning abortion.  And removing the flag of an old, supposedly-gone domestic enemy of the United States from government properties isn’t tantamount to erasing your proud regional heritage. Get over it, you hyperbolic infants.

    On the other end of the spectrum – we skip to there, because there is no middle – are the do-gooders and guilt-ridden and wanna-be saints who can never seem to do enough to make amends and fix all that is wrong with people and society and manufacture peace and harmony and the holding of the hands, sitting ‘round the campfire… No. Not a campfire, because that causes pollutants.  Sitting ‘round the solar-powered campfire hologram singing old Coca Cola commercials.  They monitor your spoken and written words, and would monitor your thoughts, if possible, to make sure there is nothing in there anywhere that could be construed as offensive to any human being, animal, plant or sub-atomic particle.  Some are genuinely intent on this pursuit. Others, just wanting to be accepted into the group, don’t exactly know what they should do … but they try so hard.  One report shows that a TV network is pulling episodes of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” because a central “character” in the old series is a car, called The General Lee, that has a Confederate flag emblem, aka stars & bars, painted on the roof.  This idiotic action, in itself, will surely eliminate all racial strife in America.  Who the hell cares what two fictional rednecks from 1980s Georgia had painted on their car, or what they named it? The only reason anybody ever watched that show was to eagerly await any appearance by Daisy Duke, in those cut-off jeans.  Oh, I’m sorry. That was sexist and surely offended somebody. Well, get over it, Alice, facts is facts.

    America has gone nuts.  Problem is: where are we gonna go? This is the bed we have made for ourselves. Neither side is going to prevail.  There will be giving and taking and taking and giving, and, hopefully, we can ride this out without killing each other. It's too late to turn the car around.
All we can do at this point is wait and see what happens; rub our eyes; groan. Stuff like that. 

    That’s all for now. If I keep going, I might offend somebody.

   

    ©2015   Rick Baber