Don't Get Me Started: 11, 2017

 Part of me says, “Oh, how nice for the temperature to be in the 70s on a day when 11º F was the record low and the 40s would be typical.” Another part says, “Oh my. It’s passing strange. Things change and we dawdle.” I have the feeling that I’m like a Titanic passenger who just heard Captain Smith order “Full speed ahead,” as we sail into a documented iceberg field.

“Quick! The Schubert.”

There, that got the systolic back under 200. More on the weather: It’s been like this all during late fall. Further, we’ve had no significant rain since August. As the old folks would say, “It’s drier that a popcorn fa....” Oh, let’s just say it’s dry. The weather is alternatively comforting and destructive. What can we trust? Certainly not our present government, as they say. Oh no, not our present government.

I’m a little older than most. I can remember when science was important in this country. There was no schizophrenia about it within our government. Now we have the idiocy of an official stricture prohibiting speaking about climate change while the entire United States Military operation is busily going about preparing for it, spending millions in the effort.

We have an official government policy of science denial as we provide aid to low-lying coastal cities that are being overrun by the sea.

Back in the 1960s, I read an essay in a college sociology class, the name of said essay being, Our Schizophrenic Society. I’ve not been able to find it lately, but it dealt with how young children grew up facing incompatible teachings, such as an emphasis on honesty by a father who cheated on his income taxes. Or, learning to appreciate, at school, a science that eliminated polio, while facing a denunciation of that same science on Sunday.

It produced a generation that urged respect for the environment and social justice while driving a gas-guzzling SUV 50 miles to work and back each day so their children wouldn’t have to attend school with kids of a different skin color.

In his recent book, A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America, Bruce Gibney blames many of our current problems on that generation raised in schizophrenia and fed on non-sequiturs. It’s true, no doubt, although the “Boomers” did help end our country’s involvement in an evil and wicked war. Oops, no. Most supported American’s involvement in the war, just not their personal involvement in it.

They were spoiled, greedy, selfish, wasteful, unbridled, shortsighted, and self-aggrandizing. Now they vote conservative and control things. Preservation of their privilege seems to be the primary concern. They can’t control the planet as an entity, though, so they just stopped teaching about it.

In short, it seems as if we’re headed for rocky shoals. I think it’s time to start resisting.