Okay.... Go Figure...

Las Cruces Sun-News Front Page March 6 2009

"Texting, driving ban is cruising."

Referencing the momentum being gained in Santa Fe as the Senate voted to prohibit -

Guess What? Yes! Reading and Writing (texting) while driving! DUH!

God help us people! We have become so stupid that we need elected representatives in the state capitol, (at great taxpayer expense), to make it a "criminal offense" to be reading and writing while we drive.

Why can't we figure that one out on our own?

Fortunately this sort of police-based parenting policy coincides with our spending hundreds of millions building new courthouses and prisons to process our responsibility impaired population. Of course if we spent that money providing quality public transportation, we could sit and text, and read and write and (can you imagine) talk to our neighbors all we wanted to, on our way back and forth to school, work, shopping, recreation. But hey! We're gonna' have all this new criminal processing capacity! Might as well create some more criminals, I guess. Gotta justify that building expense. Good thing we're so stupid that we'll surely see lots of new laws to criminalize ourselves and pay people to protect ourselves and others, from ourselves and others. Again, on taxpayers tab and at the expense of our freedom.

Q: How stupid are we?
A: Way Stupid!

More laws - more broken laws - more fines - fines equal revenue. It all makes sense if you're in the business of extracting profit from governing a nation of fearful, irresponsible sheep who are actually willing to pay others to control their lives... Hey, good work if you can get it, and given our soaring unemployment numbers, I guess it's a blessing that we're a nation of bleating, herd animals.

I'm not arguing against the legislation. Realistically speaking, remember, we need it. Seriously. We really are that deficient. We're unfortunately that impaired. Just two days ago, a friend of my son's, while stopped at a red light was rear-ended by - yes, you guessed it - someone texting. Totaled his car, and sent him to the hospital.I'm merely voicing my astonishment at our level of ignorance and required supervision and surveillance.

We are in fact, out of control. We are so stupid that we actually choose to take at least one hand (if not two) off the wheel - look away from the road and traffic, and indulge in writing and reading messages on little devices. I mean how weird is that?

It's true. In our behaviour, we cry out for someone, anyone, to make our decisions for us. Weirder yet, we're willing to pay others to make laws that actually criminalize our lack of common sense. After all, if we don't hire Big Brother to watch us, just imagine, (if left unsupervised), how stupid we'd be.


In fact, there's a new medical term that defines people suffering from a previously unidentified, life threatening condition. They're called "Text-Walkers". (This is for real - if you don't believe me, "google" the term) Hospital staff all over the country are seeing ever increasing cases of people who literally walk out in front of cars and trains while texting. Text-Walkers also fall into manholes and ditches - fall off train platforms, staircases, escalators, aircraft boarding steps, and walk into doors, walls and other people, crash their cars and bicycles and apparently trains. This is real. Duh!

What could we be texting about that's so important? I mean - how dumb are we?

That's the question that keeps coming up. "How dumb are we?" What's happened to us? How have we allowed ourselves to become a nation of adult children that need to pay parental/police overseers to enforce common sense?

And we wonder "What's wrong with kids these days?"

The simple answer is "us". "We" are what's wrong with kids these days. We the adults, the leaders, have built a society based on values that disregard obvious common sense, personal accountability and ultimate quality of life. We exchange quality of life for irresponsibility, blame-shifting, multi-tasking, quantity of stuff and social status, greed and maximum consumption - at any cost.

The fruit of the tree we've grown is being harvested (for profit of course) in the ever increasing populations of our adult and juvenile prisons and probation/parole systems.

So, what's next? Are we going to see legislation that prohibits stuffing beans into our noses, or poking ourselves in the eye with sharp objects?

Do we need legislation to enforce wiping after we go potty? Given the destruction of the constitution in the past 8 years, police and even the military (yes, the military) have the right to burst into our homes without a warrant, abduct us (and our children) and detain us indefinitely without charge, representation or disclosure of our whereabouts. That's the law. Did you realize that?

That's been done "for" us in the name of Homeland Security - The Patriot Act. We allowed that to happen. We embraced that. We kept in office, the representatives who voted it into existence. We traded freedom for a false sense of government assured security. Gee, ya' know. I don't feel all that secure.

But, Hey! Maybe the absence of constitutionally guaranteed rights will support enforcement of the new "wipe your butt" legislation. The newly created crime of "Failure to Wipe in the Furtherance of Terrorism" can easily qualify as a Homeland Security "biological terrorism threat" in That'll keep a lot of lawyers and prison personnel working - (hey, we're in an economic downturn - gotta save and create 3 million new jobs). That kind of legislation will keep lots of taxpayer funded, government scientists conducting "studies". Can't spend too much on Homeland Security you know - Gotta keep America safe from biological threats...

Now, there's a real "Weapons of Mass Destruction" threat to get "preemptive" about. 300 million potential "Bung-Berry Terrorists" - right here on our streets. Gotta stop us! We don't want the smoking gun to be a bung-berry cloud. Please stop us! Please help us! We can't wipe our own butts! Please don't let us become a threat to our own National Security. Please make us wipe after we go potty, or arrest us if we don't.

Soon, the dialogue between the first two police officers or soldiers on an accident scene could sound something like this: "Joe, I'll check the text messages and, well, this one looks particularly stupid - better call Homeland Security to do a "bung-berry bio-terror threat assessment on him".

This is the direction we're going in faster and faster. Every time we allow common sense to be legislated, by virtue of our own neglect and irresponsibility, we inch closer and closer to being a fully realized nation of prisoners - held in shackles of our own creation.

So... Anti-texting laws are the cause of all this? No. This legislation is a small thing. It doesn't sever a limb from the body of our freedom - it's a small cut. Anti-texting laws are one small and clear example of how, by refusing to take responsibility, we give away individual power in exchange for the "security" of having overlords who make decisions for us. We're like irresponsible children. Please take our power away from us. And make us pay for for it - from our pockets and our cache of freedom. This legislation is only a small cut to the body of our freedom - but one of the cuts that causes "death by a thousand cuts".

We created it. We deserve it. We get to live with it... or change it.

I pray we can change it. Else, our children and grand-children must see us as the pathetic generation that cowered in the face of personal responsibility, fled from freedom, enabled the overlords to save us from ourselves - and subsequently handed them a world in which they are merely tax generating units. A world wherein the right to self determination is only a memory - perhaps, just a myth.