Editorials
Commentary: Please just go away
- Details
- By Gary P. Custer
- Tuesday, November 29, -0001
- Hits: 411
The world's sounds were reduced to the mellow roar of a well-tuned four-stroke engine. Smells were a delicious mixture of heated engine oil, the earthy river smells and the pungent odor of the tobacco burning in a pipe or cigar clenched tightly in my teeth.
Often on those late-night rides to nowhere my headlight would capture a wild creature in its beam, its red eyes glaring at the interruption of its nightly attempt to satisfy its basic need to hunt and reproduce.
But the interuption was always brief and harmless. Most of the rabbits, possums, turtles, snakes, frogs, coons and other disinterested species remained still until released from the white pulsating net cast by the noisy, smelly intruder, then they went back to doing what they and their ancestors had done for uncounted generations before Mr. Honda first put a two-stroke engine on a bicycle.
The motorcycle is long gone, one of the treasured toys that a person has to leave behind to get a chance to achieve a precarious niche in the adult world.
But the images remain.
When I stand beside the information expressway late at night watching the traffic go by, I think I understand a little of what the animals on those lonely Missouri roads near Columbia must have felt.
Our world has been invaded by people riding big, loud, smelly vehicles.
Their solution to the social problems that are turning our nation's cities into dangerous urban jungles inhabited only by people so mired in poverty, sickness and despair that they cannot leave are mean-spirited and so ineffectual as to be criminally negligent in their use of public funds.
They would promote their "family values agenda" by taking the food out of the mouths of babies born to single mothers who have "too many" children. Maybe they think that they can instill their "family values" in welfare mothers by making them watch their children starve. A more likely consequence of this policy is that poor women will choose abortion rather than subject their fetuses to life in a world that has no compassion for human life.
It is hard to imagine that anyone would have or not have sex because of a government policy. More importantly, the children born as a result of the union should not have to pay for their parents' lust or to accomplish a politicians' agenda.
They would promote their "anti-crime agenda" by putting every available dollar into building prisons in a country that already has the highest incarceration rate of any developed county in the world and they would enact laws requiring longer mandatory sentences to ensure that there would never be a need to put up a "vacancy" sign in front of any prison.
Despite the fact that there is no creditable evidence that the death penalty deters crime, they offer it as a necessary step in reducing our violent crime rate.
To accomplish their "national debt-reduction agenda" they propose to eliminate funding for a wide variety of valuable cost-effective programs funded by the federal government.
One example is public radio and television. You may or may not listen or watch them but you benefit from their programing because others do and use what they learn to improve themselves and your community.
The cost?
What you pay in a year for public broadcasting is less than the cost of one clip of ammunition for an assault rifle used by a soldier protecting our country or a punk protecting his "turf."
Every reason these political ideologies use to justify their self-serving attacks on public broadcasting could be used to justify the elimination of public libraries. After all, there are a lot of places to buy books if you really have to undermine the free enterprise system by turning off commercial television and read a book.
A lot of public officials were swept into office on a tide of voter frustration with things as they were after they promised to do a better job than the incumbents. Unfortunately, many of them mistook disaffection with things as they were for widespread public appreciation for the politicians' mean-spirited, ineffective political philosophies.
Like the small animals along the Missouri River bottoms, I just wish the loud, smelly intruders would go away and let me get on with my life.
GPC
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