Backlash

I have spent the entire day waiting. I’m waiting for news from the state capitol about some dog legislation that we’ve been fighting for months. The bills are finally being heard in committee today and it’s nerve-wracking. It’s a six-hour drive to the capital and I didn’t want to risk my old car on that trip but I think sitting here waiting is just as bad. I can’t even watch the streaming video: I have a Mac and I don’t use Media Player. I have to rely on semi-instant replay from other people. We’ve already lost in the House committee and the bill has been recommended to pass on to the full Judiciary committee. It gets harder to stop at each step of the process. Now we’re waiting to see what happens in the Senate Ag committee. Well, I think of it as the Ag committee but it’s really the Commerce, Labor & Agriculture committee, so who knows where a member’s really coming from.

I seriously distrust a city-dweller dealing with agricultural issues. Just this morning I read a message about a poor farmer somewhere who may have to deal with keeping dust down on his farm because of some law that’s being considered in his state legislature. Of course, the law is designed to keep “dust particulate” down in some urban area but it will be applied across the state. That means he won’t be able to plow when it’s dry -- and, of course, you can’t plow when it’s wet. So what’s the poor guy supposed to do? It almost seems as though there are people who don’t want agriculture or animals in this country.

Why would people not want agriculture? Hell if I know. Well, I do know, but then this entry would turn into a rant against animal rightists and even environmentalists who go too far. Suffice it to say that there are people in this world who would be quite happy to save the planet at the expense of the human race.

I think we have gone far beyond the whole concept of a gentle, loving Mother Earth that we had in the 1970s. Mother Earth loved us and wanted us to enjoy the fruits she had to offer. Now the environmental movement is being run by Green Nazis. They make rules about everything. There’s no pleasure anymore. They will gleefully accost you on the street, in stores, in the parking lot, while you’re shopping, or anywhere they find you minding your own business, and tell you how you should be living your life. They’ll tell you what you should buy, what you shouldn’t buy, what you should wear, what you should eat, yada yada yada. Anybody else sick of it, too? I’m just tired of living in a Puritanical world, even if all of the healthy food and exercise and recycling is good for me or the planet. These people are the worst kind of missionaries out to convert us all to their little narrow-minded view of the world.

Wouldn’t you like to time travel for just a little while and visit with Scott and Zelda in the 1920s? You could drink, dance, stay out all night and nobody cared what you ate, what kind of excesses you indulged in, or how many things you did that were bad for the planet. Or maybe, just once, you could take a trip with Hemingway (I don’t even like Hemingway) and go watch a bullfight. OMG! How politically incorrect would that be! You could even pop down to Cuba for a few days and light up some good cigars. That’s another thing! Go back in time a few decades and you could smoke without people making faces and treating you like an outcast! Wow!

Really, it kind of sucks to live right now. All of the life and fun have been drained right out of living by these people who want us to do the right thing, save the planet and be healthy. It feels like the Temperance League is running the country. I think we should get rid of them and have fun again. We need a backlash. We should all stop being afraid of what people will think. Stop being afraid of those morality police.