Take your pick

"No great civilization has ever died from murder. It committed suicide, instead."

- Arnold Toynbee


You don't like the happenings in Iraq...fair enough. You don't like the inferences that Iran is next...fair enough. You don't like the "Surge" plan...which is actually reinforcements under a different name...fair enough. Speaking of which, if it were called "reinforcements", would you be so against it?

In any case, the debate will go on about all of these things listed above, while our country erodes in a sea of violence in the cities, myspace paranoia, Paris Hiltonish celebrity fascination, anti-parenting legislation, and educational apathy among minorities and poor non-minorities.

I would prefer middle ground for sure, but if my choice for who rules the world were the neo-conservatives in the White House or the people who blow off car bombs in Baghdad markets, I'll take the neo-con's every day and twice on Tuesday.

I want freedom of thought and action, but then I see where 1.7 million legal abortions happen every year, with untold thousands of coat-hanger and knitting needle abortions happening as well, and I wonder if there isn't a better solution. "Stop the killing in Iraq, but keep abortion law as it is," seems to be the sentiment shared by the same minds in most cases, and therefore makes no sense to me. This statement doesn't make me pro or con abortion rights; it simply means I'm attempting to sort it all out.

I believe America has long passed their melting pot stage, and they are more like a salad now. A melting pot brings all the ingredients together to form one. A salad has the lettuce, veggies, croutons, and dressing together, but each item is still distinct and separate and not melded into one. Some say this is a good thing; others say it's not.

Our roll models in society are George Clooney and Terrel Owens? This is our choice? I nominate my father for roll model of the year. He's 76, has Parkinson's, can't drive in the proper lane, is so deaf he couldn't hear a nuke go off in his pantry, but he is and has always been - a good guy.

We can't decide if it's ok to be fat or ok to be skinny. And we blame others for this national epidemic. It's obviously McDonald's fault, because they drive their goods to your home, and force you to eat it at gunpoint.

Our lawyers chase votes by procuring charges against kids who didn't do anything more than drink a keg of beer at a college party and then make the bad choices that come with that intoxication.

Myspace is at fault, not parents who fail to monitor their child's activities. Currently there is no law against teaching your children as they enter their teens that all those boogeyman stories are actually real, you know.

But I'm sure we're working on one.

In California, a childless state representative is trying to pass an anti-spanking law. She states too many children are abused and beaten in California - subsequently redefining "spanking" and calling it "assault." When queried, she did acknowledge she owned a cat. Ahhhh, I see.

Fourty plus years of post secondary educational placement by race and ethnicity, and the number of minority collegiate graduations has grown a sorrowful 13%. And no one wants to bring the guilty to task on this. The powers that be are afraid to tell the truth and chew the social ass that needs to be chewed.

So what do you do? Move to Montana? I think not...the Unibomber hung out there. Move to Mexico? Perhaps. The population of Mexico decreases by thousands daily. I sometimes wonder where they're all going?

Maybe it's all a bad dream, caused by hitting my head on the window sill or something like that...

Heels together...now, click them three times....