Rotational Medicine

I do not have a primary topic today. I am not linking to an article or cutting & pasting some quote. That formulaic method for writing blog posts is really what led to things like Twitter. Tell the point of your story & not the story. Tell your punchline & not the joke... enough already!

I just want to talk about how we are all led around the nose by people with hidden agendas.

I have talked recently about how the victimization of children is being used to push an agenda that dramatically erodes your privacy.

I think it is likely that parents are targeted for hot-button issues as a swing-vote because they are busy and therefore can not afford to devote enough time to rational analytical thought to parse through the spin-doctoring and see the Bill of Goods they are being sold. Politicos shrink-wrap divisive issues in a way that can be spoon-fed to stressed-out/over-worked/over-protective parents to elicit the appropriate knee-jerk response.

It is a tactic. If you find yourself in this demographic - Be Very Careful.


Let's shift gears and put out a simple statement:

Cars kill more people than cigarettes.

Do we want to talk about carbon monoxide emissions? You know - that stuff we labeled 'second-hand smoke' and pointed fingers at each other about. I am willing to bet that death-toll would put us over the top alone.

But we don't see that as the reason to stop idling your car. No - that is because of greenhouse gas emissions. The hell with you and your cancer. Quit smoking, roll your window up, and don't idle your car.

That's another thing - we are constantly being told what to do for our own good - but in the form of a cop-out. The onus of safety is pushed back on Joe Public as though it's his fault. Take the example of the bank website that originally mandated that you log in with your social security number then later sending you a nasty-gram telling you that you have to make a new account because SS#'s are not a secure data point. It was Their mistake to begin with - but the onus is put on the customer to clean up after it for them. Mind you - if you complained about the boneheaded policy to begin with then you were afforded all of the attention and expertise of your closest brick wall.

Has the constant double-speak of the Bush administration completely numbed us to the ability to tell reality from bullshit? Why does everyone act like the Chinese government these days? It seems like everyone is just trying to make themselves look good, rather than devoting any effort at all in an attempt to be good.