Driving Us Crazy
Somebody knew that Jared Loughner was making death threats to Congresswoman Giffords, as well as local radio talk show hosts, bloggers, and college administrators. Someone knew that he’d broken up with his high school sweetheart. But that kind of thing happens all the time in high school. Only a nutcase would go berserk. No one followed the popular admonition, “If you see [or hear] something, say something.”
Instead we’re all supposed to zip our lips, lest the wrong phrase fall trippingly over our tongues. We might say something inadvertently violent. Or racist. Or sexist. Or anti-government. I predict a rise in sales of duct tape, for that is the only way we can hope to achieve true political correctness. As Muslim women must shroud themselves from head to toe to remain sinless, and not encourage their male counterparts to any sinful thoughts, we must permanently glue our lips together (cutting our tongues is too violent an image for our prissy media) in order not to offend anyone.
This morning, the very thought of going out onto New Jersey’s snow-covered roads left me paralyzed with terror for a good 45 minutes before I could convince myself that I was simply going to have to run the gauntlet in order to get to work. New Jersey’s drivers are certifiable maniacs. Giving New Jerseyans a license to drive is almost the same as giving a certifiable lunatic the right to carry a gun. No traffic law exists that they believe they need to observe. The rules don't apply to crazy people.
No road is too icy, no conditions are dangerous enough for them to obey the rules of the road or the speed limit. No matter how many pictures they’ve seen of cars buried in snow banks, they’re convinced that they’re better drivers and that they’ll never suffer that fate. They cause innumerable accidents and insurance claims (don’t worry, J.D., I won’t mention any names). It’s no wonder the Garden State has one of the highest auto insurance premium rates in the nation.
Yet no matter how high their premiums are raised, no matter how many tickets they receive, no matter how many injuries they cause, to themselves and others, they plow on ahead. What are normal New Jersey drivers to do? Stay home and be fired by their indifferent employers? Or drive on as best they can?
The best we can do is drive safely ourselves, don’t speed, don’t break the rules of the right, and keep an eye out for the crazies behind the wheel. Grandpa had a saying, “Just remember: every other driver on the road is a lunatic except you, and don’t be too sure of yourself, either.”
It’s a paranoid way to go through life. There are so many what-ifs, just in driving. What if a tree falls on my car? What if I hydroplane? What if I hit a patch of ice? What if the sun blinds me for a moment? What if some maniac cuts me off? What if there’s an earthquake and that overpass collapses on top of me? What if the parking garage suddenly lets go why’ll I’m parking? What if a tanker overturns on the exit ramp and I’m behind him or in front of him or below him?
No wonder so many people are on Prozac. Actually there’s now a warning against that drug and Paxil, that they can induce violence. Probably too many people are using it who don’t need it. Some of my co-workers came in a little late this morning because of the snow and noted how relaxed they felt because there were so few cars on the road. I felt the same relief.
You want to talk about political vitriol? That’s nothing compared to driving vitriol. Yet somehow, we manage not to kill each other. Well, actually, we do. It’s just that it’s called vehicular homicide, and only when you’ve been drinking and using drugs. And to think, they want to legalize marijuana. They’re out of their minds.
No one would think of outlawing driving, though. There are laws against driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol. We tried, last century, to prohibit alcohol; that didn’t work out so well. Now someone wants to repeal the prohibition of using drugs (there’s nothing in the Constitution about it; it’s a state-by-state decision) but prohibit free speech in regards to political rhetoric.
That’s what the First Amendment was created for in the first place and it was Congresswoman Giffords who read that part of the Bill of Rights in the 112th Congress’ opening session. Liberals are now on a mission to have all violent-sounding language censored, prohibited, and outlawed. Shoot. Oh wait – we can’t use that word, which is a substitute for its cousin, the SH word. So we’re allowed to use the offensive and profane SH word, but not the shoot word. Except in Pennsylvania, where you won’t be able to say either word.
We will comply to. Now that our “awareness” has been “raised,” we will find ourselves becoming self-conscious when we use words like “shoot” and refrain from using them. Balderdash!
Oh wait, “balderdash” might not pass the breathalyzer test. “Balderdash” is a word that dates back to the 1590s and referred to a jumbled mix of liquors (milk and beer, beer and wine, etc.). In the 1670’s, it took on a secondary meaning of “senseless jumble of words.” Purportedly, it is derived from the Latin, balductum, which if my high school Latin still serves me, means something along the lines of “foolish stammering.”
“Balderdash” is what we are hearing from the Liberals, then. A jumbled mixture of accusations and wishful thinking. Hypocrisy is a Greek word. We’re hearing a good deal of that from them. All to enforce exactly what this maniac either feared or wanted – it’s hard to tell with nutcases.
Someone named Clyburn charged that Sarah Palin didn’t have the intelligence to analyze this murderous lunatic’s motives, that she was intellectually incapable of delving into his rationale for a senseless murder. But he is. What does that make anyone who thinks they can make sense of a lunatic who writes gibberish? The guy took bits and pieces of everyone’s rhetoric and mixed them together until they were unrecognizable.
Try to understand Loughner? You might as well cook up a pan of scrambled eggs, throw them into a bowl and then try to analyze them. You’d have better luck than you would trying to divine the depths of this mess of a young man’s psyche.
There are people who are concerned about our currency system. But they’re not obsessed with it. There are people who are concerned about our porous borders. They’re not only concerned but rightfully angry about it. But they’re not obsessed about it. There are people concerned about illiteracy, illegal immigrants, and political correctness. The first two, no is obsessed about, though they are trying to do something constructive about it.
But political correctness, censoring speech. Judging by the blogs and newscasts, the Liberals appear to be every bit as obsessed with controlling speech, guided by paranoia, deluded by their own grandeur and intellectual superiority, flush with hatred for anyone who opposes them, and stubbornly deaf to voices of reason, as the guy sitting in the Tucson jail right now.
Nosce te ipsum.
Instead we’re all supposed to zip our lips, lest the wrong phrase fall trippingly over our tongues. We might say something inadvertently violent. Or racist. Or sexist. Or anti-government. I predict a rise in sales of duct tape, for that is the only way we can hope to achieve true political correctness. As Muslim women must shroud themselves from head to toe to remain sinless, and not encourage their male counterparts to any sinful thoughts, we must permanently glue our lips together (cutting our tongues is too violent an image for our prissy media) in order not to offend anyone.
This morning, the very thought of going out onto New Jersey’s snow-covered roads left me paralyzed with terror for a good 45 minutes before I could convince myself that I was simply going to have to run the gauntlet in order to get to work. New Jersey’s drivers are certifiable maniacs. Giving New Jerseyans a license to drive is almost the same as giving a certifiable lunatic the right to carry a gun. No traffic law exists that they believe they need to observe. The rules don't apply to crazy people.
No road is too icy, no conditions are dangerous enough for them to obey the rules of the road or the speed limit. No matter how many pictures they’ve seen of cars buried in snow banks, they’re convinced that they’re better drivers and that they’ll never suffer that fate. They cause innumerable accidents and insurance claims (don’t worry, J.D., I won’t mention any names). It’s no wonder the Garden State has one of the highest auto insurance premium rates in the nation.
Yet no matter how high their premiums are raised, no matter how many tickets they receive, no matter how many injuries they cause, to themselves and others, they plow on ahead. What are normal New Jersey drivers to do? Stay home and be fired by their indifferent employers? Or drive on as best they can?
The best we can do is drive safely ourselves, don’t speed, don’t break the rules of the right, and keep an eye out for the crazies behind the wheel. Grandpa had a saying, “Just remember: every other driver on the road is a lunatic except you, and don’t be too sure of yourself, either.”
It’s a paranoid way to go through life. There are so many what-ifs, just in driving. What if a tree falls on my car? What if I hydroplane? What if I hit a patch of ice? What if the sun blinds me for a moment? What if some maniac cuts me off? What if there’s an earthquake and that overpass collapses on top of me? What if the parking garage suddenly lets go why’ll I’m parking? What if a tanker overturns on the exit ramp and I’m behind him or in front of him or below him?
No wonder so many people are on Prozac. Actually there’s now a warning against that drug and Paxil, that they can induce violence. Probably too many people are using it who don’t need it. Some of my co-workers came in a little late this morning because of the snow and noted how relaxed they felt because there were so few cars on the road. I felt the same relief.
You want to talk about political vitriol? That’s nothing compared to driving vitriol. Yet somehow, we manage not to kill each other. Well, actually, we do. It’s just that it’s called vehicular homicide, and only when you’ve been drinking and using drugs. And to think, they want to legalize marijuana. They’re out of their minds.
No one would think of outlawing driving, though. There are laws against driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol. We tried, last century, to prohibit alcohol; that didn’t work out so well. Now someone wants to repeal the prohibition of using drugs (there’s nothing in the Constitution about it; it’s a state-by-state decision) but prohibit free speech in regards to political rhetoric.
That’s what the First Amendment was created for in the first place and it was Congresswoman Giffords who read that part of the Bill of Rights in the 112th Congress’ opening session. Liberals are now on a mission to have all violent-sounding language censored, prohibited, and outlawed. Shoot. Oh wait – we can’t use that word, which is a substitute for its cousin, the SH word. So we’re allowed to use the offensive and profane SH word, but not the shoot word. Except in Pennsylvania, where you won’t be able to say either word.
We will comply to. Now that our “awareness” has been “raised,” we will find ourselves becoming self-conscious when we use words like “shoot” and refrain from using them. Balderdash!
Oh wait, “balderdash” might not pass the breathalyzer test. “Balderdash” is a word that dates back to the 1590s and referred to a jumbled mix of liquors (milk and beer, beer and wine, etc.). In the 1670’s, it took on a secondary meaning of “senseless jumble of words.” Purportedly, it is derived from the Latin, balductum, which if my high school Latin still serves me, means something along the lines of “foolish stammering.”
“Balderdash” is what we are hearing from the Liberals, then. A jumbled mixture of accusations and wishful thinking. Hypocrisy is a Greek word. We’re hearing a good deal of that from them. All to enforce exactly what this maniac either feared or wanted – it’s hard to tell with nutcases.
Someone named Clyburn charged that Sarah Palin didn’t have the intelligence to analyze this murderous lunatic’s motives, that she was intellectually incapable of delving into his rationale for a senseless murder. But he is. What does that make anyone who thinks they can make sense of a lunatic who writes gibberish? The guy took bits and pieces of everyone’s rhetoric and mixed them together until they were unrecognizable.
Try to understand Loughner? You might as well cook up a pan of scrambled eggs, throw them into a bowl and then try to analyze them. You’d have better luck than you would trying to divine the depths of this mess of a young man’s psyche.
There are people who are concerned about our currency system. But they’re not obsessed with it. There are people who are concerned about our porous borders. They’re not only concerned but rightfully angry about it. But they’re not obsessed about it. There are people concerned about illiteracy, illegal immigrants, and political correctness. The first two, no is obsessed about, though they are trying to do something constructive about it.
But political correctness, censoring speech. Judging by the blogs and newscasts, the Liberals appear to be every bit as obsessed with controlling speech, guided by paranoia, deluded by their own grandeur and intellectual superiority, flush with hatred for anyone who opposes them, and stubbornly deaf to voices of reason, as the guy sitting in the Tucson jail right now.
Nosce te ipsum.
posted by Belle | 5:29 PM
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